A SEARCH FOR A SECRET.
A Novel.
BY G. A. HENTY.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE ST., STRAND.
1867.
LONDON:
WYMAN AND SONS, PRINTERS, GREAT QUEEN STREET,
LINCOLN'S-INN FIELDS, W.C.
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
CHAPTER I. EARLY DAYS
CHAPTER II. THE HARMERS OF HARMER PLACE
CHAPTER III. "L'HOMME PROPOSE, DIEU DISPOSE"
CHAPTER IV. THE LAST OF THE HARMERS
CHAPTER V. TESTAMENTARY INTENTIONS
CHAPTER VI. THE BISHOP OF RAVENNA
CHAPTER VII. SOCIETY GRACIOUSLY CONDESCENDS
CHAPTER VIII. INTRODUCED TO THE WORLD
CHAPTER IX. THE OLD STORY
CHAPTER X. SUNSHINE AND SHADOW
CHAPTER XI. LAYING A TRAIN
CHAPTER XII. THE EXPLOSION
CHAPTER XIII. A BAD BUSINESS
CHAPTER XIV. MISSING!
CHAPTER I.
EARLY DAYS.
There are towns over which time seems to exercise but little power, butto have passed them by forgotten, in his swift course. Everywhere else,at his touch, all is changed. Great cities rise upon the site of fishingvillages; huge factories, with their smoky chimneys grow up andmetamorphose quiet towns into busy hives of industry; while othercities, once prosperous and flourishing, sink into insignificance; andthe passer by, as he wanders through their deserted streets, wonders andlaments over the ruin which has fallen upon them.
But the towns of which I am speaking—and of which there are but few nowleft in England, and these, with hardly an exception, cathedraltowns—seem to suffer no such change. They neither progress nor fallback. If left behind, they are not beaten in the race, for they havenever entered upon it; but are content to rest under the shelter oftheir tall spires and towers; to seek for no change and to meet withnone; but to remain beloved, as no other towns are loved, by those whohave long known them—assimilating, as it were, the very natures ofthose who dwell in them, to their own sober, neutral tints.
In these towns, a wanderer who has left them as a boy, returning as anold, old man, will see but little change—a house gone here, anothernearly similar built in its place; a greyer tint upon the stone; a treefallen in the old close; the ivy climbing a little higher upon thecrumbling wall;—these are all, or nearly all, the changes which he willsee. The trains rush past, bearing their countless passengers, who sorarely think of stopping there, that the rooks, as they hold their graveconversations in their nests in the old elm-trees, cease to break off,even for a moment, at the sound of the distant whistle. The very peopleseem, although this is but seeming, to have changed as little as theplace: the same names are over the shop doors—the boy who was at schoolhas taken his grand-sire's place, and stands at his door, looking downthe quiet street as the old man used to do before him; the dogs areasleep in the sunny corners they formerly loved; and the same horsesseem to be lazily drawing the carts, with familiar names upon them, intoth