“She do, Squire,” said Sally; “but seventeen they say, and some thinks her mortal pretty--t’ou’d Doctor for one, as was awful wild in his own time, I’ve heerd say. But Mrs. Murray she watches her like a dragon. It’s t’ou’d lady as is my sort. I don’t hold with prettiness nor fuss, but them as takes that care of their own----” Sally jumped aside with a sudden cry, as the door of the next house softly opened, and Mrs. Murray herself suddenly appeared. In the moon-light, which blanched even Sally’s dingy complexion, the old woman looked white as death; but probably it was as much an effect of the light as of the scene she had just gone through. She laid her hand very gently, with a certain dignity, upon Edgar’s arm. “Sir,” she said, “you’ll excuse my poor bairn. Willie was her brother, that we lost a year back. He was lost at sea, and the poor thing looks for him night and day. He was in a Liverpool ship; that’s why we’re here. She took you for him,” the grandmother continued, and then made a pause, as if to recover her voice. Tears were glistening in her eyes. Her voice thrilled and changed even now, it seemed to Edgar, like chords. She touched his arm again with her hand, a soft, yet firm, momentary touch, which was like a caress. And then, all at once, “You’re like him. Good night,” she said. It was as if she could not trust herself to say more. And Edgar stood gazing at the vacant spot where she had stood, while Sally peered round the porch of her own house, straining to see and hear. “She’s a queer ’un, t’ou’d dame,” said Sally, with a little gasp of disappointed excitement; and she stood at her door with the muslin twisted about her hand, and gazed after him when he went away up the village with a hasty good night. Edgar heard her close and bolt her door as he hurried on to the Doctor’s. Poor rural fastenings, what could they shut out? not even a clever thief, did any such care to enter--much less pain, trouble, sorrow, madness, or death. Dr. Somers’ study was a great contrast to the splendour and silence of the night. It was lighted by a green reading-lamp, which threw its illumination only on the table, and it was full of smoke from a succession of cigars. The Doctor was seated in a large old-fashioned elbow-chair, with a high back and sides, covered with dark leather, against which his handsome head stood out. On the table stood a silver claret-cup, and a rough brown bottle of seltzer-water--such were his modest potations. He had a medical magazine before him on the table, but it was a novel which was in his hand, and which he pitched away from him as Edgar entered. “Some of Letty’s rubbish,” he explained, as he threw it on the sofa in the shade, and welcomed his young guest. “Bravo, Edgar! Now this is what I call emancipating yourself from petticoat government. These sisters of ours are as bad as half-a-dozen wives.” “You don’t seem to have suffered much under yours,” said Edgar; “and mine, I assure you----”