The Woodlanders

The encounter with the carriages having sprung upon Winterborne's mind

the image of Mrs. Charmond, his thoughts by a natural channel went from

her to the fact that several cottages and other houses in the two

Hintocks, now his own, would fall into her possession in the event of

South's death. He marvelled what people could have been thinking about

in the past to invent such precarious tenures as these; still more,

what could have induced his ancestors at Hintock, and other village

people, to exchange their old copyholds for life-leases. But having

naturally succeeded to these properties through his father, he had done

his best to keep them in order, though he was much struck with his

father's negligence in not insuring South's life.

After breakfast, still musing on the circumstances, he went upstairs,

turned over his bed, and drew out a flat canvas bag which lay between

the mattress and the sacking. In this he kept his leases, which had

remained there unopened ever since his father's death. It was the

usual hiding-place among rural lifeholders for such documents.

Winterborne sat down on the bed and looked them over. They were

ordinary leases for three lives, which a member of the South family,

some fifty years before this time, had accepted of the lord of the

manor in lieu of certain copyholds and other rights, in consideration

of having the dilapidated houses rebuilt by said lord. They had come

into his father's possession chiefly through his mother, who was a

South.

Pinned to the parchment of one of the indentures was a letter, which

Winterborne had never seen before. It bore a remote date, the

handwriting being that of some solicitor or agent, and the signature

the landholder's. It was to the effect that at any time before the

last of the stated lives should drop, Mr. Giles Winterborne, senior, or

his representative, should have the privilege of adding his own and his

son's life to the life remaining on payment of a merely nominal sum;

the concession being in consequence of the elder Winterborne's consent

to demolish one of the houses and relinquish its site, which stood at

an awkward corner of the lane and impeded the way.

The house had been pulled down years before. Why Giles's father had

not taken advantage of his privilege to insert his own and his son's

lives it was impossible to say. The likelihood was that death alone

had hindered him in the execution of his project, as it surely was, the

elder Winterborne having been a man who took much pleasure in dealing

with house property in his small way.