As yet he had not used the bed at his lodgings, nor broken his fast there to her knowledge, though he rode down early every morning and put up his horse at Cheeseman's, and never rode away again until the dark had fallen.

Neither had he cared to make the acquaintance of Captain Stubbarb, who occupied the room beneath his for a Royal Office--as the landlady proudly entitled it; nor had he received, to the best of her knowledge, so much as a single visitor, though such might come by his private entrance among the shrubs unnoticed.

All these things stirred with deep interest and wonder the enquiring mind of the widow.
"And what do they say of him up at the Hall ?" she asked her daughter Jenny, who was come to spend holiday at home.

"What do they say of my new gentleman, young Squire Carne from the Castle?
The Carnes and the Darlings was never great friends, as every one knows in Springhaven.
Still, it do seem hard and unchristianlike to keep up them old enmities; most of all, when the one side is down in the world, with the owls and the bats and the coneys." "No, mother, no.

They are not a bit like that," replied Jenny--a maid of good loyalty; "it is only that he has not called upon them.