At this her woman's heart was a little softened, though she did despise him thoroughly. "I don't know about turning, Mr Jones, but they have been used to such different ways." "Don't they get enough to eat?" "Yes, sir; there's enough to eat, no doubt. I don't know as you have interfered about that; not but what as master you might. It isn't the victuals." "What is it, Mrs Griffith? Why do they want to go away?" "Well, it is chiefly because of your sitting here alone,--never moving, never having your hat on your head, sir. Of course a gentleman can do as he pleases in his own house. There is nothing to make him go out, not even to see his own tenants, nor his own farm, nor nothing else. He's his own master, sir, in course;--but it is mysterious. There is nothing goes against them sort of people,"--meaning the servants inferior to herself,--"like mysteries." Then they already felt that there was a mystery! Oh! what a fool he had been to shut himself up and eat his food there! Of course they would know that this mystery must have some reference to the will. Thus they would so far have traced the truth as to have learnt that the will had a mystery, and that the mystery was located in that room! There is a pleasant game, requiring much sagacity, in which, by a few answers, one is led closer and closer to a hidden word, till one is enabled to touch it. And as with such a word, so it was with his secret. He must be careful that no eye should once see that his face was turned towards the shelf. At this very moment he shifted his position so as not to look at the shelf, and then thought that she would have observed the movement, and divined the cause. "Anyways, they begs to say respectful that they wishes you to take a month's warning. As for me, I wouldn't go to inconvenience my old master's heir. I'll stay till you suits yourself, Mr Jones; but the old place isn't to me now what it was." "Very well, Mrs Griffith," said Cousin Henry, trying to fix his eyes upon an open book in his hands. CHAPTER X Cousin Henry Dreams a Dream