Then she returned to her guests and conducted them to the breakfast parlor, where the morning meal was already laid. After breakfast Mr. and Mrs. Legg took leave, and with old Dandy, who wept at parting with his friends, and with their daughter, closely veiled and silent, left Haymore Hall in a carriage proffered by Ran and drove to Chuxton, where they took the train for London, en route for Medge. Clay Legg had not been seen since he had fled from before the face of the frenzied Gentleman Geff. He was afterward heard of in Wales, as a hanger-on to his father-in-law, under whose protection his wife and children had lived for some time past. Michael Man’s good constitution, excellent health and temperate habits were all so much in his favor that in a few days he began to get well, and before the week was out he came downstairs and joined the family at their meals. The rector came over every day to inquire after Mike and to bring reports of Gentleman Geff, who was at death’s door with brain fever and not expected to recover. Longman, the colossus, was established in the sick-room as his constant attendant. Elspeth remained at the rectory for the present. She would not leave the family under present circumstances. Meanwhile Randolph Hay had given orders to his bailiff, Prowt, to have the gamekeeper’s cottage put in complete repair and refurnished for the Longmans. Christmas came, and the young couple at the Hall sent invitations to their few intimate friends to come and spend the sacred festival with them. They were loyal to the humblest among these. They really invited not only Mr. and Mrs. Campbell and Mrs. Montgomery and Dr. Hobbs, but old Dandy from Medge and Longman and Elspeth from the rectory. Will Walling and Michael Man were still staying in the house. The young doctor, the rector and his wife and daughter accepted the invitation, but Elspeth and Longman declined it on the ground that she would have to stay at home to mind the baby and he to attend to the sick man; but these were not the only reasons; they both felt that their presence, as even Christmas guests at the Hall, would be a social solecism; for as Elspeth said to her son: “These generous young people from the woods of a foreign country don’t know what they are a-doing of when they invite you and me to dinner, Samson! It might do well enough in the mines of the backwoods. But here! Why, bless ’em, if they go on in this way not a single soul among the country families will have a thing to do with ’em, if they are the lord and lady of the manor! But they’ll find out better.” Longman fully agreed with his mother, and so he wrote his excuses for both.