three miles away. It was strange that the members of the family should have decided to be buried in this lonely place, when they could have rested in some green churchyard in the Midlands. But, seeing that Cove Castle alone remained to their descendants, it was just as well that the former holders of the title had entertained this odd idea. The present Lord Conniston at least retained, out of the wreck of the property, the vault wherein the remains of his forebears were laid. When Conniston arrived at the castle he was met at the door by a gigantic female of uncommon ugliness, who answered to the name of Selina Moon. She was large enough to have earned an income by exhibiting herself in a caravan, being considerably over six feet, and sufficiently ugly to shame even the witches in Macbeth. Had Mrs. Moon lived in the Middle Ages, she would assuredly have been put to death for sorcery, as her looks seemed hardly human. She had the frame of a grenadier and the voice of a drill sergeant. Her face was large and round and pallid, from a long life in the midst of the marshes. A few grey hairs on her upper lip gave her a still more masculine look, and, indeed, the least observant would have taken her for a man in disguise. She wore a frilled cap, which surrounded her face like the rays of a sunflower, and wore a vivid red gown bound at the waist by a yellow scarf. Mrs. Moon loved bright colors, and apparently, if one could judge from her black eyes and beaked nose, had something of the gipsy in her. Not so far as wandering was concerned, though, for she rarely left the castle. This was because her great size, coupled with her love of finery, provoked comment from adults and insults from children whenever she ventured abroad. This Amazonian female, from her height of six feet five, looked down on Conniston with a submissive air. She was as timid as a rabbit, the most harmless of her sex, and report went, that the late Mr. Moon, who had been almost a dwarf, had frequently beaten her in spite of her superior inches. However, the old man was dead, and for many a long day Mrs. Moon had lorded it over the one servant in the castle. But she still wore her submissive air, and when her master imperiously demanded a sight of the gentleman who was expecting him, led the way at once to an upper room. "But I wouldn't take everyone," said Mrs. Moon in a thin, high voice like the midnight wind in a chimney. "He being wishful to keep hisself quiet. What have he done, my lord?" "Nothing," said Conniston, promptly. "He only came down here for a rest. Do you think he has robbed the bank?" "There's worse things than robbing banks," remarked Mrs. Moon, shaking her frilled cap portentously, "and the worse things is what he's done. And why shouldn't he tell me his name if he was a babe for innocence?" "Didn't he do so when he arrived?" asked Conniston, halting on the landing with an anxious look.