And before Mr. Sampson could remonstrate, John Treverton was gone. He wanted to see what Hazlehurst Manor was like in the clear spring light, framed in greenery, brightened with all the flowers that bloom in early May, musical with thrush and blackbird, noisy with the return of the swallows. Never had he so longed to look upon anything as he longed to-day to see the home of his ancestors, the home which might be his. He walked quickly along the village street. Such a quaint little street, with never one house like another; here a building bulging forward, with bow windows below and projecting dormers above; there a house retiring modestly behind a patch of garden; further on an inn set at right angles with the highway, its chief door approached by a flight of stone steps that time had worn crooked. Such a variety of chimneys, such complexities in the way of roofs and gables; but everywhere cleanliness and spring flowers, and a purer air than John Treverton had breathed for a long time. Even this queer little village street, with its dozen shops and its half-dozen public-houses was very fair and pleasant in his town-weary eyes. When he left the street he entered a noble high-road, bordered on each side by a row of fine old elms, which made the turnpike road an avenue worthy to be the approach to a king’s palace. The Manor-house lay off this road, guarded by tall gates of florid iron tracery, manufactured in the Low Countries two hundred years ago. He stopped at the gates to contemplate the scene, looking at it dreamily, as at something unreal--a picture that was fair but evanescent, and might vanish as he gazed. Between the gates and the house the ground undulated gently. It was all smooth sward, too small for a park, too irregular for a lawn. A winding carriage-road, shadowed with fine old trees, skirted the green expanse, and groups of shrubs here and there adorned it, rhododendrons, laurels, bay, deodoras, cypresses, all the variety of ornamental conifers. Two great cedars made islets of shadow in the sunny grass, and a copper beech, a giant of his kind, was just showing its dark brown buds. Beyond stood the Manor-house, tall, and broad, and red, with white stone dressings to door and windows, and a noble cornice, a house of Charles the Second’s reign, a real Sir Christopher Wren house, massive and grand in its stern simplicity. John Treverton roused himself from his waking dream and rang the bell. A woman came out of the lodge, looked at him, dropped a low curtsey, opened the gate, and admitted him without a word, as if he were master there. In her mind he was master, though the trustees paid her wages. It was an understood thing in the household that Mr. Treverton was going to marry Miss Malcolm and reign at Hazlehurst Manor.