‘Poor old James! what good days we might have had here!’ sighed Maurice, as he looked back at the fair domain. It seemed a place saved out of the good old world, and was very pleasant to contemplate after the gimcrack palaces of the age we live in—in which all that architecture can conjure from the splendour of the past is more or less disfigured by the tinsel of the present. ‘Dear old James, to think that he wanted to marry that poor little actress girl, and bring her to reign down here, in the glow and glory of those stained-glass windows—gorgeous with the armorial devices of a line of county families! Innocent, simple-hearted lad! wandering about like a prince in a fairy tale, ready to fall in love with the first pretty girl he saw by the roadside, and to take her back to his kingdom.’ ‘If you want to see Trevanard’s farm before dark you must come on, sir,’ said Elspeth. Maurice took the hint, and followed at his briskest pace. They were soon out of the pine grove, which they left by a little wooden gate, and on the wild wide hills, where the distant sheep-bell had an eerie sound in the still evening air. Even the gables of the Manor House disappeared presently as they went down a dip in the hills. Far off in a green hollow, Maurice saw some white buildings—scattered untidily near a patch of water, which reflected the saffron-hued evening sky. ‘That’s Trevanard’s,’ said Elspeth, pointing to this spot. ‘I thought as much,’ said Maurice, ‘then you need go no further. You’ve fairly earned your fee.’ He gave her the half-crown. The girl turned the coin over with a delighted look before she put it in her pocket. ‘I’ll go to Borcel End with you,’ she said. ‘I’d as lief be on the hills as at home—sooner, for grandmother is not over-pleasant company.’ ‘But you’d better go back now, my girl, or it’ll be dark long before you reach home.’ Elspeth laughed, a queer impish cachinnation, which made Maurice feel rather uncomfortable. ‘You don’t suppose I’m afraid of the dark,’ she said, in her shrill young voice, so young and yet so old in tone. ‘I know every star in the sky. Besides, it’s never dark at this time of year. I’ll go on to Borcel End with you. May be you mayn’t get accommodated there, and then I can show you a near way across the hills to Penwyn village. You might get shelter at one of the cottages anyhow.’ ‘Upon my word you are very obliging,’ said Maurice, surprised by this show of benevolence upon the damsel’s part. ‘Do you know anything about this Borcel End?’ he asked, presently, when they were going down into the valley.