The writing of prefaces is, for the most part, work thrown away; and the writing of a preface to a novel is almost always a vain thing. Nevertheless, I am tempted to prefix a few words to this novel o...

I am disposed to believe that no novel reader in England has seen the little town of Bullhampton, in Wiltshire, except such novel readers as live there, and those others, very few in number, who visit...

“You should give him an answer, dear, one way or the other.” These wise words were spoken by Mrs. Fenwick to her friend as they sat together, with their work in their hands, on a garden seat under a c...

It was about eleven o’clock when Gilmore passed through the wicket leading from the vicarage garden to the churchyard. The path he was about to take crossed simply a corner of the church precincts, as...

On the following morning there was of course a considerable amount of conversation at the Vicarage as to the affairs of the previous evening. There was first of all an examination of the fruit; but as...

Mr. Fenwick reached Brattle’s mill about two o’clock in the day. During the whole morning, while saying comfortable words to old women, and gently rebuking young maidens, he had been thinking of Sam B...

When Mr. Fenwick reached the mill, he found old Brattle sitting alone on a fixed bench in front of the house door with a pipe in his mouth. Mary Lowther was quite right in saying that the mill, in spi...

When Mr. Fenwick entered the kitchen, Mrs. Brattle was sitting there alone. Her daughter was away, disposing of the remnants and utensils of the dinner-table. The old lady, with her spectacles on her ...

The parson’s visit to the mill was on a Saturday. The next Sunday passed by very quietly, and nothing was seen of Mr. Gilmore at the Vicarage. He was at church, and walked with the two ladies from the...

Whatever may be the fact as to the rank and proper calling of Bullhampton, there can be no doubt that Loring is a town. There is a marketplace, and a High Street, and a Board of Health, and a Paragon ...

Mr. Fenwick had intended to have come home round by Market Lavington, after having deposited Miss Lowther at the Westbury Station, with the view of making some inquiry respecting the gentleman with th...

On the following morning Mr. Fenwick walked down to the mill. There was a path all along the river, and this was the way he took. He passed different points as he went, and he thought of the trout he ...

After leaving the mill Mr. Fenwick went up to the Squire, and, in contradiction, as it were, of all the hard things that he had said to Sam Brattle, spoke to the miller’s landlord in the lad’s favour....

Only that it is generally conceived that in such a history as is this the writer of the tale should be able to make his points so clear by words that no further assistance should be needed, I should b...

Mary Lowther and her cousin had taken their walk together on Monday evening, and on the next morning she received the following letter from Mrs. Fenwick. When it reached her she had as yet heard nothi...

The magistrates sat at Heytesbury on the Tuesday, and Sam Brattle was remanded. An attorney thus was employed on his behalf by Mr. Fenwick. The parson on the Monday evening had been down at the mill, ...

All these searchings for the murderers of Mr. Trumbull, and these remandings of Sam Brattle, took place in the month of September, and during that same month the energy of other men of law was very ke...

By the end of September it had come to be pretty well understood that Sam Brattle must be allowed to go out of prison, unless something in the shape of fresh evidence should be brought up on the next ...

Early in October Captain Marrable was called up to town by letters from Messrs. Block and Curling, and according to promise wrote various letters to Mary Lowther, telling her of the manner in which hi...

The Tuesday’s magistrates’ meeting had come off at Heytesbury, and Sam Brattle had been discharged. Mr. Jones had on this occasion indignantly demanded that his client should be set free without bail;...

When Mary Lowther returned home from the last walk with her cousin that has been mentioned, she was quite determined that she would not disturb her happiness on that night by the task of telling her e...

On that same Thursday, the Thursday on which Mary Lowther wrote her two despatches to Bullhampton, Miss Marrable sent a note down to Parson John, requesting that she might have an interview with him. ...

Bullhampton unfortunately was at the end of the postman’s walk, and as the man came all the way from Lavington, letters were seldom received much before eleven o’clock. Now this was a most pernicious ...

Mr. Gilmore was standing on the doorsteps of his own house when Mary’s letter was brought to him. It was a modest-sized country gentleman’s residence, built of variegated uneven stones, black and grey...

It was decided that evening at the Vicarage that it would be better for all parties that the reverend uncle from Salisbury should be told to make his visit, and spend the next week at Hampton Privets;...

