d
last not least, who the Dickens are you?" If you will have patience, my
dear sir, you will find it all out in a very short time--Read on.

Chapter II

THE COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE OF JOHN THORNTON, CLERK, AND THE BIRTH OF
SOME ONE WHO TAKES RATHER A CONSPICUOUS PART IN OUR STORY.

Sometime between the years 1780 and 1790, young John Thornton, then a
Servitor at Christ Church, fell in love with pretty Jane Hickman, whose
father was a well-to-do farmer, living not far down the river from
Oxford; and shortly before he took his degree, he called formally upon
old Hickman, and asked his daughter's hand. Hickman was secretly well
pleased that his daughter should marry a scholar and a gentleman like
John Thornton, and a man too who could knock over his bird, or kill his
trout in the lasher with any one. So after some decent hesitation he
told him, that as soon as he got a living, good enough to support Jane
as she had been accustomed to live, he might take her home with a
father's blessing, and a hundred pounds to buy furniture. And you may
take my word for it, that there was not much difficulty with the young
lady, for in fact the thing had long ago been arranged between them,
and she was anxiously waiting in the passage to hear her father's
decision, all the time that John was closeted with him.

John came forth from the room well pleased and happy. And that evening
when they two were walking together in the twilight by the quiet river,
gathering cowslips and fritillaries, he told her of his good prospects,
and how a young lord, who made much of him, and treated him as a friend
and an equal, though he was but a Servitor--and was used to sit in his
room talking with him long after the quadrangle was quiet, and the fast
men had reeled off to their drunken slumbers--had only three days
before promised him a living of 300L. a-year, as soon as he should take
his priest's orders. And when they parted that night, at the old stile
in the meadow, and he saw her go gliding home like a white phantom
under the dark elms, he thought joyfully, that in two short years they
would be happily settled, never more to part in this world, in his
peaceful vicarage in Dorsetshire.

Two short years, he thought. Alas! and alas! Before two years were
gone, poor Lord Sandston was lying one foggy November morning on
Hampstead Heath, with a bullet through his heart. Shot down at the
commencement of a noble and useful career by a brainless ga