Chapter 46

It had, no doubt, fallen, or been torn from the young lady's neck in the struggle of the night before. I resolved at once to restore it, and turned my horse's head towards the cottage, not without the unpleasant reflection that this was the 1st of April--All Fools' Day--and I might simply be courting a scrape of some kind. Leaving my horse at the gate, I rang the bell, and the door was promptly opened by the old woman (whose face expressed such evident disappointment that I saw some one else had been expected), an…