property, and had been quite familiar to him by repute, and even by sight
as a child. When he was a small lad staying at Browhead Farm, he had once
or twice found his way to the Greet, and had strayed along its course
through Bannisdale Park. Once even, when he was in the act of fishing a
particular pool where the trout were rising in a manner to tempt a very
archangel, he had been seized and his primitive rod broken over his
shoulder by an old man whom he believed to have been the owner, Mr.
Helbeck himself,--a magnificent white-haired person, about whom tales ran
freely in the country-side.

So this little, shabby old maid was a Helbeck of Bannisdale! As he looked
at her, Fountain could not help thinking with a hidden amusement of all
the awesome prestige the name had once carried with it for his boyish
ear. Thirty years back, what a gulf had seemed to yawn between the
yeoman's grandson and the lofty owners of that stern and ancient house
upon the Greet! And now, how glad was old Helbeck's daughter to sit or
walk with him and his child!--and how plain it grew, as the weeks passed
on, that if he, Stephen Fountain, willed it, she would make no difficulty
at all about a much longer companionship! Fountain held himself to be the
most convinced of democrats, a man who had a reasoned right to his
Radical opinions that commoner folk must do without. Nevertheless, his
pride fed on this small turn of fortune, and when he carelessly addressed
his new friend, her name gave him pleasure.

It seemed that she possessed but little else, poor lady. Even in his
young days, Fountain could remember that the Helbecks were reported to be
straitened, to have already much difficulty in keeping up the house and
the estate. But clearly things had fallen by now to a much lower depth.
Miss Helbeck's dress, talk, lodgings, all spoke of poverty, great
poverty. He himself had never known what it was to have a superfluous ten