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water-meads as if for home, and Marian going on to the next village, where there’s another public-house. Nothing more was seed or heard o’ Retty till the waterman, on his way home, noticed something by the Great Pool; ’twas her bonnet and shawl packed up. In the water he found her. He and another man brought her home, thinking a’ was dead; but she came round by degrees.’

Angel, suddenly recollecting that Tess was overhearing this gloomy tale, went to shut the door between the passage and the parlour; but his wife, flinging a shawl round her, had approached and listened to the man’s narrative, her eyes resting absently on the luggage and the drops of rain glistening upon it.

‘And, more than this, there’s Marian; she’s been found dead drunk by the withy-bed—a girl who hev never been known to touch anything before except shilling ale; though, to be sure, a’ was always a good trencher-woman, as her face showed. It seems as if the maids had all gone out o’ their minds!’

‘And Izz?’ asked Tess.

‘Izz is about house as usual; but a’ do say a’ can guess how it happened; and she seems to