"I may as well go that way as another, though it is out of my regular beat. But is it the old man or the young one you want to see, sir?"
"The old one, I think," replied Henry: "what is his age?"
"Oh, he is well-nigh upon seventy," answered the pedlar, "and a strange old man too. I don't know whether he'll be civil to you; but he's not to most people, though he's a kind old man at bottom, I hear. He had some troubles when he was younger, and that has made him very cross ever since. But we had better cut across the common here, for it lies away there to the westward."
"Henry turned according to his guide's directions, and followed him for some little way in silence; but at length he said--
"What troubles were they that you alluded to just now as having befallen the old man?"
"Troubles that the rich sometimes bring upon the poor, sir," answered the pedlar. "Just about the time when I first took to this trade, I remember him, as fine a looking man of forty-three or forty-four as any in the whole county, and as gay and light-hearted too. He had then two children, a girl of about seventeen or eighteen, and this young man who now holds the great farm: he was not above fourteen then, and the girl was the prettiest creature I ever saw in my life, and quite like a lady. Poor Mary Graves! I shan't forget her in a hurry. But she fell in love, one unlucky day, with a gentleman who came down into these parts from London--a rich merchant they said he was. He did not behave well by the old man, though not so bad as they said at first; but he coaxed the girl to go away with him, without her father's knowledge; and for a long time Farmer Graves thought he had seduced her, and it well-nigh broke his heart. In the end, however, he found that they were really married; but she died with her first child, poor thing, and the old man has never got over it."
"Poor man!" said Henry, in a very grave tone; "it is a sad tale indeed. Did his daughter's husband never do anything to compensate for the pain he had inflicted?"
"There are some things, sir," said the pedlar, "for which there is no compensation. He could not give him back his child again; he could not wipe out a long year of misery, during which the old man was ruined and dishonoured; he could never make his mind what it was before, nor take out of his heart all the bitterness he had planted there. I have heard, indeed, that he did offer to do a great deal which Farmer Graves would not accept of; and the people say that it was through him that the young man was enabled to take this great farm he now holds, and to stock it. They never knew rightly who he really was, for they say the name he was married under was a feigned one; and all they could find out was that he was a great merchant in London; for the child was put out to nurse for some time, and then the father came suddenly and took it away, and nothing more was ever heard of it, by the family at least."
Henry Hayley fell into deep thought, and the reader acquainted with the early part of his history may easily conceive the nature of his meditation. After a time, however, as they walked on, he resumed the conversation with his companion, but changed the subject entirely, talking of the state of the country and the condition of the country people, of the residents in the neighbourhood, and of the curious state of wandering commerce by which his companion gained his livelihood. He found him a shrewd, intelligent man, who was evidently accustomed, during the solitary hours he passed in proceeding from place to place, to think a great deal and deeply of the many different things that came to his knowledge in his travels over the face of the country. It seemed that while disposing of his wares he gained in exchange, not only money, but the history of those with whom he dealt; and that in journeying onwards he turned over and over in thought all the little facts he had acquired, or the scenes that he had witnessed, reasoning upon them with great acuteness and good sense, so that he was ever ready to comment with a degree of caustic precision unusual in the small trader of a town, who has little leisure for any thoughts unconnected with his business.
Curiosity, of course, was one trait in his character, and he did not fail to make sundry efforts to learn more of his companion, and to discover what could be his business with old Farmer Graves. Henry, however, set all questions at defiance; and in the end the pedlar, seeing that it was in vain to inquire, gave up his efforts in despair.