Cusworth, 'I must abandon the idea of going there.'

'Where? To Redstone?'

'Yes. The house is beyond my means. I cannot possibly afford it.'

'But—mamma.' Salome was startled. 'I have already secured the lodgings.'

'Only for a quarter, and it would be better to sacrifice a quarter's rent than turn out again in three months. I could not endure the shift again, so quickly following this dreadful change.'

'But—mamma!' Salome was greatly taken aback. 'This is springing a surprise on me. We have no other house into which we can go.'

'A cottage, quite a cottage, such as the artisans occupy, must content us. We shall have to cut our coat according to our cloth.'

'Mamma! You allowed me to engage Redstone.'

'I did not then know how we were circumstanced. To make both ends meet we shall have to pinch.'

'But why pinch? You told me before that we had enough on which to live quietly but comfortably.'

'I was mistaken. I have had a great and unexpected loss.'

'Loss, mamma! What loss?'

'I mean—well,' the old lady stammered, 'I mean a sore disappointment. I am not so well off as I had supposed. I had miscalculated my resources.'

'Have you only just discovered what your means really are?'

'You must not excite her,' said Janet reproachfully.

'I do not wish to do so,' explained Salome. 'But I am so surprised, so puzzled—and this is such an upset of our plans at the last moment, after I had engaged the lodgings—I do not know what to think about it.' She paused, considered, and said with a flush in her face: 'Mamma, you surely had not reckoned on poor uncle's will?'

Mrs. Cusworth hesitated, then said: 'Of course, it is a severe blow to me that no provision had been made for you and me. We might fairly have reckoned on receiving something after what was done for Janet, and you were his favourite.'

'Oh, mamma, you did not count on this?'

'Remember that you are left absolutely destitute. What little I have saved will hardly support us both. Janet can do nothing for us just now.'

'Because of the Prussians,' said Mrs. Baynes. 'Wait a bit; as soon as we have swept them from the face of fair France, I shall make you both come to me at Elboeuf.'

'Mamma,' said Salome, 'I am still puzzled. You knew very well that uncle's will was worthless when you let me make arrangements for Redstone, and now that I have settled everything you knock over my plans. If you had told me——'

'I could not tell you. I did not know,' said the widow. 'That is to say, I had misreckoned my means.'

'Then there is no help for it. I must try to get out of the agreement for Redstone, if I can. I am afraid the agent will not let me off. We shall have to pay double rent, and there is little chance of underletting Redstone at this time of the year.'

'Better pay double than have to make a double removal; it will be less expense in the end.'

'Perhaps so,' answered Salome; then she left her mother's room that she might go upstairs and think over this extraordinary change of plans. She was painfully aware that she had been treated without due consideration, subjected unnecessarily to much trouble and annoyance.

In the hall she saw Mr. Philip Pennycomequick. He beckoned to her to follow him to the garden-door, and she obeyed. He unlocked the door.

'I took away the key last night,' he said, 'and now you see my reason.'

He pointed to the turf.

A slight fall of snow, that comminuted snow that is like meal, had taken place at sundown, and it had covered the earth with a fine film of white, fine as dust. No further fall had taken place during the night.

A track of human feet was impressed on the white surface from the door to the steps that gave access to the vegetable garden.

Without exchanging a word, both followed the track, walking wide of it, one on each side. A footprint marked each step, and the track led, less distinctly, down the lower garden to the door in the wall at the bottom, through which it doubtless passed, as there were no signs of a scramble. The door was locked.

'Have you the key?' asked Philip.

'I have not. There is one on Mr. Pennycomequick's bunch, and my mother has a second.'

'It matters not,' said Philip. 'Outside is a path along which the mill people have gone this morning to their work, and have trampled out all the traces of our mysterious visitor. The prints are those of unshod feet. The shape of the impression tells me that.'

They returned to the house.

'This unpleasant incident convinces me of one thing,' said Philip. 'It will not do for me to live in this place alone. I can explain this mysterious affair in one or other way. Either one of the servants having a brother, cousin, or lover, whom she wished to favour with the pick of my uncle's clothes, that she knew were laid out for distribution, allowed him to come and choose for himself——'

'Or else——'

'Or else the gardener left the little door in the wall ajar. Some passing tramp, seeing it open, ventured in, and finding nothing worth taking in the garden, pursued his explorations to the house, where he was fortunate enough to find another door open, through which he effected his entrance and helped himself to what he first laid hands on. He would have taken more had he not been disturbed by you.'

'He was not disturbed by me.'

'He may have seen you pass down the stairs, and so have taken the alarm and decamped. My second explanation is the least probable, for it demands a double simultaneous neglect of fastening doors by two independent persons, the housemaid and the gardener.'

'The gardener has not been working for some weeks.'

'Then how this has occurred concerns me less than the prevention of a recurrence,' said Philip. 'I must have a responsible person in the house. May I see your mother?'

As he asked, he entered the hall, and Janet at the same moment came out of her mother's sitting-room with a beaming face. She slightly bowed to Philip, and said eagerly to her sister, 'Salome, the postman is coming down the road. I am sure he brings me good news. I am going to the door to meet him.'

Salome admitted Philip into the sitting-room. She would have withdrawn, but he requested her to stay.

'What I have to say to Mrs. Cusworth,' he said shortly, 'concerns you as well as your mother.'

He took a chair at the widow's request, and then, in his matter-of-fact business fashion, plunged at once into the subject of his visit.

'I dare say that you have wondered, madam, that neither Mrs. Sidebottom nor I have made any call on you lately with a proposal. The fact is that only yesterday did my aunt and I arrive at a definite and permanent