CHAPTER II. 



When Mr. John Morgan arrived at the Httle country town of 

 Tordon in Cornwall he thought he had never seen a spot 

 which might be more aptly styled " forsaken," but then he 

 had made a long journey from Dumpshire, and had to give 

 up his last two days of hunting with the Cranston. With 

 April begun, and warm and mild at that, there was not much 

 chance of sport, he thought, but then the love of hunting fits 

 badly at first into the chrysalis stage which holds it dormant 

 during the summer months. 



Jack Morgan was keen, but Jack Morgan was good-natured, 

 and an urgent appeal from a maiden aunt who had become 

 suddenly anxious about the honesty of certain tenants of a 

 small property in Cornw^all had caused him to sacrifice the 

 one good quality on the altar of the other. Mr. Morgan was 

 of cheerful disposition, always inclined to look on the bright 

 side of things, just thirty years of age, and possessed of 

 enough to make him comfortably independent. 



There were two things which redeemed the character of 

 Tordon : one, the Duchy Arms Hotel, which, though primi- 

 tive, possessed much homely comfort within ; the other, the 

 fact that the one main street of Tordon was built on a curve. 

 In the latter case the spectator who listlessly gazed at the 

 primitive architecture of the houses as he leaned against the 

 portal of the Duchy Arms felt that there were possibilities in 

 either direction ; there were those attributes of hope which 

 point out that the unexpected may happen, some one come, 

 or something arrive from either direction. A long straight 

 street would, for hours at a time, except on market days, have 

 dashed these attributes to atoms. 



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