Francis knew that his uncle’s daughter had left Tredethlyn Grange with only a few sovereigns in her pocket, perhaps not much more than enough to defray her journey to London. Without money, without friends, she had fled from her home, and had not perished; but had lived to write to her father from this dismal watering-place of Coltonslough some years after her flight. It was clear, therefore, that in the interim she must have either been supported by the benevolence of strangers, or she must have earned her own living. The last hypothesis was the more likely to be correct. Susan Tredethlyn had been educated to habits of industry, and had no doubt confronted the battle of life as fearlessly as any Tredethlyn should confront any battle. “Poor little girl! she went out as a servant, I dare say,” thought the young man. “She drudged and slaved for some hard mistress, perhaps, while her father was adding every day to the money that has come to me--to me--and he refused me a couple of hundred pounds the night my mother was dying.” Mr. Tredethlyn went in at the grocer’s doorway. There was scarcely room enough for him to pass between the bacon and the cotton stuff, which some aboriginal of Coltonslough would some day transform into wearing apparel. The postmaster was chopping some very sallow-hued lump-sugar in the dusky inner-regions of the shop; but he left off chopping, and advanced to meet the stranger. Francis Tredethlyn was no diplomatist; he was quite unskilled in that peculiar science known as beating about the bush; so he began to make inquiries respecting his cousin with as little preface as he would have employed had he been asking for a pound of sugar. “I’m a stranger to this place,” he said, “and I want to ask a few questions; and I fancy, as you’re postmaster, you must be about the likeliest person to answer them.” The grocer rubbed his hands and smirked, in a manner that was expressive of a general desire to do anything obliging--of course with an eye to ultimate profit. “A young woman--a relation of mine--left her home four years ago this month. For nearly three years no one belonging to her could discover where she was. At the end of that time a letter was received from her, bearing the post-mark of this place. I want to find out whether she is still here; or, if not, when she left. I have only just come back from Van Diemen’s Land, to find things changed in the place that was once my home. So I’m groping in the dark, you see, and shall be very thankful to any one that’ll lend me a helping hand.” Something in the frankness of his manner, the earnestness of his face, went straight home to the heart of the Coltonslough postmaster, who became less a tradesman, and more a man.