CHAPTER I.
On an evening of July, in the year 18--, at East D---, a beautiful little town in a certain district of East Anglia, I first saw the light.
My father was a Cornish man, the youngest, as I have heard him say, of seven brothers. He sprang from a family of gentlemen, or, as some people would call them, gentillâtres, for they were not very wealthy; they had a coat of arms, however, and lived on their own property at a place...
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