Mr. Penruffin’s mind was curiously divided between the memories of the past and his desire to be duly reverential to Francis Tredethlyn’s new fortunes. The young man smiled as he recognized the influence of his newly acquired wealth at war with the associations of his boyhood. He had seen pretty much the same thing in the office of Messrs. Krusdale and Scardon. He was beginning already to perceive that an income of thirty thousand a year made a kind of barrier between himself and poorer men, and that they regarded him with the same feeling of mingled reverence and familiarity with which they would have looked at a very ordinary statue seen across a wonderful screen of virgin gold. “And the sight of _your_ face takes _me_ back to old times, Mr. Penruffin,” he said, with rather a mournful accent, “and I’d freely give half this great fortune of mine if I could bring back one of those summer Sunday mornings in the old church, and see myself a little fellow again, trudging by my mother’s side, with a green-baize bag of prayer-books on my arm. I’d give five thousand pounds for a silk-dress I saw in a Plymouth draper’s fifteen years ago, when I was too poor to do any thing but wish for it, if my mother were alive to wear it. I used to think, when I was a lad, of what I’d buy for my mother out of the first five-pound note I ever earned; and now I’ve got thirty thousand a year, and there’s nothing upon all this earth that I can buy for her, except a gravestone to mark the spot where she lies.” “Thirty thousand a year!” muttered the landlord, in an undertone, which had just a tinge of disappointment in it. The Landresdale people had given their imaginations free play since the death of Oliver Tredethlyn, and the old man’s fortune had swelled into almost fabulous proportions with the lapse of time; so thirty thousand didn’t seem so very much, after all. There had been an idea in Landresdale that Francis Tredethlyn would most likely buy up the Marquis’s estate off-hand, and if practicable make a handsome offer for the purchase of the title. “I am sure, sir, your feelings do you credit,” said Mr. Penruffin, after that brief sense of disappointment; “I may say very great credit,” he added, with emphasis,--as if any display of feeling from the possessor of thirty thousand a year were specially meritorious. “I suppose you have come down this way to survey your property, sir; to look about you a little, eh?” inquired the landlord of the Crown, when Francis had finished his frugal dinner. “Not I,” the young man answered; “I scarcely know what my property is yet, though the lawyers told me a long rigmarole about it. No, I’ve come on a very different errand,” he added gravely. “You remember my cousin, Susan Tredethlyn, I dare say? I have come to look for her.” Joseph Penruffin shook his head solemnly, and breathed a long sigh that was almost a groan.