There was no spot in all the north of England whereon the winter frowned so lightly as on those sheltered precincts—there was no spot whereon spring smiled so early, and with so bright an aspect—wherein the summer so long lingered, pouring her gorgeous flowers, rich with her spicy breath, into the very lap of autumn. It was, indeed, a sweet spot, and as happy as it was sweet and beautiful, before the curse of civil war was poured upon the groaning land, with its dread train of foul and fiendish ministers; and yet it was not war, nor any of its direct consequences, that turned that happy home into a ruin and a desolation. It was not war—except the struggles of the human heart—the conflict of the fierce and turbulent passions—the strife of principles, of motives, of desires, within the secret soul, maybe called war, as, indeed, they might, and that with no figurative tongue, for they are surely the hottest, the most devastating, the most fatal of all that bear that ominous and cruel appellation. Such was the aspect then of Ingleborough Hall, at the period when it was perhaps the most beautiful; and when, as is but too often the case, its beauties were on the very point of being brought to a close forever. The family which owned the manor, for the possessions attached to the old homestead were large, and the authority attached to them extended over a large part of Upper Wharfdale, was one of those old English races which, though not noble in the literal sense of the word, are yet so ancient, and so indissolubly connected with the soil, that they may justly be comprised among the aristocracy of the land. The name was Saxon, and it was generally believed—and probably with truth—that the date of the name, and of its connection with that estate, was at the least coeval with the conquest. To what circumstances it was owing that the Hawkwoods, for such was the time-honored appellation of the race, had retained possession of their fair demesne when all the land was allotted out to feudal barons and fat priests, can never now be ascertained; nor does it indeed signify; yet that it was to some honorable cause, some service rendered, or some high exploit, may be fairly presumed from the fact that the mitred potentate of Bolton Abbey, who levied his tythes far and near throughout those fertile valleys, had no claims on the fruits of Ingleborough. During the ages that had passed since the advent of the Norman William, the Hawkwoods had never lacked male representatives to sustain the dignity of their race; and gallantly had they sustained it; for in full many a lay and legend, aye! and in grave, cold history itself, the name of Hawkwood might be found side by side with the more sonorous appellations of the Norman feudatories, the Ardens, and Maulevers, and Vavasours, which fill the chronicles of border warfare. At the period of which we write, however, the family had no male scion—the last male heir, Ralph Hawkwood, had died some years