CHAPTER I.
"My meaning in't, I protest, was very honest in the behalf of the maid * * * * yet, who would have suspected an ambush where I was taken ?" _All's Well that Ends Well_, Act iv.Sc.

3.
SOME four miles distant from one of our northern manufacturing towns, in the year 18--, was a wide and desolate common; a more dreary spot it is impossible to conceive--the herbage grew up in sickly patches from the midst of a black and stony soil.

Not a tree was to be seen in the whole of the comfortless expanse.

Nature herself had seemed to desert the solitude, as if scared by the ceaseless din of the neighbouring forges; and even Art, which presses all things into service, had disdained to cull use or beauty from these unpromising demesnes.

There was something weird and primeval in the aspect of the place; especially when in the long nights of winter you beheld the distant fires and lights which give to the vicinity of certain manufactories so preternatural an appearance, streaming red and wild over the waste.