Consequently it created considerable surprise and excitement, when, early in the summer--when Little Miss Primrose was just past five years old--news came suddenly to the village that the young earl was coming to spend the summer at the castle. The report proved true, and once more lights shone out at night from the windows, and parties of merry riders passed to and fro along the riverside, day after day, and the villagers stood on their thresholds to see them pass, and held their breath in mingled awe and admiration, as they recognised the earl himself, gay and handsome as ever, riding with graceful ease, and chatting carelessly with one and another of the friends around him. He had a pleasant word and smile in return for every carefully-lifted hat and well-dropped curtsey with which his people greeted him, and more than this none of them expected. None of the late lords of Bryn Afon had ever shown any more personal interest in them than this courteous acknowledgment of their homage, always faithfully tendered, at however long intervals. The only favoured exception to this rule was Jack the boatman, but no one was jealous of him, for as owner of the only boats which could be hired up the river for a considerable distance, and as master of the Bryn Afon fishing, he held an important position, and had been more than ever revered since he had out of his own pocket built the bridge, which had proved such a blessing to the neighbourhood. A man who had saved enough money to build a bridge at the cost of £60 or £70, was a man to be respected. So no one was jealous when it was rumoured that young Lord Bryn Afon had resumed his boyhood's acquaintance with the boatman, and went out boating or fishing with him every day, as he had been wont to do in those few and far-between summers when the late earl had brought him--a handsome, curly-headed boy--to the castle for occasional visits. For the late earl had frequented the castle rather more than his predecessors, and Jack could recall three bright summer weeks in different years when the boy had been his daily companion for a few merry days, and the hero of his now departed wife and daughter.