On the day after the dinner-party at Hampton Privets Mr. Fenwick made his little excursion out in the direction towards Devizes, of which he had spoken to his wife. The dinner had gone off very quietl...

It is hoped that the reader will remember that the Marquis of Trowbridge was subjected to very great insolence from Mr. Fenwick during the discussion which took place in poor old farmer Trumbull’s par...

“Something must be done about Carry Brattle at once.” The Vicar felt that he had pledged himself to take some steps for her welfare, and it seemed to him, as he thought of the matter, that there were ...

Mrs. Brattle was waiting at the stile opposite to Mr. Gilmore’s gate as Mr. Fenwick drove up to the spot. No doubt the dear old woman had been there for the last half-hour, thinking that the walk woul...

Gilmore had told his friend that he would do two things⁠—that he would start off and travel for four or five years, and that he would pay a visit to Loring. Fenwick had advised him to do neither, but ...

Miss Marrable heard the story of the Captain’s loss in perfect silence. Mary told it craftily, with a smile on her face, as though she were but slightly affected by it, and did not think very much on ...

That afternoon there came down to the parsonage a note from Mary to the Captain, asking her lover to meet her, and walk with her before dinner. He met her, and they took their accustomed stroll along ...

Harry Gilmore, the prosperous country gentleman, the county magistrate, the man of acres, the nephew of Mr. Chamberlaine, respected by all who knew him⁠—with the single exception of the Marquis of Tro...

Christmas came, and a month beyond Christmas, and by the end of January Captain Marrable and Miss Lowther had agreed to regard all their autumn work as null and void⁠—to look back upon the lovemaking ...

When the matter was quite settled at Loring⁠—when Miss Marrable not only knew that the engagement had been surrendered on both sides, but that it had been so surrendered as to be incapable of being ag...

The Vicar devoted a week to the consideration of his grievance about the chapel, and then did write to the Marquis. Indeed, there was no time to be lost if he intended to do anything, as on the second...

Mr. Grimes had suggested to the Vicar in a very low whisper that the new chapel might perhaps be put down as a nuisance. “It ain’t for me to say, of course,” said Mr. Grimes, “and in the way of busine...

Early in February Captain Marrable went to Dunripple to stay with his uncle, Sir Gregory, and there he still was when the middle of March had come. News of his doings reached the ladies at Loring, but...

The letter from Mrs. Fenwick, which the reader has just seen, was the immediate effect of a special visit which Mr. Gilmore had made to her. On the 10th of March he had come to her with a settled purp...

The Vicar of Bullhampton was⁠—a “good sort of fellow.” In praise of him to this extent it is hoped that the reader will cordially agree. But it cannot be denied that he was the most imprudent of men. ...

In the back room upstairs of Mr. Stiggs’s house in Trotter’s Buildings the Vicar did find Carry Brattle, and he found also that since her coming thither on the preceding evening⁠—for only on the prece...

Farmer Brattle, who was a stout man about thirty-eight years of age but looking as though he were nearly ten years older, came up to the Vicar, touching his hat, and then putting his hand out in greet...

On the Thursday in Passion week, which fell on the 6th of April, Mr. and Mrs. Quickenham came to Bullhampton Vicarage. The lawyer intended to take a long holiday⁠—four entire days⁠—and to return to Lo...

It was not only at Bullhampton that this affair of the Methodist chapel demanded and received attention. At Turnover also a good deal was being said about it, and the mind of the Marquis was not easy....

“If I were to go, there would be nobody left but you. You should remember that, Walter, when you talk of going to India.” This was said to Walter Marrable at Dunripple, by his cousin Gregory, Sir Greg...

Parson John Marrable, though he said nothing in his letters to Dunripple about the doings of his nephew at Loring, was by no means equally reticent in his speech at Loring as to the doings at Dunrippl...

The Vicar had undertaken to maintain Carry Brattle at Mrs. Stiggs’s house, in Trotter’s Buildings, for a fortnight, but he found at the end of the fortnight that his responsibility on the poor girl’s ...

The next week was one of considerable perturbation, trouble, and excitement at Bullhampton, and in the neighbourhood of Warminster and Heytesbury. It soon became known generally that Jack the Grinder ...

A month went by after the scenes described in the last chapter, and summer had come at Bullhampton. It was now the end of May, and, with the summer, Mary Lowther had arrived. During the month very lit...

