"What brings you here so often, my poor child?" asked Mr. Asperges Laud (patting him on the head) the curate, in his long-tailed coat, gaiters, and Roman collarino. "To be near mamma's grave," said Derval, gulping down a sob. "Besides, it is a quiet place for a good cry," he added, as the kind curate took him into his little thatched parsonage. In the dark nights of winter he could recal how tenderly mamma put him to bed, and watched beside him till he slept. It was old Patty Fripp who did so now, who tucked him cosily into his little crib and kissed him some twenty times ere she bade him "good-night," but, by order of Mrs. Hampton, was not permitted to linger beside him. "The child tells you, ma'm, that he can't sleep in the dark alone, from fear," urged Patty on one occasion. "Fear of what?" she asked curtly. "The Long Cripples." "What _do_ you mean?" Patty then told her that snakes in Devonshire were called "long cripples," and Derval had heard of the one at Manaton, that was as big as a human body, and had legs as well as wings, and uttered a hiss that could be heard for miles around. "The boy is a fool, and you are another; leave him to sleep, or wake, as he chooses," was the mandate. So Derval was left to sob himself asleep in the dark, cowering under his coverlet, fearing "the Long Cripple" was coming when the wind moaned in the chimney, or the ivy-leaves pattered on the window-panes. Apart from the comments of Patty, the remarks of schoolfellows and neighbours were not wanting to foster the growing animosity of Derval to his stepmother. Curious eyes watched him, and the inquisitive questioned him, extracting answers, to which they gave suggestions all calculated to inflame his impotent wrath; and now a day came when the cottage at Finglecombe was turned topsy-turvy, and Derval, to his utter bewilderment, was banished for some time to the parsonage. The real Lord of Finglecombe had come in the shape of a baby-brother to him--a baby whom the Rev. Asperges Laud made a little Christian by the name of Rookleigh Greville Hampton. And now, more than ever, as this little one had come, did the father bless his increasing prospects in the acquisition of land, and in the profits thereon, as, like the man in the _Canterbury Tales_, "therefore loved he gold in special." New hopes sprang up in the heart of Greville, and with the wealth he seemed likely to acquire, he ceased to regret that which he had lost, and to repine about the title of which his father and grandsire had been, as he believed, illegally deprived. But in the years to come this baby-brother was fated to have a terrible and calamitous influence upon the destiny of Derval Hampton.