"Would it really, now?" said that confiding innocent.

"Well, I suppose old papers, and letters, and such like, are uncommonly
interesting to some folks. I can't say I care much about 'em myself."

"Would you have any objection to my taking a copy of these entries?" I
asked.

"My word, no, lad; not I. Take half a dozen copies, and welcome, if
they can be of any use to you or other people. That's not much to ask
for."

I thanked my simple host, and determined to write to a stationer at
Hull for some tracing-paper by the first post next morning. There was
some happiness, at least, in having found this unlooked-for end to my
researches. I had a good excuse for remaining longer near Charlotte
Halliday.

"It's only for my poor Mary's sake I set any value on that old volume,"
the farmer said, presently, in a meditative tone. "You see the names
there are the names of her relations, not mine; and this place and all
in it was hers. Dorothy and I are only interlopers, as you may say, at
the best, though I brought my fortune to the old farm, and Dorothy
brought her fortune, and between us we've made Newhall a much better
place than it was in old James Halliday's time. But there's something
sad in the thought that none of those that were born on the land have
left chick or child to inherit it." Uncle Joseph fell for a while into
a pensive reverie, and I thought of that other inheritance, well-nigh
fifty times the value of Newhall farm, which is now waiting for a
claimant. And again I asked myself, Could it be possible that this
sweet girl, whose changeful face had saddened with those old memories,
whose innocent heart knew not one sordid desire--could it be indeed she
whose fair hand was to wrest the Haygarthian gold from the grip of
Crown lawyers?

The sight of that old Bible seemed to have revived Mr. Mercer's memory
of his first wife with unwonted freshness.

"She was a sweet young creature," he said; "the living picture of our
Lottie, and sometimes I fancy it must have been that which made me take
to Lottie when she was a little one. I used to see my first wife's eyes
looking up at me out of Lottie's eyes. I told Tom it was a comfort to
me to have the little lass with me, and that's how they let her come
over so often from Hyley. Poor old Tom used to bring her over in his
Whitechapel cart, and leave her behind him for a week or so at a
stretch. And then, when my Dorothy, yonder, took pity upon a poor
lonely widower,