Tatham was then a lad of fourteen, mounted on
one of the best of ponies, and he well remembered the mad gallop which
had carried him past the Tower, and the tall figure of its furious
master. The glee, the malicious triumph of the moment ran through his
pulses again as he thought of it.
A short-lived triumph indeed, as far as the hunt was concerned; for the
building of the ten-foot wall had followed, and Melrose's final breach
with the gentry of his county. Never since had Tatham set foot in the
Ogre's demesne; and he examined every feature of it with the most lively
interest. The dilapidated buildings of the Home Farm reminded him of a
lawsuit brought by a former tenant against his landlord, in which a story
of mean and rapacious dealing on the part of Melrose, toward a decent
though unfortunate man, had excited the disgust of the whole countryside.
Melrose had never since been able to find a tenant for the farm, and the
bailiff he had put in was a drunken creature whose mismanagement of it
was notorious. Such doings by a man so inhumanly shrewd as Melrose in
many of his affairs could only be accounted for by the combination in him
of miserly dislike of spending, with a violent self-will. Instances,
however, had been known when to get his own way, or gain a sinister
advantage over an opponent, Melrose had been willing to spend
extravagantly.
After passing the farm, Tatham pressed on eagerly, expecting the first
sight of the house.
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