about
where they're 'going to,' as the children say. 'Shady' is the word, is
it not? Well, the previous tenants of Tresillack (from first to last a
bewildering series) had been shady with a vengeance.

"I knew nothing of this when I first made application to the landlord, a
solid yeoman inhabiting a farm at the foot of the coombe, on a cliff
overlooking the beach. To him I presented myself fearlessly as a
spinster of decent family and small but assured income, intending a
rural life of combined seemliness and economy. He met my advances
politely enough, but with an air of suspicion which offended me.
I began by disliking him for it: afterwards I set it down as an
unpleasant feature in the local character. I was doubly mistaken.
Farmer Hosking was slow-witted, but as honest a man as ever stood up
against hard times; and a more open and hospitable race than the people
on that coast I never wish to meet. It was the caution of a child who
had burnt his fingers, not once but many times. Had I known what I
afterwards learned of Farmer Hosking's tribulations as landlord of a
'secluded country residence,' I should have approached him with the
bashfulness proper to my suit and faltered as I undertook to prove the
bright exception in a long line of painful experiences. He had bought
the Tresillack estate twenty years before--on mortgage, I fancy--because
the land adjoined his own and would pay him for tillage. But the house
was a nuisance, an incubus; and had been so from the beginning.

"'Well, miss,' he said, 'you're welcome to look over it; a pretty enough
place, inside and out. There's no trouble about keys, because I've put
in a housekeeper, a widow-woman, and she'll show you round. With your
leave I'll step up the coombe so far with you, and put you in your way.'
As I thanked him he paused and rubbed his chin. 'There's one thing I
must tell you, though. Whoever takes the house must take Mrs. Carkeek
along with it.'

"'Mrs. Carkeek?' I echoed dolefully. 'Is that the housekeeper?'

"'Yes: she was wife to my late hind. I'm sorry, miss,' he added, my
face telling him no doubt what sort of woman I expected Mrs. Carkeek to
be; 'but I had to make it a rule after--after some things that happened.
And I dare say you won't find her so bad. Mary Carkeek's a sensible
comfortable woman, and knows the place. She was in service there to
Squire Kendall when he sold up and went: her first place it was.'

"'I may as