Excerpt from The Small House at Allington, Vol. 1 Allington for some hundreds Of years; and though, as I have said, the race of squires had possessed nothing Of superhuman discretion, and had perhaps been guided in their walks through life by no very distinct principles, still there had been with them so much of adherence to a sacred law, that no acre of the property had ever been parted from the hands Of the existing squire. 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 pur chases had gone. Family arrangements required com pletion, 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. 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.