he was. I can seem to zee now
the exact style of his clothes; white hat, white trousers, white silk
handkerchief; and his jonnick face, as white as his clothes with keeping
late hours. There was nothing black about him but his hair and his
eyes--he wore no beard at that time--and they were black as slooes. The
like of his coming on the race-course was never seen there afore nor
since. He drove his ikkipage hisself; and it was always hauled by four
beautiful white horses, and two outriders rode in harness bridles. There
was a groom behind him, and another at the rubbing-post, all in livery
as glorious as New Jerusalem. What a 'stablishment he kept up at that
time! I can mind him, sir, with thirty race-horses in training at
once, seventeen coach-horses, twelve hunters at his box t'other side of
London, four chargers at Budmouth, and ever so many hacks.'

'And he lost all by his racing speculations?' the stranger observed;
and Somerset fancied that the voice had in it something more than the
languid carelessness of a casual sojourner.

'Partly by that, partly in other ways. He spent a mint o' money in
a wild project of founding a watering-place; and sunk thousands in a
useless silver mine; so 'twas no wonder that the castle named after him
vell into other hands.... The way it was done was curious. Mr. Wilkins,
who was the first owner after it went from Sir William, actually sat
down as a guest at his table, and got up as the owner. He took off, at
a round sum, everything saleable, furniture, plate, pictures, even the
milk and butter in the dairy. That's how the pictures and furniture
come to be in the castle still; wormeaten rubbish zome o' it, and hardly
worth moving.'

'And off went the baronet to Myrtle Villa?'

'O no! he went away for many years. 'Tis quite lately, since his
illness, that he came to that little place, in zight of the stone walls
that were the pride of his forefathers.'

'From what I hear, he has not the manner of a broken-hearted man?'

'Not at all. Since that illness he has been happy, as you see him: no
pride, quite calm and mild; at new moon quite childish. 'Tis that makes
him able to live there; before he was so ill he couldn't bear a zight of
the place, but since then he is happy nowhere else, and never leaves
the parish further than to drive once a week to Markton. His head won't
stand society nowadays, and he lives quite lonely as you zee, only
zeeing his daughter, or his son whenever he