extent of that property he had involuntarily conceived a vast idea.

"Lord, sir, no; we be two miles from Squire Darrell's. He han't much
property to speak of hereabouts. But he bought a good bit o' land, too,
some years ago, ten or twelve mile t' other side o' the county. First
time you are going to Fawley, sir?"

"Yes."

"Ah! I don't mind seeing you afore; and I should have known you if I
had, for it is seldom indeed I have a fare to Fawley old Manor House. It
must be, I take it, four or five years ago sin' I wor there with a gent,
and he went away while I wor feeding the horse; did me out o' my back
fare. What bisness had he to walk when he came in my fly? Shabby."

"Mr. Darrell lives very retired, then? sees few persons?" "S'pose so. I
never seed him as I knows on; see'd two o' his hosses though,--rare good
uns;" and the driver whipped on his own horse, took to whistling, and
Lionel asked no more.

At length the chaise stopped at a carriage gate, receding from the
road, and deeply shadowed by venerable trees,--no lodge. The driver,
dismounting, opened the gate.

"Is this the place?"

The driver nodded assent, remounted, and drove on rapidly through what
night by courtesy he called a park. The enclosure was indeed little
beyond that of a good-sized paddock; its boundaries were visible on
every side: but swelling uplands covered with massy foliage sloped down
to its wild, irregular turf soil,--soil poor for pasturage, but pleasant
to the eye; with dell and dingle, bosks of fantastic pollards; dotted
oaks of vast growth; here and there a weird hollow thorn-tree; patches
of fern and gorse. Hoarse and loud cawed the rooks; and deep, deep as
from the innermost core of the lovely woodlands came the mellow note of
the cuckoo. A few moments more a wind of the road brought the house in
sight. At its rear lay a piece of water, scarcely large enough to be
styled a lake; too winding in its shaggy banks, its ends too concealed
by tree and islet, to be called by the dull name of pond. Such as it was
it arrested the eye before the gaze turned towards the house: it had an
air of tranquillity so sequestered, so solemn. A lively man of the world
would have been seized with spleen at the first glimpse of it; but he
who had known some great grief, some anxious care, would have drunk
the calm into his weary soul like an anodyne. The house,--small, low,
ancient, about the date of Edward VI., before the statelier architecture
of El