Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. For some time after this the references to Job in my diary are too short to be worth relating. I used often to see the little fellow coming to and from school, and once I caught him and Sally playing truant together. I will tell this incident at length, not that it is important in itself, but because it led to Job's first introduction to the lady who played so large a part in his subsequent history. It was when the blackberries were ripe and the woods offered an overmastering temptation. I think the risks the children ran added, if anything, to their delight, and certainly they paid dearly for their afternoon. They knew that if the schoolmaster complained of their absence they would get a beating at home, for this was by no means the first time they had playedtruant together. But besides this ordinary danger, they had made up their minds to face a far more awful one, and risk encountering the wrath of Lady Elizabeth Hinton and her gamekeepers. For the finest blackberries grew in Hinton Vale. Lady Elizabeth kept the gates strictly locked, and a keeper's lodge stood at each end, for the mile of wooded vale was crowded with game. The vale was in reality a long drive up to the hall, and though the most beautiful country in the district, Lady Elizabeth kept its glories for herself and her numerous London friends. The story ran that the last two Earls her father and grandfather highhanded old gentlemen, had jealously guarded their rights in this particular, and that this lady, the last of her line, maintained with un relaxed severity the old tradition. The place was haunted by tales of poaching frays, and Job has often told me of his boyish fascination for the old stone cross which marks the spot where Big John, the famous poacher, shot the late Earl's keeper. I have ...
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