CHAPTER II.

THE DROWNED WOMAN.

IT ain't much of a homminy,' said the host of the George. 'I'll not keep you long over it, gentlemen. There was a handsome young lady, Miss Mary Feltram o' Cloostedd by name. She was the last o' that family; they had gone very poor. There's but the walls o' the house left now: grass growing in the hall, and ivy over the gables; there's no one livin' has ever hard tell o' smoke out o' they chimblies. It stands on t'other side o' the lake, on the level, wi' a deal o' a'ad trees behint and aside it, at the gap o' the clough, under the pike o' Maiden Fells. Ye may see it wi' a spyin'-glass from the boat-bield at Mardykes Hall.'

6

'I've been there fifty times,' said the Doctor.

Well, there was dealin's betwixt the two families; and there's good and bad in every family; but the Mardykes, in them days, was a wild lot. And when old Feltram o' Cloostedd died, and the young lady his daughter was left a ward o' Sir Jasper Mardykes— an ill day for her, poor lass !-twenty year older than her he was, an' more; and nothin' about him, they say, to make any one like or love him, ill-faur'd and little and dow.'

'Dow-that's gloomy,' Doctor Torvey instructed the Captain,

aside.

'But, they do say, they has an old blud-stean ring in the family that has a charm in't; and happen how it might, the poor lass fell in love wi' him. Some said they was married. Some said it hang'd i' the bell-ropes, and never had the priest's blessing; but anyhow, married or no, there was talk enough amang the folk, and out o' doors she would na budge. And there was two wee barns; and she prayed him hard to confess the marriage, poor thing! But 'twas a bootlese bene, and he would not allow they should bear his name, but their mother's; he was a hard man, and hed the bit in his teeth, and went his ain gait. And having tired of her, he took in his head to marry a lady of the Barnets, and it behoved him to be shut o' her and her children; and so she nor them was seen no more at Mardykes Hall. And the eldest, a boy, was left in care of my grandfather's father here in the George.'

'That queer Philip Feltram that's travelling with Sir Bale so long is a descendant of his ?' said the Doctor.

Grandson,' observed Mr. Peers, removing his pipe for a moment; and he is the last of that stock.'

'Well, no one could tell where she was gone to. Some said to distant parts, some said to the madhouse, some one thing, some another; but neither she nor the barn was ever seen or spoke to by the folk at Mardykes in life again. There was one Mr. Wigram that

lived in them times down at Moultry, and had sarved, like the Captain here, in the king's navy in his day; and early of a morning down he comes to the town here for a boat, sayin' he was looking toward Snakes Island through his spyin'-glass, and he seen a woman about a hundred and fifty yards outside of it; the Captain here has heard the bearings right enough. From her hips upward she was stark and straight out o' the water, and a baby in her arms. Well, no one else could see it, nor he neither, when they went down to the boat. But next morning he saw the same thing, and the boatman saw it too; and they rowed for it, both pulling might and main; but after a mile or so they could see it no more, and gave over. The next that saw it was the vicar, I forget his name now-but he was up the lake to a funeral at Mortlock Church; and coming back by moonlight with a bit of a sail up, just passin' Snakes Island, what should they hear on a sudden but a wowl like a death-cry, shrill and bleak, as made the very blood hoot in their veins; and looking along the water not a hundred yards away, they saw the same grizzled sight in the moonlight; so they turned the tiller, and came near enough to see her face-blea it was, and drenched wi' water and she was above the lake to her middle, stiff as a post, holdin' the weeny barn out to them, and flyrin' [smiling scornfully] on them as they drew nigh her. They were half-frighted, not knowing what to make of it; but passing as close as the boatman could bring her side, the vicar stretched over the gunwale to catch her, and she bent forward, pushing the dead bab forward; and as she did, on a sudden she gave another yell that scared them, and they saw her no more. 'Twas no livin' woman, for she couldn't rise that height above the water, as they well knew when they came to think; and they knew it was a dobby they saw; and ye may be sure they didn't spare prayer and blessin', and went on their course straight before the wind; for neither would a-took the worth o' all Mardykes to look sich a freetin' i' the face again. 'Twas seen another time by market-folk crossin' fra Gyllenston in the self-same place; and Snakes Island got a bad neam, and none cared to go nar it after nightfall.'

'Do you know anything of that Feltram that has been with him abroad?' asked the Doctor.

They say he's no good at anything-a harmless mafflin; he was a lang gaumless gawky when he went awa,' said Richard Turnbull. The Feltrams and the Mardykes was sib, ye know; and that made what passed in the misfortune o' that young lady spoken of all the harder; and this poor young man ye speak of is grandson o' the lad that was put here in care o' my grandfather.'

Great-grandson. His father was grandson,' said Mr. Peers; ' he held a commission in the army, and died in the West Indies. This Philip Feltram is the last of that line-illegitimate, you know,

it is held and the little that remained of the Feltram property went nearly fourscore years ago to the Mardykes, and this Philip is maintained by Sir Bale; it is pleasant, notwithstanding all the stories one hears, gentlemen, that the only thing we know of him for certain should be so creditable to his kindness.'

6

To be sure,' acquiesced Mr. Turnbull.

While they talked, the horn sounded, and the mail-coach drew up at the door of the George and Dragon to set down a passenger and his luggage.

Dick Turnbull rose and went out to the hall with careful bustle, and Doctor Torvey followed as far as the door, which commanded a view of it, and saw several trunks cased in canvas pitched into the hall, and by careful Tom and a boy lifted one on top of the other, behind the corner of the banister. It would have been below the dignity of his cloth to go out and read the labels on these, or the Doctor would have done otherwise, so great was his curiosity.

CHAPTER III.

PHILIP FELTRAM.

