About six extremely spiced novels by Mr. Sigismund Smith were published, and they were quite well received by the classes who prefer their literature as strongly flavored as their tobacco. Except when he found himself on the shelf of a newsvendor, very oily and dog-eared at the edges, he always appeared in weekly numbers for a cent a week. The maid-of-all-work visited the greengrocer's and came back with a boy who appeared filthy and a truck. Mr. Lansdell had returned from Lowlands, but he avoided the grey old estate where the Earl and his daughter were wallowing in a depressing and financially precarious situation. The carpet bag, luggage, and trunks belonging to Mrs. Judkin's son were loaded into the truck before he left, leaving them in Sigismund's care.
Smooth glades, enchanting waterfalls, and gorgeous landscape gardening effects like those at Mordred Priory are absent from Lowlands. For the past 150 years, the Earls of Ruysdale have mostly lagged behind the rest of the world. Only a dense layer of woodland surrounded the old red-brick home, unaltered by the merciless handicraft of modern development.