“She isn’t for any such as you, if that’s what you mean,” volunteered the straggler, taking up the burden of the talk. “She has been looked after by the village because her case was a hard one. She was an only child, and when she was but four her mother died, after a long and curious illness which no one understood, and three days after, her father—” The dog yelped. As no one was near him but his master, he must have been hurt by that master, but how, it was impossible to understand, for neither had appeared to move. “Well, well,” cried the sallow young man, “her father——” “Disappeared. He was last seen at his wife’s funeral; the next day he was not to be found anywhere. That was fourteen years ago, and we know no more now than then what became of him.” “And the child?” “Was left without a soul to look after it. But the whole village has taken her in charge and she has never suffered. She has even been educated,—some say by Dr. Izard, but for this I won’t vouch, for he is a perfect miser in his way of living, and I don’t think he would trouble himself to help anybody, even a poor motherless child.” “Well, if he has spent a penny for her in the past, I don’t think he will be called upon to spend any in the future. I heard yesterday that she has come into a pretty property, and that, too, in a very suspicious way.” “What’s that? You have? Why didn’t you tell us so before? When a man has news, I say he ought to impart it, and that without any ifs and ands.” “Well, I thought it would keep,” drawled the speaker, drawing back with an air of importance as all the _habitués_ of the place pressed upon him, and even Mrs. Husted, the landlady, stepped out of her sitting-room to listen. “Wa’al, it won’t,” snarled the landlord. “News, like baked potatoes, must be eaten hot. Where did you hear this about Polly Earle, and what do you mean by suspicious?” “I mean that this money, and they do say it’s a pretty sum, came to her by will, and that the man who left it was a perfect stranger to her, someone she never heard of before, of that I’ll be bound. He said in his will that he left all this money in payment of an old debt to her father, but that’s all bosh. Ephraim Earle got all the money that was owing to him two weeks before he vanished out of this town, and I say——” “No matter what you say,” broke in the crabbed landlord. “She’s had money left her, and now she’ll get a good husband, and make a show in the village. I’m glad on it, for one. She’s sung and danced and made merry on nothing long enough. Let her try a little responsibility now, and return some of the favors she has received.” “Did you hear how much money it was?” timidly asked an old man who had just joined the group. “It was just the same amount as was paid Ephraim Earle for his invention a few days before we saw the last of him.” “Lord-a-mercy!” “And which——”