ime
before, succeeded as coheiresses.

The last forty miles of my journey I was obliged to post, chiefly by
cross-roads, little known, and less frequented, and presenting scenery
often extremely interesting and pretty. The picturesqueness of the
landscape was enhanced by the season, the beginning of September, at
which I was travelling.

I had never been in this part of the world before; I am told it is now a
great deal less wild, and, consequently, less beautiful.

At the inn where I had stopped for a relay of horses and some
dinner--for it was then past five o'clock--I found the host, a hale old
fellow of five-and-sixty, as he told me, a man of easy and garrulous
benevolence, willing to accommodate his guests with any amount of talk,
which the slightest tap sufficed to set flowing, on any subject you
pleased.

I was curious to learn something about Barwyke, which was the name of
the demesne and house I was going to. As there was no inn within some
miles of it, I had written to the steward to put me up there, the best
way he could, for a night.

The host of the "Three Nuns," which was the sign under which he
entertained wayfarers, had not a great deal to tell. It was twenty
years, or more, since old Squire Bowes died, and no one had lived in the
Hall ever since, except the gardener and his wife.

"Tom Wyndsour will be as old a man as myself; but he's a bit taller, and
not so much in flesh, quite," said the fat innkeeper.

"But there were stories about the house," I repeated, "that, they said,
prevented tenants from coming into it?"

"Old wives' tales; many years ago, that will be, sir; I forget 'em; I
forget 'em all. Oh yes, there always will be, when a house is left so;
foolish folk will always be talkin'; but I han't heard a word about it
this twenty year."

It was vain trying to pump him; the old landlord of the "Three Nuns,"
for some reason, did not choose to tell tales of Barwyke Hall, if he
really did, as I suspected, remember them.

I paid my reckoning, and resumed my journey, well pleased with the good
cheer of that old-world inn, but a little disappointed.

We had been driving for more than an hour, when we began to cross a wild
common; and I knew that, this passed, a quarter of an hour would bring
me to the door of Barwyke Hall.

The peat and furze were pretty soon left behind; we were again in the
wooded scenery that I enjoyed so much, so entirely natural and pretty,
and so little disturbed b