"Remember, I've got to go back to Malsham; I haven't all the night to waste." "I don't want to set my house afire," Mr.Whitelaw answered sullenly; "though, perhaps, _you_ might like that.

It might suit your book, you see." The stranger gave a sudden shudder, and told the farmer with an angry oath to "drop that sort of insolence." "And now show the way, and look sharp about it," he said in an authoritative tone.
They went out of the room in the next moment.

Mrs.Tadman gazed after them, or rather at the door which had closed upon them, with a solemn awe-stricken stare.
"I don't like the look of it, Ellen," she said; "I don't at all like the look of it." "What do you mean ?" the girl asked indifferently.
"I don't like the hold that man has got over Stephen, nor the way he speaks to him--almost as if Steph was a dog.

Did you hear him just now?
And what does he want to see the house for, I should like to know?
What can this house matter to him, unless he was going to buy it?
That's it, perhaps, Ellen.

Stephen has been speculating, and has gone and ruined himself, and that strange man is going to buy Wyncomb.