CA AND UNCLE SILAS MEET

XL. IN WHICH I MAKE ANOTHER COUSIN'S ACQUAINTANCE

XLI. MY COUSIN DUDLEY

XLII. ELVERSTON AND ITS PEOPLE

XLIII. NEWS AT BARTRAM GATE

XLIV. A FRIEND ARISES

XLV. A CHAPTER-FULL OF LOVERS

XLVI. THE RIVALS

XLVII. DOCTOR BRYERLY REAPPEARS

XLVIII. QUESTION AND ANSWER

XLIX. AN APPARITION

L. MILLY'S FAREWELL

LI. SARAH MATILDA COMES TO LIGHT

LII. THE PICTURE OF A WOLF

LIII. AN ODD PROPOSAL

LIV. IN SEARCH OF MR. CHARKE'S SKELETON

LV. THE FOOT OF HERCULES

LVI. I CONSPIRE

LVII. THE LETTER

LVIII. LADY KNOLLYS' CARRIAGE

LIX. A SUDDEN DEPARTURE

LX. THE JOURNEY

LXI. OUR BED-CHAMBER

LXII. A WELL-KNOWN FACE LOOKS IN

LXIII. SPICED CLARET

LXIV. THE HOUR OF DEATH

LXV. IN THE OAK PARLOUR

CONCLUSION

UNCLE SILAS

A Tale of Bartram-Haugh

CHAPTER I

_AUSTIN RUTHYN, OF KNOWL, AND HIS DAUGHTER_

It was winter--that is, about the second week in November--and great gusts
were rattling at the windows, and wailing and thundering among our tall
trees and ivied chimneys--a very dark night, and a very cheerful fire
blazing, a pleasant mixture of good round coal and spluttering dry wood, in
a genuine old fireplace, in a sombre old room. Black wainscoting glimmered
up to the ceiling, in small ebony panels; a cheerful clump of wax candles
on the tea-table; many old portraits, some grim and pale, others pretty,
and some very graceful and charming, hanging from the walls. Few pictures,
except portraits long and short, were there. On the whole, I think you
would have taken the room for our parlour. It was not like our modern
notion of a drawing-room. It was a long room too, and every way capacious,
but irregularly shaped.

A girl, of a little more than seventeen, looking, I believe, younger still;
slight and rather tall, with a great deal of golden hair, dark grey-eyed,
and with a countenance rather sensitive and melancholy, was sitting at the
tea-table, in a reverie. I was that girl.

The only other person in the room--the only person in the house related to
me--was my father. He was Mr. Ruthyn, of Knowl, so called in his county,
but he had many other places, was of a very ancient lineage, who had
refused a baronetage often, and it was said even a viscounty, being of a
proud and defiant spirit, and thinking themselves higher in station and
purer of blood than two-thirds of the nobility into whose ranks, it was
said, they had been invited to ente