The police were so very tedious in managing their business, and the whole affair of the second magisterial investigation was so protracted, that people in the neighbourhood became almost tired of it, ...

Of course it was soon known in the vicarage that Mary Lowther had accepted the Squire’s hand. She had left him standing in the drawing-room;⁠—had left him very abruptly, though she had condescended to...

As the day drew near for the final examination at Heytesbury of the suspected murderers⁠—the day on which it was expected that either all the three prisoners, or at least two of them, would be committ...

Mrs. Stiggs had been right in her surmise about Carry Brattle. The confinement in Trotter’s Buildings and want of interest in her life was more than the girl could bear, and she had been thinking of e...

Mrs. Brattle, when she heard her daughter’s voice, was so confounded, dismayed, and frightened, that for awhile she could give no direction as to what should be done. She had screamed at first, having...

Mary Lowther struggled hard for a week to reconcile herself to her new fate, and at the end of the week had very nearly given way. The gloom which had fallen upon her acted upon her lover and then rea...

The fifteenth of July was a Sunday, and it had been settled for some time past that on this day Mr. Puddleham would preach for the first time in his new chapel. The building had been hurried on throug...

No eloquence on the part of the two ladies at the vicarage, or of the Squire, could turn Mr. Fenwick from his purpose, but he did consent at last to go over with the Squire to Salisbury, and to consul...

Messrs. Boothby in Lincoln’s Inn had for very many years been the lawyers of the Stowte family, and probably knew as much about the property as any of the Stowtes themselves. They had not been consult...

“My dear, sit down; I want to speak to you. Do you know I should like to see you⁠—married.” This speech was made at Dunripple to Edith Brownlow by her uncle, Sir Gregory, one morning in July, as she w...

At the end of the first week in August news reached the vicarage at Bullhampton that was not indeed very important to the family of Mr. Fenwick, but which still seemed to have an immediate effect on t...

Lord St. George began to throw his oil upon the waters in reference to that unfortunate chapel at Bullhampton a day or two after his interview with his father in the lawyer’s chambers. His father had ...

While the Vicar was listening to the eloquence of Mr. Puddleham in the chapel, and was being cozened out of his just indignation by Lord St. George, a terrible scene was going on in the drawing-room o...

The whole of the next day was passed in wretchedness by the party at the vicarage. The Vicar, as he greeted Miss Lowther in the morning, had not meant to be severe, having been specially cautioned aga...

When the Vicar went on his unhappy mission to the Squire’s house Carry Brattle had been nearly two months at the mill. During that time both Mr. and Mrs. Fenwick had seen her more than once, and at la...

Mr. Gilmore in his last words to his friend Fenwick, declared that he would not accept the message which the Vicar delivered to him as the sufficient expression of Mary’s decision. He would see Mary L...

It was considerably past one o’clock, and the children’s dinner was upon the table in the dining parlour before anyone in the vicarage had seen Mary Lowther since the departure of the Squire. When she...

The presence of Carry Brattle was required in Salisbury for the trial of John Burrows and Lawrence Acorn on Wednesday the 22nd of August. Our Vicar, who had learned that the judges would come into the...

Mary Lowther, in her letter to her aunt, had in one line told the story of her rupture with Mr. Gilmore. This line had formed a postscript, and the writer had hesitated much before she added it. She h...

Mr. Gilmore left his own home on a Thursday afternoon, and on the Monday when the Vicar again visited the Privets nothing had been heard of him. Money had been left with the bailiff for the Saturday w...

The miller, as he was starting from his house door, had called his daughter by her own name for the first time since her return home⁠—and Carry had been comforted. But no further comfort came to her d...

Fenwick and Gilmore breakfasted together on the morning that the former left London for Bullhampton; and by that time the Vicar had assured himself that it would be quite impossible to induce his frie...

Sir Gregory Marrable’s headache was not of long duration. Allusion is here made to that especial headache under the acute effects of which he had taken so very unpromising a farewell of his nephew and...

Mrs. Fenwick had many quips and quirks with her husband as to those tidings to be made in a pleasant spirit which were expected from Turnover Castle. From the very moment that Lord St. George had give...

There is nothing further left to be told of this story of the village of Bullhampton and its Vicar beyond what may be necessary to satisfy the reader as to the condition and future prospects of the Br...