"I have not very long to stay, Martha," said David Arden, looking at his watch, "so tell me your recollection as accurately as you can. Let me hear _that_ first; and then I want to ask you for some particular information, which I am sure you can give me." "Why not? Who should I give it sooner to? Will ye take a cup o' coffee? No. Well, a glass o' curaçoa? No. And what will ye take?" "You forget that I have taken everything, and come to you with all my wants supplied. So now, dear Martha, let me hear it all." "I'll tell ye all about it. I was younger and stronger, mind, than I am now, by twenty years and more. 'Tis a short time to look back on, but a good while passing, and leaves many a gap and change, and many a scar and wrinkle." There was a palpable tremble always in Mrs. Tansey's voice, in the thin hand she extended towards him, and in the head from which her old eyes glittered glassily on him. "The road is very lonely by night--the loneliest road in all England. When it passes ten o'clock, you might listen till cock-crow for a footfall. Well, I, and Thomas Ridley, and Anne Haslett, was all the people at Mortlake just then, the family being in the North, except Master Harry. He went to a race across country, that was run that day; and he told me, laughing, he would not ask me to throw an old shoe after him, as he stood sure to win two thousand pounds. And away he went, little thinking, him and me, how our next meetin' would be. At that time old Tom Clinton--ye'll mind Clinton?" "To be sure I do," acquiesced David Arden.