be sorry one day that
you did not tell me of your own accord."

CHAPTER XII

A RECORD AND A PRESENTMENT.

The gallery of family portraits at Pulwick is one of the most
remarkable features of that ancient house.

It was a custom firmly established at the Priory--ever since the first
heralds' visitation in Lancashire, when some mooted point of claims to
certain quarterings had been cleared in an unexpected way by the
testimony of a well-authenticated ancestral portrait--for each
successive representative to add to the collection. One of the first
cares of every Landale, therefore, on succeeding to the title was to
be painted, with his proper armorial and otherwise distinguishing
honours jealously delineated, and thus hung in the place of honour
over the high mantelshelf of the gallery--displacing on the occasion
his own immediate and revered predecessor.

The chain was consequently unbroken from the Elizabethan descendants
of the first acquirers of ecclesiastical property at Pulwick, down to
the present Light-keeper of Scarthey.

But whilst the late Sir Thomas appeared in all the majesty of
deputy-lieutenant, colonel of Militia, magistrate, and sundry other
honourable offices, in his due place on the right of the present
baronet, the latter figured in a character so strange and so
incongruous that it seemed as if one day the dignified array of
Landales--old, young, middle-aged, but fine gentlemen, all of
them--must turn their backs upon their degenerate kinsman.

Over the chimney-piece, in the huge carved-oak frame (now already two
centuries old), a common sailor, in the striped loose trousers, the
blue jacket with red piping of a man-of-war's man, with pigtail and
coarse open shirt--stood boldly forth as the representative of the
present owner of Pulwick.

Proud of their long line of progenitors, it was a not unusual thing
for the Landales to entertain their guests at breakfast in a certain
sunny bow-window in the portrait gallery rather than in the breakfast
parlour proper, which in winter, unmistakably harboured more damp than
was pleasant.

It was, therefore, with no surprise that Miss Landale received an
early order from her brother to have a fire lighted in the apartment
sacred to the family honours, and the matutinal repast served there in
due course.

Whether Mr. Landale was actuated by a regard for the rheumatism of his
worthy relative, or merely a natural family pride, or by some other
and