sh in Oxfordshire. He had already been some ten years
married to my dear mother when he went there, and he had four children,
of whom I was the youngest. I remember faintly the place where we lived.
It was an ancient long grey house, facing the road. There was a very
large tree of some sort in the garden. It was hollow, and we children
used to play about inside of it, and knock knots of wood from the rough
bark. We all slept in a kind of attic, and my mother always came and
kissed us when we were in bed. I used to wake up and see her bending
over me, a candle in her hand. There was a curious kind of pole
projecting from the wall over my bed. Once I was dreadfully frightened
because my eldest brother made me hang to it by my hands. That is all
I remember about our old home. It has been pulled down long ago, or I
would journey there to see it.

A little further down the road was a large house with big iron gates to
it, and on the top of the gate pillars sat two stone lions, which
were so hideous that I was afraid of them. Perhaps this sentiment was
prophetic. One could see the house by peeping through the bars of the
gates. It was a gloomy-looking place, with a tall yew hedge round it;
but in the summer-time some flowers grew about the sun-dial in the grass
plat. This house was called the Hall, and Squire Carson lived there. One
Christmas--it must have been the Christmas before my father emigrated,
or I should not remember it--we children went to a Christmas-tree
festivity at the Hall. There was a great party there, and footmen
wearing red waistcoats stood at the door. In the dining-room, which was
panelled with black oak, was the Christmas-tree. Squire Carson stood in
front of it. He was a tall, dark man, very quiet in his manners, and he
wore a bunch of seals on his waistcoat. We used to think him old, but
as a matter of fact he was then not more than forty. He had been, as
I afterwards learned, a great traveller in his youth, and some six
or seven years before this date he married a lady who was half a
Spaniard--a papist, my father called her. I can remember her well. She
was small and very pretty, with a rounded figure, large black eyes, and
glittering teeth. She spoke English with a curious accent. I suppose
that I must have been a funny child to look at, and I know that my hair
stood up on my head then as it does now, for I still have a sketch of
myself that my mother made of me, in which this peculiarity is strongly