The stranger complied with this invitation, and felt highly gratified that matters seemed about to take a more favorable turn.

“I trust,” said he, “you are satisfied that I am fully entitled to any confidence you may feel disposed to place in me?”

“The priest speaks well of you,” replied Dunphy; “but then, sure I know him; he’s so kind-hearted a creature, that any one who speaks him fair, or that he happens to take a fancy to, will be sure to get his good word.  It isn’t much assistance I can give you, and it’s not on account of his letther altogether that I do it; but bekaise I think the time’s come, or rather soon will be come.  Oh, here,” he said, “is the ould woman, and she’ll keep the shop.  Now, sir, come upstairs, if you plaise, for what we’re goin’ to talk about is what the very stones oughtn’t to hear so long as that man—­”

He paused, and instantly checked himself, as if he felt that he had already gone too far.

“Now, sir,” he proceeded, “what is it you expect from me?  Name it at wanst.”

“You are aware,” said the stranger, “that the son of the late Sir Edward Gourlay, and the heir of his property, disappeared very mysteriously and suspiciously—­”

“And so did the son of the present man,” replied Dunphy, eying the stranger keenly.

“It is not of him I am speaking,” replied the other; “although at the same time I must say, that if I could find a trace even of him I would leave no stone unturned to recover him.”

The old man looked into the floor, and mused for some time.

“It was a strange business,” he observed, “that both should go—­you may take my word, there has been mischief and revenge, or both, at the bottom of the same business.”

“The worthy priest, whose letter I presented to you to-day, led me to suppose, that if any man could put me in a capacity to throw light upon it you could.”

“He didn’t say, surely, that I could throw light upon it—­did he?”

“No, certainly not—­but that if any man could, you are that man.”

“Ay, ay,” replied old Dunphy; “all bekaise he thinks I have a regard for the Gourlays.  That’s what makes him suppose that I know anything about the business; just as if I was in the saicrets of the family.  I may have suspicions like other people; but that’s all.”

“Can you throw out no hint, or give no clew, that might aid me in the recovery of this unhappy young man, if he be alive?”

“You did well to add that, for who can tell whether he is or not?—­maybe it’s only thrashing the water you are, after all.”

The stranger saw the old fellow had once more grown cautious, and avoided giving a direct reply to him; but on considering the matter, he was, after all, not much surprised at this.  The subject involved a black and heinous crime, and if it so happened that Dunphy could in any way have been implicated in or connected with it, even indirectly, it would be almost unreasonable to expect that he should now become his own accuser.  Still the stranger could observe that in spite of all his caution, there was a mystery and uneasiness in his manner, when talking of it, which he could not shake off.