Deprived as the curious thus were and are of information in that direction, it yet became well known all over the country-side, some time afterwards, that Mr. Lupton had become remarkably serious very soon after his wife's death; and, unlike many in similar predicaments, from whom such conduct might more have been expected, had actually continued so ever since. All the able theories that had been set afloat touching his second marriage, for everybody, who knew nothing about it, believed he would be married again, were found, day after day, and month after month, never to be carried out on his part by any corresponding action; so that at length the interested portion of the neighbourhood in this question were fain to give him credit for being a good widower, who could not find in his heart to marry again. Another step also, which he subsequently took, must be here recorded. After the occurrence of the important events so recently described, Colin's father would no longer think of permitting him and his wife again to leave the Hall and take up their residence elsewhere, as had originally been intended. Considering all things that had happened, and the state of his own feelings and sentiments thereon, Mr. Lupton now declared it to be his fixed intention to instal the young couple at once in that family residence, which he had already made provision for eventually bequeathing to them, and of having them considered as constituting, along with himself, the family and owners of the place. At the same time he expressed his earnest desire that his son Colin should take the management of his estates, as far as possible, into his own hands; to which end he devoted considerable pains to qualify him; observing that, however strange it might appear, he now felt but little interest in those matters which formerly had occupied nearly all his attention, and that for the future he wished to devote his time to such study and pursuits as would be found more congenial with his feelings, as well as better adapted to fit him for that great change which in no very distant years he must undergo. This arrangement being agreed to, and eventually acted upon, much to the satisfaction of all parties, Colin was soon looked upon as the greatest man in that parish where once we found him, a miserable child of misfortune, turned rudely out of his cradle at night, and sent by a hard-hearted steward to starve with his mother beneath the naked sky, or find a shelter under the poorest hovel of the fields. As to that same steward, the notorious Mr. Longstaff, whom, it may be remembered, Colin's mother had once charged with having, in conjunction with his wife, been the cause of her betrayal and misfortune, he had now grown an old man, but still occupied the same situation, now that Colin became his master, as he did when first the reader was introduced to him.