If Pitt's appearance had been less supremely neat and faultless, I think the honest worker would have offered his hand; but the white linen summer suit, the polished boots, the delicate gloves, were too much of a contrast with his own dusty and rough exterior. It was no feeling of inferiority, be it well understood, that moved him to this bit of self-denial; only a self-respecting feeling of fitness. He himself would not have wanted to touch a dusty hand with those gloves on his own. But he spoke his welcome. 'Glad to see ye hum, squoire. When did ye come?' 'Last night, thank you. Whom am I talking to? I have been so long away, I have forgotten my friends.' 'I guess there's nobody hain't forgotten you, you'll find,' said the man, wiping his scythe blade with a wisp of grass; needlessly, for he had just whetted it; but it gave him an opportunity to look at the figure beside him. 'More than I deserve,' said Pitt. 'But I seem not to find some of my old friends. Do you know where is the family that used to live here?' 'Gone away, I guess.' 'I see they have gone away; but where have they gone?' 'Dunno, no more'n the dead,' said the man, beginning to mow again. 'You know whom I am speaking of?--Colonel Gainsborough.' 'I know. He's gone--that's all I kin tell ye.' 'Who takes care of the place?' 'The place? If you mean the house, nobody takes keer of it, I guess. There ain't nobody in it. The land hez as good keer as it ever hed. The squoire, he sees to that.' 'My father, do you mean?' 'Who else? It belongs to the squoire now, and he takes good keer o' all _he_ sees to. He bought it, ye know, when the cunnel went away,' said the man, stopping work and resting on his scythe to look at Pitt again. 'He'd ha' let it, I guess, ef he could; but you see there ain't nobody that wants it. The folks in Seaforth all hez their own houses, and don't want nobody else's. There _is_ folks, they say, as 'd like to live in two houses to once, _ef_ they could manage it; but I never heerd o' no one that could.' 'Do you know at all why the colonel went away?' 'Hain't an idee. Never knowed him particular, ye see, and so never heerd tell. The cunnel he warn't a sociable man by no means, and kep' himself mostly shut up. I think it's a man's loss; but there's different opinions, I suppose, on that p'int. As on every other! Folks du say, the cunnel warn't never to hum in Seaforth. Anyway, he ain't now.' With which utterance he went to mowing again, and Pitt, after a courteous 'Good day,' left him. Where could they be gone? And why should they have gone? And how was it that his mother in her many letters had never said a word about it? Nay, had let him go out this very morning to look for what she knew he would not find? And his father had bought the ground! There was something here to be inquired into. Meanwhile, for the present, he must do his thinking without Esther.