Yes! If she wasn’t there, her spirit was most certainly there. He scrambled to his feet, feeling sure that he would see her; and there she was! She was seated upon a grave over against William Solent’s. On her lap was a paper of sandwiches, in her hands a book. She was munching and reading at the same time, her hat on the grave by her side, her large black boots emerging from beneath a voluminous skirt, whose stiff folds suggested the Melancholia of Albert Dürer.

He had vowed he would bolt if he saw her that day, but instead of that he pulled off his cloth-cap with effusive humility and stepped over the intervening mounds.

“Miss Gault!”

She must have marked him down while he was under the fence, and been merely gathering her wits; for all she did now was to raise her eyes and blink at him.

“So you’ve come at last, boy!”