y Calmady, who, living in excellent repute until
close upon sixty, seemed destined by Providence to break the evil chain
of the family fate. But he too goes the way of all flesh, suddenly
enough, after a long run with the hounds, owing to the opening of a
wound, received when he was little more than a lad, at the taking of
Frenchtown under General Proctor, during the second American war. So he
too died, and they buried him with much honest mourning, as befitted so
kindly and honourable a gentleman; and his son Richard--of whom more
hereafter--reigned in his stead.

CHAPTER II

GIVING THE VERY EARLIEST INFORMATION OBTAINABLE OF THE HERO OF THIS
BOOK

It happened in this way, towards the end of August, 1842.

In the gray of the summer evening, as the sunset faded and the twilight
gathered, spreading itself tenderly over the pastures and
corn-fields,--over the purple-green glooms of the fir forest--over the
open moors, whose surface is scored for miles by the turf-slane of the
cottager and squatter--over the clear brown streams that trickle out of
the pink and emerald mosses of the peat-bogs, and gain volume and
vigour as they sparkle away by woodside, and green-lane, and village
street--and over those secret, bosky places, in the heart of the great
common-lands, where the smooth, white stems and glossy foliage of the
self-sown hollies spring up between the roots of the beech trees, where
plovers cry, and stoat and weazel lurk and scamper, while the old
poacher's lean, ill-favoured, rusty-coloured lurcher picks up a
shrieking hare, and where wandering bands of gypsies--those lithe,
onyx-eyed children of the magic East--still pitch their dirty, little,
fungus-like tents around the camp-fire,--as the sunset died and the
twilight thus softly widened and deepened, Lady Calmady found herself,
for the first time during all the long summer day, alone.

For though no royal personage had graced the occasion with his
presence, nor had bears suffered martyrdom to promote questionably
amiable mirth, Brockhurst, during the past week, had witnessed a series
of festivities hardly inferior to those which marked Sir Denzil's
historic house-warming. Young Sir Richard Calmady had brought home his
bride, and it was but fitting the whole countryside should see her. So
all and sundry received generous entertainment according to their
degree.--Labourers, tenants, school-children. Weary old-age from
Pennygreen poorhouse taking its p