He told, accordingly, the full story of the gems, leading up to the quarrel between the two men, as Faversham had told it to him.

“Faversham,” he wrote, “left the old man, convinced that all was at an end as to the will and the inheritance.  And now he is as much the heir as ever!  I find him bewildered; for his mind, in that tragic half-hour, had absolutely renounced.  What he will do, no one can say.  As to the murderer, we have discussed all possible clues—­with little light.  But the morning will doubtless bring some new facts.  That Faversham has not the smallest fraction of responsibility for the murder is clear to any sane man who talks with him.  But that there will be a buzz of slanderous tongues as soon as ever the story is public property, I am convinced.  So I send you these fresh particulars as quickly as possible—­for your guidance.”

Tatham thrust the letter into his pocket, and rode away through the December dawn.  His mother would soon be in the thick of her own task with the two unconscious ones at Duddon. His duty lay—­with Lydia!  The “friend” was all alive in him, reaching out to her in a manly and generous emotion.

The winter sunrise was a thing of beauty.  It chimed with the intensity of feeling in the young man’s breast.  The sky was a light saffron over the eastern fells, and the mountains rose into it indistinguishably blue, the light mists wrapped about their feet.  Among the mists, plane behind plane, the hedgerow trees, still faintly afire with their last leaf, stood patterned on the azure of the fells.  And as he rode on, the first rays of the light mounting a gap in the Helvellyn range struck upon the valleys below.  The shadows ran blue along the frosty grass; here and there the withered leaf began to blaze; the streams rejoiced.  Under their sycamores and yews, the white-walled farms sent up their morning smoke; the cocks were crowing; and as he mounted the upland on which the cottage stood, from a height in front of him, a tiny church—­one of the smallest and loneliest in the fells—­sent forth a summoning bell.  The sound, with all its weight of association, sank and echoed through the morning stillness; the fells repeated it, a voice of worship toward God, of appeal toward man.

In Tatham, fashioned to the appeal by all the accidents of blood and nurture, the sound made for a deepened spirit and a steadied mood.  He pressed on toward the little house and garden that now began to show through the trees.

Lydia had not long come downstairs when she heard the horse at the gate.  The cottage breakfast was nominally at half-past eight.  But Mrs. Penfold never appeared, and Susy was always professionally late, it being understood that inspiration—­when it alights—­is a midnight visitant, and must be wooed at suitable hours.

Lydia was generally down to the minute, and read prayers to their two maids.  Mrs. Penfold made a great point of family prayers, but rarely or never attended them.  Susy did not like to be read to by anybody.  Lydia therefore had the little function to herself.  She chose her favourite psalms, and prayers from the most various sources.  The maids liked it because they loved Lydia; and Lydia, having once begun, would not willingly have given it up.