'You will take Ellen with you, I suppose?' he said.
'I am sure I had not thought of doing it. You know all the children are home, and really we have no room at present.'
Two weeks previous she had written a pressing invitation to Ellen to come at this particular time. Joel bluntly reminded her of it.
'Yes, but circumstances alter cases. The fact is, I can't afford to maintain the girl, and I don't think I had better begin; and that's the English of it, Joel, if you force me to say so. You know very well there won't be a cent left.'
'I think I know more about that than you do,' replied Joel, with an air which would have done credit to a diplomat, 'and, I assure you, Ellen will not be left penniless; and if you will insist on her going with you for a short time—mind, I say insist—I promise before long to make certain disclosures which will satisfy you as to my assertion. But she must not be here while they are settling up. You understand.'
The old lady did not understand, but Joel carried his point by the aid of the mystery with which he surrounded it. It put her on her good behavior at once, lest she should lose the promised revelation. She spoke even affectionately to Ellen, and declared she should not let her remain in the house alone, but she must go home with her.
Before the two left Sudbury, Joel had a very long interview with Ellen. What passed at that interview never transpired, but the young girl's countenance, though very sad, did not wear the desolate and despairing expression which it exhibited before.
The stage now drew up, the ladies got in, and it rolled away, leaving Joel and the deputy-sheriffs the sole possessors of the premises.
CHAPTER VI.
A few miles to the north-east of Sudbury the country, at the time I speak of it, had a wild and forbidding appearance. This was partly owing to the immense forest which stretched along a continuous ridge of land covering both sides of it and the plain below. On one side of this ridge the face of the country was very rough; on the other side, through a fine intervale, flowed a stream of respectable size called Pine Creek, which took its rise in the mountains at some distance, and was fed by innumerable springs and rivulets from the surrounding hills. Nearly a thousand acres of these lands were owned by an old merchant in New-York, who had taken them for debt many years before, and had become, as he said, tired of paying taxes on them.