"I can't make out," was old Canham's reply. "Me and Ann have been talking about him. He came strolling inside the gates this afternoon with a red umberellar, looking here and looking there, and at last he see us, and come up and asked what place this was; and when I told him it was Trevlyn Hold, he said Trevlyn Hold was what he had been seeking for, and he stood there talking a matter o' twenty minutes, leaning his arms on the window-sill. He thought you was the Squire, Master Rupert. He had a red umberellar," repeated old Canham, as if the fact were remarkable. Rupert glanced up in surprise. "Thought I was the Squire?" "He came into this neighbourhood, he said, believing nothing less but that you were the rightful Squire, and couldn't make out why you were not: he had been away from England a many years, and had believed it all the while. He said you were the true Squire, and you should be helped to your right." "Why! who can he be?" exclaimed Rupert, in excitement. "Ah, that's it--who can he be?" returned old Canham. "Me and Ann have been marvelling. He said that he used to be a friend of the dead heir, Mr. Joe. Master Rupert, who knows but he may be somebody come to place you in the Hold?" Rupert was leaning forward on the settle, his elbow on his knee, his eye fixed on old Canham. "How could he do that?" he asked after a pause. "How could any one do it?" "It's not for us to say how, Master Rupert. If anybody in these parts could have said, maybe you'd have been in it long before this. That there stranger is a cute 'un, I know. White beards always is a sign of wisdom." Rupert laughed. "Look here, Mark. It is no good going over that ground again. I have heard about my 'rights' until I am tired. The subject vexes me; it makes me cross from its very hopelessness. I wish I had been born without rights." "This stranger, when he called you the heir of Trevlyn Hold, and I told him you were not the heir, said I was right; you were not the heir, but the owner," persisted old Canham. "Then he knew nothing about it," returned Rupert. "It's _impossible_ that Chattaway can be put out of Trevlyn Hold." "Master Rupert, there has always been a feeling upon me that he will be put out of it," resumed old Canham. "He came to it by wrong, and wrong never lasts to the end without being righted. Who knows that the same feeling ain't on Chattaway? He turned the colour o' my Sunday smock when I told him of this stranger's having been here and what he'd said." "Did you tell him?" quickly cried Rupert.