Chapter 1

"The changing guests, each in a different mood,
Sit at the road-side table and arise:
And every life among them in likewise
Is a soul's board set daily with new food.

"May not this ancient room thou sitt'st in dwell
In separate living souls for joy or pain?
Nay, all its corners may be painted plain
Where Heaven shows pictures of some life well-spent."



Yorkshire is the epitome of England. Whatever is excellent in the
whole land is found there. The men are sturdy, shrewd, and stalwart;
hard-headed and hard-fisted, and have notably done their work in every
era of English history. They are also a handsome race, the finest
specimens extant of the pure Anglo-Saxon, and they still preserve the
imposing stature and the bright blonde characteristics of the race.

Yorkshire abounds in what is the typical English home--fine old halls
and granges, set in wooded parks, and surrounded by sweet, shady
gardens. One of the fairest of these homes is Hallam-Croft. There may
be larger halls in the West Riding, but none that combines so finely
all the charms of antiquity, with every modern grace and comfort. Its
walls are of gray stone, covered with ivy, or crusted with golden
lichens; its front, long and low, is picturesquely diversified with
oriel windows, gable ends, and shadowy angles. Behind is a steep,
craggy range of woody hills; in front, a terraced garden of great
extent; full of old-fashioned bowers, and labyrinth-like walks, and
sloping down to a noble park, whose oaks and beeches are of wonderful
beauty, and whose turf is soft as velvet and greener than any artist
ever dreamed of.

Fifty years ago the owner of this lovely spot was Squire Henry Hallam.
He was about sixty years of age, stout and fair and dressed in fine
drab broad-cloth, with a white vest, and a white cambric kerchief tied
loosely round his neck. His hat, drab also, was low-crowned and
broad-brimmed, and, as a general rule, he kept it on. In the holy
precincts of a church, or if the national anthem was played, he indeed
always bared his head; but, in the first case, it was his expression
of a religious sentiment, in the second he saluted his country, and,
in a measure, himself.

One evening in the early spring he was sitting upon a low sofa in the
room that was specially his own, mending some fishing tackle. A couple
of setter puppies were worrying each other on the sofa beside him,
and a splendid fox-hound leaned her muzzle on one of his broad knees,
and looked up into her master's face with sad reproachful eyes. She
was evidently jealous, and watching anxiously for some look or word
of favor. She had not long to wait. The puppies became troublesome;
he chided them, and put the