"Who has the title-deeds?" "They are at Coutts's." "You are sure of that?" "Well; as sure as a man can be of a thing that he does not see. I have never seen them there; indeed, have never seen them at all; but I feel no doubt in my own mind as to their being at the bankers." "Is there much due on the estate?" "Very little. No estate in county Cork has less on it. Miss Letty has her income, and when Poulnasherry was bought,--that townland lying just under Berryhill, where the gorse cover is, part of the purchase money was left on mortgage. That is still due; but the interest is less than a hundred a year." "And that is all?" "All that I know of." "Could there be encumbrances without your knowing it?" "I think not. I think it is impossible. Of all men your father is the last to encumber his estates in a manner unknown to his agent, and to pay off the interest in secret." "What is it then, Mr. Somers?" "I do not know." And then Mr. Somers paused. "Of course you have heard of a visit he received the other day from a stranger?" "Yes; I heard of it." "People about here are talking of it. And he--that man, with a younger man--they are still living in Cork, at a little drinking-house in South Main Street. The younger man has been seen down here twice." "But what can that mean?" "I do not know. I tell you everything that I do know." Herbert exacted a promise from him that he would continue to tell him everything which he might learn, and then rode back to Castle Richmond. "The whole thing must be a delusion," he said to himself; and resolved that there was no valid reason why he should make Clara unhappy by any reference to the circumstance. CHAPTER XIII. MR. MOLLETT RETURNS TO SOUTH MAIN STREET. I must now take my readers back to that very unsavoury public-house in South Main Street, Cork, in which, for the present, lived Mr. Matthew Mollett and his son Abraham. I need hardly explain to a discerning public that Mr. Matthew Mollett was the gentleman who made that momentous call at Castle Richmond, and flurried all that household. "Drat it!" said Mrs. Jones to herself on that day, as soon as she had regained the solitude of her own private apartment, after having taken a long look at Mr. Mollett in the hall. On that occasion she sat down on a low chair in the middle of the room, put her two hands down substantially on her two knees, gave a long sigh, and then made the above exclamation,--"Drat it!" Mrs. Jones was still thoroughly a Saxon, although she had lived for so many years among the Celts. But it was only when she was quite alone that she allowed herself the indulgence of so peculiarly Saxon a mode of expressing either her surprise or indignation.