'Upon my word you are very obliging,' said Maurice, surprised by this show of benevolence upon the damsel's part.

'Do you know anything about this Borcel End?' he asked, presently, when they were going down into the valley.

'I've never been inside it,' answered Elspeth, glibly, more communicative now than she had been an hour or two ago, when Churchill questioned her about the house of Penwyn. 'Mrs. Trevanard isn't one to encourage a poor girl like me about her place. She's a rare hard one, they say, and would pinch and scrape for a sixpence; yet dresses fine on Sundays, and lives well. There's always good eating and drinking at Borcel End, folks say. I've heard tell as it was a gentleman's house once, before old Squire Penwyn bought it, and that there was a fine park round the house. There's plenty of trees now, and a garden that has all gone to ruin. The gentleman that owned Borcel spent all his money, people say, and old Squire Penwyn bought the place cheap, and turned it into a farm, and it's been in the hands of the Trevanards ever since, and they're rich

enough to buy the place three times over, people say, if Squire Penwyn would sell it.'

'I don't suppose I shall get a very warm welcome if this Mrs. Trevanard is such a disagreeable person,' said Maurice, beginning to feel doubtful as to the wisdom of asking hospitality at Borcel End.

'Oh, I don't know about that. She's civil enough to gentlefolks, I've heard say. It's only her servants and such like she's so stiff with. You can but try.'

They were at the farm by this time. The old house stood before them-a broad stretch of greensward in front of it, with a pool of blackish-looking water in the middle, on which several broods of juvenile ducks were swimming gaily.

The house was large, the walls rough-cast, with massive timber framework. There was a roomy central porch, also of plaster and timber, and this and a projecting wing at each end of the house gave a certain importance to the building. Some relics of its ancient gentility still remained, to show that Borcel End had not always been the house of a

tenant farmer. A coat of arms, roughly cut on a stone tablet over the front door, testified to its former owner's pride of birth; and the quadrangular range of stables, stone-built, and more important than the house, indicated those sporting tastes which might have helped to dissipate the fortunes of a banished and half-forgotten race. But Borcel End, in its brightest day, had never been such a mansion as the old Tudor Manor House of Penwyn. There was a homeliness in the architecture which aspired to neither dignity nor beauty. Low ceilings, square latticed windows, dormers in the roof, and heavy chimney-stacks. The only beauty which the place could have possessed at its best was the charm of rusticity-an honest, simple English home. To-day, however, Borcel End was no longer at its best. The stone quadrangle, where the finest stud of hunters in the county had been lodged, was now a straw-yard for cattle; one side of the house was overshadowed by a huge barn, built out of the débris of the park wall; a colony of jovial pigs disported themselves in a small enclosure which had once been a maze. A remnant of hedgerow, densest yew, still marked

the boundary of this ancient pleasance, but all the rest had vanished beneath the cloven hoof of the unclean animal.

Though the farmyard showed on every side the tokens of agricultural prosperity, the house itself had a neglected air. The plaster walls, green and weatherstained, presented the curious blended hues of a Stilton cheese in prime condition, the timber seemed perishing for want of a good coat of paint. Poultry were pecking about close under the latticed windows, and even in the porch, and a vagabond pigling was thrusting his black nose in among the roots of one solitary rose bush which still lingered on the barren turf. Borcel End, seen in this fading light, was hardly a homestead to attract the traveller.

'I don't think much of your Borcel End,' said Maurice, with a disparaging air. 'However, here

goes for a fair trial of west-country hospitality.'

CHAPTER II.

'O'ER ALL THERE HUNG A SHADOW AND A FEAR.'

MR. CLISSOLD entered the porch, scattering the affrighted fowls right and left. As they sped cackling away, the house door, which had stood ajar, was opened wider by a middle-aged woman, who looked at the intruder frowningly. 'We never buy anything of pedlars,' she said, sharply. It's no use coming

here.'

'I'm not a pedlar, and I haven't anything to sell. I am going through Cornwall on a walking tour, and want to find a place where I could stop for a week or so, and look about the country. I am prepared homely lodging.

to pay a fair price for a clean

The housekeeper at Penwyn Manor told me to try here.'

Then she sent you on a fool's errand,' replied the woman; 'we don't take lodgers.'