A repetition of this stirring event was anxiously looked for during many years, every time that the said pack met within ten miles of Billingsfield, but hitherto it had been looked for in vain.

On the whole the life at the vicarage was not eventful, and the studies of the two young men who imbibed learning at the feet of the Reverend Augustin Ambrose were rarely interrupted.
Mrs.Ambrose herself represented the feminine element in the society of the little place.

The new doctor was a strange man, suspected of being a free-thinker, and he was not married.

The Hall, for there was a Hall at Billingsfield, was uninhabited, and had been uninhabited for years.

The estate which belonged to it was unimportant and moreover was in Chancery and seemed likely to stay there, for reasons no one ever mentioned at Billingsfield, because no one knew anything about them.