l Donald it would never come to any good.
She might have married well. Willie Fearn, who owns a farm over the
moors here, would have had her, and he's worth thousands of pounds now,
is Willie. But she would have nothing to say to him. One day I saw a
stranger coming up the path with her, one of these handsome Southerners,
and they used to meet in secret, and I suppose he courted her. Anyhow,
she ran away with him, or said she did, and then came back the next day
telling us that she was married."

"Yes?" said Paul eagerly. He knew all this before, but it seemed to him
as though he was getting nearer the truth that he longed to learn. "And
did she stay with you long?"

"Not long," replied the woman. "You see----" And a look almost of shame
came into her eyes. "Well, she stayed as long as she dared."

"And have you heard what has become of her since?" he asked.

"We've heard that she died. We've no proof of it, but we saw in the
papers a few weeks afterwards that a girl was found dead, and from the
description given of her we concluded that it was Jean."

"But did you not try and find out?" he asked. "Surely your husband would
not be so callous towards his daughter?"

"My husband did what I told him," she said. "Besides, the girl had
disgraced herself, and we did not want to be dragged into it. Mind, I'm
not sure, after all, but what she was properly married, and it may be I
did wrong. But there it is--she's dead."

"And did you hear anything more--have you ever heard anything more about
this young Southerner?"

"Well, we are not so sure about that," replied the woman. "You see, I
never saw him but once before the time Jean said he married her, and so I
cannot swear to him anywhere. But some time after Jean left a man came
here, and, in a roundabout way, he found out what we knew about her."

"And did you tell him she was dead?"

"I told him just what I've told you," replied the woman.

"And how did he take the news?" asked Paul.

"Oh, nothing particular," replied the woman. "He just went on talking
about something else, but I believe that was a bit of make-up."

"Wasn't he a friend of the Grahams at a house called 'Highlands'?" asked
Paul presently.

"I believe there were some people called Graham at the time. It is said
that they came there for their summer holidays, but they left before we
had guessed about Jean's trouble, and so we could never find out anything
about them."

"What ki