criminal?" she
asked in measured tones.

Stephen Hurd shrugged his shoulders.

"Perhaps not," he admitted, "but at any rate he sheltered him."

"As he doubtless would have done any passer-by on such a night," she
remarked. "By the bye, what has become of that young man?"

"He has left the neighbourhood," Hurd answered shortly.

"Left altogether?" she inquired.

"I imagine so," Hurd answered. "I had the shelter destroyed, and I gave
him to understand pretty clearly what your wishes were. There really
wasn't much else for him to do."

Her eyelids drooped over her half closed eyes. For a moment she was
silent.

"If you hear of him again," she said quietly, "be so good as to let me
know."

Her indifference seemed too complete to be assumed. Yet somehow or other
Hurd felt that she was displeased with him.

"I will do so," he said, "if I hear anything about him. It scarcely
seems likely."

Wilhelmina sat quite still. Her head, resting slightly upon the long
delicate fingers of her right hand, was turned away from the young man
who was daring to watch her. She was apparently gazing across the park,
down the magnificent avenue of elms which led to the village. So he was
gone--without a word! How else? On the whole she could not but approve!
And yet!--and yet!

She turned once more to Hurd.

"I read the account of the inquest on your father's death," she said,
speaking very slowly, with her usual drawl, yet with a softer note in
her voice, as though out of respect for the dead man. "Does it not seem
very strange that the money was left untouched?"

"Yes!" he answered. "Yet, after all, I don't know. You see, the governor
must have closed with the fellow and shown fight before he got that
knock on the head. If the thief was really only an ordinary tramp, he'd
be scared to death at what he'd done, and probably bolt for his life
without stopping to take anything with him."

"Isn't it rather surprising to have tramps--in Thorpe?" she asked.

"I have scarcely ever seen one," he answered.

Wilhelmina turned her head slightly, so that she was now directly facing
him. She looked him steadily in the eyes.

"Has it occurred to you, Mr. Hurd," she asked, "that this young man may
not have been a tramp at all, and that his visit to your father may have
been on other business than that of robbery?"

He hesitated for a moment.

"My father's connexions with the outside world," he said slowly, "were
so slight."

"Yet