corn, and all the black trappings of the thing fluttered and flapped as it went by. Another man on horseback, singing to himself a drunken song, closed this horrid procession. It moved up towards the village, and Oliver listened to it until the noise seemed to cease about opposite to the Park gates. The solitary witness, frightened enough before, was now doubly terrified, for he made sure that what he had seen was the news of Sir Nicholas's decease, brought over in this ghastly and characteristic fashion. He did not for a single moment imagine that it was a palpable vision; and yet he had seen a veritable funeral pass by. The old baronet had died in France, leaving directions, and the money to carry them out, that his corpse should be taken at night, and at full gallop, through every town that lay between Dover and Fairburn.—Alive or dead," added Marmaduke grimly, "the Heaths are a charming family."

"At all events, my dear fellow," said I, laying my hand upon his arm, "you will have nothing to fear from comparison with your forefathers. You may make a good reputation at a cheap price.[1] A very little virtue will go a great way with the next tenant of Fairburn Hall, if half the tales we hear be true."

"And what tales are those?" inquired a deep, low voice at my very elbow.

I believe I jumped a foot or two in the air myself, so great was my alarm. But as far my companion, if those grass-grown tombs which we were contemplating had given up their wicked skeletons before his eyes, he could not have exhibited a greater excess of terror.

Beside me stood a man of Herculean proportions, who by his dress might have been taken for an under-gamekeeper, but for a very massive gold chain which hung from the top button-hole of his waistcoat down to its deep-flapped pocket. What is now, I believe, called an "Albert guard," resembles it on a smaller scale; but at the time I speak of, such an ornament was altogether unique. His face, too, evidently belonged to one who was used to command. On the forehead was a curious indented curve like the letter U, while his lip curled contemptuously upwards also, in somewhat the same shape. The two together gave him a weird and indeed a demoniacal look, which his white beard, although long and flowing, had not enough of dignity to do away with. I had never heard Sir Massingberd's personal appearance described; but even if I had not had before me his shrinking nephew, I should have recognized at once the features of Giant Despair.

"And what tales are those which are told against the present tenant of Fairburn Hall?" reiterated the baronet, scanning me from head to foot with his cold glittering eyes. "And who is this young gentleman who comes to listen to them from the lips of my loving ward?"

"Sir," said I, "your nephew was saying nothing whatever against you, I do assure you. I was merely referring to the gossip of the village, which, indeed, does not make you out to be entirely a saint." I was angry at having been frightened by this man, who, after all, could not hurt me. I had been accustomed, too, to Indian life; which, without making one bolder than other people, indisposes one to submit to dictation, which is only the duty of the natives.

Sir Massingberd reached forth one iron finger, and rocked me with it to and fro, though I stood as firm as I could. "Take care, young gentleman, take care," said he; "that spirit of yours will not do down at Fairburn. Mr. Long does not seem to have, taught you humility, I think. Marmaduke, go home." He spoke these last words exactly as a man speaks to his dog who has injudiciously followed him to church on Sunday, in the hope that he was bent on partridge shooting.

The boy instantly obeyed. He shrank away, passing as closely to the churchyard railing as he could, as though he almost feared a blow from his uncle.

"There is humility, there is docility!" sneered the baronet, looking after him. "And if I had you up at the Hall, my young bantam, for four and twenty hours or so, I'd make you docile too." He strode away with a laugh like the creaking of an iron hinge, for he saw that I did not dare to answer him. He strode away over the humble graves, setting his foot deep into their daisied mounds as though in scorn; and his laugh echoed again and again from the sepulchral walls, for it was joy to Sir Massingberd Heath to know that he was feared.

CHAPTER III.

THE DREAM BY THE BROOK.

Although my story must needs be sombre wherever it has to do with that person whose name it bears, yet I hope there will be found some sunny spots in it. During the first few months after my arrival at Fairburn, there was nothing to sadden life there that I knew of. I passed my days under green leaves, and not only in a metaphorical sense; for every fine afternoon, immediately after study was over, I betook myself to the Park. The whole place was watched as zealously, even in summer, as the gardens of the Hesperides, but Mr. Long had obtained permission for me to roam at large therein. To me, vexed from childhood by Indian suns, Fairburn Chase—as that part of the demesne most remote from the Hall was called—was far more delightful than it could have been to any mere English boy. Its stately avenues of oaks, tapering into infinite distance, with their checker work of beam and shade, was the realization of my dreams of forest beauty. Nor was its delicious coolness marred by the broad strips of sunlight, at long but equal distances, like the golden stairs of the Angels' Ladder; for those, I knew, marked the interlacing of "the Rides" themselves as fair, and leading, not as the avenue did, to the outer world, but into secret bowers known only to the deer and me.

When Marmaduke was not with me, which often enough happened, poor fellow, and particularly after that unfortunate meeting with his uncle in the churchyard—the whole Chase seemed abandoned to myself. I dare say it was not really so, and that if I had not been a privileged person I should soon have found out my mistake, but for days and days I never saw any human being there. Now and then the figure of a gamekeeper, dwarfed by distance, would make its appearance for a moment, to be lost the next in some leafy glade. But the sense of solitude was thereby rather increased than otherwise, just as the poet tells us in a case where the ear and not the eye was concerned, "the busy woodpecker made stiller by his sound the inviolable quietness." Lying couched in fern, in that lordly pleasure-place, I have myself entertained some poetic thoughts, although they never found expression. Even now, as I shut my eyes, I make an inward picture of some such resting-place; nothing to be seen but the long green feathery stems which the summer air just stirs about my brow, and the broad branches of the oak that stretch themselves motionless between me and the sun; nothing to be heard but the coo of the ring-dove, and the swift stealthy bite of the dappled deer. Nor did