About the commencement of the present century there stood, near the
centre of a rather extensive hamlet, not many miles distant from a
northern seaport town, a large, substantially-built, but somewhat
straggling building, known as Craig Farm (popularly _Crook_ Farm) House.
The farm consisted of about one hundred acres of tolerable arable and
meadow land; and at the time I have indicated, belonged to a farmer of
the name of Armstrong. He had purchased it about three years previously,
at a sale held, in pursuance of a decree of the High Court of Chancery,
for the purpose of liquidating certain costs incurred in the suit of
Craig _versus_ Craig, which the said high court had nursed so long and
successfully, as to enable the solicitor to the victorious claimant to
incarcerate his triumphant client for several years in the Fleet, in
"satisfaction" of the charges of victory remaining due after the proceeds
of the sale of Craig Farm had been deducted from the gross total. Farmer
Armstrong was married, but childless; his dame, like himself, was a
native of Devonshire. They bore the character of a plodding, taciturn,
morose-mannered couple: seldom leaving the farm except to attend market,
and rarely seen at church or chapel, they naturally enough became objects
of suspicion and dislike to the prying, gossiping villagers, to whom
mystery or reserve of any kind was of course exceedingly annoying and
unpleasant.

Soon after Armstrong was settled in his new purchase another stranger
arrived, and took up his abode in the best apartments of the house. The
new-comer, a man of about fifty years of age, and evidently, from his
dress and gait, a sea-faring person, was as reserved and unsocial as his
landlord. His name, or at least that which he chose to be known by, was
Wilson. He had one child, a daughter, about thirteen years of age, whom