The young man stopped and looked perplexed. A sudden change had passed over the strange gentleman’s face. His swarthy cheeks had turned to a cold clay color, through which his two scars seemed to burn fiercer than ever, like streaks of fire. His heavy hand and arm trembled a little as he leaned against the counter. Was he going to be taken ill? No: he walked at once from the counter to the door--turned round there, and asked where Joanna Grice lived. The young man answered, the second turning to the right, down a street, which ended in a lane of cottages. Miss Grice’s was the last cottage on the left hand; but he could assure the gentleman that it would be quite useless to go there, for she let nobody in. The gentleman thanked him, and went, nevertheless. “I didn’t think it would have took me so,” Mat said, walking quickly up the street; “and it wouldn’t if I’d heard it anywhere else. But I’m not the man I was, now I’m in the old place again. Over twenty year of hardening, don’t seem to have hardened me yet!” He followed the directions given him, correctly enough, arrived at the last cottage on his left hand, and tried the garden gate. It was locked; and there was no bell to ring. But the paling was low, and Mat was not scrupulous. He got over it, and advanced to the cottage door. It opened, like other doors in the country, merely by turning the handle of the lock. He went in without any hesitation, and entered the first room into which the passage led him. It was a small parlor; and, at the back window, which looked out on a garden, sat Joanna Grice, a thin, dwarfish old woman, poring over a big book which looked like a Bible. She started from her chair, as she heard the sound of footsteps, and tottered up fiercely, with wild wandering grey eyes and horny threatening hands, to meet the intruder. He let her come close to him; then mentioned a name--pronouncing it twice, very distinctly. She paused instantly, livid pale, with gaping lips, and arms hanging rigid at her side; as if that name, or the voice in which it had been uttered, had frozen up in a moment all the little life left in her. Then she moved back slowly, groping with her hands like one in the dark--back, till she touched the wall of the room Against this she leaned, trembling violently; not speaking a word; her wild eyes staring panic-stricken on the man who was confronting her. He sat down unbidden, and asked if she did not remember him. No answer was given; no movement made that might serve instead of an answer. He asked again; a little impatiently this time. She nodded her head and stared at him--still speechless, still trembling. He told her what he had heard at the shop; and using the shopman’s phrases, asked whether it was true that the daughter of old Mr. Grice, who was the cause of all the scandal in the family, had died long since, away from her home, and in a miserable way?