Griff had thought little of the preacher's gossip touching Frender's Folly; but as he rode home from Wynyates, in the small hours of the morning, the name of its new owner came to his mind, and stuck there with irritating persistency; there was some elusive, half-remembered association with the name, but he could not focus it. The matter was still troubling him—as trifles sometimes will—when he came down to breakfast.
"Mother, where have I heard the name Laverack before?" he demanded.
Mrs. Lomax was pouring him his second cup of tea at the moment, and a sudden nervous movement of her hand flooded saucer and tray alike.
"There, Griff, you always were so abrupt! You know how I hate spilling things," cried the old lady, with an uneasy laugh.
Griff, seeing her trouble, came very near to gripping his fugitive memory fair and square.
"Never mind the tea; who is Captain Laverack?"
"I had rather you left that question alone, dear," she said slowly; "but if you must have an answer, you must. Long before you were born, there was a certain lying rumour set abroad; it was said that Joe Strangeways' mother had—had suffered at your father's hands; every one believed it at the time."
"I know now. And it was this same Captain Laverack who had really done the harm?"
"Yes, he got into difficulties soon after, you may remember, and went away to America. Your father wrote to him just before he sailed, asking him to put matters straight so far as he could; and Captain Laverack wrote back that he had enough discovered sins to face, without gratuitously adding to the list. This was the last we heard of him."
"Well, he has returned, it seems, with a mint of money. Gabriel told me yesterday that he had come to live at Frender's Folly."