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Some futile attempts had been made to increase
the territory, as indeed had been done by Kit Dale, the father of
Christopher Dale, who will appear as our squire of Allington when the
persons of our drama are introduced. Old Kit Dale, who had married
money, had bought outlying farms,--a bit of ground here and a bit
there,--talking, as he did so, much of political influence and of
the good old Tory cause. But these farms and bits of ground had gone
again before our time. To them had been attached no religion. When
old Kit had found himself pressed in that matter of the majority
of the Nineteenth Dragoons, in which crack regiment his second son
made for himself quite a career, he found it easier to sell than
to save--seeing that that which he sold was his own and not the
patrimony of the Dales. At his death the remainder of these purchases
had gone. Family arrangements required completion, and Christopher
Dale required ready money. The outlying farms flew away, as such
new purchases had flown before; but the old patrimony of the Dales
remained untouched, as it had ever remained.


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