s a man
of habitual gravity, occasionally severe in the rule of his household,
very seldom unbending to mirth. Though not particularly robust, he
employed his leisure in long walks about the moors, walks sometimes
prolonged till after midnight, sometimes begun long before dawn. His
acquaintances called him unsociable, and doubt less he was so in the
sense that he could not find at Sowerby Bridge any one for whose
society be greatly cared. It was even a rare thing for him to sit down
with his wife and children for more than a few minutes; if he remained
in the house, he kept apart in a room of his own, musing over, rather
than reading, a little collection of books--one of his favourites being
Defoe's "History of the Devil." He often made ironical remarks, and
seemed to have a grim satisfaction when his hearers missed the point.
Then he would chuckle, and shake his head, and go away muttering.

Young Ross, who made no brilliant figure at school, and showed a turn
for drawing, was sent at seventeen to the factory of Messrs. Gilstead,
Miles and Doran, to become a designer of patterns. The result was
something more than his father had expected, for Mr. Doran, who had his
abode at Sowerby Bridge, quickly discovered that the lad was meant for
far other things, and, by dint of personal intervention, caused Mr.
Mallard to give his son a chance of becoming an artist.

A remarkable man, this Mr. Doran. By nature a Bohemian, somehow made
into a Yorkshire mill-owner; a strong, active, nobly featured man, who
dressed as no one in the factory regions ever did before or probably
ever will again--his usual appearance suggesting the common notion of a
bushranger; an artist to the core; a purchaser of pictures by unknown
men who had a future--at the sale of his collection three Robert
Cheeles got into the hands of dealers, all of them now the boasted
possessions of great galleries; a passionate lover of music--he had
been known to make the journey to Paris merely to hear Diodati sing;
finally, in common rumour a profligate whom no prudent householder
would admit to the society of his wife and daughters. However, at the
time of young Mallard's coming under his notice he had been married
about a year. Mrs. Doran came from Manchester; she was very beautiful,
but had slight education, and before long Sowerby Bridge remarked that
the husband was too often away from home.

Doran and the elder Mallard, having once met, were disposed to sec mor