It seemed to him as though some mysterious power were brooding over this lonely dwelling and forbidding him to learn the secrets that lay within. "Does Donald Lindsay live here?" he asked presently. The lad looked at him for a few seconds before replying, and then, in his strong Scotch accent, replied, "Nay. He's dead." "And Mrs. Lindsay, is she alive?" "Ay," replied the lad. "She'll be inside. She's my mother." Paul remembered his own mother's story about this hard Scotswoman's unkindness, and felt little disposed to go into the house; yet, for the sake of learning what he had come to learn, he determined to enter. The cottage, for it was little more than a cottage, was clean, but comfortless and bare of any adornment whatever. It might seem as though no woman entered this building, for there were no marks of a woman's handicraft, none of those little suggestions of the feminine presence. "Mother!" shouted the youth. "There's someone wants you." A minute later Paul heard a heavy step on the uncarpeted stairway, and a tall, angular, hard-featured woman, with cold blue eyes and scanty light hair, entered the room. She looked at him steadily, as if there was something in his face that she recognised. "And what might ye be wantin'?" she asked presently. "Ye'll not be from these parts, I fancy." "No," said Paul. "I came from England. I was born and reared in Cornwall. Years ago, a man named Donald Lindsay came there and married into my family. I was wanting to find out something about him." He knew it was a clumsy explanation of his appearance there, but it was the best he could think of for the moment. "What'll you be to Donald Lindsay?" asked the woman, as she scanned him closely. "He died two years since, and it's getting on for forty years ago since he was down South. He's told me about it many a time. You're in no way related to him, are you?" And then, giving him a second glance, she went on: "No, no, you're no Lindsay. Donald was blue-eyed and fair-haired, and you are black-eyed and black-haired." "But did not Donald have a daughter?" asked Paul. "You see, I've heard he married a Cornish girl, and that they had a daughter. Did you know her? Did she ever live here?" "What's that to you?" asked the woman. "You don't mean to say that there's any siller coming to her?" "I don't say but what there is," replied Paul, seeing that this might be the key which might help to unlock the mystery of his mother's life. "And are you a lawyer chap?" "Do I look like a lawyer?" he asked with a laugh. He was wanting to get the woman into a communicative mood. "You might be," she replied. "You're just one of those keen-eyed men of the lawyer class, but I ken nothing about her, except that she's dead." "Who's dead?" asked Paul. "Donald's lass, Jean," was the reply. "She that was born to his first wife. And a good thing, too!" she added vindictively. "Why a good thing?" asked the young man.