What had caused the church to be deserted had kept it from being desecrated; it was clean out of the way.  No gypsy, nor vagrant, ever slept there, and even the boys of the village kept their distance.  Nothing would have pleased them better than to break the sacred windows time had spared, and defile the graves of their forefathers with pitch-farthing and other arts; but it was three miles off, and there was a lion in the way:  they must pass in sight of Squire Raby’s house; and, whenever they had tried it, he and his groom had followed them on swift horses that could jump as well as gallop, had caught them in the churchyard, and lashed them heartily; and the same night notice to quit had been given to their parents, who were all Mr. Raby’s weekly tenants:  and this had led to a compromise and flagellation.

Once or twice every summer a more insidious foe approached.  Some little party of tourists, including a lady, who sketched in water and never finished anything, would hear of the old church, and wander up to it.  But Mr. Raby’s trusty groom was sure to be after them, with orders to keep by them, under guise of friendship, and tell them outrageous figments, and see that they demolished not, stole not, sculptured not.

All this was odd enough in itself, but it astonished nobody who knew Mr. Raby.  His father and predecessor had guarded the old church religiously in his day, and was buried in it, by his own orders; and, as for Guy Raby himself, what wonder he respected it, since his own mind, like that old church, was out of date, and a relic of the past?

An antique Tory squire, nursed in expiring Jacobitism, and cradled in the pride of race; educated at Oxford, well read in books, versed in county business, and acquainted with trade and commerce; yet puffed up with aristocratic notions, and hugging the very prejudices our nobility are getting rid of as fast as the vulgar will let them.

He had a sovereign contempt for tradespeople, and especially for manufacturers.  Any one of those numerous disputes between masters and mechanics, which distinguish British industry, might have been safely referred to him, for he abhorred and despised them both with strict impartiality.

The lingering beams of a bright December day still gilded the moss-clad roof of that deserted church, and flamed on its broken panes, when a young man came galloping toward it, from Hillsborough, on one of those powerful horses common in that district.

He came so swiftly and so direct, that, ere the sun had been down twenty minutes, he and his smoking horse had reached a winding gorge about three furlongs from the church.  Here, however, the bridle-road, which had hitherto served his turn across the moor, turned off sharply toward the village of Cairnhope, and the horse had to pick his way over heather, and bog, and great loose stones.  He lowered his nose, and hesitated more than once.  But the rein was loose