tself had long since
retired from the business, and was content to import the delicacy which
still bore its own name in consignments of canisters from Manchester or
London. During many years the heir of the noble family had deserted the
park, and absolutely never came near it or near England even, and
everything that gave the town a distinct reason for existence seemed to
be passing rapidly into tradition. It had lain out of the track of the
railway system for a long time, and when the railway system at length
enclosed it in its arms, the attention seemed to have come too late. All
the heat of life appeared to have chilled out of Dukes-Keeton in the
mean time, and it lay now between two railways almost as inanimate and
hopeless a lump as the child to whom the Erl-king's touch is fatal in
his father's arms.

The park, with its huge palace-like, barrack-like house, not a castle,
and too great to be called merely a hall, lies almost immediately
outside the town. From streets and shops the visitor passes straightway
through the gates of the great enclosure. Every stranger who has seen
the house is taken at once to see another object of interest.

In the centre of the park was a broad, clear space, made by the felling
and removing of every tree, until it spread there sharp and hard as a
burnt-out patch in a forest. Gravel and small shells made the pavement
of this space, and thus formed a new contrast with the turf, the
grasses, and the underwood of the park all around. In the midst of this
open space there rose a large circular building: a tower low in height
when the bulk enclosed by its circumference was considered, and standing
on a great square platform of solid masonry with steps on each of its
sides. The tower itself reminded one of the tomb of Cecilia Metella, or
some other of the tombs that still stand near Rome. It was in fact the
mausoleum which it had pleased the father of the present owner to have
erected for himself during his lifetime. He lavished money on it, cared
nothing for the cost of materials and labor, planned it out himself,
watched every detail, and stood by the workmen as they toiled. Within he
had prepared a lordly reception-room for his dead body when he should
come to die. A superb sarcophagus of porphyry, fit to have received the
remains of a Caesar, was there. When the work was done and all was ready,
the lonely owner visited it every day, unlocked its massive gate, and
went in, and sat someti