“I will tell him all and everything,” he said, thus murmuring to himself as he went on:  “he may drive me forth if he will; but surely, surely, he will protect and do something for the boy.  What, though there have been faults committed and wrong done, he cannot be so hard-hearted as to let the poor child starve, or be brought up as I can alone bring him up.”

Such was still the conclusion to which he seemed to come; and at length when the sun had completely gone down, and at the distance of about three miles from the inn, he paused before a large pair of wooden gates, consisting of two rows of square bars of painted wood placed close together, with a thick heavy rail at the top and bottom, while two wooden obelisks, with their steeple-shaped summits, formed the gate posts.  Opening the gates, as one well familiar with the lock, he now entered the smaller road which led from them through the fields towards a wood upon the top of the hill.  At first the way was uninteresting enough, and the faint remains of twilight only served to show some square fields within their hedge-rows cut in the most prim and undeviating lines around.  The wayfarer rode on, through that part of the scene, with his eyes bent down in deep thought; but when he came to the wood; and, following the path—­which, now kept with high neatness and propriety, wound in and out amongst the trees, and then sweeping gently round the shoulder of the hill, exposed a beautiful deer park—­he had before his eyes a fine Elizabethan house, rising grey upon a little eminence at the distance of some four or five hundred yards,—­it seemed that some old remembrance, some agitating vision of the days gone by, came over the horseman’s mind.  He pulled in his rein, clasped his hands together, and gazed around with a look of sad and painful recognition.  At the end of a minute or two, however, he recovered himself, rode on to the front of the house we have mentioned, and dismounting from his horse, pulled the bell-rope which action was instantly followed by a long peal heard from within.

“It sounds cold and empty,” said the wayfarer to himself, “like my reception, and perhaps my hopes.”

No answer was made for some time; and though the sounds had been loud enough, as the traveller’s ears bore witness, yet they required to be repeated before any one came to ask his pleasure.

“This is very strange!” he said, as he applied his hand to the bell-rope again.  “He must have grown miserly, as they say, indeed.  Why I remember a dozen servants crowding into this porch at the first sound of a horse’s feet.”

A short time after, some steps were heard within; bolts and bars were carefully withdrawn, and an old man in a white jacket, with a lantern in his hand, opened the heavy oaken door, and gazed upon the stranger.

“Where is the Earl of Byerdale?” demanded the horseman, in apparent surprise.  “Is he not at home?”

The old man gazed at him for a moment from head to foot, without replying, and then answered slowly and somewhat bitterly, “Yes, he is at home—­at his long home, from which he’ll never move again!  Why, he has been dead and buried this fortnight.”