“If that’s your errand here, sir, I’m afraid it isn’t likely to be a very fortunate one. Folks in Landresdale never expect to see Susan Tredethlyn again; she went away from the farm four years ago; no one knows exactly where she went; no one knows why she went. There’s your uncle’s old servants, Mr. Tredethlyn, of course they _might_ have said something, if they’d liked to it. But you may as well go and question the tombstones in Landresdale churchyard as question _them_. All I know, or all anybody knows in this place is, that your cousin Susan went away and never came back again; and it stands to reason that she must have done something very bad indeed, and made her father very desperate against her, before the old man would have gone and left all his money away from her--meaning no disrespect to you, sir, but only looking at it in the light of human nature in general,” added the landlord, apologetically. “I’ll never believe that Susan Tredethlyn did any thing wicked or unwomanly till her own lips tell me so,” cried Francis, bringing his hand heavily down on the table. “She may have made my uncle desperate against her, _that’s_ likely enough, for he was always hard with her; and when I think of his having hoarded all this money, and remember the life my cousin Susan used to lead, I can scarcely bring myself to believe that she was his own flesh and blood. I’ll never believe that she did any thing wrong. I’ll never believe that she could grow to be any thing different from what she was when I left home,--an innocent, modest little creature, who was almost frightened of her own pretty looks when she caught a sight of herself in a glass. But I’m going up to the old house; and if Martha Dryscoll or her husband know any thing of my lost cousin, I’ll get the knowledge from them, though I have to wring it out of their wizened old throats.” The young man rose as he said this, and took his hat and stick from a chair near the window. Joseph Penruffin watched him with something like alarm upon his countenance. “You’ll sleep here to-night, sir?” he asked. “Yes; I’m going straight up to the Grange, and I don’t know how long I may be gone; but I’ll come back here to sleep. I should scarcely fancy lying down in one of those dreary old rooms; I should expect to see the wandering spirit of my lost cousin come and look in at me from the darkness outside my window. No; however late I may be, I’ll come back here to sleep.” “And perhaps you’d like some little trifle for supper, sir, having made such an uncommon poor dinner,” suggested the landlord,--“a chicken and a little bit of grass, or a tender young duck and a dish of peas?” But Francis Tredethlyn was walking up the little village street out of earshot of these savoury suggestions before the landlord had finished his sentence.