ely, the art
in which we acknowledge you a master.

A. T. QUILLER-COUCH

October 25th, 1901

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I THE WESTCOTES OF BAYFIELD

CHAPTER II THE ORANGE ROOM

CHAPTER III A BALL, A SNOWSTORM, AND A SNOWBALL

CHAPTER IV ENCOUNTER BETWEEN A HIGH HORSE AND A HOBBY

CHAPTER V BEGINS WITH ANCIENT HISTORY AND ENDS WITH AN OLD STORY

CHAPTER VI FATE IN A LAURELLED POST-CHAISE

CHAPTER VII LOVE AND AN OLD MAID

CHAPTER VIII CORPORAL ZEALLY INTERVENES

CHAPTER IX DOROTHEA CONFESSES

CHAPTER X DARTMOOR

CHAPTER XI THE NEW DOROTHEA

CHAPTER XII GENERAL ROCHAMBEAU TELLS A STORY; AND THE TING-TANG RINGS
FOR THE LAST TIME

CHAPTER I

THE WESTCOTES OF BAYFIELD

A mural tablet in Axcester Parish Church describes Endymion Westcote as
"a conspicuous example of that noblest work of God, the English Country
Gentleman." Certainly he was a typical one.

In almost every district of England you will find a family which,
without distinguishing itself in any particular way, has held fast to
the comforts of life and the respect of its neighbours for generation
after generation. Its men have never shone in court, camp, or senate;
they prefer tenacity to enterprise, look askance upon wit (as a
dangerous gift), and are even a little suspicious of eminence. On the
other hand they make excellent magistrates, maintain a code of manners
most salutary for the poor in whose midst they live and are looked up
to; are as a rule satisfied, like the old Athenian, if they leave to
their heirs not less but a little more than they themselves inherited,
and deserve, as they claim, to be called the backbone of Great Britain.
Many of the women have beauty, still more have an elegance which may
pass for it, and almost all are pure in thought, truthful, assiduous in
deeds of charity, and marry for love of those manly qualities which
they have already esteemed in their brothers.

Such a family were the Westcotes of Bayfield, or Bagvil, in 1810. Their
"founder" had settled in Axcester towards the middle of the seventeenth
century, and prospered--mainly, it was said, by usury. A little before
his death, which befel in 1668, he purchased Bayfield House from a
decayed Royalist who had lost his only son in the Civil Wars; and to
Bayfield and the ancestral business (exalted now into Banking) his
descendants continued faithful. One or both of the two brothers who,
with their