as he went on: "he may drive me forth if he will; but surely, surely, he
will protect and do something for the boy. What, though there have been
faults committed and wrong done, he cannot be so hard-hearted as to let
the poor child starve, or be brought up as I can alone bring him up."

Such was still the conclusion to which he seemed to come; and at length
when the sun had completely gone down, and at the distance of about
three miles from the inn, he paused before a large pair of wooden gates,
consisting of two rows of square bars of painted wood placed close
together, with a thick heavy rail at the top and bottom, while two
wooden obelisks, with their steeple-shaped summits, formed the gate
posts. Opening the gates, as one well familiar with the lock, he now
entered the smaller road which led from them through the fields towards
a wood upon the top of the hill. At first the way was uninteresting
enough, and the faint remains of twilight only served to show some
square fields within their hedge-rows cut in the most prim and
undeviating lines around. The wayfarer rode on, through that part of the
scene, with his eyes bent down in deep thought; but when he came to the
wood; and, following the path--which, now kept with high neatness and
propriety, wound in and out amongst the trees, and then sweeping gently
round the shoulder of the hill, exposed a beautiful deer park--he had
before his eyes a fine Elizabethan house, rising grey upon a little
eminence at the distance of some four or five hundred yards,--it seemed
that some old remembrance, some agitating vision of the days gone by,
came over the horseman's mind. He pulled in his rein, clasped his hands
together, and gazed around with a look of sad and painful recognition.
At the end of a minute or two, however, he recovered himself, rode on to
the front of the house we have mentioned, and dismounting from his
horse, pulled the bell-rope which action was instantly followed by a
long peal heard from within.