SINGLEHURST MANOR: A Story of Country Life. CHAPTER I. ROBERT CARFAX. Ir was a brilliant afternoon in early summer, and meadow, and wood land, and hedgerow were apparelled in their fairest robes of tender, vivid green. The hawthorn blossom still lingered on its thorny spray; the lilac was in full bloom; the guelder-rose airily tossed its snowy balls in the light warm breeze that rustled in the boughs of the emerald-tasselled sycamore, and shook down the wax-like, ruby-touched petals of the gorgeous horse-chestnut spirals, and waved the golden tresses of the gay laburnum, and stirred the delicate leaflets of the sensitive acacia, whose fragrant pale flowers had not yet unfolded themselves to the warm sunshine of the sweet June day. The village of West Copley was beautifully situated in a wide, well-watered valley, with here and there a tiny glen, or a bosky little dell for diversification; but for the most part consisting of rich, level meadow lands, shady, pleasant woods of no great extent nor of wondrous growth, and long green-bordered roads and lanes crossing and re-crossing each other in every direction. The high-road, once the grand B coach-road to the north, passed right through the village; it was very broad, and the verdurous strips on either sidetwenty or thirty feet in breadth-were sometimes smooth and flower-spangled, the short turf alternating with fragrant beds of the wild thyme, and sometimes tangled over with, thick bramble-brakes or wild-briar thickets, or mingled with waving stretches of the common bracken, or plumy tufts of the ordinary "male-fern." All around rose up long lines of low blue hills and sloping downs; and West Copley was scarcely three miles from a grand old forest that clothed the swelling base of one of the boldest eminences,—a forest that had known royal hunters in its day, that had seen the chase in all its ancient sylvan glory,-a forest that had many a strange old legend and weird story of its own, and that cherished still in its inmost recesses the grey ruins of a timehonoured abbey, whose broken arches, and crumbled walls, and shattered columns attracted the attention of all tourists and artists and lovers of the picturesque who passed that way. Yet, till within the last few years, people generally knew very little about Stanford Abbey; it was out of the way of all who did not turn aside expressly for the purpose of paying it a visit. The stage-coaches only stopped at West Copley when there were passengers to take up or to alight, and strangers were nearly as rare as apparitions in the quiet rural village, that thought Great Copley-a small market town at five miles distance-quite a magnificent metropolis, only about half a degree inferior to London. For at Great Copley "you really might buy anything," as housewifely ladies say-that is, if your desires were moderate, your needs not very urgent, and the shopkeeper not "out" of the exact article you required. But now a railroad ran through Great Copley and West Copley both, and Stanford Abbey and Stanford Forest grew famous, and trains stopped at the pretty little West Copley station six times a day-that is, three times on the up journey, and three times on the down. Still, West Copley |