connected with that place where I slept last night? I only ask,"
added I, with a feeble grin, like the ghost of a smile that had
been able-bodied once, "because I'm fond of hearing stories, and
because, as you know, there generally is a legend, or something
of that sort, related about old family mansions."

"Well, sir," answered the old man slowly, "I never heard nothin';
but then, you see, I never asked no questions. We came here eight
years agone, and then no one round remembered a tenant at the big
house. It's been empty somewhere nigh twenty years, I should say,--
to my own knowledge more than ten,--and what's more, nobody knows
exactly who it belongs to: and there's been lawsuits about it and
all manner o' things, but nothin' ever came of them."

"Did no one ever tell you anything about its history," I asked,
"or were you never asked any questions about it until now?"

"Not particularly as I remember," replied he musingly.

Then, after a moment's pause, he added more briskly, "Ay, ay, though,
now I come to think of it, there was a man up here more'n five months
back, a Frenchman, who came on purpose to see it and ask me one
or two questions, but I on'y jest told him nothin' as I've told you.
He was a popish priest, and seemed to take a sight of interest in
the place somehow. I think if you want to know about it, sir, you'd
better go and see him; he's staying down here in the village, about
a mile and a half off, at the Crown Inn."

"And a queer old fellow he is," broke in my host's wife, who was
clearing away the breakfast; "no one knows where he comes from,