those hard daubs and of ourselves, we may light upon a face that about
six generations since was the counterpart of the little boy upon our
shoulder, or the daughter standing at our side. In the same way, too,
partly through tradition and partly by other means, we are sometimes
able to trace in ourselves and in our children the strong development
of characteristics that distinguished the race centuries ago.

If local tradition and such records of their individual lives as
remained are worthy of any faith, it is beyond a doubt that the
Caresfoots of Bratham Abbey had handed down their own hard and
peculiar cast of character from father to son unaffected in the main
by the continual introduction of alien blood on the side of the
mother.

The history of the Caresfoot family had nothing remarkable about it.
They had been yeomen at Bratham from time immemorial, perhaps ever
since the village had become a geographical fact; but it was on the
dissolution of the monasteries that they first became of any
importance in the county. Bratham Abbey, which had shared the common
fate, was granted by Henry VIII. to a certain courtier, Sir Charles
Varry by name. For two years the owner never came near his new
possession, but one day he appeared in the village, and riding to the
house of Farmer Caresfoot, which was its most respectable tenement, he
begged him to show him the Abbey house and the lands attached. It was
a dark November afternoon, and by the time the farmer and his wearied
guest had crossed the soaked lands and reached the great grey house,
the damps and shadows of the night had begun to curtain it and to
render its appearance, forsaken as it was, inexpressibly dreary and
lonesome.