and go--a
man of remarkable stature and appearance--without any body asking who he
is?"

"You scarcely could have put it better, miss, for me to give the answer.
They do ask who he is, and they want to know it, and would like any
body to tell them. But being of a different breed, as they are, from all
outside the long valley, speaking also with a different voice, they fear
to talk so freely out of their own ways and places. Any thing they can
learn in and out among themselves, they will learn; but any thing out of
that they let go, in the sense of outlandish matter. Bless you, miss,
if your poor grandfather had been shot any where else in England, how
different it would have been for him!"

"For us, you mean, Mrs. Busk. Do you think the man who did it had that
in his mind?"

"Not unless he knew the place, as few know it. No, that was an accident
of his luck, as many other things have been. But the best luck stops at
last, Miss Erema; and unless I am very much mistaken, you will be the
stop of his. I shall find out, in a few days, where he came from, where
he staid, and when he went away. I suppose you mean to let him go away?"

"What else am I to do?" I asked. "I have no evidence at all against him;
only my own ideas. The police would scarcely take it up, even if--"

"Oh, don't talk of them. They spoil every thing. And none of our people
would say a word, or care to help us, if it came to that. The police are
all strangers, and our people hate them. And, indeed, I believe that
the worst thing ever done was the meddling of that old Jobbins. The old
stupe is still alive at Petersfield, and as pompous-headed as ever. My
father would have been the man for your sad affair, miss, if the
police had only been invented in his time. Ah, yes, he was sharp! Not a
Moonstock man--you may take your oath of that, miss--but a good honest
native from Essex. But he married my mother, a Moonstock woman; or they
would not put up with me here at all. You quality people have your ideas
to hold by, and despise all others, and reasonable in your opinions; but
you know nothing--nothing--nothing--of the stiffness of the people under
you."

"How should I know any thing of that?" I answered; "all these things are
new to me. I have not been brought up in this country, as you know. I
come from a larger land, where your stiffness may have burst out into
roughness, from having so much room suddenly. But tell me what you think
now your father wou