Friday 19th September 1808

Dear Diary,
I rode Python to Pimpton and stabled him there before meeting Miss Dixon and we continued our journey to Hoarcambe by carriage.
"What is become of Miss Forster?" I enquired, "I trust she is well."
"Indeed, Mr Austen, she is in fine form and sends her fervant greetings and heartfelt condolences upon your recent tribulations. She regrets she has a prior engagement with distant relations or she would have joined us on this merry trip." Miss Dixon was holding onto her bonnet with one hand but now reached out the other and gripped my arm, "How are you faring, Mr Austen? What news of your 'intended'?"
I assured her that my spirits were high under the circumstances and that I had heard nought of 'her' and informed her that she was, practically, the first person to enquire of 'Danielle' since that revelatory day.
"It is of 'Danielle' that I wish to speak to you and why I sought you out at Far Corfe. Your Father told me you were there." Her ever present smile faltered slightly. "When I met 'Danielle' some weeks ago I felt her...I mean ...his face familiar and I pondered upon it greatly afterwards. Then last week I received a letter from my old friend Cissy Trumper in Little Sodding by the Marsh and I gasped when it all came back to me in an instant. Poor Miss Forster thought I had come over all queer but I had just remembered where I had seen that familiar face before."
Miss Dixon informed me how many years ago she was employed as a nurse in the Stammer household at Sod Hall close to Little Sodding by the Marsh. Her charges were the twins Danielle and Daniel Stammer. She cared for them for some five years from the age of nine until their mid teens when she left after meeting a handsome butcher who asked her to marry him. Another five years passed and then she received the terrible news that Sod Hall had burnt down and only Danielle had survived the fire. Miss Dixon said she had tried to contact the poor girl but to no avail as she disppeared and no one in the area ever heard of or saw her again.
Miss Dixon squeezed my arm tighter and leaned in closer;
"It was Daniel not Danielle who survived. His was the face I remembered. He took his sister's identity and vanished by altering his name from Stammer to St Amour."
She sat back with a satisfied sigh and released her grip.
"Oh, Mr Austen, is that not some juicy gossip!" She giggled.
"Indeed," I agreed, " but do you believe Daniel started the fire in which his family perished?"
"Do badgers defecate in the woods?" She hooted.
"I am observing you in a new light, Miss Dixon," I mused, "I fear there are depths to you I have not yet fathomed."
"Oh, Mr Austen, I could tell you some tales but for now we must look forward to an evening of musical delight. Mr Ken Brianeddy is so delightful, why, I could eat him," she laughed.
"But what of the butcher?" I asked. "It is true you never married."
A shadow dimmed her merry eyes for a moment and she sighed;
"He was not the man I thought him and sadly...well, let's just say, he went to pieces."