But lend me, I pray, some of thy counsel.
This Foster, who or what is he, and why makes he such mystery of his female inmate ?" "Troth," replied Gosling, "I can add but little to what you heard last night.

He was one of Queen Mary's Papists, and now he is one of Queen Elizabeth's Protestants; he was an onhanger of the Abbot of Abingdon; and now he lives as master of the Manor-house.

Above all, he was poor, and is rich.

Folk talk of private apartments in his old waste mansion-house, bedizened fine enough to serve the Queen, God bless her! Some men think he found a treasure in the orchard, some that he sold himself to the devil for treasure, and some say that he cheated the abbot out of the church plate, which was hidden in the old Manor-house at the Reformation.

Rich, however, he is, and God and his conscience, with the devil perhaps besides, only know how he came by it.