“Somewhere about a hundred years ago (but in which of our good kings’ reigns, or in which of our sea-coast counties, is needless to be known) there stood, quite by itself, in a parish called Milverstoke, a cottage of the better sort, which no one could have seen, some few years before that in which it is presented to our notice, without its suggesting to him that he was looking at a cottage quite of the old English kind. It was most snug in winter, and in summer very beautiful; glistening, as then it did, in all its fragrant loveliness of jessamine, honeysuckle, and sweet-brier. There, also, stood a bee-hive, in the centre of the garden, which, stretching down to the road-side, was so filled with flowers, especially roses, that nothing whatever could be seen of the ground in which they grew; wherefore it might well be that the busy little personages who occupied the tiny mansion so situated, conceived that the lines had fallen to them in very pleasant places indeed. The cottage was built very substantially, though originally somewhat rudely, and principally of sea-shore stones. It had a thick thatched roof, and the walls were low. In front there were only two windows, with diamond-shaped panes, one above another, the former much larger than the latter, the one belonging to _the_ room of the building, the other to what might be called the chief bed-room; for there were three little dormitories—two being small, and at the back of the cottage. Close behind, and somewhat to the left, stood an elm-tree, its trunk completely covered with ivy; and so effectually sheltering the cottage, and otherwise so materially contributing to its snug, picturesque appearance, that there could be little doubt of the tree’s having reached its maturity before there was any such structure for it to grace and protect. Beside this tree was a wicket, by which was entered a little slip of ground, half garden and half orchard. All the foregoing formed the remnant of a little freehold property, which had belonged to its present owner and to his family before him, for several generations. The initial letter (A) of their name, Ayliffe, was rudely cut in old English character in a piece of stone forming a sort of centre facing over the doorway; and no one then living there knew when that letter had been cut.” Such is the scene, and such the small house, in and from which the events evolve, that form the solemn and instructive narrative. The owner of the cot, the foremost though the humblest personage in the drama, was once a substantial, but is now a reduced yeoman, well stricken in years, being, at the opening of the story, close upon his sixty-eighth year.