. Whatever her business, it was very clear that promptness,
secrecy, and large precaution were elements of its success.

Nor had these characteristics, which we have named, escaped entire
observation of the people on shore, for at the nearest point of land a
group of idlers were visible, who stood gazing at and discussing the
character of the vessel, while at the same moment her young commander
was seen with his boat's crew pulling back from the landing to his
craft. His business was brief enough, for even now the anchor is once
more away. The gallant ship spreads her broad wings one by one, and
gracefully bending to the power of the breeze, glides, like a fleet
courser, over the fathomless depths of the sea, while the mind that
controls her motions again assumes his reverie on the quarter-deck.

CHAPTER IV.

BRAMBLE PARK.

CHANGING the field of our story from the blue waves to that of land, we
must ask the reader to go back with us for a period of years from that
wherein our story has opened, to the fertile country and
highly-cultivated lands in the neighborhood of Manchester, England. Sir
Robert Bramble's estate was some eight miles from the large
manufacturing town just named, and embraced within its grounds some of
the most delightfully situated spots within a day's ride in any
direction. Parks, gardens, ponds, groves, stables and fine animals; in
short, every accompaniment to a fine English estate. Sir Robert was a
man of not much force of character, had inherited his estates, and had
partly exhausted his income so far as to render a degree of economy
imperatively necessary, a fact which was not calculated to render any
more amiable a naturally irritable disposition.

The family at Bramble Park, as the estate was called, consisted of Sir
Robert and his lady, a weak-minded, but once beautiful woman, and two
sons, Robert and Charles, the eldest at this period some twelve years of
age, the youngest about nine; the usual number of servants, in doors and
out; made up the household. Sir Robert's could hardly be said to be a
very happy household, notwithstanding there seemed to be every element
and requisite to be found there for peaceful domestic happiness; and
perhaps it would have puzzled a casual observer to have ascertained
wherein laid the root of that evil, which, like a poisonous upas, seemed
to spread its branches through the household.

There was a cloud apparently shadowing each face there; there