‘He never bore me or mine much goodwill,’ John Treverton said to himself, ‘but he might have left his money to me for want of anyone else to leave it to, if it hadn’t been for this girl.’ During almost the whole of that dreary night journey he was meditating on this subject, half inclined to be angry with himself for having taken such useless trouble for the sake of a man who was not likely to leave him sixpence. He was not an utterly bad fellow, this John Treverton, though his better and purer feelings had been a good deal blunted by rough contact with the world. He had a frank, winning manner, and a handsome face, a face which had won him the love of more than one woman, with little profit to himself. He was a man of no strong principle, and with a self-indulgent nature that had led him into wrong-doing very often during the last ten years of his life. He had an easy temper, a habit of looking at the pleasanter side of things so long as there was any pleasantness in them, and a chronic avoidance of all serious thought--qualities which do not serve to make up a strong character. But the charm of his manner was none the less because of this latent weakness of character, and he was better liked than many better men. The train stopped at a little rustic station, forty miles westward of Exeter, about an hour after midnight--a dreary building with an open platform, across which the wind blew and the snow drifted as John Treverton alighted, the one solitary passenger to be deposited at this out-of-the-way place. He knew that the house to which he had to go was some miles from the station, and he applied himself at once to the sleepy station-master to ascertain if there were any possibility of procuring a conveyance at that time of night. ‘There’s a gig waiting for a gentleman from London,’ the man answered, stifling a yawn. ‘I suppose you are the party, sir.’ ‘A gig from Treverton Manor?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Thanks, yes; I am the person that is expected. Civil, at any rate,’ John Treverton added to himself, as he walked off to the gig, wrapped to the eyes in his great coat, and with a railway rug across his shoulder. He found a gig, with a rough-looking individual of the gardener species waiting for him in the snow. ‘Here I am, my man,’ he cried cheerily. ‘Have you been waiting long?’ ‘No, sir. Miss Malcolm said as how you’d come by this train.’ ‘Miss Malcolm sent you for me, then? ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘And how is Mr. Treverton to-night?’ ‘Mortal bad, sir. The doctors say as th’ old gentleman hasn’t many hours to live. And Miss Malcolm, she says to me, “Jacob, you’re to drive home as fast as th’ horse can go, for papa is very anxious to see Mr. John before he dies.” She allus calls the old gentleman papa, you see, sir, he having adopted of her ten years ago, and brought her up as his own daughter like ever since.’