The Poplars--there can be no mistake in saying it--was an extremely ugly house. Its architecture was neither Gothic nor Norman, Elizabethan or Tudor; it was an heterogeneous pile of stones and brickwork, scrambled together without any style or design. Inside it was comfortable enough, and roomy and rambling; without it seemed nothing but a collection of eaves and chimneys, and its sole redeeming point consisted in the lofty and spreading poplar trees which surrounded it on all sides, as well as gave it its name, and concealed its native ugliness from strangers and passers-by. There you have "The Poplars" and its mistress. Volume 1, Chapter III. THE FISH AND THE HOOK. "Het-wood!" shouted the guard vehemently, as the train in which Tom Hartshorne and Markworth had left London drew up at a little wayside station, closely adjoining Hartwood village, the spire of whose church could be seen near at hand, amidst a group of lofty elm trees which surrounded it--and "Het-wood! Het-wood! Het-wood!" burst a tribe of porters and railway men, after that official, chorusing in full cry to a musical accompaniment of door-slammings and steam-escapements. "Here we are at last," ejaculated Tom, poking his head out of the window of one of the carriages as soon as they fairly stopped. "Are we? Then the Lord be praised! Beastly long journey. More than two hours for only sixty or seventy miles!" responded his companion, stepping on to the platform, where they and their luggage were quickly deposited--the only arrivals for the little village--while the iron horse again grunted and puffed on its toilsome way with its string of cattle pens behind it. "Good day, sir," said the station-master, touching his hat respectfully to Tom; "do you want a trap, sir?" "No, thanks, we'll walk over; but will you send up our things for us, Murphy?" "Certainly, sir; one of the men shall go at once with them. Here, Peter! shoulder them there bags, and follow Mister Hartshorne up t'ouse." "It's much jollier to walk, Markworth," remarked Tom, as they left the station, and he led the way over a stile into a little bypath across a field; "it's a lovely afternoon, and we'll get there in half the time we should if we drove by the road." "All right, my boy, I'm agreeable," answered Markworth. So they sauntered on, walking in a narrow foot-wide track, through acres of gleaming green fields of oats and wheat, with their wavy motion, like the sea, and their rustling tops, one of the railway porters following closely behind them, weighed down apparently by two heavy travelling-bags he carried, although, probably, he thought them but a trifle. A pleasant walk it was on a fine summer day. Presently Markworth could see a gaunt, grim stone wall in front of them, with a mass of tall, melancholy-looking, waving poplar trees behind it, all in a clump together.