his waist with a girdle, in which he carried writing tools.

"Ha, Cuthbert Langston, art thou there?" said the captain, rising.
"Thou art kindly welcome. Sit down and crush a cup of sack with
Master Heatherthwayte and me."

"Thanks, cousin," returned the visitor, "I heard that the Mastiff was
come in, and I came to see whether all was well."

"It was kindly done, lad," said Richard, while the others did their
part of the welcome, though scarcely so willingly. Cuthbert Langston
was a distant relation on the mother's side of Richard, a young
scholar, who, after his education at Oxford, had gone abroad with a
nobleman's son as his pupil, and on his return, instead of taking
Holy Orders, as was expected, had obtained employment in a merchant's
counting-house at Hull, for which his knowledge of languages
eminently fitted him. Though he possessed none of the noble blood of
the Talbots, the employment was thought by Mistress Susan somewhat
derogatory to the family dignity, and there was a strong suspicion
both in her mind and that of Master Heatherthwayte that his change of
purpose was due to the change of religion in England, although he was
a perfectly regular church-goer. Captain Talbot, however, laughed at
all this, and, though he had not much in common with his kinsman,
always treated him in a cousinly fashion. He too had heard a rumour
of the foundling, and made inquiry for it, upon which Richard told
his story in greater detail, and his wife asked what the poor mother
was like.

"I saw her not," he answered, "but Goatley thought the poor woman to
whom she was bound more like to be nurse than mother, judging by her