ANTONY PELHAM. The surroundings of Norham Cathedral were the great attraction of the little town to Antony Pelham. Large, airy houses, set in gardens to match, with here and there a field running down to the street, formed one side of the main thoroughfare of the town. It was wide and shady, bounded on its other side by the Canons' Walk, a gravelled terrace, extending the whole length of the cathedral graveyard, over-arched by "immemorial elms," where the rooks, year after year, cawed their noisy affairs into the ears of those below. At the eastern end of the cathedral the Canons' Court terminated the Walk, and provided residences for the minor canons almost under the cathedral walls. The Deanery stood at one end of the Court, and the gardens of all the houses extended southwards to enclosed fields called the Parks, on which also the grounds of the old palace, on the southern side of the cathedral, abutted. Beyond the boundaries of the Cathedral Precincts the town developed into a small, compact area of shops, and then sprawled on into suburbs. These, called respectively Easton and Weston, had little to do with each other, and less with the exclusive Precincts. They had a church and parish apiece, served by two of the minor canons. The spacious houses round the cathedral had been built originally to serve as town houses for the county families. They were now often used as dower houses, or pleasant homes to retire to from the active work of life. Their owners formed a sufficiently large circle to make society pleasant, but they admitted no one into their midst who was not "one of them." When old General Orme died, he left no one to occupy the fine old house on the hill called "The Ridges," beyond which the "Green," with its complement of houses--also old, but filling the more useful _rôles_ of Grammar School, Sessions House, and such like--descended into the valley. Here, as far off as possible, the necessary lock-up and railway station hid their commonness out of sight. It was with amazement, and incredulity at his audacity, that the news gradually was received of the purchase of "The Ridges," by Antony Pelham, a lawyer from the big town of Blackton, eight miles away. This manufacturing town had superseded Norham as the county town--since which it was scarcely ever mentioned, much less visited, by the Norhamites. Not only had he bought "The Ridges" but, with an extraordinary fatuity, he meant to go on with his business and travel backwards and forwards.