l
again, a keg of philanthropic oysters; or if these were not hospitably
on their hinges yet, certainly there would be choice-bodied creatures,
dried with a dash of salt upon the sunny shingle, and lacking of
perfection nothing more than to be warmed through upon a toasting-fork.

By none, however, of these delights was the newly won lodger tempted.
All that he wanted was peace and quiet, time to go through a great trunk
full of papers and parchments, which he brought with him, and a breath
of fresh air from the downs on the north, and the sea to the south,
to enliven him. And in good truth he wanted to be enlivened, as Widow
Shanks said to her daughter Jenny; for his eyes were gloomy, and his
face was stern, and he seldom said anything good-natured. He seemed to
avoid all company, and to be wrapped up wholly in his own concerns, and
to take little pleasure in anything. As yet he had not used the bed at
his lodgings, nor broken his fast there to her knowledge, though he rode
down early every morning and put up his horse at Cheeseman's, and never
rode away again until the dark had fallen. Neither had he cared to make
the acquaintance of Captain Stubbarb, who occupied the room beneath
his for a Royal Office--as the landlady proudly entitled it; nor had
he received, to the best of her knowledge, so much as a single visitor,
though such might come by his private entrance among the shrubs
unnoticed. All these things stirred with deep interest and wonder the
enquiring mind of the widow.

"And what do they say of him up at the Hall?" she asked her daughter
Jenny, who was come to spend holiday at home. "What do they say of my
new gentleman, young Squire Carne from the Castle? The Carnes and the
Darlings was never great friends, as every one knows in Springhaven.
Still, it do seem hard and unchristianlike to keep up them old enmities;
most of all, when the one side is down in the world, with the owls and
the bats and the coneys."

"No, mother, no. They are not a bit like that," replied Jenny--a maid
of good loyalty; "it is only that he has not called upon them. All
gentlefolks have their proper rules of behaviour. You can't be expected
to understand them, mother."

"But why should he go to them more than they should come to him,
particular with young ladies there? And him with only one horse to
their seven or eight. I am right, you may depend upon it, Jenny; and
my mother, your grandmother, was a lady's-maid in a higher fami