hout a neighbour or a soul to help her."

"Well, it's a sad story, wife; I wonder you never told it me before."

"To say the truth, Adam, it's not a matter I ever liked talking about,
and I don't know scarcely what made me tell it you now. It's not that I
care about Lawyer Goul and his crazy wife and their son; but even now I
cannot bear to think of poor Miss Ellen. It was a sad thing that a
sweet innocent creature like her should have been cut off in her young
days."

CHAPTER EIGHT.

GAFFIN, THE MILLER.

Adam had just recounted to his wife his interviews with the mayor and
lawyer of Morbury, and had listened to her history of Mr Herbert
Castleton's family, and the unhappy fate of his daughter, when a knock
was heard at the door. The dame opened it, but drew back on seeing
their visitor.

"Good-day, neighbour," said the person who entered, a strongly-built man
with a bushy black beard and a sunburnt countenance, the sinister
expression of which was ill-calculated to win confidence, and whose
semi-nautical costume made it doubtful whether he was a landsman or
sailor.

"I have come to have a friendly chat with you, if you will give me
leave?"

Without waiting for a reply, still keeping his hat on, he threw himself
into a chair by the fire, glancing round the room as he did so.

"What have you got to talk about, Mr Gaffin?" asked Adam, disdaining to
give the welcome he could not heartily offer, and instead of sitting
down, standing with his hands in his pockets opposite his guest, while
the dame continued the work in which she had been engaged.

"I hear you boarded a wreck the other morning and rescued a child from
it," observed the visitor.

"I did so," answered Adam, curtly.

"What has become of the child, then?" asked Mr Gaffin, looking round
the room as if in search of her. The visitor was Miles Gaffin, the
miller of Hurlston, as he was generally called.

"She has gone out for a walk," said the dame, coming up near her husband
on hearing the subject of the conversation.

"You will find the maintenance of a child in addition to your own
somewhat burdensome in these hard times," observed the miller.

"We can judge better than our neighbours whether the burden is more than
we can bear," answered the dame; "so you see, Mr Gaffin, that need not
make any one uneasy on our account."

"Very likely, my good woman, and all very well at present; but the day
will come when she will require schooling an