would be better that he should live, in order that his daughter might
still have bread to eat and a house of her own over her head. Though he
was now an impoverished man, there was still left to him the means of
keeping up the old home; and he told himself that it must, if possible,
be so kept that a few pounds annually might be put by for Clara. The
old carriage-horses were sold, and the park was let to a farmer, up to
the hall door of the castle. So much the squire could do; but as to the
putting by of the few pounds, any dependence on such exertion as that
on his part would, we may say, be very precarious.

Belton Castle was not in truth a castle. Immediately before the front
door, so near to the house as merely to allow of a broad road running
between it and the entrance porch, there stood an old tower, which gave
its name to the residence an old square tower, up which the Amedroz
boys for three generations had been able to climb by means of the ivy
and broken stones in one of the inner corners and this tower was a
remnant of a real castle that had once protected the village of Belton.
The house itself was an ugly residence, three stories high, built in
the time of George II, with low rooms and long passages, and an immense
number of doors. It was a large unattractive house unattractive that
is, as regarded its own attributes but made interesting by the beauty
of the small park in which it stood. Belton Park did not, perhaps,
contain much above a hundred acres, but the land was so broken into
knolls and valleys, in so many places was the rock seen to be cropping
up through the verdure, there were in it so many stunted old oaks, so
many points of vantage for the lover of scenery, that no one would
believe it to be other than a considerable domain. The farmer who took
it, and who would not under any circumstances undertake to pay more
than seventeen shillings an acre for it, could not be made to think
that it was in any way considerable. But Belton Park, since first it