Bridgenorth was already in possession of a fair third of his estate,
and had various pecuniary claims affecting the remainder, to the
extent of one-third more. He endeavoured even to forget, what it was
still more difficult not to remember, the altered situation in which
they and their mansions now stood to each other.

Before the Civil War, the superb battlements and turrets of Martindale
Castle looked down on the red brick-built Hall, as it stole out from
the green plantations, just as an oak in Martindale Chase would have
looked beside one of the stunted and formal young beech-trees with
which Bridgenorth had graced his avenue; but after the siege which we
have commemorated, the enlarged and augmented Hall was as much
predominant in the landscape over the shattered and blackened ruins of
the Castle, of which only one wing was left habitable, as the youthful
beech, in all its vigour of shoot and bud, would appear to the same
aged oak stripped of its boughs, and rifted by lightning, one-half
laid in shivers on the ground, and the other remaining a blackened and
ungraceful trunk, rent and splintered, and without either life or
leaves. Sir Geoffrey could not but feel, that the situation and
prospects were exchanged as disadvantageously for himself as the
appearance of their mansions; and that though the authority of the man
in office under the Parliament, the sequestrator, and the
committeeman, had been only exerted for the protection of the Cavalier
and the malignant, they would have been as effectual if applied to
procure his utter ruin; and that he was become a client, while his
neighbour was elevated into a patron.

There were two considerations, besides the necessity of the case and
the constant advice of his lady, which enabled Peveril of the Peak to
endure, with some patience, this state of degradation. The first was,