The twilight of a winter’s evening was fast falling into night, and old John Thornton sat dozing by the fire.  His face looked worn and aged, and anyone might see the old man was unhappy.

What could there be to vex him?  Not poverty, at all events, for not a year ago a relation had left him L5,000, and a like sum to his daughter, Mary.  And his sister—­a quiet, good old maid—­had come to live with him, so that now he was comfortably off, and had with him the only two relations he cared about to make his old age happy.  His daughter Mary—­a beautiful girl, merry, impetuous, and thoughtless—­was standing at the window.

The white gate swings on its hinges, and a tall man comes, with rapid, eager steps, up the walk.  The maid, bringing in candles, announces:  “Mr. George Hawker!”

As the light fell on him, any man or woman might have exclaimed instantly, and with justice, “What a handsome fellow!” Handsome he was, without doubt, and yet the more you looked at him the less you liked him.  The thin lips, the everlasting smile, the quick, suspicious glance were fearfully repulsive.  He was the only son of a small farmer in one of the outlying hamlets of Drumston.  His mother had died when he was very young, and he had had little education, and strange stories were in circulation about that lonely farmhouse, not much to the credit of father or son; which stories John Thornton must, in his position of clergyman, have heard somewhat of; so that one need hardly wonder at his uneasiness when he saw him enter.

For Mary Thornton adored him.  The rest of the village disliked and mistrusted him; but she, with a strange perversity, loved him with her whole heart and soul.  After a few words, the lovers were whispering in the window.

Presently the gate goes again, and another footfall is heard approaching.

That is James Stockbridge.  I should know that step in a thousand.  As he entered the parlour, John’s face grew bright, and he held out his hand to him; but he got rather a cool reception from the pair at the window.

Old John and he were as father and son, and sat there before the cheerful blaze smoking their pipes.

“How are your Southdowns looking, Jim?” says the vicar.  “How is Scapegrace Hamlyn?”

“He is very well, sir.  He and I are thinking of selling up and going to New South Wales.”

The vicar was “knocked all of a heap” at Jim’s announcement; but, recovering a little, said, “You hear him?  He is going to sell his estate—­250 acres of the best land in Devon—­and go and live among the convicts.  And who is going with him?  Hamlyn, the wise!  Oh, dear me!  And what is he going for?”

That was a question apparently hard to answer.  Yet I think the real cause was standing there, with a look of unbounded astonishment upon her pretty face.

“Going to leave us, James!” she cried.  “Why, whatever shall I do without you?”