“Thanks! thanks! my friend; but I must refuse it.  All persuasion is useless.  Let us leave this room!”

“But, sir,” cried the farmer, in astonishment, “where do you intend to go?  Tell me, for God’s sake!”

“I cannot,” replied Monsieur De Vlierbeck, “for I don’t know myself; and, even if I did, prudence would make me silent.”

Uttering these words, he returned to the other room, where he found everybody in tears.  He saw at once that for his own sake as well as his daughter’s he must end these trying scenes; and accordingly, in a firm voice, he told her it was time to be gone.  There were a few more tender and eager pressures of hands, a few more farewells, a few last looks at the old homestead and its surroundings, and the bankrupt pair sallied forth with their bundles, and, passing the bridge just at sunset, departed on foot across the desolate moor.

It is hard to bid farewell and quit the spots with which, even in a summer’s journey, we have formed agreeable associations:  but harder far it is to bid adieu forever to the home of our ancestors and the haunts of our youth.  This dreadful trial was passing in De Vlierbeck’s heart.  From a distant point on the road where the domain of Grinselhof was masked by thickets, the wanderer turned his eyes once more in the direction of the old chateau.  Big tears stood in his eyes and slowly rolled down his hollow cheeks as he stood there, silent and motionless, with clasped hands, gazing into vacancy.  But night was rapidly falling around the wayfarers; and, recalling him to consciousness with a kiss, Lenora gently drew her father from the spot till they disappeared in the windings of the wood.

CHAPTER IX.

Monsieur De Vlierbeck had not been gone a week, when a letter addressed to him from Italy reached the village post-office.  The carrier inquired of Farmer John where the old proprietor of Grinselhof had fixed his residence; but neither from him, the notary, nor any one else in the neighborhood, could he discover the bankrupt’s retreat.  The same fate awaited three or four other letters which followed the first from Italy; and, indeed, nobody bothered himself any more about the wanderers except the peasant, who every market-day pestered the country-folks from every quarter with questions about his old master.  But no one had seen or heard of him.

Four months passed slowly by, when one morning a handsome post-chaise stopped at the door of our old acquaintance the notary and dropped a young gentleman in travelling-costume.

“Where’s your master?” said he impatiently to the servant, who excused the notary under the plea of his present engagement with other visitors, but invited the stranger to await his leisure in the parlor.