"Help! help! holloa there!  Master Walter--Mr Amos--Jim--Harry--quick-- bring us a light!--lend a hand here!"  Such were the words which suddenly broke the stillness of a dark October night, and roused up the household of Mr Walter Huntingdon, a country gentleman living on his own estate in Derbyshire.  The voice was the coachman's, and came apparently from somewhere near the drive-gate, which was about a couple of hundred yards from the front door of the house.  The evening had been dark and stormy; and it was in a lull of the tempest that the ominous sounds of distress reached the ears of the inmates of Flixworth Manor.