"I was foolish," he thought, "not to leave Manners in London for a day, and get all the joyful absurdities of a first welcome over before he came down. However, my aunt would have it so; and it cannot be avoided now."
As they proceeded, the purple of the evening died entirely away, and a gray dimness fell over tree, and stream, and hill. Star by star looked out, grew brighter and brighter, as the wandering ball on which we travel through the inconceivable depth turned our hemisphere from the superior light, and at length all was night.
In the lapse of ten minutes more, the road--which, winding about between the hills and the stream, was forced often out of its true direction,--had conducted them to a steep bank overhanging a wider part of the valley, and here Colonel Manners divined--for he could scarcely be said to see--that a scattered but considerable village lay before them. Up and down the sides of the hill, a hundred twinkling lights in cottage windows were sprinkled like glow-worms among the darker masses of orchard and copsewood; and now and then, as the travellers advanced, a bright glare suddenly flashed forth from some opening door; and then again was as speedily extinguished, when the entrance or the exit of the visiter was accomplished. Some watchful dog, too, caught the sound of horses' feet, and, after one or two desultory barks, set up his tongue into a continual peal. His neighbours of the canine race took the signal, and--not at all unlike the human species--ever inclined to clamour, yelped forth in concert, whether they had heard or not the noise that roused their comrade's indignation, so that the village was soon one continued roar with the efforts of various hairy throats.
The salutation, however, was sweet to Edward de Vaux, for it spoke of home--or at least of a dwelling that was dearer than any other home he might possess; and, pausing a moment, he pointed onward to a spot, where, on the edge of the hill beyond the village, might be seen, cutting sharp upon the pale silvery gray of the western sky, the dark outline of a large house, with a plentiful supply of chimneys, of an architecture somewhat less light and fanciful than that of Palladio, but very well suited to a dwelling in the land of peace and comfort.
"That is my aunt's house," said De Vaux, "and, though it is nearly three miles by the road from the spot where that horseman passed us, it is not much more than three-quarters of a mile by the path over the hill. But that path," he added, "is impracticable for horses, or I should certainly have risked breaking your neck, Manners, rather than take this long tedious round."
Now, strange to say, the round that they had taken seemed longer and more tedious to Edward de Vaux, when he came within sight of the mansion which was to end his journey, than it had done at any other moment of the ride. But so it was; and without inquiring into things with which we have nothing to do, we may conclude that he felt some of those vague, unreasonable doubts and apprehensions, which almost every one experiences on the first view of one's home after a long absence--those fears which are the very children of our hopes--that anxiety which the uncertainty of human fate impresses upon our minds, till we are sure that all is well. Who is there that has not gazed up at his own dwelling-place as he returned from far, and asked himself, with a sudden consciousness of the instability of all things, "Shall I find nothing gone amiss? Has no misfortune trod that threshold? Has disease or sorrow never visited it? Has death turned his steps aside?"
Whatever it was that Edward de Vaux felt, although the round seemed a long one, and the time tedious that it had consumed, he yet drew in his rein, not so as to bring his horse quite up, but to check him into a walk; while he pointed out the house to his companion, and gazed at its dark and distant mass himself. At that very moment, a single ray glimmered in one of the windows, passed on into another, and then three windows suddenly streamed forth with light. It looked like a beacon to say that all was well; and though no man in the present day cares a straw for things that in other years, when skilfully applied, have won battles and overthrown dynasties--I mean omens--yet every man has a silent, unacknowledged, foolish little system of augury of his own; and Edward de Vaux and his companion, at the sight of this dexter omen, set spurs to their horses, and rode merrily on their way.
[CHAPTER II.]
The reader, who loves variety, will not be displeased, perhaps, to find that this story, leaving the two horsemen whom we have conducted a short stage on their way, now turns to another of our characters not less important to our tale.
In the same wood, which we have already described as clothing the hills and skirting the road over which De Vaux and his companion were travelling, but in a far more intricate part thereof than that into which the reader's eye has hitherto penetrated, might be seen, at the hour which we have chosen for the commencement of our tale, the figure of a man creeping quietly, but quickly, along a path so covered by the long branches of the underwood, that it could only be followed out by one who knew well the deepest recesses of the forest.