The grim stone vaults, the dimly-lighted chamber, the roofless hall, he peopled in imagination with mail-clad soldiers, their pikes glittering and banners waving, as his mind filled with feudal fancies and monastic longings, and he loved the old walls, which had been the cradle of his race, especially when they, and the masses of dark-green ivy that clothed them, were steeped in the redness of the setting sun, and the gathering shadows of evening added to their melancholy, their stillness, and gloom.
He felt his heart swell with romance and pride, as he recalled all his father and even Patty Fripp had told him of the Hamptons of other days, and of the rights he had lost, and bold and daring were the fancies that filled the mind of the brave boy at times, for he was now at the age when all life is illusion.
The sea-shore was his other favourite resort, and he spent hours there listening to the lap, lapping of the waves upon the shingle, and marvelling of other lands that were far, far away; and there was one morning, the excitement of which he never forgot, when a nameless and unknown wreck was found floating in the bay, a mastless and battered hulk—battered by the fury of some great storm, in which the water had contended with the spirits of the air, till all on board had perished.
Another haunt was a ruined and unused mill at Mill-brook, where the old wheel, covered with green moss and grey lichens, looked so picturesque, while the brook foamed and boiled unheeded beneath it, and some ancient trees with drooping branches cast a shadow over the ivied walls, where all, so busy once, was now silent, and made up a picture of which Derval never wearied in his childish rambles, though the pixies were said to grind their corn there at night, when the old wheel, so silent and still by day, was seen revolving furiously in the light of the moon.
Thus, a strange and shadowy expression—induced by his loneliness—began to come into the boy's eyes, as if he had thoughts no one understood, or cared to understand, and as if by day he dreamed of things unthought of by others. Mr. Asperges Laud saw all this in his face, and longed to see the little lad away from Finglecombe and its influence, and the wish was likely to be soon gratified.
CHAPTER III.
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP "AMETHYST."
At last there comes a crisis in the affairs of Derval Hampton.
"How often am I to urge that this boy of yours should be sent to a boarding school or—to sea, dearest Greville," he heard his step-mother say decisively, but in a suave manner she was cunning enough to adopt with his father, when she had some important end in view, just as he took his seat at a side-table for breakfast to which he had been permanently banished, while little Rookleigh perched in a baby-chair (held in by a cross-bar) sat by his mamma's side and got tiny bits of the best of everything from her own hands.
As her husband made no immediate reply, but sat immersed in the "money article" of the Times, she repeated her observation or suggestion in a louder key, when he said,