Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VI. Which treats of Family Matters, and introduces the reader to some new acquaintances. The father of Charles Dalton, Gerald Dal ton, Esq., of Dai- ton Hall, Cumberland, had died suddenly from the effects of a fall from his horse, while hunting, only a few months prior to the period at which this history commences. Up to the day of his death he was considered to be a man of large property. He was the representative of an ancient family, whose members had for many generations held a prominent position in the county, and Mr. Dalton had at the age of thirty inherited from his father a handsome estate, giving him an unincumbered rent-roll of three thousand pounds per annum. But the young man had deviated from the course of his forefathers; he had been educated at Harrow and at Oxford, and had at these places acquired habits of extravagance which required an income twice as large to support. The consequence was, that he soon became embarrassed, and was compelled to resort to ruinous measures to raise a larger income than his estate brought him. The property was not entailed, and he had no difficulty in, mortgaging it piecemeal, and obtaining in this manner all the money his extravagancies required. Nay, so obliging were his creditors, that they bound themselves to supply him with the funds he needed without stint, and without letting the matter be known to any one until after his death, when of course they would be enabled to foreclose the mortgages and dismember the estate. It is not likely that Gerald Dalton when he first fell into the clutches of the money-lenders thought of the ruin that was sure to follow. He was not an ill-meaning man, and, at first would have been shocked at the thought of the ruin that he was bringing upon his family. But, the fact is...