“I don’t believe that,” said Dick.  “If he had had any such intention as that he certainly would have mentioned it to you or to me.”

The good woman shook her head.  “When an old man marries a girl,” she said, “she just leads him wherever she wants him to go, and he gives up everything to her, and when an old man marries a tough and seasoned and smoked old maid like Maria Port, she just drives him wherever she wants him to go, and he hasn’t nothin’ to say about it.  It looks as if she told him to come in this mornin’, and he’s gone.  It may be for a weddin’, or it may be for somethin’ else, but whatever it is, it’ll be her way and not his straight on to the end of the chapter.”

Dick had nothing to answer.  He was very much afraid that old Jane knew what she was talking about, and his mind was occupied with trying to decide what he, individually, ought to do about it.  Old Jane was now obliged to go to the toll-gate to attend to a traveler, but when she came back she took occasion to say a few more words.

“It’s hard on me, sir,” she said, “at my age to make a change.  I’ve lived at this house, and I’ve took toll at that gate ever since I was a girl, long before the captain came here, and I’ve been with him a long time.  My people used to own this house, but they all died, and when the place was sold and the captain bought it, he heard about me, and he said I should always have charge of the old toll-gate when he wasn’t attendin’ to it himself, just the same as when my father was alive and was toll-gate keeper, and I was helpin’ him.  But I’ve got to go now, and where I’m goin’ to is more’n I know.  But I’d rather go to the county poorhouse than stay here, or anywhere else, with Maria Port.  She’s a regular boa-constrictor, that woman is!  She’s twisted herself around people before this and squeezed the senses out of them; and that’s exactly what she’s doin’ with the captain.  If she could come here to live and bring her old father, and get him to sell the house in town and put the money in bank, and then if she could worry her husband and her father both to death, and work things so she’d be a widow with plenty of money and a good house and as much farm land as she wanted, and a toll-gate where she could set all day and take toll and give back lies and false witness as change, she’d be the happiest woman on earth.”

It had been long since old Jane had said as much at any one time to any one person, but her mind was stirred.  Her life was about to change, and the future was very black to her.

When dinner was ready the captain had not yet returned, and Dick ate his meal by himself.  He was now beginning to feel used to this sort of thing.  He had scarcely finished, and gone down to the garden-gate to look once more over the road toward Glenford, when the man in the buggy arrived, and he received Mrs. Easterfield’s letter.

He lost no moments in making up his mind.  He would go to Broadstone, of course, and he did not think it at all necessary to stand on ceremony with the captain.  The latter had gone off and left him without making any statement whatever, but he would do better, and he wrote a note explaining the state of affairs.  As he was leaving old Jane came to bid him good-by.