Arrah Neil mused; not that she had any hesitation in relating to her companion all that her own memory served to recall, for it is not those who have had few friends that are suspicious, but those who have had friends that have proved false. She had too rarely met with the voice of kindness and sympathy not to yield her ear to it willingly, especially when it came from one who was linked to the sad, but sweet recollections of the past. She had lived so long in a dream, however--a dream from which nothing but the most important scenes and figures had stood forth in full light--that much was confused and indistinct; and she felt that she could but relate it as it presented itself to remembrance, might afford but a faint and misty image to a stranger. It was with the good widow's first question, then, that she commenced making her reply. "Annie Walton!" she said; "I wonder you have never heard of her, she is so kind and so good; every one knows her by her bounties." "Ay, but if I understand right, my poor young lady, she lives a long way off on the other side of Coventry," replied the hostess; "and while wicked doings travel on horseback, the report of good ones trudges afoot. Like the waggoner's cart, it may be richly loaded, but is long a-coming." "Well, then," answered Arrah Neil, "she is Lord Walton's daughter, sister of kind Charles Walton, who is now lord. The old man died two years ago, and the lady long before that. However, they have always been good to me, and to my poor old grandfather, ever since we went to live at Bishop's Merton. 'Tis a long while ago now; and between the time when I was here and the days I first recollect there, there seems a sort of gap, as if we had lived somewhere else. But I remember well our first arriving there, and going with my grandfather to look at two or three cottages, till at length he chose one just out of the town, upon the green, by the old church." "Were you then quite alone with him as you went from Hull?" asked the landlady.