thers any benefit derived from his lonely researches. But he proffered
no hospitality, and shrank from all offers of friendship. Yet, unsocial
as he was, everyone loved him. The peasant threw kindly pity into his
respectful greeting. Even that terror of the village, Mother Darkmans,
saved her bitterest gibes for others; and the village maiden, as she
curtseyed by him, stole a glance at his handsome but melancholy
countenance, and told her sweetheart she was certain the poor scholar
had been crossed in love.

At the manor house he was often the subject of remark, but only on the
day of the stranger's appearance at the Spotted Dog had the squire found
an opportunity of breaking through the scholar's habitual reserve, and
so persuaded him to dine with him and his family on the day following.

The squire, Rowland Lester, a man of cultivated tastes, was a widower,
with two daughters and a nephew. Walter, the only son of Rowland's
brother Geoffrey, who had absconded, leaving his wife and child to shift
for themselves, was in his twenty-first year, tall and strong, with a
striking if not strictly handsome face; high-spirited, jealous of the
affections of those he loved; cheerful outwardly, but given to moody
reflections on his orphaned and dependent lot, for his mother had not
long survived her desertion.

Madeline Lester, at the age of eighteen, was the beauty and toast of the
whole country; with a mind no less beautiful than her form was graceful,
and a desire for study equalled only by her regard for those who
possessed it, a regard which had extended secretly, if all but
unacknowledged to herself, to the solitary scholar of whom I have been
speaking. Ellinor, her junior by two years, was of a character equally
gentle, but less elevated, and a beauty akin to her sister's.

When Eugene Aram arrived at the manor house in keeping with his promise,
something appeared to rest upon his mind, from which, however, by the
excitement lent by wine and occasional bursts of eloquence, he seemed
striving to escape, and at length he apparently succeeded.

When the ladies had retired, Lester and his guest resumed their talk in
the open, Walter declining to join them.

Aram was advancing the view that it is impossible for a man who leads
the life of the world ever to experience content.

"For me," observed the squire, "I have my objects of interest in my
children."

"And I mine in my books," said Aram.

As they passed over the vil