picture gallery.  Lady Madeline Badsworth, famous for her beauty in some remote and chivalrous past, gazed down at Sir Morton while he sat at meals, suggesting to the imaginative beholder a world of scorn in her lovely painted eyes,—­and a heroic young Badsworth who had perished at the battle of Marston Moor, stood proudly out of one of the dark canvases, his gauntleted hand on the hilt of his sword and a smile of pained wrath on his lips, as one who should say, beholding the new possessor of his ancient home ’To such base uses must we come at last!’

Surrounded by gold-framed Badsworths, young and old, Sir Morton ate his fried bacon and ‘swilled’ his tea, with a considerable noise in swallowing, getting gradually redder in the face as he proceeded with his meal.  He was by no means a bad-looking old gentleman,—­his sixty years sat lightly upon his broad shoulders, and he was tall and well set up, though somewhat too stout in what may be politely called the ‘lower chest’ direction.  His face was plump, florid and clean-shaven, and what hair he still possessed was of a pleasantly-bright silver hue.  The first impression he created was always one of kindness and benevolence,—­the hearts of women especially invariably went out to him, and murmurs of ‘What a dear old man!’ and ’What a darling old man!’ frequently escaped lips feminine in softest accents.  He was very courtly to women,—­when he was not rude; and very kind to the poor,—­when he was not mean.  His moods were fluctuating; his rages violent; his temper obstinate.  When he did not succeed in getting his own way, his petulant sulks resembled those of a spoilt child put in a corner, only they lasted longer.  There was one shop in Riversford which he had not entered for ten years, because its owner had ventured, with trembling respect, to contradict him on a small matter.  Occasionally he could be quite the ‘dear darling old man’ his lady admirers judged him to be,—­but after all, his servants knew him best.  To them, ’Sir Morton was a caution.’  And that is precisely what he was; the definition entirely summed up his character.  He had one great passion,—­the desire to make himself ‘the’ most important person in the county, and to be written about in the local paper, a hazy and often ungrammatical organ For the chancel appeared to demand special reverence, from the nature of a wonderful discovery made in it during the work of restoration,—­a discovery which greatly helped to sustain and confirm the name of both church and village as ‘St. Rest,’ and to entirely disprove the frequently-offered suggestion that it could ever have been meant for ‘St. East.’  And this is how the discovery happened.

One never-to-be-forgotten morning when the workmen were hewing away at the floor of the chancel, one of their pickaxes came suddenly in contact with a hard substance which gave back a metallic echo when the blow of the implement came down upon it.  Working with caution, and gradually clearing away a large quantity of loose stones, broken pieces of mosaic and earth, a curious iron handle was discovered attached to a large screw which was apparently embedded deep in the ground.  Walden was at once informed of this strange ‘find’ and hastened to the spot to examine the mysterious object.  He was not very long in determining its nature.