ADVERTISEMENT. THE Author of this Work, being resident at Madeira, was unable personally to superintend its progress through the press; the task of revision has therefore been intrusted to other hands. THE HEIR OF VALLIS. CHAPTER I. ON the morning of a rainy bleak day in March, the good folk of the village of Darlington, then the last stage before reaching Oxford, were thrown into a state of consternation through the nonarrival of "the Express" at its appointed hour. Divers conjectures, usual in such cases, were afloat; fatal accidents were assumed, causing the apothecary's imagination to travel post-haste to the conviction that it was an ill wind that blew good to none; whilst the landlady of the "Bedford" came to the conclusion, that it would be only kind and proper to have well-aired beds in readiness, as well as a sympathizing countenance to comfort the luckless passengers, whose lightest mishaps, she VOL. I. B |