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out from this were a well-manicured lawn, now silvery in the haze, and then smooth fields stretching in all directions, broken only by orderly hedgerows and occasional patches of woodland. Allingham had grown up with this land, and loved it—not with the fierce attachment some men felt for their blessed plot, but with the more binding affection of a man for a loved sister or mother. It was the kind of feeling that required no loud demonstrations or declarations, which were anyway for eign to Allingham’s nature, but that incorporated a sense of both past and future and of his place in the scheme of things.
    It was the future he was thinking of now. He had been a docile child, taking his home for granted in the all-encom passing way children have, and later a rather solemn boy whose interests were confined more to the library than to the fields or the stables. At Harrow and Cambridge, he had been a firm favourite of the masters, and later, in London, he had been taken up by a circle that included Sydney Smith, Lord Greville, the publisher John Murray, and even the poet laureate, Mr Southey, on those occasions when the poet journeyed south from Greta Hall. Allingham’s value to these men was less as a colleague than as an audience, which naturally led him to be much valued and, by the age of twenty-one, to have turned himself into something of a pedant.
    From this fate he was rescued by the sudden death of his father and the subsequent necessity to look after his inheri tance, which was a good deal richer than he had antic ipated, William Allingham having been a cautious man about advertising his wealth in earshot of encroaching relatives. As a result of this sudden windfall, the young Mr Al lingham found himself much sought-after in other London circles as well—particularly by mothers of eligible daugh ters, who quickly discovered in the taciturn young man re serves of wit and amiability to which they had hitherto been blind. To this particular fate, however, Mr Allingham soon found the attractions of managing an estate and providing for his widowed mother infinitely preferable.
    People at Brookfield were, rather to his surprise, altogether different from the narrow London society he knew —or for that matter the one into which he was subse quently thrust. He admired a good poem or a stirring speech in the Commons, but he came to appreciate equally a fine piece of craftsmanship by the estate carpenter and the ancient knowledge of a rustic seer. As brilliant as had been the balls and soirées he attended during the Season, he found himself much more at ease taking dinner with the local squire or joining in at a harvest fair.
    Back into his desk drawer went the rather dry essays and political analyses he had once written (pseudonymously, of course) for London periodicals; even his correspondence suffered as he took a greater interest in the crops being grown on his lands and the home industries of his tenants. It was not very long before he had become well enough liked that servants, ten ants, and neighbours even declared—sincerely, if forgetful ly—that nothing could have been more natural than the transfer of masters at Brookfield.
    Of late, however, Allingham had felt a stirring of the rest lessness generally associated with extreme youth or appre hensive middle age. He thought he had been spared the former, and at thirty he must be too young for the latter, but at last he had concluded that it was not so much his own future that concerned him as that of the home so close to his heart. There must be another to take care of it after him, as he had followed his father. He must have a son.
    He had not been entirely sanguine in his explanation to Lord Vernon of his choice of a future mother to such a son, for he understood better than his friend imagined the kind of love he was missing—the kind that Sarah and Vernon had shared and that made Vernon the kind of man Alling ham could admire—but he was firmly convinced