Transcribed from the 1907 T. Fisher Unwin edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org [Picture: Book cover] CLARA HOPGOOD BY MARK RUTHERFORD EDITED BY HIS FRIEND REUBEN SHAPCOTT * * * * * _THIRD IMPRESSION_ * * * * * LONDON T. FISHER UNWIN ADELPHI TERRACE _First Edition_ _March_ 1896 _Second Impression_ _June_ 1896 _Third Impression_ _July_ 1907 * * * * * _All rights reserved_ * * * * * CHAPTER I ABOUT ten miles north-east of Eastthorpe lies the town of Fenmarket, very like Eastthorpe generally; and as we are already familiar with Eastthorpe, a particular description of Fenmarket is unnecessary. There is, however, one marked difference between them. Eastthorpe, it will be remembered, is on the border between the low uplands and the Fens, and has one side open to soft, swelling hills. Fenmarket is entirely in the Fens, and all the roads that lead out of it are alike level, monotonous, straight, and flanked by deep and stagnant ditches. The river, also, here is broader and slower; more reluctant than it is even at Eastthorpe to hasten its journey to the inevitable sea. During the greater part of the year the visitor to Fenmarket would perhaps find it dull and depressing, and at times, under a grey, wintry sky, almost unendurable; but nevertheless, for days and weeks it has a charm possessed by few other landscapes in England, provided only that behind the eye which looks there is something to which a landscape of that peculiar character answers. There is, for example, the wide, dome-like expanse of the sky, there is the distance, there is the freedom and there are the stars on a clear night. The orderly, geometrical march of the constellations from the extreme eastern horizon across the meridian and down to the west has a solemn majesty, which is only partially discernible when their course is interrupted by broken country.