"She sits her horse well," remarked the stranger, still following her with his eyes as she cantered away in the direction of her home, Caius bounding nimbly on by the pony's side. "But she seems quite alone, is there no more of the family?" "Most of 'em lie yonder," replied Grimes, pointing to a row of graves not far from the spot where they stood. "Children all died young but this girl and an older brother who went West years ago. Father died within the last year, and the mother's away nursing a sick sister, I hear." Lyttleton seemed interested, asked several more questions, walked over to the graves and carefully read the inscriptions on the tombstones; Grimes standing by his side and going on with much garrulity to tell all he knew or had ever heard of the family, and that was not a little, for he was a great gatherer and retailer of news, for which few had better opportunities. He spoke of the late Mr. Clendenin as a man of singularly secluded habits, upright and honest in all his dealings, but strangely averse to the society of his kind. "And I suppose," he added, "that's what has kept his wife and daughter pretty much shut up at home: at any rate the girl's never seen at a cornhusking or quilting, or any sort o' merry making, and the young fellows never get a chance to wait on her. About the only place she does go to is Woodland, to read to those poor sickly old ladies; but she's there every day I'm told." "She is then of a literary turn, this young heroine of yours?" sneered the stranger interrogatively. "That's just what she is, sir, so I've heard on good authority, they're a bookish family." And as they rode homeward Grimes went on to expatiate at length upon Marian's reputed literary tastes and acquirements. "You are a good trumpeter," remarked Lyttleton. "Pray tell me, are the Clendenins wealthy?" "Glen Forest's a valuable place, and there's only the two of them, as I told you, after the mother dies." "And the son doesn't get it all, as is usually the way with us?" "No: and I dare say there's money laid by, too." The next afternoon Marian, reading to her friends in the wide, cool porch that ran along the front of the house at Woodland, saw a horseman coming leisurely along the road, as, looking up from her book, she sent a casual glance in that direction. "It is the English gentleman," she said in a low tone, as he drew rein at the gate. It was long since either Esther or Janet Burns had been able to go to church, and Monday's visit from Marian was anticipated with even more than ordinary eagerness because of the detailed account she would bring of all she had seen and heard the previous day. Of course she had not, on this occasion, omitted to mention the stranger in Grimes's pew. "Where, my dear?" asked purblind Janet, straining her eyes in a vain effort to see him. "Is he riding? I surely heard horse's hoofs."