The Landales were within the charmed circle of county people, and highly esteemed in Waterdale, but they had no claim to approach the greatness of the Ridleys and Featherstonhaughs. Landale took his friend to the water, and showed him with pride the beautiful lake, fringed by low hills, with lines of greater peaks in the distance. "There's the Castle on the right hand. I'll ask Ridley to show you all over it some day. It's a wonderful old place; and that is the chase, spreading along to the west. They have some of the finest oaks in the county there. The village lies lower down, but we passed through it, don't you remember? That's the beck, as they call it, meandering down from the hills. Do you see the road, like a white line, above the bridge? There's a most glorious view from that point. Oh yes, I suppose you who have been in Switzerland may despise it perhaps--but we are of a different opinion. I don't think anything in the world can be much finer--the lake in the foreground, and all the hills behind." "You may be sure I shan't despise it," said Abel. How well he knew every point his good-humoured companion showed him!--Not a curve of the shore, not a little bay or inlet that was not far more familiar to him than to Charley. He had gone bird's-nesting in the chase before he was breeched. He had fished in the lake almost before he could speak. He had roamed out and in of all the wonders of the Castle, and could have guided the Ridleys themselves, not to say Charley Landale, about all its holes and corners. But nothing of this dared he to say. He stood and gazed like a man in a dream, feeling that it was unsafe to open his lips, and that even his eyes alone must betray him. But no one suspected him. The good Landales would as soon have believed he came from Jupiter as that he came under false pretences; and Charley believed in him as he believed in the British constitution or any of the other standards which are unquestionable by men of his simplicity of faith.