"I never seed her," was the reiteration. "I've never yet seed the new master of Foxwood, Sir Karl Andinnian. It's said Sir Karl is coming home himself soon," added the boy; "him and his lady. Hope he'll be as good for the place as Sir Joseph was."
They passed on; the opposite gentleman's eyes following Miss Blake: of which she was quite conscious. Soon they came to the road on the left hand that led direct to the village. Miss Blake glanced down it, but continued her walk straight onwards, as if she had a mind to go on to the railway station. Casting her eyes this way and that, she was attracted by a pile of ruins on the other side the road, with what looked like a kind of modern room amidst them.
"Why, what's that?" she cried to Tom Pepp, standing still to gaze.
"Oh, them be the ruins, 'um," answered Tom Pepp. "It had used to be the chapel belonging to the grey friars at the monastery."
"What friars?--what monastery!" eagerly returned Miss Blake, much interested.
The friars were dead years ago, and the monastery had crumbled to pieces, and Mr. Truefit's farm was built upon where it used to stand, was the substance of the boy's answer; delivered in terrible fright, for he caught sight of his master, Mr. Truefit, at a distance.
The farmhouse lay back beyond the first field. Miss Blake glanced at it; but all her interest was concentrated in these ruins close at hand.
"Surely they have not desecrated sacred ruins by putting up a barn amidst them!" she exclaimed, as she crossed the road to explore. There were half-crumbled walls around, part of an ivied stone block that she thought must have been the basement of a spire, and other fragments.
"It's not a barn," said Tom Pepp; "never was one. They mended some o' the old walls a few years ago, and made it into a school-room, and the children went to school in it--me for one. Not for long, though. Lady Andinnian and Sir Joseph--it was more her than him--fell out with Parson Sumnor and the trusts; and my lady said the children should never come to it again. After that, the trusts built 'em a school-room in the village; and 'twas said Sir Joseph sent 'em a five-hunderd pound in a letter and never writ a word to tell where it come from. He was a good man, he was, when my lady 'ud let him be."
Miss Blake did not hear half; she was lost in an idea that had taken possession of her, as she gazed about inside the room. It was narrow, though rather long, with bare whitewashed walls and rafters above, the windows on either side being very high up.