“How should I know? It’s a whim of his. And, I’ll tell you what, here’s a piece of serious advice for you:--If you want to go there again, and make her acquaintance, don’t you ask Blyth who she is, or let him fancy you want to know. He’s touchy on that point--I can’t say why; but he is. Every man has a raw place about him somewhere: that’s Blyth’s raw place, and if you hit him on it, you won’t get inside of his house again in a hurry, I can tell you.” Still, Mat’s attention fastened greedily on every word--still, his eyes fixed eagerly on his informant’s face--still, he repeated to himself what Zack was telling him. “By the bye, I suppose you saw the poor dear little soul is deaf and dumb,” young Thorpe continued. “She’s been so from a child. Some accident; a fall, I believe. But it don’t affect her spirits a bit. She’s as happy as the day is long--that’s one comfort.” “Deaf and dumb! So like her, it was a’most as awful as seeing the dead come to life again. She had Mary’s turn with her head; Mary’s--poor creature! poor creature!” He whispered those words to himself, under his breath, his face turned aside, his eyes wandering over the ground at his feet, with a faint, troubled, vacantly anxious expression. “Come! come! don’t be getting into the dolefuls already,” cried Zack, administering an exhilarating thump on the back to his friend. “Cheer up! We’re all in love with her; you’re rowing in the same boat with Bullivant, and Gimble, and me, and lots more; and you’ll get used to it in time, like the rest of us. I’ll act the generous rival with you, brother Mat! You shall have all the benefit of my advice gratis; and shall lay siege to our little beauty in regular form. I don’t think your own experience among the wild Indians will help you much, over here. How do you mean to make love to her? Did you ever make love to a Squaw?” “She isn’t his wife; and she isn’t his daughter; he won’t say where he picked her up, or who she is.” Repeating these words to himself in a quick, quiet whisper, Mat did not appear to be listening to a single word that young Thorpe said. His mind was running now on one of the answers that he had wrested from Joanna Grice, at Dibbledean--the answer which had informed him that Mary’s child had been born alive!