COLONEL THORNDYKE'S SECRET

CHAPTER I.


Squire Thorndyke, of the Manor House of Crawley, was, on the 1st of
September; 1782, walking up and down the little terrace in front of the
quaint old house in an unusually disturbed mood. He was a man of forty
three or four, stoutly and strongly built, and inclined to be portly.
Save the loss of his wife four years before, there had been but little
to ruffle the easy tenor of his life. A younger son, he had, at his
mother's death, when he was three and twenty, come in for the small
estate at Crawley, which had been her jointure.

For ten years he had led a life resembling that of most of his
neighbors; he had hunted and shot, been a regular attendant at any
main of cocks that was fought within fifteen miles of Crawley, had
occasionally been up to London for a week or two to see the gay doings
there. Of an evening he had generally gone down to the inn, where he
talked over, with two or three of his own condition and a few of the
better class of farmers, the news of the day, the war with the French,
the troubles in Scotland, the alarming march of the Young Pretender, and
his defeat at Culloden--with no very keen interest in the result, for
the Southern gentry and yeomen, unlike those in the North, had no strong
leanings either way. They had a dull dislike for Hanoverian George, but
no great love for the exiled Stuarts, whose patron, the King of France,
was an enemy of England.

More often, however, their thoughts turned upon local topics--the
holding up of the coach of Sir James Harris or Squire Hamilton by
highwaymen; the affray between the French smugglers and the Revenue men
near Selsea Bill or Shoreham; the delinquencies of the poaching gangs;
the heaviness of the taxes, and the price of corn.

At the age of thirty-three Squire Thorndyke married the daughter of
a neighboring landowner; a son was born and three years later Mrs.
Thorndyke died. Since then the Squire had led a more retired life; he
still went down to smoke his pipe at the inn parlor, but he gave up his
visits to town; and cock fights, and even bull baiting, were no longer
attractions to him. He was known as a good landlord to the three or four
farmers who held land under him; was respected and liked in the village,
where he was always ready to assist in cases of real distress; was of an
easygoing disposition and on good terms with all his neighbors.