Excerpt from The Adventures of Harry Richmond One midnight of a winter month the Sleepers in Riversley Grange were awakened by a ringing of the outer bell and blows upon the great hall-doors. Squire Reltham was master there: the other members of the household were, his daughter Dorothy Beltham; a married daughter Mrs. Richmond; Benjamin Sewis, an Old half-caste butler, various domestic servants; and a little boy, christened Harry Lepel Richmond, the sqiie 's g1andson.riversley Grange lay In a rich watered hollow of the Hampshire heath -country;a lonely circle of enclosed brook and pasture, within View of some of its dependent farms, but out of hail of them, or any dwelling except the stables and the head-gardener's cottage. Traditions of audacious highwaymen, together with the gloomy surrounding fir-scenery, kept it alive to fears of solitude and the night; and there was that in the deter mined violence of the knocks and repeated bell-peals which assured all those who had ever listened in the servants' hall to prognostications of a possible night attack, that the robbers had come at last most awfully. A crowd of maids gathered along the upper corridor of the main body of the building: two or three footmen hung lower down, bold in attitude. Suddenly the noise ended, and soon after the voice Of Old Sewis commanded them to scatter away to their beds. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.