She went out into the yard, coal-hole, stable, hay-loft, green-house, fowl-house, and piggery, and still there was no sign.  Coming in again, she saw a bonnet, eagerly pounced upon it; and found it to be her own.

Hastily completing her arrangements in the other rooms, she entered the village again, and called at once on the postmistress, Elizabeth Leat, an intimate friend of hers, and a female who sported several unique diseases and afflictions.

Mrs. Crickett unfolded the paper, took out the hair, and waved it on high before the perplexed eyes of Elizabeth, which immediately mooned and wandered after it like a cat’s.

‘What is it?’ said Mrs. Leat, contracting her eyelids, and stretching out towards the invisible object a narrow bony hand that would have been an unmitigated delight to the pencil of Carlo Crivelli.

‘You shall hear,’ said Mrs. Crickett, complacently gathering up the treasure into her own fat hand; and the secret was then solemnly imparted, together with the accident of its discovery.

A shaving-glass was taken down from a nail, laid on its back in the middle of a table by the window, and the hair spread carefully out upon it.  The pair then bent over the table from opposite sides, their elbows on the edge, their hands supporting their heads, their foreheads nearly touching, and their eyes upon the hair.

‘He ha’ been mad a’ter my lady Cytherea,’ said Mrs. Crickett, ’and ‘tis my very belief the hair is—­’

’No ‘tidn’.  Hers idn’ so dark as that,’ said Elizabeth.

’Elizabeth, you know that as the faithful wife of a servant of the Church, I should be glad to think as you do about the girl.  Mind I don’t wish to say anything against Miss Graye, but this I do say, that I believe her to be a nameless thing, and she’s no right to stick a moral clock in her face, and deceive the country in such a way.  If she wasn’t of a bad stock at the outset she was bad in the planten, and if she wasn’t bad in the planten, she was bad in the growen, and if not in the growen, she’s made bad by what she’s gone through since.’

‘But I have another reason for knowing it idn’ hers,’ said Mrs. Leat.

‘Ah!  I know whose it is then—­Miss Aldclyffe’s, upon my song!’

‘’Tis the colour of hers, but I don’t believe it to be hers either.’

‘Don’t you believe what they d’ say about her and him?’

’I say nothen about that; but you don’t know what I know about his letters.’

’What about ’em?’

‘He d’ post all his letters here except those for one person, and they he d’ take to Budmouth.  My son is in Budmouth Post Office, as you know, and as he d’ sit at desk he can see over the blind of the window all the people who d’ post letters.  Mr. Manston d’ unvariably go there wi’ letters for that person; my boy d’ know ’em by sight well enough now.’

‘Is it a she?’

‘’Tis a she.’