to surrender as “the King of the Peak.” To these he made no reply, and the third time he was called on as Sir George Vernon, when he stepped forward and acknowledged himself—“Here am I!” Having been summoned as “the King of the Peak,” the indictment fell through, and Sir George was admonished and discharged. Sir George Vernon is buried in Bakewell Church, where a remarkably fine and well-preserved altar-tomb bears the recumbent effigies of himself and his two wives. Dorothy Vernon, the youngest daughter and co-heiress of Sir George, and over whom such “a halo of romantic interest” rests, is said to have been one of the most beautiful of all beautiful women, and possessed of so sweet a temper, that she was idolised by all who knew her. If it were so, however, the monument at Bakewell does not fairly represent her, for it exhibits her with an expression of countenance far from either amiable or attractive. The story of her life, according to popular belief, is that, while her elder sister, fortunate in an open attachment to Sir Thomas Stanley, the son of the Earl of Derby, and his affianced bride, was petted and “made much of,” she, the younger, was kept in the background, having formed a secret attachment to John Manners, son of the Earl of Rutland—an attachment which was opposed by her father, sister, and stepmother; she was, therefore, closely watched, and kept almost a prisoner. Her lover is said to have disguised himself as a woodman, or forester, and to have remained in hiding in the woods around Haddon for several weeks, in order to obtain stolen glances of, and occasional brief meetings with, Dorothy. At length, on a festive night at Haddon—tradition states it to have been on one of the “merry meetings,” consequent on the marriage of her sister Margaret—Dorothy is said to have stolen away unobserved in the midst of the merriment in the ball-room, and to have quietly passed out of the door of the adjoining ante-room on to the terrace, which she crossed, and having ascended the steps on the other side, her lover’s arms received her; horses were in waiting, and they rode off in the moonlight all through the night, and were married in Leicestershire the next morning. The door through which the heiress eloped is always pointed out to visitors as “Dorothy Vernon’s Door.” Thus the Derbyshire estates of Sir George Vernon passed to John Manners, and thus it was the noble house of Rutland became connected with Haddon and the county of Derby. [Illustration: _Haddon: from the Meadows._]