Daniel, a young man and son of the late bailiff, with rather superior ways of a gentleman but no money to back them up becomes involved in a love triangle. Engaged to Maria, a plain looking girl but with proper manners, Daniel begins stepping out on the sly with a pretty young woman from France called Harriet (really Henriette, but a name too difficult for the villagers to remember). Maria decides to have it out with him, so she follows him one night. She catches him coming out of the barn of a neighbour, who also happens to be narrator of the story, with a sack of grain in hand. Maria lets loose as only a woman scorned might. The next day Daniel goes missing, and Maria, now repentant for her promise to turn him in to the authorities, sees him walking in the wooded area near the barn, but he doesn't see her. It transpires she saw him well after he hanged himself in those same woods.