He was not a lively stranger; he seemed, indeed, to have something on his mind, to be brooding upon some trouble or difficulty, as Mrs. Tadman remarked to her kinsman’s wife afterwards.  Both the women watched him; Ellen always perplexed by that unknown likeness, which seemed sometimes to grow stronger, sometimes to fade away altogether, as she looked at him; Mrs. Tadman in a rabid state of curiosity, so profound was the mystery of his silent presence.

What was he there for?  What could Stephen want with him?  He was not one of Stephen’s sort, by any means; had no appearance of association with agricultural interests.  And yet there he was, a silent inexplicable presence, a mysterious figure with a moody brow, which seemed to grow darker as Mrs. Tadman watched him.

At last, about an hour after the tea-table had been cleared, he rose suddenly, with an abrupt gesture, and said,

“Come, Whitelaw, if you mean to show me this house of yours, you may as well show it to me at once.”

His voice had a harsh unpleasant sound as he said this.  He stood with his back to the women, staring at the fire, while Stephen Whitelaw lighted a candle in his slow dawdling way.

“Be quick, man alive,” the stranger cried impatiently, turning sharply round upon the farmer, who was trimming an incorrigible wick with a pair of blunted snuffers.  “Remember, I’ve got to go back to Malsham; I haven’t all the night to waste.”

“I don’t want to set my house afire,” Mr. Whitelaw answered sullenly; “though, perhaps, you might like that.  It might suit your book, you see.”

The stranger gave a sudden shudder, and told the farmer with an angry oath to “drop that sort of insolence.”

“And now show the way, and look sharp about it,” he said in an authoritative tone.

They went out of the room in the next moment.  Mrs. Tadman gazed after them, or rather at the door which had closed upon them, with a solemn awe-stricken stare.

“I don’t like the look of it, Ellen,” she said; “I don’t at all like the look of it.”

“What do you mean?” the girl asked indifferently.

“I don’t like the hold that man has got over Stephen, nor the way he speaks to him—­almost as if Steph was a dog.  Did you hear him just now?  And what does he want to see the house for, I should like to know?  What can this house matter to him, unless he was going to buy it?  That’s it, perhaps, Ellen.  Stephen has been speculating, and has gone and ruined himself, and that strange man is going to buy Wyncomb.  He gave me a kind of turn the minute I looked at him.  And, depend upon it, he’s come to turn us all out of house and home.”