my own uncles were open to me, that my cousins were all like brothers
and sisters to me, and yet that my father and my aunts had never been to
their uncle's house at Hellifield, and that our relations there never
came to see us at Burnley. The explanation of this estrangement given by
my grandfather, was that there had been a disagreement about land; but
perhaps he may have felt some delicacy about telling his children that
his unambitious marriage had contributed to render the separation
permanent. However this may have been, my grandmother never once saw the
inside of her brother-in-law's house, and when she died there was, I
believe, not even the formal expression of condolence that is usual
among acquaintances. Gilbert Hamerton had lived at Hollins, a house and
estate inherited from his mother; and James Hamerton, the elder brother,
lived in a castellated peel or border tower at Hellifield, which had
been built by Lawrence Hamerton in 1440. The two places are not much
more than twenty miles apart; but the brothers never met after their
quarrel, and my grandfather's sons and daughters never saw their uncle's
house. One result of the estrangement was that we hardly seemed to
belong to our own family; and I remember a lady, who had some very vague
and shadowy claims to a distant connection with the family at
Hellifield, asking one of my aunts in a rather patronizing manner if she
also did not "claim to be connected" with the Hamertons of Hellifield
Peel. Even to this day it is difficult for me to realize the simple fact
that she was niece to an uncle whom she had never seen, and first cousin
to his successor.

My grandfather had lived in apparently excellent health till the age of
seventy-seven, when one afternoon as he was seated in his dining-room at
Hollins, nobody being present except his eldest daughter Mary, he asked
her to open the window, and then added, "Say a prayer." She immediately
began to repeat a short prayer, and before she had reached the end of it