In their early life, the Awdreys were particularly bright, clever sharp fellows, endowed with excellent animal spirits, and many amiable traits of character. They were chivalrous to women, kind to children, full of warm affections, and each and all of them possessed much of the golden gift of hope. As a rule the doom of the house came upon each victim with startling suddenness. One of the disappointments of life ensued--an unfortunate love affair--the death of some beloved member--a money loss. The victim lost all memory of the event. No words, no explanations could revive the dead memory--the thing was completely blotted out from the phonograph of the brain. Immediately afterward followed the mental and physical decay. The girls of the family quite escaped the curse. It was on the sons that it invariably descended. Up to the present time, however, Robert Awdrey's father had lived to confute the West Indian's dire curse. His father had married a Scotch lassie, with no bluer blood in her veins than that which had been given to her by some rugged Scotch ancestors. Her health of mind and body had done her descendants much good. Even the word "nerves" had been unknown to this healthy-minded daughter of the North--her children had all up to the present escaped the family curse, and it was now firmly believed at the Court that the spell was broken, and that the West Indian's awful doom would leave the family. The matter was too solemn and painful to be alluded to except under the gravest conditions, and young Robert Awdrey, the heir to the old place and all its belongings, was certainly the last person to speak of it. Robert's father was matter-of-fact to the back bone, but Robert himself was possessed of an essentially reflective temperament. Had he been less healthily brought up by his stout old grandmother and by his mother, he might have given way to morbid musings. Circumstances, however, were all in his favor, and at the time when this strange story really opens, he was looking out at life with a heart full of hope and a mind filled with noble ambitions. Robert was the only son--he had two sisters, bright, good-natured, every-day sort of girls. As a matter of course his sisters adored him. They looked forward to his career with immense pride. He was to stand for Parliament at the next general election. His brains belonged to the highest order of intellect. He had taken a double first at the University--there was no position which he might not hope to assume. Robert had all the chivalrous instincts of his race toward women. As he walked quickly home now with Hetty by his side, his blood boiled at the thought of the insult which had been offered to her. Poor, silly little Hetty was nothing whatever to him except a remarkably pretty village girl. Her people, however, were his father's tenants; he felt it his duty to protect her. When he parted with her just outside the village inn, he said a few words.