"Very like--very like," said Mr. Ball hastily; "and who may this fine young lady be--your sister? She seems to favour you, sir." "Elsie Stennis," says I, "and if she had her rights you know very well what she would be! Your young mistress!" "Elsie Stennis?" he gasped, "not poor Bell's daughter--and Robin's?" "The same!" "Bell and Robin Stennis--I mind them well. But where, how----" The bailiff stopped, all thrown out of gear, much more affected, indeed, than when it was a question of Harry Foster's death. "Well," he went on at last, "it's perhaps as well not asking. I might blurt things out. But I hope--I may say that I pray--that the day may come when you shall have your rights, young lady, and I shall see yon crew sent about their business to a madhouse. That's the fit place for such as they! There they go. I must be off. They will be at their processioning again, and Mr. Stennis will never forgive me if they come to a mischief or go off the premises!" We did not know then what he was talking about, but we could hear over the green tree tops the sound of a cornet playing a marching tune, and marvellously well, too. CHAPTER IV THE GOLDEN FARMER But that same night we got the full story, so far as she knew it, from Nance Edgar. It did not help us any in finding out what had become of poor Harry the carrier and his mail bags, but because it involved Elsie's father and mother I will admit that it interested me nearly as much. Nance Edgar was a weather-beaten woman of about fifty. She had lived nearly all her life in the fields, and was tanned like a leather schoolbag for carrying books. She was kindly, but you never could have told it on her. Only I knew because she had been kind to Elsie. Afterwards I found out that often she would go supperless to bed that Elsie might have something to eat when she came home from school. But when Nance Edgar talked it was with the curious kind of quiet I have noticed about the speech of gentlefolks. The other field workers said that she kept herself to herself. But in the furrow, or on the rig, she was kind to young ones or feeble folk who were not up to their work. So Nance, in spite of her aloofness, was not at all unpopular. She always had work, too, because she could be trusted with anything. So that very night I said to Elsie: "Let's have it out with Nance about your people. Your grandfather is as rich as can be. There may be money in it, and my father says you should never let that go a-begging. Besides you ought to know about your father and mother. It is only respectable if you are asked." "Oh, I know all that," said Elsie, mightily unmoved, "my mother married her cousin and her father was angry. She ran away. My grandfather can keep his old money. Who wants it? Not I! I am happier with Nance."