Colonel Quaritch, V.C. | Page 3

had passed on, and he watched her walking
down the long level drift, till her image melted into the stormy sunset
light, and was gone. When he returned to the cottage he had described
her to his old aunt, and asked who she might be, to learn that she was
Ida de la Molle (which sounded like a name out of a novel), the only
daughter of the old squire who lived at Honham Castle. Next day he
had left for India, and saw Miss de la Molle no more.

And now he wondered what had become of her. Probably she was
married; so striking a person would be almost sure to attract the notice
of men. And after all what could it matter to him? He was not a
marrying man, and women as a class had little attraction for him;
indeed he disliked them. It has been said that he had never married, and
never even had a love affair since he was five-and-twenty. But though
he was not married, he once--before he was five-and-twenty--very
nearly took that step. It was twenty years ago now, and nobody quite
knew the history, for in twenty years many things are fortunately
forgotten. But there was a history, and a scandal, and the marriage was
broken off almost on the day it should have taken place. And after that
it leaked out in the neighbourhood that the young lady, who by the way
was a considerable heiress, had gone off her head, presumably with
grief, and been confined in an asylum, where she was believed still to
remain.
Perhaps it was the thought of this one woman's face, the woman he had
once seen walking down the drift, her figure limned out against the
stormy sky, that led him to think of the other face, the face hidden in
the madhouse. At any rate, with a sigh, or rather a groan, he swung
himself round from the gate and began to walk homeward at a brisk
pace.
The drift that he was following is known as the mile drift, and had in
ancient times formed the approach to the gates of Honham Castle, the
seat of the ancient and honourable family of de la Molle (sometimes
written "Delamol" in history and old writings). Honham Castle was
now nothing but a ruin, with a manor house built out of the wreck on
one side of its square, and the broad way that led to it from the high
road which ran from Boisingham,[*] the local country town, was a drift
or grass lane.
[*] Said to have been so named after the Boissey family, whose heiress
a de la Molle married in the fourteenth century. As, however, the town
of Boisingham is mentioned by one of the old chroniclers, this does not
seem very probable. No doubt the family took their name from the
town or hamlet, not the town from the family.

Colonel Quaritch followed this drift till he came to the high road, and
then turned. A few minutes' walk brought him to a drive opening out of
the main road on the left as he faced towards Boisingham. This drive,
which was some three hundred yards long, led up a rather sharp slope
to his own place, Honham Cottage, or Molehill, as the villagers called
it, a title calculated to give a keen impression of a neat spick and span
red brick villa with a slate roof. In fact, however, it was nothing of the
sort, being a building of the fifteenth century, as a glance at its massive
flint walls was sufficient to show. In ancient times there had been a
large Abbey at Boisingham, two miles away, which, the records tell,
suffered terribly from an outbreak of the plague in the fifteenth century.
After this the monks obtained ten acres of land, known as Molehill, by
grant from the de la Molle of the day, and so named either on account
of their resemblance to a molehill (of which more presently) or after the
family. On this elevated spot, which was supposed to be peculiarly
healthy, they built the little house now called Honham Cottage, whereto
to fly when next the plague should visit them.
And as they built it, so, with some slight additions, it had remained to
this day, for in those ages men did not skimp their flint, and oak, and
mortar. It was a beautiful little spot, situated upon the flat top of a
swelling hill, which comprised the ten acres of grazing ground
originally granted, and was, strange to say, still the most
magnificently-timbered piece of ground in the country side. For on the
ten acres of grass land there stood over fifty great oaks, some of them
pollards of the most enormous antiquity,