Chapter 1

HEADSTRONG AND HEADLONG

Far from any house or hut, in the depth of dreary moor-land, a road,
unfenced and almost unformed, descends to a rapid river. The crossing is
called the "Seven Corpse Ford," because a large party of farmers, riding
homeward from Middleton, banded together and perhaps well primed through
fear of a famous highwayman, came down to this place on a foggy evening,
after heavy rain-fall. One of the company set before them what the power
of the water was, but they laughed at him and spurred into it, and one
alone spurred out of it. Whether taken with fright, or with too much
courage, they laid hold of one another, and seven out of eight of them,
all large farmers, and thoroughly understanding land, came never upon it
alive again; and their bodies, being found upon the ridge that cast them
up, gave a dismal name to a place that never was merry in the best of
weather.

However, worse things than this had happened; and the country is not
chary of its living, though apt to be scared of its dead; and so the
ford came into use again, with a little attempt at improvement. For
those farmers being beyond recall, and their families hard to
provide for, Richard Yordas, of Scargate Hall, the chief owner of the
neighborhood, set a long heavy stone up on either brink, and stretched
a strong chain between them, not only to mark out the course of the
shallow, whose shelf is askew to the channel, but also that any one
being washed away might fetch up, and feel how to save himself. For the
Tees is a violent water sometimes, and the safest way to cross it is to
go on till you come to a good stone bridge.

Now forty years after that sad destruction of brave but not well-guided
men, and thirty years after the chain was fixed, that their sons might
not go after them, another thing happened at "Seven Corpse Ford," worse
than the drowning of the farmers. Or, at any rate, it made more stir
(which is of wider spread than sorrow), because of the eminence of the
man, and the length and width of his property. Neither could any one at
first believe in so quiet an end to so turbulent a course. Nevertheless
it came to pass, as lightly as if he were a reed or a bubble of the
river that belonged to him.

It was upon a gentle evening, a few days after Michaelmas of 1777. No
flood was in the river then, and no fog on the moor-land, only the usual
course of time, keeping the silent company of stars. The young moon was
down, and the hover of the sky (in doubt of various lights) was gone,
and the equal spread of obscurity soothed the eyes of any reasonable
man.

But the man who rode down to the river that night had little love of
reason. Headstrong chief of a headlong race, no will must