The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 21: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

4° REYNOLDS’ WORKS same level with it, are several tombs and monuments, enclosing the remains of some of the earlier scions of the house of Saxondale. In the middle of this cloister stands a colossal figure, carved in black marble, representing a warrior in complete armour with his vizor closed, and reputed to have been the image of the founder of the Saxondale family in the earliest times of the Tudors. The appearance of this giant statue, in its sable gloom, but in a natural, lifelike attitude, with the lett hand upon the hip, and the right arm extended as if menacingly pointing toward the door, is well calculated to produce a startling effect upon the visitor who, unwarned of its presence there, enters that cloister for the first time, and beholds the colossal image uprearing its huge form in the midst of the dim cathedral light which pervades the place. The reader must not fancy that from this long description of Saxondale Castle we are about to entertain him with the gloomy mysticism or the dark horrors of a romance of the olden time; but it was necessary for the purposes of our nar- rative to record these details in respect to the ancestral seat of a family which is destined to play no mean part upon the stage of our story. Without further preface, therefore, we will proceed to state that in the year 1825 does our narrative open. | At that period Lord Saxondale, the owner of the castle and its immense domain, was a nobleman well stricken in years, but who had recently married a very young wife by whom he had three children. This was his second marriage, and it is necessary that we should inform the reader how and under what circumstances it came to be contracted. Lord Saxondale. had long been a widower and also child- less, the presumptive heir to his title and estates being his nephew, the Honourable Mr. Ralph Farefield. Ralph was an only child, and his birth cost his mother her life. His father, who was Lord Saxondale’s younger brother, died soon after- ward of a fever, and the infant orphan was left entirely dependent upon his noble uncle. Lord Saxondale accepted the sacred trust generously, and, having then no children of his own, brought up his nephew with as much love and affection as if he were his son. His lordship habitually resided at his palatial mansion in London, paying an annual visit of two or three months to his castle in Lincolnshire; and CONNIE NOOO KS (E(0)