He had unconsciously come to a stop at the noble old oak gates, flung hospitably open, of a wide-spreading park, through one of whose vistas a grand old mansion in the most elaborate manner of the Elizabethan style was visible. He looked up, and the beauty of the prospect struck him as if it had been created by an enchanter's wand. He looked back along the road by which he had come, and found that he had completely lost sight of Amherst. He went a pace or two beyond the gate pillars. A hale old man was employed in nailing up a trailing branch of jessamine against the porch of the lodge. "Good afternoon, old gentleman. This is a fine place, I fancy." "Good afternoon, sir. It is a fine place. You'll not see many finer in Amherst. Would you like to walk through it, sir? You're quite welcome." "Thank you. I should like to walk through it. I have never been down this way before. What is the name of this place, and to whom does it belong?" "It is called the Sycamores, sir, and it belongs to Sir Thomas Boldero." CHAPTER VII. AMONG THE BEECHES. A fine avenue of beech-trees led from the gate through which George Dallas had passed, to the house which had attracted his admiration. These grandest and most beautiful of trees were not, however, the distinguishing feature of the place: not its chief pride. "The Sycamores" was so called in honour of a profusion of trees of that kind, said in the neighbourhood to have no rivals in all England. Be that as it might, the woodland scenery in Sir Thomas Boldero's noble park was beautiful in the highest degree, and of such beauty George Dallas was keenly and artistically appreciative. The tender loveliness of the spring was abroad throughout the land; its voices, its gladness, its perfumes, were around him everywhere, and as the young man strolled on under the shadow of the great branches, bearing their tender burden of bright, soft, green, half-unclosed buds, the weight and blackness of care seemed to be lifted off him, and his heart opened to fresh, pure, simple aspirations, long strangers to his jaded but not wholly vitiated character. He was very young, and the blessed influence of youth told upon him, its power of receiving impressions, its faculty of enjoyment, its susceptibility to external things--a blessing or a curse as it is used--its buoyancy, its hopefulness. As George Dallas turned from the broad smooth carriage-way, and went wandering over the green elastic turf of the carefully kept park, winding in and out through the boles of the grand old trees, treading now on a tender twig, again on a wild flower, now startling from her nest a brooding lark, anon stopping to listen to a burst of melody from some songster free from domestic cares, he was hardly recognizable as the man who had sat listening to Philip Deane's hard worldly talk at the Strand tavern the day before.