Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 6).djvu/413



DOCTOR in full practice in London often loses sight of his early home. This was not my case. I had spent all my young days in a small village in Yorkshire, and, as my practice increased and my leisure time grew rarer and rarer, I was still glad to spend a fortnight in each year in the old sequestered hamlet which had known me as child and boy.

The thing which happens to all flesh came also into my life. The friends who knew me of old knew me no more, for the simple reason that they no longer knew anybody else on earth—they were lying in the churchyard. But one friend of about my own age always welcomed me with enthusiasm and heartiness when I could run down from London to spend a few days at Chartelpool.

Stanhope was the squire of the village. He occupied the old Manor House, and was the only man of wealth in the neighbourhood. He inherited not only a goodly share of old ancestral acres, but his grandfather and father before him had largely added to their means by coal mines, which were worked successfully, and which, in consequence, made Harold Stanhope one of the richest men of my acquaintance.

When I first knew him he was a dark-eyed, sallow-faced schoolboy. We spent a great deal of time riding and fishing together, and when we both went up to the University, we found ourselves men of the same college.

Harold was reserved and silent—a little shy and difficult to get on with—at least, so strangers said, but I always thought him the best fellow on earth. The fact is, I had at quite an early age plumbed the depths of his nature, and knew what he was really worth.

He was a man of few words, but of sterling merit—honourable and upright as the day. His manners were somewhat cold and reserved, but he had a warm heart and the constancy of a Jacob. Harold, or Hal, as his more intimate friends generally called him, fell in love at an early age with a beautiful girl whom he happened to meet