II. AN ADVENTURE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT
III. DIPWELL FARM
IV. I HAVE A TASTE OF GRANDEUR
V. I HAVE A DEAR FRIEND
VI. A TALE OF A GOOSE



CHAPTER I

I AM A SUBJECT OF CONTENTION

One midnight of a winter month the sleepers in Riversley Grange were
awakened by a ringing of the outer bell and blows upon the great hall-
doors. Squire Beltham was master there: the other members of the
household were, his daughter Dorothy Beltham; a married daughter Mrs.
Richmond; Benjamin Sewis, an old half-caste butler; various domestic
servants; and a little boy, christened Harry Lepel Richmond, the squire's
grandson. Riversley Grange lay in a rich watered hollow of the Hampshire
heath-country; a lonely circle of enclosed brook and pasture, within view
of some of its dependent farms, but out of hail of them or any dwelling
except the stables and the head-gardener's cottage. Traditions of
audacious highwaymen, together with the gloomy surrounding fir-scenery,
kept it alive to fears of solitude and the night; and there was that in
the determined violence of the knocks and repeated bell-peals which
assured all those who had ever listened in the servants' hall to
prognostications of a possible night attack, that the robbers had come at
last most awfully. A crowd of maids gathered along the upper corridor of
the main body of the building: two or three footmen hung lower down, bold
in attitude. Suddenly the noise ended, and soon after the voice of old