The river was the thing which Michael remembered longer than anything else. When a babe in his nurse’s arms he had leaped at its sudden shimmer through the trees, and since then its presence had been ever with him, more or less. It had been his companion and confidant without his knowing it. He went unconsciously to its side to think out his young thoughts, and it carried all his vague meditations gliding down its stream as it flowed between the two fair counties of York and Durham. Of course, he was not conscious how potent was its presence in his life; he would find that out only when he should come to move in other scenes—when he should get men for his companions instead of the stream. Little more remains to be said of them at this time, save that the mothers of the Langstroths and of Otho Askam were both living then, young and beautiful women, one of them, at least, wrapped up in her husband and her children. Otho was the only one of the lads who had a sister, the little Eleanor, three years of age, and so much younger than they that she never shared their sports; and they knew nothing of her, save when they saw her sometimes walking on the upper terrace, led by her nurse or her mother, when she would sometimes stop and look at them with a pair of great candid eyes, and burst into a laugh at some of their antics. A sturdy-looking, not very pretty child, with little resemblance to Otho in either expression or complexion. CHAPTER I OTHO’S RETURN