'You have not?'

'Never!'

'Then why does not he believe you?'

'He thinks he has proof against me. I can't guess how he discovered it;
but I was obliged to pay some money to a gambling sort of man, and he
thinks I lost it.'

'Then why don't you show him your accounts?'

'For one reason--because I have kept none.'

As if it was an immense relief to his mind, Markham launched out into a
discourse on the extreme folly, imprudence, and all other evils of
such carelessness. He was so glad to find this was the worst, that
his lecture lasted for two miles and a half, during which Guy, though
attentive at first, had ample space for all the thrills of recognition
at each well-known spot.

There was the long green-wooded valley between the hills where he had
shot his first woodcock; there was the great stone on which he had
broken his best knife in a fit of geological research; there was the
pool where he used to skate; there the sudden break in the lulls that
gave the first view of the sea. He could not help springing up at the
sight--pale, leaden, and misty as it was; and though Markham forthwith
rebuked him for not listening, his heart was still beating as at the
first sight of a dear old friend, when that peep was far behind. More
black heaths, with stacks of peat and withered ferns. Guy was straining
his eyes far off in the darkness to look for the smoke of the old
keeper's cottage chimney, and could with difficulty refrain from
interrupting Markham to ask after the old man.

Another long hill, and then began a descent into a rich valley,
beautiful fields of young wheat, reddish soil, full of fatness, large
spreading trees with noble limbs, cottages, and cottage gardens, very
unlike poor Coombe Prior; Markham's house--a perfect little snuggery
covered all over with choice climbing plants, the smart plastered
doctor's house, the Morville Arms, looking honest and venerable, the
church, with its disproportionately high tower, the parsonage rather
hidden behind it; and, on the opposite side of the road, the park-wall
and the gate, where old Sarah stood, in an ecstasy of curtsies.

Guy jumped out to meet her, and to spare Whiteface; for there was a
sharp, steep bit of hill, rising from the lodge, trying to horses, in
spite of the road being cut out in long spirals. On he ran, leaving the
road to Markham, straight up the high, steep, slippery green slope. He
came in sight at the great dark-red sandstone pile of build