Osborne swore he did not know who--he thought it a runaway match; but it turned out something worse, for never did girl take on so for leaving her home with a lover. I tell the story badly, for I never got the rights of it. It ended tragically--the lady died--was drowned, as well as I could make out, in some river. You know how dangerous the streams are on our coast. "'It was the naming Cumberland and our estuaries that set me asking questions, which frightened Osborne. When he found that I was a native of that part of the world, he grew as mute as a fish, and never a word more of lady or friend did I get from him; except, as I guessed, he was well rewarded, and sent over the water out of the way; and he swore he believed that the gentleman was dead too. It was no murder--that he averred, but a sad tragic accident that might look like one; and he grew as white as a sheet if ever I tried to bring him to speak of it again. It haunted his thoughts nevertheless: and he would talk in his sleep, and dream of being hanged--and mutter about a grave dug in the sands, and there being no parson; and the dark breakers of the ocean--and horses scampering away, and the lady's wet hair--nothing regular, but such as often made me waken him; for in wild nights, such mutterings were no lullaby. "'Now, sir, whether the lady he spoke of were your lady mother, is more than I can say; but the time and place tally. It is twelve years this summer since he came out; and it had just happened, for his heart and head were full of horrors, and he feared every vessel from Europe brought out a warrant to arrest him, or the like. He was a chicken-hearted fellow; and I have known him hide himself for a week when a packet came from Liverpool. But he got courage as time went on; when I saw him last, he had forgotten all about it; and when I jeered him about his terrors, he laughed, and said all was well, and he should not care going to England; for that the story was blown over, and neither he nor his friend even so much as suspected. "'This, sir, is my story; and I don't think he ever told me any more, or that I can remember anything else; but such as I tell it, I can swear to it. There was a lady run off with, and she died, by fair means or foul, before she quitted the coast; and was buried, as we might bury in the far West, without bell or prayer-book. And Osborne does not know the name of the lady; but the gentleman he knew, though he has never since heard of him, and believes him to be dead. You best know whether my story is worth the two hundred pounds.' "Such, Sophia, is the tale I heard. Such is the coarse hand and vulgar tongue that first touches the veil that conceals my mother's fate." "It is a strange story," said Lady Cecil, shuddering.