es of the
court-yard.

It was hazard that effected this. The dice-box swept those noble
avenues from the face of the estate. Soon after Sir Laurence's coming
of age, almost before the church-bells had ceased to announce the
joyous event of the attainment of his majority, he was off to the
Continent--Paris--Italy--I know not where, and was thenceforward only
occasionally heard of in Cheshire as the ornament of the Sardinian or
Austrian courts. But these tidings were usually accompanied by a
shaking of the head from the old family steward. The timber was to be
thinned anew--the tenants to be again amerced. Sir Laurence evidently
looked upon the Lexley property as a mere hotbed for his vices. At
last the old steward turned surly to our enquiries, and would answer
no further questions concerning his master. My grandfather's small
farm was the only plot of ground in the parish that did not belong to
the estate; and from him the faithful old servant was as careful to
conceal the family disgraces, as to maintain the honour of Sir
Laurence's name in the ears of his grumbling tenants.

The truth, however, could not long be withheld. Chaisefuls of
suspicious-looking men in black arrived at the hall; loungers,
surveyors, auctioneers--I know not what. There was talk in the parish
about foreclosing a mortgage, no one exactly understood why, or by
whom. But it was soon clear that Wightman, the old steward, was no
longer the great man at Lexley. These strangers bade him come here and
go there exactly as they chose, and, unhappily, they saw fit to make
his comings and goings so frequent and so humiliating, that before the
close of the summer the old servitor betook himself to his rest in a
spot where all men cease from troubling. The leaves that dreary autumn
fell upon his grave.

According to my grandfather's account, however, few even of his
village contemporaries grieved for old Wightman. They felt that
Providence knew best; that the old man was happily spared the
mortification of all that was likely to ensue. For before another year
was out the ring fence, which had hitherto encircled the Lexley
property, was divided within itself; a paltry distribution of about a
hundred acres alone remaining attached to the old hall. The rest was
gone! The rest was the property of the foreclosee of that hateful
mortgage.

Within view of the battlements of the old manor-house, nearly a
hundred workmen were soon employed in digging the founda