"A relative of the Garths, Jim—I didn't know that!" exclaimed his father.
"It's right enough. Meg Garth herself told me."
"Meg Garth! Is she here?"
"She's at the Grange. Tom Bland told me she was there, so, after calling about those cattle at Bellerby to-day, I drove on to Elmdale and saw her."
"Well, of all the surprising things! Then, Mr. Armathwaite must have known about the house when he came in yesterday?"
Yesterday! While the three men were gazing at each other in the Walkers' office, Armathwaite and Marguérite Ogilvey were escorting Percy Whittaker down the moor road, and even wily James Walker, junior, little guessed what a whirlwind had enwrapped the new tenant of the Grange since, as the older Walker had put it, "he came in yesterday."
"No, I'm jiggered if he did!" cried the younger man viciously. "Armathwaite had never heard the name of the place before we mentioned it. I'll swear that in any court of law in the land."
"And I'd bear you out," agreed his father. "Not that I can see any reason why it should come into court. He paid up promptly, and we have nothing to bother about until the next quarter is due."
"I'm not so sure of that," was the well-calculated answer.
"What are you driving at, Jim?"