In through the open window came the sound of the tramping of many feet and the whisper of subdued voices.
Kingsnorth hurried out on to the path and saw a number of men and women walking slowly down the drive, in the centre of which the soldiers were carrying a body on some branches. Riding beside them was his sister Angela with her groom.
"What new horror is this?" he thought, as he hurried down the path to meet the procession.
CHAPTER V
ANGELA
Wilberforce Kingsnorth left three children: Nathaniel—whose acquaintance we have already made, and who in a large measure inherited much of his father's dominant will and hardheadedness—Monica, the elder daughter, and Angela the younger.
Nathaniel was the old man's favourite.
While still a youth he inculcated into the boy all the tenets of business, morality and politics that had made Wilberforce prosperous.
Pride in his name: a sturdy grasp of life: an unbending attitude toward those beneath him, and an abiding reverence for law and order and fealty to the throne—these were the foundations on which the father built Nathaniel's character.