at unless she sent for the journal it seldom
reached her hands. Anne was always her messenger. The arrival of the
soldiers led Mrs. Garland to despatch her daughter for it the day after
the party; and away she went in her hat and pelisse, in a direction at
right angles to that of the encampment on the hill.

Walking across the fields for the distance of a mile or two, she came out
upon the high-road by a wicket-gate. On the other side of the way was
the entrance to what at first sight looked like a neglected meadow, the
gate being a rotten one, without a bottom rail, and broken-down palings
lying on each side. The dry hard mud of the opening was marked with
several horse and cow tracks, that had been half obliterated by fifty
score sheep tracks, surcharged with the tracks of a man and a dog. Beyond
this geological record appeared a carriage-road, nearly grown over with
grass, which Anne followed. It descended by a gentle slope, dived under
dark-rinded elm and chestnut trees, and conducted her on till the hiss of
a waterfall and the sound of the sea became audible, when it took a bend
round a swamp of fresh watercress and brooklime that had once been a fish
pond. Here the grey, weather-worn front of a building edged from behind
the trees. It was Oxwell Hall, once the seat of a family now extinct,
and of late years used as a farmhouse.

Benjamin Derriman, who owned the crumbling place, had originally been
only the occupier and tenant-farmer of the fields around. His wife had
brought him a small fortune, and during the growth of their only son
there had been a partition of the Oxwell estate, giving the farmer, now a
widower, the opportunity of acquiring the building and a small portion of
the land attached on exceptionally low terms. But two years after the
purchase the boy died, and Derriman's existence was paralyzed forthwith.
It was said that since that event he had devised the house and fields to
a distant female relative, to keep them out of the hands of his detested
nephew; but this was not certainly known.

The hall was as interesting as mansions in a state of declension usually
are, as the excellent county history showed. That popular work in folio
contained an old plate dedicated to the last scion of the original
owners, from which drawing it appeared that in 1750, the date of
publication, the windows were covered with little scratches like black
flashes of lightning; that a horn of hard smoke came out