eplored before the first few weeks of married life were
over--events, which afterwards very greatly affected his career, were
quickly shaping themselves in a sleepy little English village not far
from the place where he was born.

Angleford, a mere handful of red-brick cottages, five miles from a
railway station, was little known to the outer world. Its nearest
market-town was Dorminster, and the village of Thorley lay between
Angleford and the county town. Birchmead, a hamlet which had some repute
of its own as a particularly healthy place, stood further down the river
on which Angleford was built, and its merits generally threw those of
neighboring villages into the shade.

But Angleford was in itself a pretty little nook, and its inhabitants
somewhat prided themselves on its seclusion from the world. These
inhabitants, it must be confessed, were few. It had once been a larger
and more important place, but had gradually dwindled away until the
village contained less than three hundred persons, chiefly laborers and
small shop-keepers. Beside these, there were the doctor, and his wife,
the rector and his family, and the squire--a childless widower, who was
of rather less account than anybody else in the parish.

The Rectory was a rambling, long, low, red-brick house standing in
prettily-wooded grounds, bordered by the river, on the other side of
which lay the park belonging to the squire. The park ran for some
distance on both sides of the stream, and the Rectory grounds were, so
to speak, taken out of the very midst of the squire's, demesne. The
continuation of wooded ground on either side the narrow winding river
made the place particularly picturesque; and it was a favorite amusement
for the rector's son and daughter to push a rather crazy boat out of the
little boat-house at the foot of the garden, and row up and down those
reaches of the stream "between the bridges," which were navigable. One
of the bridges warned them of the weir, which it was not very safe to
approach; and beyond the other, three miles further down and close to
Birchmead, the stream was shallow and clogged with reeds. But within
these limits there was a peaceful tranquil beauty which made the boat a
favorite resting place for the Rectory people during the long summer
evenings and afternoons.

It was two o'clock on a late autumn afternoon, when a girl of sixteen
came out of the Rectory door, which always stood hospitably open in fine
weather,