ght to waste."

"I don't want to set my house afire," Mr. Whitelaw answered sullenly;
"though, perhaps, _you_ might like that. It might suit your book, you
see."

The stranger gave a sudden shudder, and told the farmer with an angry
oath to "drop that sort of insolence."

"And now show the way, and look sharp about it," he said in an
authoritative tone.

They went out of the room in the next moment. Mrs. Tadman gazed after
them, or rather at the door which had closed upon them, with a solemn
awe-stricken stare.

"I don't like the look of it, Ellen," she said; "I don't at all like the
look of it."

"What do you mean?" the girl asked indifferently.

"I don't like the hold that man has got over Stephen, nor the way he
speaks to him--almost as if Steph was a dog. Did you hear him just now?
And what does he want to see the house for, I should like to know? What
can this house matter to him, unless he was going to buy it? That's it,
perhaps, Ellen. Stephen has been speculating, and has gone and ruined
himself, and that strange man is going to buy Wyncomb. He gave me a kind
of turn the minute I looked at him. And, depend upon it, he's come to
turn us all out of house and home."

Ellen gave a faint shudder. What if her father's wicked scheming were to
come to such an end as this! what if she had been sold into bondage, and
the master to whom she had been given had not even the wealth which had
been held before her as a bait in her misery! For herself she cared
little whether she were rich or poor. It could make but a difference of
detail in the fact of her unhappiness, whether she were mistress of
Wyncomb or a homeless tramp upon the country roads. The workhouse without
Stephen Whitelaw must needs be infinitely preferable to Wyncomb Farm with
him. And for her father, it seemed only a natural and justifiable thing
that his guilt and his greed should be so punished. He had sold his
daughter into life-long slavery for nothing but that one advance of two
hundred pounds. He had saved himself from the penalty of his dishonesty,
however, by that sacrifice; and would, no doubt, hold his daughter's
misery lightly enough, even if poverty were added to the wretchedness of
her position.

The two women sat down on opposite sides of the hearth; Mrs. Tadman, too
anxious to go on with her accustomed knitting, only able to wring her
hands in a feeble way, and groan every now and then, or from time to time
burst into some fragmentary