tramping my way across the south of
England, and doing odd jobs as I went. I was trying all I knew to keep
off the cross, for I had done a year in Exeter Gaol, and I had had
enough of visiting Queen Victoria. But it's cruel hard to get work when
once the black mark is against your name, and it was all I could do to
keep soul and body together. At last, after ten days of wood-cutting and
stone-breaking on starvation pay, I found myself near Salisbury with a
couple of shillings in my pocket, and my boots and my patience clean
wore out. There's an alehouse called "The Willing Mind," which stands
on the road between Blandford and Salisbury, and it was there that night
I engaged a bed. I was sitting alone in the taproom just about closing
time, when the inn-keeper--Allen his name was--came beside me and began
yarning about the neighbours. He was a man that liked to talk and to
have some one to listen to his talk, so I sat there smoking and drinking
a mug of ale which he had stood me; and I took no great interest in what
he said until he began to talk (as the devil would have it) about the
riches of Mannering Hall.

"Meaning the large house on the right before I came to the village?"
said I. "The one that stands in its own park?"

"Exactly," said he--and I am giving all our talk so that you may know
that I am telling you the truth and hiding nothing. "The long white
house with the pillars," said he. "At the side of the Blandford Road."

Now I had looked at it as I passed, and it had crossed my mind, as such
thoughts will, that it was a very easy house to get into with that
great row of grand windows and glass doors. I had put the thought away
from me, and now here was this landlord bringing it back with his talk
about the riches within. I said nothing, but I listened, and as luck
would have it, he would always come back to this one subject.

"He was a miser young, so you can think what he is now in his age," said
he. "Well, he's had some good out of his money."

"What good can he have had if he does not spend it?" said I.

"Well, it bought him the prettiest wife in England, and that was some
good that he got out of it. She thought she would have the spending of
it, but she knows the difference now."

"Who was she then?" I asked, just for the sake of something to say.

"She was nobody at all until the old Lord made her his Lady," said he.
"She came from up London way, and some said that she had been on the
stage there