The Argosy — page 98: what you’re looking at

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

The Mysteries of Heron Dyke. 85 to the head of the house: but the squire would have none of them. He hated the whole ‘“‘ vile crew,” root and stump, he said; and if any one of them ever dared to darken his threshold, he vowed that he would shoot him without compunction. It was Squire Denison’s firm and fixed belief that the spies sometimes seen around his house —for spies he declared them to be—were emissaries of his relatives, sent to see whether he was not likely to die before his seventieth birthday. We made the squire’s acquaintance at his interview with Captain Lennox, after the return of the latter from London. His sixty- ninth birthday was just over. Could he but live eleven months more, all would be well. Ella Winter, in that case, would be heiress to all he had to leave, for he should will it to her; and his hated cousin, and his cousin’s family, would be left out in the cold, as they deserved to be. As everybody knew, the squire had been more or less of an invalid for many years; but latterly his complaint had assumed a rather alarming character, and there were weeks together when he never crossed the threshold of his own rooms. His dis- order was a mortal one—one that would most certainly carry him off at no very distant date—but that was a fact known to himself and Dr. Spreckley alone. For the last twenty years the squire had not kept up an estab- lishment at the Hall in accordance with his income and position in the county. There was Aaron Stone, his faithful old body- servant and major-domo, and Aaron’s wife, who was almost as old as he was. ‘There was the old couple’s handsome grandson, Hubert, who was the squire’s steward, bailiff, gamekeeper, and sometimes secretary and companion. ‘There were the gardener and his wife at the lodge on the Nullington road. When to these were added a coachman, a stable-boy, and two or three women-servants, the whole of the establishment was told. Mr. Denison had not given a dinner- party for years ; or, for the matter of that, gone to one. Now and then an old acquaintance—such as the vicar, or Sir Peter Dock- wray, or Colonel Townson—would drop in unceremoniously, and take the chance of whatever there happened to be for dinner; but beyond such casual visitants, very little company was kept. Mr. Denison had been compelled to give up horse exercise some few years ago. He took his airings in a lumbering, old-fashioned brougham, which might have been stylish and handsome once. Very often nothing occupied the shafts but a grey mare, that was nearly as lumbering as the vehicle itself. Old Aaron could get its best paces out of it when he drove it in the dog-cart to Nullington market and back. Ella Winter had a young chestnut filly for riding, powerful yet gentle, for which her uncle had given quite a fancy price. Another horse in the squire’s stables was a big, serviceable hack, which Hubert Stone looked upon as being for his sole use ; indeed, no one but himself ever thought of mounting it. He rode eonnichooks (CO)