THE DISOWNED

by Edward Bulwer Lytton




CHAPTER I.

I'll tell you a story if you please to attend.
G. KNIGHT: Limbo.

It was the evening of a soft, warm day in the May of 17--. The sun
had already set, and the twilight was gathering slowly over the large,
still masses of wood which lay on either side of one of those green
lanes so peculiar to England. Here and there, the outline of the
trees irregularly shrunk back from the road, leaving broad patches of
waste land covered with fern and the yellow blossoms of the dwarf
furze, and at more distant intervals thick clusters of rushes, from
which came the small hum of gnats,--those "evening revellers"
alternately rising and sinking in the customary manner of their
unknown sports,--till, as the shadows grew darker and darker, their
thin and airy shapes were no longer distinguishable, and no solitary
token of life or motion broke the voiceless monotony of the
surrounding woods.

The first sound which invaded the silence came from the light, quick
footsteps of a person whose youth betrayed itself in its elastic and
unmeasured tread, and in the gay, free carol which broke out by fits
and starts upon the gentle stillness of the evening.