uietness of their last long sleep.

A large house, which stands aloof from the village and a little above
it, is Wanley Manor. The county history tells us that Wanley was given
in the fifteenth century to that same religious foundation, and that at
the dissolution of monasteries the Manor passed into the hands of Queen
Catherine. The house is half-timbered; from the height above it looks
old and peaceful amid its immemorial trees. Towards the end of the
eighteenth century it became the home of a family named Eldon, the
estate including the greater part of the valley below. But an Eldon who
came into possession when William IV. was King brought the fortunes
of his house to a low ebb, and his son, seeking to improve matters by
abandoning his prejudices and entering upon commercial speculation, in
the end left a widow and two boys with little more to live upon than the
income which arose from Mrs. Eldon's settlements. The Manor was shortly
after this purchased by a Mr. Mutimer, a Belwick ironmaster; but Mrs.
Eldon and her boys still inhabited the house, in consequence of certain
events which will shortly be narrated. Wanley would have mourned their
departure; they were the aristocracy of the neighbourhood, and to have
them ousted by a name which no one knew, a name connected only with
blast-furnaces, would have made a distinct fall in the tone of Wanley
society. Fortunately no changes were made in the structure by its new
owner. Not far from it you see the church and the vicarage, these also
unmolested in their quiet age. Wanley, it is to be feared, lags far
behind the times--painfully so, when one knows for a certainty that
the valley upon which it looks conceals treasures of coal, of
ironstone--blackband, to be technical--and of fireclay. Some ten years
ago it seemed as if better things were in store; there was a chance
that the vale might for ever cast off its foolish greenery, and begin
vomiting smoke and flames in humble imitation of its metropolis beyond
the hills. There are men in Belwick who have an angry feeling whenever
Wanley is mentioned to them.

After the inhabitants of the Manor, the most respected of those who
dwelt in Wanley were the Walthams. At the time of which I speak, this
family consisted of a middle-aged lady; her son, of one-and-twenty; and
her daughter, just eighteen. They had resided here for little more than
two years, but a gentility which marked their speech and demeanour, and
the fact that t