THE new guest was now in the hall of the George, and Doctor Torvey could hear him talking with Mr. Turnbull. Being himself one of the dignitaries of Golden Friars, the Doctor, having regard to first impressions, did not care to be seen in his post of observation; and closing the door gently, returned to his chair by the fire, and in an under-tone informed his cronies that there was a new arrival in the George, and he could not hear, but would not wonder if he were taking a private room; and he seemed to have trunks enough to build a church with.

were it

'Don't be too sure we haven't Sir Bale on board,' said Amerald, who would have followed his crony the Doctor to the door for never was retired naval hero of a village more curious than he not that his wooden leg made a distinct pounding on the floor that was inimical, as experience had taught him, to mystery.

That can't be,' answered the Doctor; Charley Twyne knows everything about it, and has a letter every second day; and there's no chance of Sir Bale before the tenth; this is a tourist, you'll find. I don't know what the d-l keeps Turnbull; he knows well enough we are all naturally anxious to hear who it is.'

'Well, he won't trouble us here, I bet ye;' and catching deaf Mr. Hollar's eye, the Captain nodded, and pointed to the little table beside him, and made a gesture imitative of the rattling of a dice-box; at which that quiet old gentleman nodded also sunnily; and up got the Captain and conveyed the backgammon-box to the table, near Hollar's elbow, and the two worthies were soon sincducing and catre-acing, with the pleasant clatter that accompanies

that ancient game. Hollar had thrown sixes and made his double point, and the honest Captain, who could stand many things better than Hollar's throwing such throws so early in the evening, cursed his opponent's luck and sneered at his play, and called the company to witness, with a distinctness which a stranger to smiling Hollar's deafness would have thought hardly civil; and just at this moment the door opened, and Richard Turnbull showed his new guest into the room, and ushered him to a vacant seat near the other corner of the table before the fire.

The stranger advanced slowly and shyly, with something a little deprecatory in his air, to which a lathy figure, a slight stoop, and a very gentle and even heart-broken look in his long pale face, gave a more marked character of shrinking and timidity.

He thanked the landlord aside, as it were, and took his seat with a furtive glance round, as if he had no right to come in and intrude upon the happiness of these honest gentlemen.

He saw the Captain scanning him from under his shaggy gray eyebrows while he was pretending to look only at his game; and the Doctor was able to recount to Mrs. Torvey when he went home every article of the stranger's dress.

It was odd and melancholy as his peaked face.

He had come into the room with a short black cloak on, and a rather tall foreign felt hat, and a pair of shiny leather gaiters or leggings on his thin legs; and altogether presented a general resemblance to the conventional figure of Guy Fawkes.

Not one of the company assembled there knew the appearance of the Baronet. The Doctor and old Mr. Peers remembered something of his looks; and certainly they had no likeness, but the reverse, to those presented by the new-comer. The Baronet, as now described by people who had chanced to see him, was a dark man, not above the middle size, and with a certain decision in his air and talk; whereas this person was tall, pale, and in air and manner feeble. So this broken trader in the world's commerce, with whom all seemed to have gone wrong, could not possibly be he.

Presently, in one of his stealthy glances, the Doctor's eye encountered that of the stranger, who was by this time drinking his tea—a thin and feminine liquor little used in that room.

The stranger did not seem put out; and the Doctor, interpreting his look as a permission to converse, cleared his voice, and said urbanely,

'We have had a little frost by night down here, sir, and a little fire is no great harm-it is rather pleasant, don't you think?'

The stranger bowed acquiescence with a transient wintry smile, and looked gratefully on the fire.

This place is a good deal admired, sir, and people come a good way to see it; you have been here perhaps before ?'

'Many years ago.'

Here was another pause.

'Places change imperceptibly-in detail, at least—a good deal,' said the Doctor, making an effort to keep up a conversation that plainly would not go on of itself; and people too; population shifts -there's an old fellow, sir, they call Death.'

'And an old fellow they call the Doctor, that helps him,' threw in the Captain humorously, allowing his attention to get entangled in the conversation, and treating them to one of his tempestuous ha-ha-ha's.

'We are expecting the return of a gentleman who would be a very leading member of our little society down here,' said the Doctor, without noticing the Captain's joke. I mean Sir Bale Mardykes. Mardykes Hall is a pretty object from the water, sir, and a very fine old place.'

The melancholy stranger bowed slightly, but rather in courtesy to the relator, it seemed, than that the Doctor's lore interested him much.

And on the opposite side of the lake,' continued Doctor Torvey, 'there is a building that contrasts very well with it-the old house of the Feltrams-quite a ruin now, at the mouth of the glen— Cloostedd House, a very picturesque object.'

'Exactly opposite,' said the stranger dreamily, but whether in the tone of acquiescence or of interrogatory, the Doctor could not be quite sure.

'That was one of our great families down here that has disappeared. It has dwindled down to nothing.'

'Duce ace,' remarked Mr. Hollar, who was attending to his

game.

While others have mounted more suddenly and amazingly still,' observed gentle Mr. Peers, who was great upon county genealogies.

'Sizes!' thundered the Captain, thumping the table with an oath of disgust.

'And Snakes Island is a very pretty object; they say there used to be snakes there,' said the Doctor, enlightening the visitor.

Ah! that's a mistake,' said the dejected guest, making his first original observation. It should be spelt Snaiks. In the old papers it is called Sen-aiks Island, from the seven oaks that grew in a clump there.'

Hey? that's very curious, egad! I daresay,' said the Doctor, set right thus by the stranger, and eyeing him curiously.

Very true, sir,' observed Mr. Peers; three of those oaks, though, two of them little better than stumps, are there still; and Clewson of Heckleston has an old document

Here, unhappily, the landlord entered the room in a fuss, and