"Ah!" said the squire, rubbing his hands, "I perceive you know what you are talking of. I have a few old books here to show you, which I think will please you. We are not rich, but we have never been tempted, like some people, to turn all our treasures into money. We have a few old pictures still and old books to enrich the old walls. I wish my son was more interested in them, but Roger cares for none of these things. He has not my tastes. 'A primrose by the river's brim, a yellow primrose was to him'--Well, well, Mr Murray, we are not all made alike. You are one of the Scotch Murrays, I suppose?" This question came in so suddenly that Abel, though he ought to have been on his guard, was startled. "By origin, yes, no doubt," he said; then added, with more self-command, "But I have been brought up by a--friend. I know more about my adopted family than my own." "Ah!" the squire said, with a momentary stare; then he opened a glass case and plunged into the congenial occupation of showing his treasures. Roger, who knew them all by heart, after a time went quietly away, leaving the stranger alone with his father. What a strange sensation it was! and how clear and distinct was the recollection of standing in this same room a dozen years before, his head drooping, his heart beating as loudly as now. If the squire should turn upon him, and charge him with his real origin--if he should demand to know on what pretext the son of Elizabeth Murray, of Overbeck, had found his way among the Ridleys, what could the intruder say? But Mr Ridley asked no such questions, made no uncomfortable suggestions. On the contrary, he took down all the treasures of which he was most proud, and the illuminated MS. which (he said) the British Museum had bid for, to show to the only person, with an air of knowing anything about it, who had visited him for years. Abel, for his part, did not much believe in that story about the British Museum. But he examined the treasures with understanding, and said all that could be said in praise of them, and to the glory of the family who possessed them, listening even patiently to the squire's account of his grandfather, who was a collector, though with so much buzzing in his ears, and curious bewilderment of suppressed feeling, that he scarcely could follow the story. Abel had been in greater houses than this, and had talked familiarly to men more notable than Squire Ridley; but he could not forget the abashed boy, whom he seemed to see standing there, in his rough country clothes, listening to the squire's objurgations with a beating heart. He could not forget him. He was two people, not one, in that haunted place. "You little rascal, if I hear anything of the kind again I'll have you soundly whipped to show you what your duty is"--was that what the squire was saying?--or was it this, "My grandfather came just in time to make a good bargain with the superior of the convent: the poor monk had ceased to care for what was once the