CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

I.[A STRIKING LIKENESS]
II.[ALLAN CAREW'S PEOPLE]
III.["A HOME OF ANCIENT PEACE"]
IV.["IN THE ALL-GOLDEN AFTERNOON"]
V.[MORE NEW-COMERS]
VI.[LIKE THE MOTH TO THE FLAME]
VII.["O THE RARE SPRING-TIME!"]
VIII.[NOT YET]
IX.["SO GREW MY OWN SMALL LIFE COMPLETE"]
X.["OUR DREAMS PURSUE OUR DEAD, AND DO NOT FIND"]
XI.[THE MASTER OF DISCOMBE]

SONS OF FIRE.

CHAPTER I.

A STRIKING LIKENESS.

The meet was at the Pig and Whistle, at Melbury, nine miles off. Rather a near meet—compared with the usual appointments of the South Sarum hounds—the ostler remarked, as Allan Carew mounted a hired hunter in the yard of the Duke's Head, chief, and indeed only possible inn for a gentleman to put up at, in the little village of Matcham, a small but prosperous hamlet, lying in a hollow of the hills between Salisbury and Andover. He had only arrived on the previous afternoon, and he was sallying forth in the crisp March morning, on an unknown horse in an unfamiliar country, to hunt with a pack whose master's name he had heard for the first time that day.

"Can he jump?" asked Allan, as he scrutinized the lean, upstanding bay; not a bad kind of horse by any means, but with that shabby, under-groomed and over-worked appearance common to hirelings.