Publisher's Synopsis
IT was a morning of late May, and the sunshine, though rather watery, after the fashion ofSouth-of-England suns, was real sunshine still, and glinted and glittered bravely on thedew-soaked fields about Copplestone Grange.This was an ancient house of red brick, dating back to the last half of the sixteenth century, and still bearing testimony in its sturdy bulk to the honest and durable work put upon it byits builders. Not a joist had bent, not a girder started in the long course of its two hundredand odd years of life. The brick-work of its twisted chimney-stacks was intact, and thestone carving over its doorways and window frames; only the immense growth of the ivyon its side walls attested to its age. It takes longer to build ivy five feet thick than manycastles, and though new masonry by trick and artifice may be made to look like old, there isno secret known to man by which a plant or tree can be induced to simulate an antiquitywhich does not rightfully belong to it. Innumerable sparrows and tomtits had built in thethick mats of the old ivy, and their cries and twitters blended in shrill and happy chorus asthey flew in and out of their nests
