ind out where Culverwood Hall was than you
may imagine. I asked many at the inn where I put up, but no one could
tell me, and at such places I was not likely to find any book which I
could refer to. I went to the coach offices and asked what coaches
started for Essex, and the reply was, `Where did I want to go?' and,
when I said Culverwood Hall, no one could tell me by which coach I was
to go, or which town it was near. At last, I did find out from the
porter of the Saracen's Head, who had taken in parcels with that
address, and who went to the coachman, who said that his coach passed
within a mile of Sir Alexander Moystyn's, who lived there. I never knew
her ladyship's maiden name before. I took my place by the coach, for I
had gone to the banker's in Fleet Street, and received the money for my
check, and started the next morning at three o'clock.

"I was put down at a village called Westgate, at an inn called the
Moystyn Arms. I kept to the dress of a sailor, and when the people
spoke to me on the coach, kept up the character as well as I could,
which is very easy to do when you have to do with people who know
nothing about it. I shivered my timbers, and all that sort of thing,
and hitched up my trousers, as they do at the theatres. The coachman
told me that the inn was the nearest place I could stop at, if I wanted
to go to the hall, and taking my bundle, I got down and he drove off. A
sailor-boy is a sort of curiosity in a country village, Miss Valerie,
and I had many questions put to me, but I answered them by putting
others. I said that my friends were formerly living at the hall in the
old baronet's time, but that I knew little about them, as it was a long
while ago; and I asked if there were any of the old servants still
living at the place. The woman who kept the inn told me that there was
one, Old Roberts, who still lived in the village, and been _bedridden_
for some years. This of course was the person I wanted, and I inquired
what had become of his family. The reply was, that his daughter, who
had married Green, was somewhere in London, and his son, who had married
Kitty Wilson of the village, had gone to reside as gamekeeper somewhere
near Portsmouth, and had a large family of children.

"`You're right enough,' replied I, laughing, `we are a large family.'

"`What, are you old Roberts' grandson?' exclaimed the woman. `Well, we
did hear that one of them, Harry, I think, did go to sea.'

"`We