ther born nor 'tempted at that time.'

'Who lives in the old house behind the plantation?'

'Old Gammer Martin, my lady, and her grandson.'

'He has neither father nor mother, then?'

'Not a single one, my lady.'

'Where was he educated?'

'At Warborne,--a place where they draw up young gam'sters' brains like
rhubarb under a ninepenny pan, my lady, excusing my common way. They hit
so much larning into en that 'a could talk like the day of Pentecost;
which is a wonderful thing for a simple boy, and his mother only the
plainest ciphering woman in the world. Warborne Grammar School--that's
where 'twas 'a went to. His father, the reverent Pa'son St. Cleeve, made
a terrible bruckle hit in 's marrying, in the sight of the high. He were
the curate here, my lady, for a length o' time.'

'Oh, curate,' said Lady Constantine. 'It was before I knew the village.'

'Ay, long and merry ago! And he married Farmer Martin's daughter--Giles
Martin, a limberish man, who used to go rather bad upon his lags, if you
can mind. I knowed the man well enough; who should know en better! The
maid was a poor windling thing, and, though a playward piece o' flesh
when he married her, 'a socked and sighed, and went out like a snoff!
Yes, my lady. Well, when Pa'son St. Cleeve married this homespun woman
the toppermost folk wouldn't speak to his wife. Then he dropped a cuss
or two, and said he'd no longer get his living by curing their twopenny
souls o' such d--- nonsense as that (excusing my common way), and he took
to farming straightway, and then 'a dropped down dead in a nor'-west
thunderstorm; it being said--hee-hee!--that Master God was in tantrums
wi'en for leaving his service,--hee-hee! I give the story as I heard it,
my lady, but be dazed if I believe in such trumpery about folks in the
sky, nor anything else that's said on 'em, good or bad. Well, Swithin,
the boy, was sent to the grammar school, as I say for; but what with
having two stations of life in his blood he's good for nothing, my lady.
He mopes about--sometimes here, and sometimes there; nobody troubles
about en.'

Lady Constantine thanked her informant, and proceeded onward. To her, as
a woman, the most curious feature in the afternoon's incident was that
this lad, of striking beauty, scientific attainments, and cultivated
bearing, should be linked, on the maternal side, with a local
agricultural family through his father's matrimonial eccentricity. A
more attr