Description

It is nearly eleven years since Alan Sydney left England, but I have only recently been released from my promise of secrecy. So sacred to me is the memory of our friendship, that, even now, I shrink from the task of narrating his strange and curious history. A strong impulse, however, urges me to break silence. The village of Anstead, near which we both lived, is in Surrey, possibly the best county in England to find mixed society. Here the old-fashioned farmers, the labourers who have never travelled as far as London, and a few country squires are mingled with, and influenced by, retired London shopkeepers, merchant princes--with or without H's--and a sprinkling of literary and scientific dabblers; these last are regarded with suspicion by all, but especially by the retired Army and Navy magnates.