Here and there lay scattered among the fields and woods innumerable farm-houses and granges, the abodes of small freeholders, once tenants and vassals of the great St. Aubyns; and, at about six miles from the Hall, nestled in a green valley, through which ran a clear, bright trout-stream to join the turbulent torrent, stood the little market town of Widecomb-Under-Moor, from their unalienated property in which the family of St. Aubyn derived the most valuable portion of their incomes.
Over the whole of this pleasant and peaceful tract, whether it was still owned by themselves, or had passed into the hands of the free yeomanry, the Lords of Widecomb still held manorial rights, and the few feudal privileges which had survived the revolution; and, through the whole of it, Sir Miles St. Aubyn was regarded with unmixed love and veneration, while the boy Jasper was looked upon almost as a son in every family, though some old men would shake their heads doubtfully, and mutter sage but unregarded saws concerning his present disposition and future prospects; and some old grandames would prognosticate disasters, horrors, and even crimes as hanging over his career, in consequence, perhaps, of the inauspicious change in the patronymic of his race.
They were a happy and an unsophisticated race who inhabited those lonely glens. Sufficiently well provided to be above the want of necessaries, or the fear of poverty, they were not so far removed from the necessity of labor as to have incurred vicious ambitions—moderate, frugal, and industrious, they lived uncorrupted, and died happy in their unlearned innocence.
It was the boast of the district that bars and locks were appendages to doors entirely unusual and useless; that the cage of Widecomb had not held a tenant since the days of stiff old Oliver; and that no deed of violence or blood had ever tainted those calm vales with horror.
Alas! how soon was that boast to be annulled; how soon were the details of a dread domestic tragedy, full of dark horrors, and reproductive of guilt through generations, to render the very name of Widecomb a terror, and to invest the beauteous scenery with images of superstitious awe and hatred. But we must not anticipate, nor seek as yet to penetrate the secrets of that destiny, which even during the morn of promising young life, seemed to overhang the house,
And hushed in grim repose,
Expects its evening prey.
——
CHAPTER I.
The Peril.