And he was right; for there was not a nobler old house, nor prettier grounds, in the broad county of Sussex, where it stood. Contrast is the great thing, after all: tall men marry short women; the most thickset nursery-maids struggle a-tiptoe to keep step with the lengthiest members of the Foot-Guards; Plimnims the poet, who is of the Sybarite-roseleaf order, sighs for Miss Crupper the _écuyère_, who calls a horse an oss, and a donkey a hass; and so you, if you had been staying at Brighton, and had gone on an excursion at half-a-crown an hour into the inner country, would have fallen in love with Bissett Grange. For, weary of the perpetual hoarse murmur of the sea, now thundering its rage in tremendous waves, now shrieking its lamentation in long hissing back currents; sick of the monotony of the "long-backed bushless downs," so cold and bare and wind-swept, echoing to the eternal plaint of the curlew, and shutting off the horizon with a dreary never-ending shoulder-blade of blank turf,--you, if you were lucky in your choice, and had a driver with a soul beyond the Steine and aspirations exceeding the Lewes Road, would have come upon, at a distance of some five miles from Brighton, a little one-storied porter's lodge, nestling in ivy so deep that the dear parasite had it in its embrace, chimneys and all. Big, heavy, and wooden were the lodge-gates; none of your pretty, light, elegant Coalbrookdale innovations. Gates, in Sir Marmaduke Wentworth's idea, were things to keep impertinent prying people out; and as such they could not be made too cumbrous or too opaque for his pleasure. They were very high as well as very heavy; so, if you had come with your 'cute driver in your fly excursion, you would have seen nothing but the quaint twisted chimneys; and even for that view you must have mounted unto the box. Save the friends of the owner, no one, in Marmaduke Wentworth's time, had ever passed the lodge, or rather, I should say, reached the house. Visitors to. Brighton and Worthing, dying of _ennui_, had besieged the lodge' and implored permission to walk in the grounds; artists had asked to be allowed to sketch the house; a "gentleman engaged upon the press" had written to say that he was sure there must be a legend connected with some chamber, if he might only be permitted to explore the mansion; and one man, a photographer, bribed the lodge-keeper's grand-daughter with a piece of elecampane, and, in the absence of the legitimate portress passed the gate. He had proceeded about a couple of hundred yards up the avenue, when he was met by Sir Marmaduke, who had just turned out for his leisurely afternoon ride. The sight of the itinerant professor with his travelling camera roused the old gentleman in an instant; he set spurs to his cob, hurried off to the intruder, and tapped him smartly on the back with his whip. One instant's glance revealed to him the whole affair: it was _not_ a travelling Punch, whom he would have sent into the kitchen; it was