Excerpt: "It was the evening of one of the last days of spring, when that delightful season is blending with the approaching summer, and when the sun was setting on one of those green and fertile landscapes which we find nowhere but in England, that a young man paused upon the crest of the eminence which overlooks, from the southward, the beautiful little vale and sequestered village of Acton-Rennel, and, with a kindling eye and flushing cheek, surveyed the scene and all its features, on which he had not gazed for what now seemed a long and weary lapse of time. Morley Ashton—for it was he whom we introduce at once to the reader—was a handsome and active young fellow, with a lithe and well-knit figure, somewhat above the middle height; but he was thin and rather sallow in face, as if wasted by recent sickness or suffering. His short-shorn hair and well-pointed moustache, together with the general contour of his head, suggested the idea of a soldier, and yet no soldier was he. Forethought and penetration were perceptible in the form and lines of his brow; his keen, bright, but contemplative eyes, and the shape of his lower jaw, betokened firmness, decision, and courage; and well did Morley Ashton require them all, for these pages, and the course of our story, which opens at no remote date, but only a very short time ago, will show that he had a very desperate game to play."
