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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. LOOKING BACK. John Homeeton, the blacksmith, only spoke advisedly when he said that the young squire, Ringwood Mark- ham, was ruining himself up in London. The simple inhabitants of villages are apt to exaggerate the dangers and the vices of that unknown metropolis of which they hear such strange stories ; but in this case honest Master Homefton did not exaggerate, for the young squire was hurrying at a good rattling pace along that smooth and easy highway known as the road to ruin. Ringwood Markham was three years older than his sister Millicent, and six years younger than his cousin Darrell; for old Squire Markham had married late in life, and had, shortly after his marriage, adopted little Darrell, the only child of a younger brother, who Lad died early, leaving a small fortune to his orphan boy. Ringwood Markham in person closely resembled his sister. He had the same pale golden hair, the deep limpid blue eyes, the small features, and delicate pink- and-white complexion. But that style of beauty which was charming in a girl of nineteen was far too effeminate to be pleasing in a man of two-and-twenty, and the old squire had been sorely vexed to see his beloved son grow up into nothing better than a pretty boy—a fair-faced dollish young coxcomb, the admiration of simpering school-girls and middle-aged women, and the type of the Strephons and Damons who at that time overran our English poetry. Ringwood had always been his father's favourite, to the exclusion even of pretty, lovable, and loving Millicent; and as Darrell grew to manhood, it vexed the old squire to see the elder cousin high-spirited and stalwart, broad-chested and athletic, accomplished in all manly exercises, a good shot, an expert swordsman, a bold horseman, and reckless, daredevil, gen...
