"No, she is not dead," replied the stranger; "but it is probable a friend of mine, who took an interest in her, has provided for her more comfortably than she could be here. I did not think he would have been so rapid in his proceedings, or I might have spared myself a journey. I wonder where the boy is who I hear was with her: are you sure he is not in the cottage?" "He is not there, sir; the place is all shut up," replied the pedlar. "He's a good boy, and was very kind to the poor woman, though the people said they were not relations; and indeed I always thought she must have been a gentlewoman at one time." "You were not far wrong," replied Henry Hayley--for he it was. "I suppose you are well acquainted with the country around?" he continued, turning away from the hovel and walking on by the pedlar's side towards the highroad. "I know every inch of it," answered the man, "for fifty miles round and more, and many another part of the country besides. I have spent more than twenty years of my life in wandering about with my pack on my back, so that there is hardly a cottage in the counties I travel that I do not know." "Perhaps, then, you can tell me my best way to the house of a farmer named Graves," said Henry Hayley; "I think it is some six or seven miles off." "I can tell you the way well enough, sir," replied the man; "but I doubt, with all my telling, that you'll find it; for you see it lies on the other road, and the cross-country lanes are rather crooked." "Can you show me the way?" asked Henry again; "I shall be inclined to pay you well for your trouble." The man hesitated for a moment, but then replied-- "I may as well go that way as another, though it is out of my regular beat. But is it the old man or the young one you want to see, sir?" "The old one, I think," replied Henry: "what is his age?" "Oh, he is well-nigh upon seventy," answered the pedlar, "and a strange old man too. I don't know whether he'll be civil to you; but he's not to most people, though he's a kind old man at bottom, I hear. He had some troubles when he was younger, and that has made him very cross ever since. But we had better cut across the common here, for it lies away there to the westward." "Henry turned according to his guide's directions, and followed him for some little way in silence; but at length he said-- "What troubles were they that you alluded to just now as having befallen the old man?"