Borderland

One summer, which in point of date now lies many years behind us, four boys used to play together, and to quarrel and make it up again with one another—to live together through the long, golden days, that vivid, eager life peculiar to children, in a curious, old-fashioned garden on the bank of the river Tees, and on the Durham side of that stream. The garden belonged to a great house, not very old, though it was the abode of an old family, solemn, not to say gloomy, in its dulness and stateliness of appearance, and standing out in rather sombre contrast to the woods which were behind it, and the terraces which sloped down from its front to the river-side.