Then the master entered his dwelling to prepare his wife and daughter for the honours they had in perspective.

Before he executed this duty, however, the unfortunate man opened what he called a locker--what a housewife would term a cupboard--and fortified his nerves with a strong draught of pure Nantes; a liquor that no hostilities, custom-house duties, or national antipathies, has ever been able to bring into general disrepute in the British Islands.

In the mean time the party of the two baronets pursued its way towards the Hall.
The village, or hamlet of Wychecombe, lay about half-way between the station and the residence of the lord of the manor.

It was an exceedingly rural and retired collection of mean houses, possessing neither physician, apothecary, nor attorney, to give it importance.

A small inn, two or three shops of the humblest kind, and some twenty cottages of labourers and mechanics, composed the place, which, at that early day, had not even a chapel, or a conventicle; dissent not having made much progress then in England.