ss.
There ain't nobody in it. The land hez as good keer as it ever hed. The
squoire, he sees to that.'

'My father, do you mean?'

'Who else? It belongs to the squoire now, and he takes good keer o' all
_he_ sees to. He bought it, ye know, when the cunnel went away,' said
the man, stopping work and resting on his scythe to look at Pitt again.
'He'd ha' let it, I guess, ef he could; but you see there ain't nobody
that wants it. The folks in Seaforth all hez their own houses, and
don't want nobody else's. There _is_ folks, they say, as 'd like to
live in two houses to once, _ef_ they could manage it; but I never
heerd o' no one that could.'

'Do you know at all why the colonel went away?'

'Hain't an idee. Never knowed him particular, ye see, and so never
heerd tell. The cunnel he warn't a sociable man by no means, and kep'
himself mostly shut up. I think it's a man's loss; but there's
different opinions, I suppose, on that p'int. As on every other! Folks
du say, the cunnel warn't never to hum in Seaforth. Anyway, he ain't
now.'

With which utterance he went to mowing again, and Pitt, after a
courteous 'Good day,' left him.

Where could they be gone? And why should they have gone? And how was it
that his mother in her many letters had never said a word about it?
Nay, had let him go out this very morning to look for what she knew he
would not find? And his father had bought the ground! There was
something here to be inquired into. Meanwhile, for the present, he must
do his thinking without Esther.

He walked on and on, slowly, under the shade of the great trees, along
the empty, grassy street. He had plucked one or two shoots from the
honeysuckles, long shoots full of sweetness; and as he went on and
thought, they seemed to put in a word now and then. A word of reminder,
not distinct nor logical, but with a blended meaning of Esther and
sweetness and truth. Not _her_ sweetness and truth, but that which she
testified to, and which an inner voice in Pitt's heart kept declaring
to be genuine. That lured him and beckoned him one way; and the other
way sounded voices as if of a thousand sirens. Pleasure, pride,
distinction, dominion, applause, achievement, power, and ease. Various
forms of them, various colours, started up before his mind's eye;
vaguely discerned, as to individual form, but every one of them, like
the picadors in a bull-fight, shaking its little banner of distraction
and allurement. Pitt felt the conf