With an accident to the Squire’s daughter, Miss Ethel Smithson, upon some occasion of fox-hunting, this narrative properly begins. She suffered an awkward tumble, and the young man who came to her aid had the good fortune to please the girl immensely. Squire Smithson, upon the narration of Mr. Talbot Warren’s bravery, could not for the life of him see anything to make a fuss about. “If a woman falls into a ditch, is it asking much of the man nearest at the time to pull her out?” he inquired. But Miss Ethel explained that the circumstances were of a very terrific nature, and how her hero, not content with seeing that she was safe and sound, had foregone all further sport, sacrificed his day’s pleasure, and insisted on riding with her to the nearest farmhouse. She met Mr. Warren again soon afterwards, and continued to find peculiar pleasure in his society; while, finally, through mutual friends, the young man secured an invitation to Capon Hall for a week’s hunting. He and his horse arrived. He proved uninteresting, and a sportsman of mean capabilities; but Ethel Smithson, blind to the youth’s colourless and negative nature, fell violently in love with him. Being, moreover, a wilful little soul, who did pretty much what she liked with a most indulgent parent, matters went nearly all her own way from the first. But the Squire and Mr. Warren had nothing in common, and at times their manifold differences of opinion might have produced serious results save for the younger man’s caution. Talbot’s physical nerve was weak, he wanted pluck--a lack that Mr. Smithson quickly discovered, and made the boy’s life a burden to him. Ethel always supported the weaker side in the many arguments arising from this question of bravery; and, on one occasion, after the Squire had made some allusions more pointed than polite to his guest’s rapidly acquired knowledge of gaps, gates and like aids to the judicious Nimrod, Miss Smithson thought proper to drag me into the conversation. “How can the wild, reckless courage you admire, papa, compare with the cool mental nerve which may be shown to some purpose in the useful affairs of life? How many of the men who jump over hedges and ditches, and risk their stupid necks before the gaze of farm yokels, would sleep night after night in a haunted room, for instance, as Mr. Warren does here?” “Our ghost!” roared the Squire. “Our little plump, roly-poly of a ghost! I’d make a better bogey with a sheet and a turnip!”