The Finger of Fate

CHAPTER ONE.

THE HALF-BROTHERS.

In a wood, within ten miles of Windsor, two youths are seen, gun in
hand, in pursuit of game. A brace of thoroughbred setters, guarding the
cover in front, and a well-equipped keeper, walking obsequiously in the
rear, precludes any suspicion of poaching; though the personal
appearance of the young sportsmen needs no such testimony.

The wood is only an extensive pheasant-cover, and their father is its
owner. They are the sons of General Harding, an old Indian officer,
who, with a hundred thousand pounds, garnered during twenty years'
active service in the East, has purchased an estate in the pleasant
shire of Bucks, in the hope of restoring health to a constitution
impaired upon the hot plains of Hindostan.

A fine old Elizabethan mansion, of red brick, now and then visible
through the openings of the cover, tells that the General has laid out
his lacs with considerable taste, while five hundred acres of finely
timbered park, a "home farm," and half-a-dozen others rented out--to say
nothing of the wood-covers and cottage tenements--prove that the
_ci-devant_ soldier has not carefully collected a hundred thousand
pounds in India to be carelessly squandered in England.

The two young sportsmen, already introduced as his sons, are his only
sons; in short, the only members of his family, with the exception of a
maiden sister, who, being sixty years old, and otherwise extremely
uninteresting, will not figure conspicuously in our tale, however true
it is.