For the moment I had gone back twenty years, and to-morrow was none so near." He laughed softly, as though his lapse of memory amused him.

Then he resumed: "I was the only son, Kenneth, of the noblest gentleman that ever lived--the heir to an ancient, honoured name, and to a castle as proud and lands as fair and broad as any in England.
"They lie who say that from the dawn we may foretell the day.

Never was there a brighter dawn than that of my life; never a day so wasted; never an evening so dark.

But let that be.
"Our lands were touched upon the northern side by those of a house with which we had been at feud for two hundred years and more.

Puritans they were, stern and haughty in their ungodly righteousness.