Two other heads of the family lost their lives in duels; one of them by the hand of his dearest friend, with whom he had had a difference respecting the colour of a lady's eyebrows: the other by a stranger, with whom he had chosen to pick a quarrel "just for the fun of the thing." There was an old distich well known to the country-folk for twenty miles round Heron Dyke, which sufficiently emphasised the popular notion of the family's peculiarities. It ran as under: "Whate'er a Denzon choose to do, Need ne'er surprise nor me nor you." The existing mansion at Heron Dyke was the third which was known to have been built on the same site, or in immediate proximity to it. The present house bore the date 1616, the one to which it was the successor having been destroyed by fire. There was a tradition in the family that the whilom lord of Heron Dyke set fire to the roof-tree of the old mansion with his own hand, hoping by such summary method to exorcise the ghost of a girl dressed in white and having a red spot on her breast, which would persist in rambling through the upper chambers of the house during that weird half-hour when the daylight is dying, and night has not yet come. He had lately brought home his bride, and the young wife vowed that she would go back to her mother unless the ghost were got rid of. It is to be presumed that the means adopted proved effectual, since there seems to be no further record of the girl in white ever having put in an appearance afterwards. The present mansion of Heron Dyke formed three sides of an oblong square. A low, broad, lichen-covered wall made up the fourth side, just outside of which ran the moat, a sluggish stream some ten or dozen feet broad, spanned by an old stone bridge grey with age. The house, which was but two stories high, was built of the black flints so common in that part of the country, set in some sort of cement which age had hardened to the consistency of stone. Here and there the dull uniformity of the thick walls was relieved by diaper-patterned pilasters of faded red brick. The high, narrow, lozenge-paned windows were set in quaintly carved mullions of reddish freestone, the once sharp outlines of which were now blurred with age. The steep, high-pitched roof was covered with blue-black tiles which at one time had been highly glazed, but the rains and snows of many winters had dimmed their brightness, while in summer many-coloured mosses found lodgment in their crevices and patched them here and there with beauty. The tall, twisted chimneys of deep-red brick lent their warmth and colouring to the picture.