"It is not too much, sir, at this season of the year, when summer's coming on," she hastened to say, lest the amount should be objected to. "I always try to make my lodgers comfortable, and cook for them and wait on them well. The last I had--a sick young woman and her little girl--stayed here all the winter and spring: they only left three weeks ago." The stranger's answer was to put down a sovereign. "That's the first week's rent in advance," said he. "With the change you can get me some mutton chops for my dinner. I shall not give you much trouble." And he took possession of the rooms at once. As the days had gone on, only a few as yet, Esther Jetty found that his promise of not giving much trouble was kept. She had never had a lodger who gave less. He lived very simply. His dinner generally consisted of two mutton chops; his other food chiefly of eggs and bread-and-butter. It was glorious weather; and he passed nearly all his time out-of-doors. Not a nook or corner of the immediate neighbourhood escaped his keen eye, his, as it seemed, insatiable curiosity. He penetrated into the small dwelling-houses, good and bad, asking questions of the inmates, making friends with them all. He would stand by the half-hour side by side with the out-door labourers, saying the land wanted this and that done to it, and demanding why it was not done. But, there could be no doubt that he was even more curious in regard to the Raynor family, and especially to its eldest son, than he was as to the land and its labourers: and the latter soon noticed that if by chance Charles Raynor came into sight, the stranger would stroll off, apparently without aim, towards him; and when Charles turned away, as he invariably did, the man followed in his wake at a distance. In short, it would seem that his chief business was to look surreptitiously after some of the inmates of Eagles' Nest; and that his visits to the land and the cottages, and his disparaging remarks thereupon, were probably only taken up to pass the time away. These opinions, however, grew upon people as time went on, rather than at the beginning of his stay.