The poor man was well treated, and when sufficiently recovered a subscription was made for him, and he was sent on to his friends.
Although Mr. Freeman was not at all inclined to be sociable or familiar with his neighbours himself, yet he did not object to his sister and daughter being on friendly terms with them;--indeed he rather wished it, and was never more pleased than when they were visiting at the farm-houses in the neighbourhood, or giving entertainments at home--at which he was seldom seen except in some mysterious manner. Strange noises would sometimes be heard in "The Maister's" private room, in the dusk of the evening, before the candles were brought in; and, in the midst of the terror of the visitors, and almost before the noises had subsided, Mr. Freeman would walk quietly into the room, and relate some thrilling story, and disappear again in the same mysterious manner. These scenes would be talked over the next day by the gossips, and after going the round for a few days, the most extraordinary additions would be made and circulated. And so he became a man of great importance, and was looked upon as a superior being, and people feared him and believed that his powers were much greater than they really were.
He was greatly assisted in obtaining information respecting his neighbours, by his sister, who was a shrewd woman, and who by her tact and cunning could lead on her friends imperceptibly to talk of their own and their neighbours' private affairs. She would impart those secrets to "The Maister," who stored them in his memory till opportunities arose for using his information with advantage. And when those ignorant people applied to him to be informed by whom they were ill-wished, or to recover their property, perhaps, which had been stolen, he could guess pretty nearly who the culprits were likely to be, having possession of these little secrets (long since forgotten by them); and he would so work upon their fears, that the property would be restored in some mysterious way, and he then would have the credit for getting it back by some supernatural agency.
Alrina had a good deal of her father's fondness for the mysterious, but in her it took a more romantic turn. She would spend whole days, sometimes, in wandering over the cliffs and examining with curiosity the ruins of chapels and ancient fortifications, of which there were several in that locality; and the tumuli in the neighbourhood of the chapels, supposed to contain the ashes of the Druids and other holy men, afforded great scope to her imagination. Her father, as we have seen, was not very regular in his habits--indeed it would not have suited his purpose to be so--and her aunt was sometimes so intent on sifting out any little secret gossip, and relating it to "The Maister," that Alrina was often left for days without the supervision of either her father or aunt, and so she wandered about alone.