The man directed him; the place was near at hand.  In two minutes Mr. Fishwick found himself at the door of a small but decent grocer’s shop, over the portal of which a gilded bee seemed to prognosticate more business than the fact performed.  An elderly woman, stout and comfortable-looking, was behind the counter.  Eyeing the attorney as he came forward, she asked him what she could do for him, and before he could answer reached for the snuff canister.

He took the hint, requested an ounce of the best Scotch and Havannah mixed, and while she weighed it, asked her how long she had lived there.

‘Twenty-six years, sir,’ she answered heartily, ’Old Style.  For the New, I don’t hold with it nor them that meddle with things above them.  I am sure it brought me no profit,’ she continued, rubbing her nose.  ’I have buried a good husband and two children since they gave it us!’

‘Still, I suppose people died Old Style?’ the lawyer ventured.

‘Well, well, may be.’

‘There was a death in this house seventeen years gone this September,’ he said, ‘if I remember rightly.’

The woman pushed away the snuff and stared at him.  ’Two, for the matter of that,’ she said sharply.  ‘But should I remember you?’

‘No.’

‘Then, if I may make so bold, what is’t to you?’ she retorted.  ’Do you come from Jim Masterson?’

‘He is dead,’ Mr. Fishwick answered.

She threw up her hands.  ’Lord!  And he a young man, so to speak!  Poor Jim!  Poor Jim!  It is ten years and more—­ay, more—­since I heard from him.  And the child?  Is that dead too?’

‘No, the child is alive,’ the lawyer answered, speaking at a venture, ’I am here on her behalf, to make some inquiries about her kinsfolk.’

The woman’s honest red face softened and grew motherly.  ’You may inquire,’ she said, ’you’ll learn no more than I can tell you.  There is no one left that’s kin to her.  The father was a poor Frenchman, a monsieur that taught the quality about here; the mother was one of his people—­she came from Canterbury, where I am told there are French and to spare.  But according to her account she had no kin left.  He died the year after the child was born, and she came to lodge with me, and lived by teaching, as he had; but ’twas a poor livelihood, you may say, and when she sickened, she died—­just as a candle goes out.’

‘When?’ Mr. Fishwick asked, his eyes glued to the woman’s face.

’The week Jim Masterson came to see us bringing the child from foreign parts—­that was buried with her.  ’Twas said his child took the fever from her and got its death that way.  But I don’t know.  I don’t know.  It is true they had not brought in the New Style then; but—­’

‘You knew him before?  Masterson, I mean?’