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Updated: September 16, 2025
Behind the house was high ground, once thickly wooded, and still partially covered with trees and underwood. The Hall was about two miles distant from Crossbourne, and was well-known to most of its inhabitants, though but seldom visited, except occasionally by picnic parties in summer-time.
"Dear, kind friend," began Miss Maltby, raising herself from her couch, and leaning herself on her mother, who came and sat by her, "I could not be satisfied to leave Crossbourne without seeing you first, as I want you to do something for me in the parish which I cannot ask my dear father to do.
"There's been some roguery or trickery about it altogether. The bag was in Crossbourne on the 23rd of last December, and your wife got the Bible that same evening. I'm firmly persuaded there's been some hoax about it all, and I believe bag and bracelet and all's in the town, if we only knew how to find 'em without making the matter public.
"Perhaps so, John; but it is time for me to go up and dress for dinner." No one was more universally respected or more vigorously abused in Crossbourne than "Tommy Tracks," as he was sneeringly called. His real name was Thomas Bradly. He was not a native of Crossbourne, but had resided in that town for some five years past at the time when our story opens.
It is one cheering sign of real progress in Crossbourne that our Temperance Society and Band of Hope are so nourishing. You know the rock on which we have founded them; I mean, on love to the Lord Jesus Christ. May these societies long flourish! I trust we shall gain some members to-night; for Thomas, I know, has got the pledge-book with him.
A few minutes more, and Dr and Mrs Prosser were on their way back to the great city. When Edward Taylor's accident and its cause were known in Crossbourne, the consternation caused among the enemies of religion and of the temperance cause was indescribable.
Thus, meeting a fellow-workman one day who had lately come to Crossbourne, about whose character for steadiness he had strong suspicions, and who seemed always in a hurry, and yet as if he could never fairly overtake his work "James," he said to him, "you should borrow my two walking-sticks." "Walking-sticks! what for?" asked the other.
To which Thomas dryly replied that "he was not aware that it was so; but if it had been, he should have kept it to himself." This and similar broad hints at length closed the gossiping mouths of Crossbourne at any rate, in the presence of any members of the Bradly family and Jane and her troubles ceased to occupy much attention out of her own home.
And when he passed, after some years' experience in the ministerial Work, to the important post of vicar of Crossbourne, he had come to take a peculiar interest in the study of individual character, and to delight in gathering around him workers of various temperaments and habits of thought.
Crossbourne, the present flourishing manufacturing town, occupied the hills on either side of the little stream, the greater part of it being to the north, in the direction of the parish church. The station itself was on high ground, and looked across over open country, the line in the London direction passing from it through the centre of the town over a noble viaduct of some twenty arches.
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