"Do I think it? I know it. I don't trouble to think about what I know. It's in their blood, I tell you. The things they ought to remember are wiped out of their brains as clean as if you washed a slate after using it. My mother was cook in the Family, and her mother and her mother before her again. We are Perrys, and the Perrys had always a turn for cooking. We've cooked the dinner up at the Court for close on a hundred years. Don't you suppose I know their ways by this time? Oh, I could tell you of fearful things. There have been dark deeds done before now, and the men who did them had no more memory of their own sin than if they were babies of a month old. There was a Squire--two generations back he was--my grandmother knew him--and he had a son. The mother was--! but there! where's the use of going into that. The mother died raving mad, and the Squire knew no more what he had done than the babe unborn. Folks call it the curse of God. It's an awful doom, and it always comes on just as it has fallen on the young Squire. There comes a fit of passion--a desperate deed is done or a desperate sorrow is met, and all is blank. They wither up afterward just as if the drought was in them. He'll die young, the young Squire will, just like his forefathers. What's the good of crying, Hetty? Crying won't save him--he'll die young. Blood for blood. God will require that young man's blood at his hands. He can't escape--it's in his race; but at least he shan't hang for it--if you and I can keep him from the gallows. Hetty, put your hand in mine and tell me all over again what you saw." "I can't bear to go over it again, Aunt Fanny--it seems burnt into me like fire. I can think of nothing else--I can think of no face but Mr. Awdrey's--I can only remember the look on his face when he bent over the man he had killed. I saw his face just for a minute by the light of the match, and I never could have believed that human face could have looked like that before. It was old--like the face of an old man. But I met him this evening, Aunt Fanny, and he had forgotten all about it, and he was jolly and happy, and they say he was seen with Miss Douglas to-day. The family had a picnic on the Plain, and Miss Douglas was there, with her uncle, Sir John Cuthbert, and there were a lot of other young ladies. Mr. Awdrey went back to Cuthbertstown with Miss Douglas. It was when he was returning to the Court I met him. All the world knows he worships the ground she walks on. I suppose he'll marry her by and by, Aunt--he seemed so happy and contented to-night." "I suppose he will marry her, child--that is the best thing that could happen to him, and she's a nice young lady and his equal in other ways. He's happy, did you say? Maybe he is for a bit, but he's a gone man for all that--nothing, nor no one can keep the doom of his house from him. What are you squeezing my hand for, Hetty?" "I can't bear to think of the Squire marrying Miss Douglas."