He met his laborers coming to the work. In answer to his questions, one said that, crossing a field after dark, he had met a tall woman, in black, veiled, carrying a bundle which, at the time, he fancied might be a child. Another, returning late from the Blue Boar, had passed a tall woman, in black, veiled, hurrying on, with empty arms swinging at her side, but heard her sob and moan as she went by. This was all Mark Brace heard about that eventful night. The neighbors, finding a golden-haired, dainty babe in Patty Brace's cradle, said, wisely: "No doubt she was well paid." "Mark Brace had seemed flush of money of late." "It was well to have friends. The child very surely belonged to some great lady." But whether its mother lived or was dead, or where she was, Patty never opened her lips to tell; and, after two months, gossip died away, and the baby at Brackenside Farm was an accepted fact. One person asked questions with more show of authority, and to him Mark and Patty told part of the truth. This one person was the Rector of Brakebury. They told him that the child had been left at their door, with a letter and a sum of money. The letter said the child was legitimate and christened, and that the hundred pounds would come each year. The rector was so astonished at this story that he told it to his bishop when he dined with him. "And what kind of a child is it?" asked the Bishop of Lansdown. "The most marvelously beautiful creature; fairly angelic." A few weeks later, in November, the bishop was dining with the Duke of Downsbury, and bethought himself to tell the tale, beginning: "Does not the village of Brakebury belong entirely to your grace? and is not Mark Brace one of your tenant farmers?" The bishop told the story, as he told every story, admirably. "And they have no clew to the child's family," asked the duchess. "Not the least. It was the most cleverly-managed thing I ever heard of in my life." When the ladies returned to the drawing-room, Lady Estelle Hereford, the duke's only child, asked her mother: "What was that story the bishop was telling?" Lady Estelle was not nineteen. Her mother felt that this tale of a foundling was not a proper thing to pour into the ear of innocence. "Really, my dear, I was shocked at the bishop's speaking of such a thing before you," said her Grace of Downsbury. "Why, mamma, there may be nothing really wrong about it after all," said Lady Estelle, quietly, and the duchess privately thanked Heaven for her daughter's simplicity. "There is always some wrong where there is concealment," said the duchess, with decision. "Honor does not shun the day. I prefer you do not talk of it, Estelle." "But, dear mamma, I want to know. So little happens here in the country, I hoped it was something to interest me." "No, my dear. Only a little child, left at Mark Brace's door--with some money--and I think that is all, my dear." "And Mark Brace is going to keep the child, mamma?"