t beaten. Then he died; his
affairs were in great confusion; he had mortgaged his land for his writ.
There were debts that could not be paid. I had no capital. I would not
sink to be a labourer. I had heard much of the high wages of this new
industry; I left the land."

"And the papers?"

"I never thought of them, or thought of them with disgust, as the cause
of my ruin. Of Hatton, I have not heard since my father's death. He had
quitted Mowbray, and none could give me tidings of him. When you came
and showed me in a book that the last abbot of Marney was a Walter
Gerard, the old feeling stirred again, and though I am but the
overlooker at Mr. Trafford's mill, I could not help telling you that my
fathers fought at Agincourt."

They approached the station, entered the train, and two hours later
arrived at Mowbray. Gerard and Morley left their companion at a convent
gate in the suburbs of the manufacturing town.

The two men made their way through the streets and entered a prominent
public house. Here they sought an interview with the landlord, and from
him got information of Hatton's brother.

"You have heard of a place called Hell-house Yard?" said the publican.
"Well, he lives there, and his name is Simon, and that's all I know
about him."

_III.--The Gulf Impassable_

When it came to the point, Lord Marney very much objected to paying
Egremont's election expenses, and proposed instead that he should
accompany him to Mowbray Castle, and marry Earl Mowbray's daughter, Lady
Joan Fitz-Warene.

Lord Mowbray was the grandson of a waiter, who had gone out to India a
gentleman's valet, and returned a nabob. Lord Mowbray's two daughters--
he had no sons--were great heiresses. Lady Joan was doctrinal; Lady Maud
inquisitive. Egremont fell in love with neither, and the visit was a
failure. Lord Marney declined to pay the election expenses.

The brothers parted in anger; and Egremont took up his abode in a
cottage in Mowedale, a few miles outside the town of Mowbray. He was
drawn to this by the knowledge that Walter Gerard and his daughter
Sybil, and their friend Stephen Morley, lived close by. Of Egremont's
rank these three were ignorant. Sybil had met him with Mr. St. Lys, the
good vicar of Mowbray, relieving the misery of a poor weaver's family in
the town, and at Mowedale he passed as Mr. Franklin, a journalist.

For some weeks Egremont enjoyed the peace of rural life, and the
intercourse with the Gerards ripe