He seemed to have a propensity for getting into trouble, or rather an inability to keep out of it.

Latterly he had been staying in London with his brother.
His thoughts wandered to the past as he looked at the chimneys of Hartledon--all he could see of it--from the low-lying ground.

He remembered the happy time when they had been children in it; five of them--the three boys and the two girls--he himself the youngest and the pet.

His eldest sister, Margaret, had been the first to leave it.

She married Sir James Cooper, and went with him to his remote home in Scotland, where she was still.