it was a reality. The letter had set him
thinking, and he had been thinking ever since. He had come here this
morning, hoping that in talking with her she might perhaps give him
some more light, and now she had disappeared. Strange that his mother
should not have told him! What could be the explanation of this sudden
disappearance? Disaster or death it could not be, for that she
certainly would have told him.

Sitting there and musing over many things, his own great question ever
and again, he heard a mower whetting his scythe somewhere in the
neighbourhood. Pitt set about searching for the unseen labourer, and
presently saw the man, who was cutting the grass in an adjoining field.
Dismissing thought for action, in two minutes he had sprung over the
fence and was beside the man; but the mower did not intermit the long
sweeps of his scythe, until he heard Pitt's civil 'Good morning.' Then
he stopped, straightened himself up, and looked at his visitor--looked
him all over.

'Good mornin',' he replied. 'Guess you're the young squoire, ain't ye?'

If Pitt's appearance had been less supremely neat and faultless, I
think the honest worker would have offered his hand; but the white
linen summer suit, the polished boots, the delicate gloves, were too
much of a contrast with his own dusty and rough exterior. It was no
feeling of inferiority, be it well understood, that moved him to this
bit of self-denial; only a self-respecting feeling of fitness. He
himself would not have wanted to touch a dusty hand with those gloves
on his own. But he spoke his welcome.

'Glad to see ye hum, squoire. When did ye come?'

'Last night, thank you. Whom am I talking to? I have been so long away,
I have forgotten my friends.'

'I guess there's nobody hain't forgotten you, you'll find,' said the
man, wiping his scythe blade with a wisp of grass; needlessly, for he
had just whetted it; but it gave him an opportunity to look at the
figure beside him.

'More than I deserve,' said Pitt. 'But I seem not to find some of my
old friends. Do you know where is the family that used to live here?'

'Gone away, I guess.'

'I see they have gone away; but where have they gone?'

'Dunno, no more'n the dead,' said the man, beginning to mow again.

'You know whom I am speaking of?--Colonel Gainsborough.'

'I know. He's gone--that's all I kin tell ye.'

'Who takes care of the place?'

'The place? If you mean the house, nobody takes keer of it, I gue