"Come in a fortnight to the place where we met three months ago, when you were going on a scheme that all the wise ones and the great ones would have thought madness," was the woman's reply. "You recollect the place in the lanes above Northferry: come there. I knew not at that time what drove you out of that fine house at Elmsly, and made you put on a gardener's coat, and take service like a hireling. I thought it was the Jacob and Laban story; and that you were going to serve for a fair wife; but I know more now. And a sweet, good girl she is, too. Her gay heart will be dull enough now, I dare say, poor thing; but you must go and comfort her." "Where am I to find her? is the question," answered Chandos. "But, doubtless, I shall hear from the servants at Northferry." "The servants!" cried the woman, with a laugh: "there are no servants there. The house is shut up. Half the servants are discharged; and the rest are gone with the old General and his nieces to London. But I will tell you where to find them. He has a house in a place they call Green-street though it is as brown as all the rest of the den. Go there, and ask for them, and you will find some of them, at least." "Do you mean that Mr. Tracy has a house in Green-street?" asked Chandos. "Or are you still speaking of the General?" "Of the General, to be sure," replied the woman. "It is a small, narrow house, fit for a solitary man. I was there once, and the old soldier, his servant, was kind to me, because I talked to him of Northferry, and the places round. He is not a bad man, General Tracy, as men go--better than most; and I think he will keep his word with the boy, whatever be his concern for his brother." "You may be quite certain he will," replied her companion. "General Tracy is a man of honour, and never breaks his word." "What! not to a woman?" demanded Sally Stanley, with a mocking laugh. "Well, go up to him, and see. Put him in mind of the boy; and tell him for me, that mice sometimes help lions, as the old fable-book says that I read at school. Then come down to me this day fortnight; and perhaps I may tell you more--I do not say that I will--I do not say that I can; but yet I have seen more unlikely things. Do you know anything of your brother?" "Nothing," replied Chandos, "but that he has gone to the continent--whither, I know not." "He has taken a bad heart and a heavy conscience with him," said the woman. "But you must learn where he has gone; for some day you will have to claim your own at his hands. He will not always triumph in his wickedness. A day of retribution will come." "I trust he is not so wicked as you seem to think," answered Chandos Winslow; "and, at all events, I pray, if he have done wrong, as doubtless he has in some things, that repentance rather than retribution may reach him."