CHAPTER I

THE BIRKENSHAWS OF THAT ILK AND THEIR FORTUNES When Gideon Birkenshaw--of Birkenshaw Tower in the Forest and the lands of Markit beneath the brow of remote Cheviot--was summoned by death to his account, he left all to his eldest son and turned the other penniless upon the world. Robert, the heir, stepped unthinking into the dead man's shoes, and set himself to the family task of amassing gear. He was a man already grim and aging at thirty, with the stoop of an inquisitor and deep eyes to search out the intents of t…