“How did she get into the trouble?  Who is the father of her child?”

“Nay, that no one knows for certain; though there be suspicions, and one of them, no doubt, correct.  But, I believe, fire wouldn’t drive his name out at her mouth.  I know my lass.  When she says a thing, she ’ll stick to it.”

I asked no more questions.  But, after a short pause, the old man went on.

“I shan’t soon forget the night I first heard about my father and mother.  That was a night!  The wind was roaring like a mad beast about the house;—­not this house, sir, but the great house over the way.”

“You don’t mean Oldcastle Hall?” I said.

“’Deed I do, sir,” returned the old man, “This house here belonged to the same family at one time; though when I was born it was another branch of the family, second cousins or something, that lived in it.  But even then it was something on to the downhill road, I believe.”

“But,” I said, fearing my question might have turned the old man aside from a story worth hearing, “never mind all that now, if you please.  I am anxious to hear all about that night.  Do go on.  You were saying the wind was blowing about the old house.”

“Eh, sir, it was roaring!-roaring as if it was mad with rage!  And every now and then it would come down the chimley like out of a gun, and blow the smoke and a’most the fire into the middle of the housekeeper’s room.  For the housekeeper had been giving me my supper.  I called her auntie, then; and didn’t know a bit that she wasn’t my aunt really.  I was at that time a kind of a under-gamekeeper upon the place, and slept over the stable.  But I fared of the best, for I was a favourite with the old woman—­I suppose because I had given her plenty of trouble in my time.  That’s always the way, sir.—­Well, as I was a-saying, when the wind stopped for a moment, down came the rain with a noise that sounded like a regiment of cavalry on the turnpike road t’other side of the hill.  And then up the wind got again, and swept the rain away, and took it all in its own hand again, and went on roaring worse than ever.  ’You ‘ll be wet afore you get across the yard, Samuel,’ said auntie, looking very prim in her long white apron, as she sat on the other side of the little round table before the fire, sipping a drop of hot rum and water, which she always had before she went to bed.  ‘You’ll be wet to the skin, Samuel,’ she said.  ‘Never mind,’ says I.  ’I’m not salt, nor yet sugar; and I’ll be going, auntie, for you’ll be wanting your bed.’-’Sit ye still,’ said she.  ’I don’t want my bed yet.’  And there she sat, sipping at her rum and water; and there I sat, o’ the other side, drinking the last of a pint of October, she had gotten me from the cellar—­for I had been out in the wind all day.  ‘It was just such a night as this,’ said she, and then stopped again.—­But I’m wearying you, sir, with my long story.”

“Not in the least,” I answered.  “Quite the contrary.  Pray tell it out your own way.  You won’t tire me, I assure you.”