he had seen his mother as she was driving home the cattle from the moors.
He watched the lad almost furtively, and he wondered why it was that he
was afraid to speak. It seemed to him as though some mysterious power
were brooding over this lonely dwelling and forbidding him to learn the
secrets that lay within.

"Does Donald Lindsay live here?" he asked presently.

The lad looked at him for a few seconds before replying, and then, in his
strong Scotch accent, replied, "Nay. He's dead."

"And Mrs. Lindsay, is she alive?"

"Ay," replied the lad. "She'll be inside. She's my mother."

Paul remembered his own mother's story about this hard Scotswoman's
unkindness, and felt little disposed to go into the house; yet, for the
sake of learning what he had come to learn, he determined to enter. The
cottage, for it was little more than a cottage, was clean, but
comfortless and bare of any adornment whatever. It might seem as though
no woman entered this building, for there were no marks of a woman's
handicraft, none of those little suggestions of the feminine presence.

"Mother!" shouted the youth. "There's someone wants you."

A minute later Paul heard a heavy step on the uncarpeted stairway, and a
tall, angular, hard-featured woman, with cold blue eyes and scanty light
hair, entered the room. She looked at him steadily, as if there was
something in his face that she recognised.

"And what might ye be wantin'?" she asked presently. "Ye'll not be from
these parts, I fancy."

"No," said Paul. "I came from England. I was born and reared in
Cornwall. Years ago, a man named Donald Lindsay came there and married
into my family. I was wanting to find out something about him."

He knew it was a clumsy explanation of his appearance there, but it was
the best he could think of for the moment.

"What'll you be to Donald Lindsay?" asked the woman, as she scanned him
closely. "He died two years since, and it's getting on for forty years
ago since he was down South. He's told me about it many a time. You're
in no way related to him, are you?"

And then, giving him a second glance, she went on:

"No, no, you're no Lindsay. Donald was blue-eyed and fair-haired, and
you are black-eyed and black-haired."

"But did not Donald have a daughter?" asked Paul. "You see, I've heard
he married a Cornish girl, and that they had a daughter. Did you know
her? Did she ever live here?"

"What's that to you?" asked the wom