’When the night came, my nerves were in some way weaker than they had been on the previous night.  I felt reluctant to touch the body.  I went to the outhouse, but instead of opening the oven, I firmly drove in the shoulder-nails that held the cupboard to the wall.  “I will bury her to-morrow night, however,” I thought.

’But the next night I was still more reluctant to touch her.  And my reluctance increased, and there the body remained.  The oven was, after all, never likely to be opened in my time.

’I married Cytherea Graye, and never did a bridegroom leave the church with a heart more full of love and happiness, and a brain more fixed on good intentions, than I did on that morning.

’When Cytherea’s brother made his appearance at the hotel in Southampton, bearing his strange evidence of the porter’s disclosure, I was staggered beyond expression.  I thought they had found the body.  “Am I to be apprehended and to lose her even now?” I mourned.  I saw my error, and instantly saw, too, that I must act externally like an honourable man.  So at his request I yielded her up to him, and meditated on several schemes for enabling me to claim the woman I had a legal right to claim as my wife, without disclosing the reason why I knew myself to have it.

’I went home to Knapwater the next day, and for nearly a week lived in a state of indecision.  I could not hit upon a scheme for proving my wife dead without compromising myself.

’Mr. Raunham hinted that I should take steps to discover her whereabouts by advertising.  I had no energy for the farce.  But one evening I chanced to enter the Rising Sun Inn.  Two notorious poachers were sitting in the settle, which screened my entrance.  They were half drunk—­their conversation was carried on in the solemn and emphatic tone common to that stage of intoxication, and I myself was the subject of it.

’The following was the substance of their disjointed remarks:  On the night of the great fire at Carriford, one of them was sent to meet me, and break the news of the death of my wife to me.  This he did; but because I would not pay him for his news, he left me in a mood of vindictiveness.  When the fire was over, he joined his comrade.  The favourable hour of the night suggested to them the possibility of some unlawful gain before daylight came.  My fowlhouse stood in a tempting position, and still resenting his repulse during the evening, one of them proposed to operate upon my birds.  I was believed to have gone to the rectory with Mr. Raunham.  The other was disinclined to go, and the first went off alone.

’It was now about three o’clock.  He had advanced as far as the shrubbery, which grows near the north wall of the house, when he fancied he heard, above the rush of the waterfall, noises on the other side of the building.  He described them in these words, “Ghostly mouths talking—­then a fall—­then a groan—­then the rush of the water and creak of the engine as before.”  Only one explanation occurred to him; the house was haunted.  And, whether those of the living or the dead, voices of any kind were inimical to one who had come on such an errand.  He stealthily crept home.