When the boy Godwin was five years old, the death of his blind aunt came as a relief to means which were in every sense overtaxed.  Twelve months later, a piece of unprecedented good fortune seemed to place the Peaks beyond fear of want, and at the same time to supply Nicholas with a fulfilment of hopeless desires.  By the death of Mrs Peak’s brother, they came into possession of a freehold house and about nine hundred pounds.  The property was situated some twelve miles from the Midland town of Twybridge, and thither they at once removed.  At Twybridge lived Mrs. Peak’s elder sister, Miss Cadman; but between this lady and her nearest kinsfolk there had been but slight correspondence—­the deceased Cadman left her only a couple of hundred pounds.  With capital at command, Nicholas Peak took a lease of certain fields near his house, and turned farmer.  The study of chemistry had given a special bent to his economic speculations; he fancied himself endowed with exceptional aptitude for agriculture, and the scent of the furrow brought all his energies into feverish activity—­activity which soon impoverished him:  that was in the order of things.  ‘Ungainly integrity’ and ’headlong irascibility’ wrought the same results for the ex-dispenser as for the Ayrshire husbandman.  His farming came to a chaotic end; and when the struggling man died, worn out at forty-three, his wife and children (there was now a younger boy, Oliver, named after the Protector) had no very bright prospects.

Things went better with them than might have been anticipated.  To Mrs. Peak her husband’s death was not an occasion of unmingled mourning.  For the last few years she had suffered severely from domestic discord, and when left at peace by bereavement she turned with a sense of liberation to the task of caring for her children’s future.  Godwin was just thirteen, Oliver was eleven; both had been well schooled, and with the help of friends they might soon be put in the way of self-support.  The daughter, Charlotte, sixteen years of age, had accomplishments which would perhaps be profitable.  The widow decided to make a home in Twybridge, where Miss Cadman kept a millinery shop.  By means of this connection, Charlotte presently found employment for her skill in fine needlework.  Mrs. Peak was incapable of earning money, but the experiences of her early married life enabled her to make more than the most of the pittance at her disposal.

Miss Cadman was a woman of active mind, something of a busy-body—­ dogmatic, punctilious in her claims to respect, proud of the acknowledgment by her acquaintances that she was not as other tradespeople; her chief weakness was a fanatical ecclesiasticism, the common blight of English womanhood.  Circumstances had allowed her a better education than generally falls to women of that standing, and in spite of her shop she succeeded in retaining the friendship of certain ladies long ago her schoolfellows.  Among these were the Misses Lumb—­middle-aged