etter advantage elsewhere.

All this and much more Sir Denzil had seen, and doubtless measured, for
all that he appears so immovably calm and apart. But that which he had
never yet seen was a man of his name and race, full of years and
honours, come slowly forth from the stately house to sun himself,
morning or evening, in the comfortable shelter of the high, red-brick,
rose-grown garden walls. Looking the while, with the pensive
resignation of old age, at the goodly, wide-spreading prospect. Smiling
again over old jokes, warming again over old stories of prowess with
horse and hound, or rod and gun. Feeling the eyes moisten again at the
memory of old loves, and of those far-away first embraces which seemed
to open the gates of paradise and create the world anew; at
remembrances of old hopes too, which proved still-born, and of old
distresses, which often enough proved still-born likewise,--the whole
of these simplified now, sanctified, the tumult of them stilled, along
with the hot, young blood which went to make them, by the kindly torpor
of increasing age and the approaching footsteps of greatly reconciling
Death.

For Sir Denzil's male descendants, one and all,--so says tradition, so
say too the written and printed family records, the fine monuments in
the chancel of Sandyfield Church, and more than one tombstone in the
yew-shaded church-yard,--have displayed a disquieting incapacity for
living to the permitted "threescore years and ten," let alone
fourscore, and dying decently, in ordinary, commonplace fashion, in
their beds. Mention is made of casualties surprising in number and
variety; and not always, it must be owned, to the moral credit of those
who suffered them. It is told how Sir Thomas, grandson of Sir Denzil,
died miserably of gangrene, caused by a tear in the arm from the antler
of a wounded buck. How his nephew Zachary--who succeeded him--was
stabbed during a drunken brawl in an eating-house in the Strand. How
the brother of the said Zachary, a gallant young soldier, was killed at
the battle of Ramillies in 1706. Dueling, lightning during a summer
storm, even the blue-brown waters of the Brockhurst Lake in turn claim
a victim. Later it is told how a second Sir Denzil, after hard fighting
to save his purse, was shot by highwaymen on Bagshot Heath, when riding
with a couple of servants--not notably distinguished, as it would
appear, for personal valour--from Brockhurst up to town.

Lastly comes Courtne