“When King Charles the First was beheaded,” Ned thought, “the Cromwellians drove many rich and powerful nobles from the land, and confiscated all their great estates.
“Suppose that my father was one of these!
“He might have been a noble! Who knows?” thought Ned; and as this conviction flashed across his mind, he resolved to let no chance pass by in order to find it out.
“Who was my father?” Ned had often asked of Sir Richard.
The old man smiled, but answered not.
The more he repeated this question and was put off, the more he resolved to find out the grand secret.
All he could find out was this:—
“I do not wonder that you and Phillip Redgill can never agree,” old Sir Richard would say; “for your families have always been at daggers’ points for centuries.”
“Indeed!” Ned would say, “how?”
“How I cannot explain yet,” was the invariable answer. “When you are twenty-one years old, you may know more; but this much I will tell you, Ned, that old Redgill, Phillip’s father, hated your father much worse than you do Phillip.”