range when
he is from home!"

"So I have heard," said I, "and he keeps some fine dogs there, too, to
see that they don't."

For my father had refused to deliver Mr. Stennis' goods, except at Mr.
Ball's house, which was on the main road, and no tearing dogs kept.

"Very like--very like," said Mr. Ball hastily; "and who may this fine
young lady be--your sister? She seems to favour you, sir."

"Elsie Stennis," says I, "and if she had her rights you know very well
what she would be! Your young mistress!"

"Elsie Stennis?" he gasped, "not poor Bell's daughter--and Robin's?"

"The same!"

"Bell and Robin Stennis--I mind them well. But where, how----"

The bailiff stopped, all thrown out of gear, much more affected,
indeed, than when it was a question of Harry Foster's death.

"Well," he went on at last, "it's perhaps as well not asking. I might
blurt things out. But I hope--I may say that I pray--that the day may
come when you shall have your rights, young lady, and I shall see yon
crew sent about their business to a madhouse. That's the fit place for
such as they! There they go. I must be off. They will be at their
processioning again, and Mr. Stennis will never forgive me if they come
to a mischief or go off the premises!"

We did not know then what he was talking about, but we could hear over
the green tree tops the sound of a cornet playing a marching tune, and
marvellously well, too.

CHAPTER IV

THE GOLDEN FARMER

But that same night we got the full story, so far as she knew it, from
Nance Edgar. It did not help us any in finding out what had become of
poor Harry the carrier and his mail bags, but because it involved
Elsie's father and mother I will admit that it interested me nearly as
much.

Nance Edgar was a weather-beaten woman of about fifty. She had lived
nearly all her life in the fields, and was tanned like a leather
schoolbag for carrying books. She was kindly, but you never could have
told it on her. Only I knew because she had been kind to Elsie.

Afterwards I found out that often she would go supperless to bed that
Elsie might have something to eat when she came home from school.

But when Nance Edgar talked it was with the curious kind of quiet I
have noticed about the speech of gentlefolks. The other field workers
said that she kept herself to herself. But in the furrow, or on the
rig, she was kind to young ones or feeble folk who were not up to their
work. So Nan