there from answering, for the truth was terrible, and we knew it;
else why those dripping locks and heavily soaked garments oozing,
not with the limpid waters of the stream we could faintly hear
gurgling in the distance, but with some fearful substance that dyed
the forehead blue and left upon the grass a dark stain that floods
of rain would scarcely wash away?

"What is it? Oh, what does it mean?" she faintly gasped, shuddering
backward with wondering dread as one of those tiny streams of
strange blue moisture found its way to her feet.

Still that ominous silence.

"Oh, I must know!" she whispered. "I was his betrothed"; and her
eyes wandered for a moment with a wild appeal upon those about her.

Whereupon a kindly voice spoke up. "He has been drowned, miss. The
blue----" and there he hesitated.

"The blue is from the remains of some old dye that must have been in
the bottom of the vat out of which we drew him," another voice went
on.

"The vat!" she repeated. "The vat! Was he found----"

"In the vat? Yes, miss." And there the silence fell again.

It was no wonder. For a man like him, alert, busy, with no time nor
inclination for foolish explorations, to have been found drowned in
the disused vat of a half-tumbled-down old mill on a lonesome and