The day after the workmen went out, a waggon load of furniture, simple and substantial, arrived, and on the following day the coach brought down the new tenants. A girl had already been engaged in the village to act as servant. Miss Armstrong was quietly and plainly dressed, and might, by her attire, be taken for the daughter of a small farmer, and the opinion in the village, as the newcomers walked through on their way to the cottage, was distinctly favourable. In a very short time Mr. Armstrong became quite a popular character in Carnesford, and soon was on speaking terms with most of the people. He won the mothers' hearts by patting the heads of the little girls, and praising their looks. He had a habit of carrying sweets in his pockets, and distributing them freely among the children, and he would lounge for hours at the smith's door, listening to the gossip that went on, for in Carnesford, as elsewhere, the forge was the recognised meeting-place of those who had nothing to do. He was considered a wonderful acquisition by the frequenters of the snuggery at the "Carne's Arms," and his stories of life at the Cape gave an added interest to their meetings. Hearing from Hiram Powlett that he had a wife and daughter, he asked him to get them, as a matter of kindness, to visit his daughter; and within a fortnight of his arrival, he and Mary went to tea to the Mill. Several times the conversation in the snuggery turned upon the murder at The Hold. In no case did the new-comer lead up to it, but it cropped up as the subject which the people of Carnesford were never weary of discussing. He ventured no opinions and asked no questions upon the first few occasions when the subject was being discussed, but smoked his pipe in silence, listening to the conversation. "It seems strange to me," he said at last, "that you in this village should never have had a suspicion of any one except this Captain Mervyn; I understand that you, Mr. Claphurst, and you, Mr. Carey, have never thought of any one else; but Mr. Powlett--he always says he is sure it isn't him. But if it wasn't him, Mr. Powlett, who do you think it was?" "Ah, that is more than I can tell," Hiram replied. "I have thought, and I have thought, till my head went round, but I can't see who it can have been." "Miss Carne seems to have had no enemies?" "No, not one--not as I ever heard of. She was wonderful popular in the village, she was; and as for the Squire, except about poaching, he never quarrelled with any one." "Had he trouble with poachers, then?"