ELIZABETH'S PRETENDERS.
PART I.
CHAPTER I.
One of the most prominent men in the great manufacturing turning town which I shall call Whiteburn, was the late Anthony Shaw. He was not wholly a self-made man; rather a self-uplifted man. His father, beginning life as a common mechanic, had amassed a considerable fortune, which he divided between his two sons. To Anthony, who had been associated with him in business during the last few years of his life, were left the iron works at Whiteburn, and the substantial house in the town. The younger son, William, a man with a limited capacity for fox-hunting and billiards, and little else to serve as a breastplate to a soft credulous heart, found himself the possessor of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. He bought himself a small estate in an adjoining county, within reach of two packs of hounds; and, in process of time, he also bought himself a wife.
Fortune had, apparently, smiled on both brothers, each after his kind. Anthony, with his remarkable business
