changes had occurred within the quiet little seaport, some of which closely affected Roger the sailor.  At the time of his departure his only sister Edith had become the bride of one Stocker, a respectable townsman, and part owner of the brig in which Roger had sailed; and it was to the house of this couple, his only relatives, that the young man directed his steps.  On trying the door in Quay Street he found it locked, and then observed that the windows were boarded up.  Inquiring of a bystander, he learnt for the first time of the death of his brother-in-law, though that event had taken place nearly eighteen months before.

‘And my sister Edith?’ asked Roger.

’She’s married again—­as they do say, and hath been so these twelve months.  I don’t vouch for the truth o’t, though if she isn’t she ought to be.’

Roger’s face grew dark.  He was a man with a considerable reserve of strong passion, and he asked his informant what he meant by speaking thus.

The man explained that shortly after the young woman’s bereavement a stranger had come to the port.  He had seen her moping on the quay, had been attracted by her youth and loneliness, and in an extraordinarily brief wooing had completely fascinated her—­had carried her off, and, as was reported, had married her.  Though he had come by water, he was supposed to live no very great distance off by land.  They were last heard of at Oozewood, in Upper Wessex, at the house of one Wall, a timber-merchant, where, he believed, she still had a lodging, though her husband, if he were lawfully that much, was but an occasional visitor to the place.

‘The stranger?’ asked Roger.  ’Did you see him?  What manner of man was he?’

‘I liked him not,’ said the other.  ’He seemed of that kind that hath something to conceal, and as he walked with her he ever and anon turned his head and gazed behind him, as if he much feared an unwelcome pursuer.  But, faith,’ continued he, ’it may have been the man’s anxiety only.  Yet did I not like him.’

‘Was he older than my sister?’ Roger asked.

’Ay—­much older; from a dozen to a score of years older.  A man of some position, maybe, playing an amorous game for the pleasure of the hour.  Who knoweth but that he have a wife already?  Many have done the thing hereabouts of late.’

Having paid a visit to the graves of his relatives, the sailor next day went along the straight road which, then a lane, now a highway, conducted to the curious little inland town named by the Havenpool man.  It is unnecessary to describe Oozewood on the South-Avon.  It has a railway at the present day; but thirty years of steam traffic past its precincts have hardly modified its original features.  Surrounded by a sort of fresh-water lagoon, dividing it from meadows and coppice, its ancient thatch and timber houses have barely made way even in the front street for the ubiquitous modern brick and slate.  It neither increases nor diminishes