The wild son did not take kindly to farming, and ran away; and his mother did not hear of him again until four years after she was living alone in The Locks, when a little girl five years old arrived, accompanied by a letter, stating that the son had lived a wanderer like his father, and that the child's mother being dead, he hoped Mrs. Wedge would take care of his daughter Betty until the father made his fortune. But the father never made his fortune; anyway, he never called for the child, and Mrs. Wedge had found in her grand-daughter a companion and a comfort, passing her days in peace and quiet. Therefore when the new owner offered her a home there, and wages besides, in return for her agreement to undertake his small services, she accepted--having become attached to the place--and lived on as before. The house itself, which was built of stone, and almost square, contained ten rooms; four of about the same size below, and four exactly like them above, and two in the attic or half story in the roof. There were wide halls up stairs and down, and out of the room that Allan Dorris had selected for his own use, and which was on the corner looking one way toward the gate in front, and the other toward the town, began a covered stairway leading to the attic. In this room he sat day after day, and slept night after night, until he almost became afraid of the quiet that he believed he coveted when he came to Davy's Bend; and at times he looked longingly toward the speaking-tube behind the door, hoping it would whistle an announcement that a visitor had arrived; for his habit of sitting quietly looking at nothing, until his thoughts became so disagreeable that he took long walks about the place to rid himself of them, was growing upon him. But no visitors came to vary the monotony, except the agent on the morning after his arrival, who received a quarter's rent in advance, and afterwards named a price so low that Allan Dorris bought the place outright, receiving credit for the rent already paid.