"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.
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