Arthur Hamilton left me his manuscripts, papers, and letters; from
these, and casual conversations I have had with him in old days,
this little volume is constructed.

C.C.


CHAPTER I


He was born November 2, 1852. He was the second son of a retired
cavalry officer, who lived in Hampshire. Besides his elder brother,
there were three sisters, one of whom died. His father was a wealthy
man, and had built himself a small country house, and planted the few
acres of ground round it very skillfully. Major Hamilton was a very
religious man, of the self-sufficient, puritanical, and evangelical
type, that issues from discipline; a martinet in his regiment, a
domestic tyrant, without intending to be. He did not marry till
rather late in life; and at the time when Arthur was growing up—the
time when memory intwines itself most lingeringly with its
surroundings, the time which comes back to us at ecstatic moments
in later, sadder days—all the _entourage_ of the place was at its
loveliest. Nothing ever equalled the thrill, he has told me, of
finding the first thrush's nest in the laurels by the gate, or of
catching the first smell of the lilac bushes in spring, or the
pungent scent of the chamomile and wild celery down by the little
stream.

The boy acquired a great love for Nature, though not of the intimate