Presently Allen spoke to her again.  “There’ll never be such another kind gentleman in our times, Mrs. Dale; nor one so open-handed.  And it’s not only the gentry that’s going to mourn him.  The pore hev lost a good friend.”

“Yes,” she whispered.  “Indeed they have.  Indeed they have.”

Miss Waddy came out of her absurd little post-card shop and kept saying, “Oh, dear!” She, like almost everybody else in the village except Mavis Dale and Mary, had known the news for hours; but she was greedy for the more and more particularized information that every newcomer brought with him along the road from Manninglea.

“How was the body taken to the Abbey?”

“Sent one of the carriages.”

“Oh, dear!”

They continued to talk; and Mavis, listening, for a few moments felt gladness, nothing but gladness.  He had gone out of their lives forever.  There could be no divorce.  Now that he was dead, she would be forgiven.  Then again she felt the horror of it.  The thing was like an answer to her secret prayer or wish—­like the mysterious overwhelming consequence of her curse.  It was as though in cursing him she had doomed him to destruction.

“They caught the horse last night, didn’t they?”

“Yes.  Some chaps at Abbey Cross Roads see un go gallopin’ by, and followed un up Beacon Hill.  Catched un in the quag by th’ old gravel pits.”

“Oh, dear!” said Miss Waddy.

Little by little Mavis pieced the story together.  Mr. Barradine had been out riding late yesterday, and the riderless horse had given the alarm some time about nine o’clock in the evening.  But, although a wide-spread search continued all through the night, the body was not found until past noon to-day.

They had found it at Kibworth Rocks.  These rocks, situated in Hadleigh Wood, about two miles from the Abbey, were of curious formation—­a wide mass of jagged boulders cropping out unexpectedly from the sandy soil, some of them half hidden with bracken, while others, the bigger ones, rose brown and bare and strange.  They provided a redoubtable fortress for foxes, and contained what was known as the biggest “earth” of the neighborhood.  Not far off, the main ride passed through the wood, making a broad sunlit avenue between the gloomy pines; but no one without local knowledge would have suspected the existence of the rocky gorge or slope, because, although only at a little distance, it was quite invisible from the ride.

The body had been discovered lying in a narrow cleft, the head fearfully battered; and how Mr. Barradine came by his death was obvious.  He had been riding through or near the rocks, and the horse, probably stumbling, had thrown him; and then, frightened and struggling away, had dragged him some considerable distance, until the rocks held him fast and tore him free.

What remained doubtful was how or why Mr. Barradine approached the rocks.  Of course, his horse might have shied from the ride and taken him there before he could recover control of it; or, as perhaps was more probable, Mr. Barradine might have ridden from the safe and open track in order quietly to examine what was called the main earth, and, if fortunate, gratify himself with a glimpse of two or three lusty fox cubs playing outside the burrows.