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Rh ward creature is a lover, male or female! If sober married folk did fly off at a tangent like to sweethearts in their courting, there would be never a household on the earth with both master and mistress within its doors at the same time!"

"Wherefore are you not busy with your sermon, father?" asked Joan, saucily, to turn the conversation and draw attention from her guilty blushes.

"'Tis too early in the week," retorted the vicar, with a twinkle of his merry eyes. "I was going to the churchyard to look for the key of the vault I opened this morning. I know not how I can have mislaid it."

They accompanied him on his search, but their efforts were in vain; and at last Tregenna suggested that the key might have been stolen.

"Nay, but who should steal the key of a burial vault?" objected the vicar, incredulously. "'Tis the last thing a man would covet, I imagine."

But though Tregenna did not press the point, the notion he had suggested did not leave his mind. And even after he had had tea with