"I don't think I am bound to answer that question," replied the other, with marked significance. Merle apologized at once. "Forgive me for being so curious. I do not seek to know your secret, but my daughter Margaret was talking about you, and I wondered who you were." "I hope Miss Merle is well," said Dan, evading a direct reply. "She is never ill. Strong as a young colt. That comes of her open-air life." "Do you think it is quite safe for her to wander on these moors alone?" "Of course I do! Every one knows her. I should be sorry for the man who insulted Meg. She can hold her own. Why do you laugh?" "It seems such a strange up-bringing for a young lady." "True, true!" muttered the little doctor, with a frown; "but what can I do? I am very poor. I make barely enough to live. I can do nothing--nothing." "But Miss Linisfarne might; she is a rich old maid with no relatives." "Miss Linisfarne!" said Merle, in tones of deep sorrow. "Yes, she might adopt her." Dan said the words carelessly enough, and was quite unprepared for their effect on his host. Merle sprang out of his seat. He had grown deadly white, and he seized Dan's arm with a shaking hand. He looked like a man thoroughly terrified, and could hardly articulate a word. "Did--did Tim the Tinker--say--say--anything?" "What do you mean?" asked Dan, with surprise. Merle looked at him steadily for a moment, and then turned away, wiping his forehead with a hankerchief. "It's all right," Dan overheard him mutter; "he knows nothing--nothing." The visitor began to think his host mad or drunk, and arose smartly to his feet for the second time. Again Merle stopped him. "No, no! Don't go yet. I am subject to these--these attacks." Then, with a sudden burst of hospitality, "Won't you have a glass of wine?" Dan's eyes wandered towards the writing-table, on which stood a decanter apparently containing wine. "Not that--not that," muttered Merle, hastily putting it in a cupboard; "that is medicine for my attacks." He averted his face from Dan, but the young man had already guessed his secret. Shaking hand, glazed eye, retiring manner,--the inference to be drawn from these was only too plain. Dr. Merle was a laudanum-drinker, and the decanter so hurriedly removed contained the fatal drug. "No, thank you, doctor; I will not take any wine," he said, disgusted with this discovery. "I must be off at once. Give my respects and the necklace to Miss Merle." "You'll come again?" "Certainly, in a day or so. Goodbye for the present." With a sigh of relief, he found himself again in the open air, and looked back at the dismal house with a shudder. "Poor girl!" he sighed, thinking of Meg; "what can she do with a father like that? A laudanum-drinker--a dreamer of dreams--a nervous fool. How, in the name of Nature, did he ever come to have that splendid creature as his child? I don't wonder she wanders about the hills. Anything would be better than that dark room and its unwholesome occupant."