Richard Jeffray whipped his black mare out of Hardacre Chase, leaving the gaunt trees, the dew-drenched grass and rotting bracken for the muddy road that curled up towards the moors. He was a slim yet wiry youth, with a sallow face and a pair of sparkling Spanish eyes. A sensitive intelligence showed in every fibre. He wore his own black hair unpowdered, and though nature appeared to have intended him for a macaroni, he boasted more scholarly slovenliness than fashionable elegance in his clothes. Cousin Lot thought him a pretty fellow enough, but too damned womanish to be of any use in the world. The local squires respected his wealth and his breeding, did not hesitate to set their daughters at his service, and chose to despise him over their punch-bowls as a milksop and a fool. Richard topped the heath, and reined in to scan the shadowy slopes of the wilds of Pevensel. In the far south, huge, hog-backed hills brooded over the sea, purple under a passing cloud, or glistening in the slanting sun. South, east, and west rolled the forest land, hill on hill and valley on valley, mist-wrapped, splashed with light or smirched with shadow, a region of gloom, or of mysterious delight. Richard Jeffray sat in the saddle and stared about him like a man refreshed. His pale face colored, his eyes brightened. This forest land, called Pevensel of old, and voted “a damned rubbish heap” by the Baronet Peter, appealed to the sentimentalist as a wild delicacy snatched from the material maw of Mammon. Here were no cropped hedges and sullen fields, no sour and unclean villages, no cabbage gardens, no frowsy and rubbish-ridden farms. Nature had her sway in Pevensel. Even the wild things were clean, sleek, and fair of limb, beautiful according to the idea upon which each had been created. The falcon glimmering under the clouds; the hare scampering amid the heather. These were preferable to clumsy, bandy-legged oafs, and to women whose tongues were as unclean as their garments.