Once or twice every summer a more insidious foe approached. Some little
party of tourists, including a lady, who sketched in water and never
finished anything, would hear of the old church, and wander up to it.
But Mr. Raby's trusty groom was sure to be after them, with orders
to keep by them, under guise of friendship, and tell them outrageous
figments, and see that they demolished not, stole not, sculptured not.

All this was odd enough in itself, but it astonished nobody who knew Mr.
Raby. His father and predecessor had guarded the old church religiously
in his day, and was buried in it, by his own orders; and, as for Guy
Raby himself, what wonder he respected it, since his own mind, like that
old church, was out of date, and a relic of the past?

An antique Tory squire, nursed in expiring Jacobitism, and cradled in
the pride of race; educated at Oxford, well read in books, versed in
county business, and acquainted with trade and commerce; yet puffed up
with aristocratic notions, and hugging the very prejudices our nobility
are getting rid of as fast as the vulgar will let them.

He had a sovereign contempt for tradespeople, and especially for
manufacturers. Any one of those numerous disputes between masters and
mechanics, which distinguish British industry, might have been safely
referred to him, for he abhorred and despised them both with strict
impartiality.


The lingering beams of a bright December day still gilded the moss-clad
roof of that deserted church, and flamed on its broken panes, when a
young man came galloping toward it, from Hillsborough, on one of those
powerful horses common in that district.