only access to it. There
was some difficulty, therefore, in contriving a tolerable entrance
from the road for wheel traffic, and it was found necessary to cause a
tiny little spring that rose in the bank by the roadside to change
its course in some small degree. The affair seemed to us a matter of
infinitesimal importance, but Sir George was dismayed. We had moved,
he said, a holy well, and the consequence would surely be that we
should never succeed in establishing ourselves in that spot.

And surely enough we never did so succeed; for, after having built a
very nice little house, and lived in it one winter and half a summer,
we--for I cannot say that it was my mother more than I, or I more than
my mother--made up our minds that "the sun yoked his horses too far
from Penrith town," and that we had had enough of it. Sir George,
of course, when he heard our determination, while he expressed
all possible regret at losing us as neighbours, said that he knew
perfectly well that it must be so, from the time that we so recklessly
meddled with the holy well.

He was the most hospitable man in the world, and could never let many
days pass without asking us to dine with him. But his hospitality was
of quite the old world school. One day, but that was after our journey
to Italy and when he had become intimate with us, being in a hurry to
get back into the drawing-room to rejoin a pretty girl next whom I had
sat at dinner, I tried to escape from the dining-room. "Come back!"
he roared, before I could get to the door, "we won't have any of your
d--d forineering habits here! Come back and stick to your wine, or by
the Lord I'll have the door locked."

He was, unlike most men of his sort, not very fond of riding, but was
a great walker. He used to take the men he could get to walk with him
a tramp over the hill, till they were fain to cry "Hold! enough!" But
_there_ I was his match.

Most of my readers have probably heard of the "Luck of Edenhall," for
besides Longfellow's[1] well-known poem, the legend relating to it
has often been told in print. I refer to it here merely to mention a
curious trait of character in Sir George Musgrave in connection with
it. The "Luck of Edenhall" is an ancient decorated glass goblet, which
has belonged to the Musgraves time out of mind, and which bears on it
the legend:--

"When this cup shall break or fall,
Farewell the luck of Edenhall."

[Footnote 1: Subsequently to the publication of