When Gilbert Denison, uncle to the present Squire of Heron Dyke, died from the results of an accident, at his lodgings in Bloomsbury Square, and when the strange nature of his will came to be noised abroad, there was no lack of ill-advisers, who did their best to induce the youthful heir to contest the validity of the dead man's last testament. But young Gilbert knew that his uncle had never been saner in his life than when he planned that particular proviso; besides which, he was far too proud of his family name to drag the will of a Denison through the mire of the law courts. His uncle, who had always been looked upon as a sober, thrifty, bucolic-minded sort of man, had not failed to redeem the family reputation for eccentricity at the last moment, and young Gilbert had an idea that it was just the sort of thing he himself would have been likely to do under similar circumstances. To the surprise of his boon companions, he quietly accepted the situation thus forced upon him, and determined to make the best of it. After giving a farewell symposium to the friends who had so kindly helped him to sow his wild oats, London saw him no more for several years. He settled down at Heron Dyke, and became as staid and sober a specimen of a country gentleman as a Denison was ever likely to become. His somewhat shattered constitution was now nursed with all due care and tenderness. If it were in the power of man to defeat that last hateful clause in his uncle's will, he was the man to do it. "He will be sure to choose a wife before long," said all the anxious matrons in the neighbourhood, who had eligible daughters waiting to be mated. But Gilbert Denison did nothing of the kind. Years went by. He became a middle-aged man, then an elderly man, and all hope of his ever changing his bachelor condition gradually died out. There was a constantly floating rumour in the neighbourhood of a romantic attachment and a disappointment when he was young; but it might be nothing more than an idle story. It was even said that the lady had jilted him in favour of his cousin, and that there would have been bloodshed between the two men had not the other Gilbert hurried away with his young wife to Italy.