30 Hkims ot tbc iDuitttna^jfiel^ 



the exploits of honest Tom there would have been 

 little cause for complaint against her. 



George Forester's forbears had been settled in Shrop- 

 shire for some hundreds of years before he came into 

 the world, and Willey Hall, the place of his birth, was 

 as good a specimen of a quaint old English manor- 

 house as you could have found in England. Nestling 

 in a wooded hollow, with its many gables, its fine massive 

 Tudor chimneys, its ivy-covered walls, it looked as 

 picturesque and comfortable a dwelling-place as any 

 country squire could wish for. And the interior did 

 not belie the promise of the exterior. The spacious 

 oak-panelled hall, the walls hung with old armour, 

 swords, battle-axes, antique firearms and trophies of the 

 Chase, the logs blazing in the capacious fireplace, the 

 grim portraits of the squire's ancestors looking down 

 from the wainscoted walls of the dining-room, all 

 combined to make such a picture of old-world life as 

 would have delighted the heart and inspired the pen 

 of Washington Irving. 



And the master of Willey Hall was a country gentle- 

 man of the good old Sir Roger de Coverley sort. No 

 one was ever turned empty away from his hospitable 

 doors. There was always plenty of broken victuals to 

 be had for the fetching, and for all comers a tankard 

 of good home-brewed ale, a slice of cold mutton, and as 

 much bread and cheese as a hungry man could eat. 

 It is true that Squire Forester's morals were looser 

 than would be tolerated nowadays, for he kept a whole 

 harem of rustic beauties, and preferred the freedom of 

 his illicit amours to the strict bonds of wedlock. But 

 his jovial, easy-going neighbours condoned this little 

 weakness of the squire's in consideration of his many 



