Oswald Cray A Novel Author:Ellen Wood CHAPTER I. DR. DAVENAL. T U-as market-day at Hallingham. A moderate-sized md once beautiful tom, cut np now by the ugly railroad which bad chose11 to take its way right through it, and to build a large station on the very spot where the Abbey Gardens used to flourish. Famous gardens once and not so long ago the evening recreation of the townspeo... more »ple, who would promenade there at sunset, whatever the time of year. , Since the gardens had been seized upon for the railway purposes, a bitter feud of opinion had reigned in the place the staid old inhabitants mourning and resenting their towns desecration the younger welcoming the new rail, its station, and its bustle, with all their might and main, as a grateful inbreak . on their monotonous life. The twins from London distant some sixty or seventy miles mould go shriekiig and whiatling through the town at any hour of the day or night and, so far, peace for Hallingham was over. Possibly it was became the town was famons for little else, that these Abbey Gardens were so regretted. Hallingham Abbey had been renowned in the ages gone by very little of its greatness was left to it now. The crumbling hand of time h d partially destroyed the fine old building, m insignificant portion of it alone remaining just suf3icient to impart a notion of its style of. architecture and the century of its erection and this small porti6n had bean patched and propped, and altogether altered and modernised, by way of keeping it together. It was little more than an ordinary dwellinghouse now and at the present moment was unoccupied, ready to be let to any suitable tenant who would take it. But, poor as it Wa h ccmprison with some of the modern dwellings in its vicinity, it NM still in a degree bowed down to by Hallingham...« less