`I don't know it. But wouldn't it have been different, or shouldn't I have heard more, or wouldn't they have found him, Liddy? - or - I don't know how it is, but death would have been different from how this is. There may be some trick in it. I am perfectly convinced that he is still alive!'

Bathsheba remained firm in this opinion till Monday, when two circumstances conjoined to shake it. The first was a short paragraph in the local newspaper, which, beyond making by a methodizing pen formidable presumptive evidence of Troy's death by drowning, contained the important testimony of a young Mr Barker, M.D., of Budmouth, who spoke to being an eyewitness of the accident, in a letter to the editor. In this he stated that he was passing over the cliff on the remoter side of the cove just as the sun was setting. At that time he saw a bather carried along in the current outside the mouth of the cove, and guessed in an instant that there was but a poor chance for him unless. He should be possessed of unusual muscular powers. He drifted behind a projection of the coast, and Mr Barker followed along the shore in the same direction. But by the time that he could reach an elevation sufficiently great to command a view of the sea beyond, dusk had set in, and nothing farther was to be seen.

The other circumstance was the arrival of his clothes, when it became necessary for her to examine and identify them - though this had virtually been done long before by those who inspected the letters in his pockets. It was so evident to her in the midst of her agitation that Troy had undressed in the fall conviction of dressing again almost immediately, that the notion that anything but death could have prevented him was a perverse one to entertain.

Then Bathsheba said to herself that others were assured in their opinion; strange that she should not be. A strange reflection occurred to her, causing her face to flush. Suppose that Troy had followed Fanny into another world. Had he done this intentionally yet contrived to make his death appear like an accident? Nevertheless, this thought of how the apparent might differ from the real - made vivid by her bygone jealousy of Fanny, and the remorse he had shown that night - did not blind her to the perception of a likelier difference, less tragic, but to herself far more disastrous.

When alone late that evening beside a small fire, and much calmed down, Bathsheba took Troy's watch into her hand, which had been restored to her with the rest of the articles belonging to him. She opened the case as he had opened it before her a week ago. There was the little coil of pale hair which had been as the faze to this great explosion.

`He was hers and she was his; they should be gone together,' she said. `I am nothing to either of them, and why should I keep her hair?' She took it in her hand, and held it over the fire. `No - I'll not burn it - I'll keep it in memory of her, poor thing!' she added, snatching back her hand.