w, a humble reverent visitor.

In his art, Fairthorn was certainly a master, and the air he now played
was exquisitely soft and plaintive; it accorded with the clouded yet
quiet sky, with the lone but summer landscape, with Lionel's melancholic
but not afflicted train of thought. The boy could only murmur
"Beautiful!" when the musician ceased.

"It is an old air," said Fairthorn; "I don't think it is known. I found
its scale scrawled down in a copy of the 'Eikon Basilike,' with the name
of 'Joannes Darrell, Esq., Aurat,' written under it. That, by the date,
was Sir John Darrell, the cavalier who fought for Charles I., father
of the graceless Sir Ralph, who flourished under Charles II. Both their
portraits are in the dining-room."

"Tell me something of the family; I know so little about it,--not even
how the Haughtons and Darrells seem to have been so long connected.
I see by the portraits that the Haughton name was borne by former
Darrells, then apparently dropped, now it is borne again by my cousin."

"He bears it only as a Christian name. Your grandfather was his sponsor.
But he is nevertheless the head of your family."

"So he says. How?"

Fairthorn gathered himself up, his knees to his chin, and began in the
tone of a guide who has got his lesson by heart; though it was not long
before he warmed into his subject.

"The Darrells are supposed to have got their name from a knight in the
reign of Edward III., who held the lists in a joust victoriously against
all comers, and was called, or called himself, John the Dare-all; or, in
old spelling, the Der-all. They were amongst the most powerful
families in the country; their alliances were with the highest
houses,--Montfichets, Nevilles, Mowbrays; they descended through such
marriages from the blood of Plantagenet kings. You'll find their
names in chronicles in the early French wars. Unluckily they attached
themselves to the fortunes of Earl Warwick, the king-maker, to whose
blood they were allied; their representative was killed in the fatal
field of Barnet; their estates were of course confiscated; the sole son
and heir of that ill-fated politician passed into the Low Countries,
where he served as a soldier. His son and grandson followed the same
calling under foreign banners. But they must have kept up the love of
the old land; for in the latter part of the reign of Henry VIII., the
last male Darrell returned to England with some broad gold pieces saved
by him