This work of fiction commences THE story of Cecilia Grace's parentage was a curious one. Maurice Grace, a plodding, serious young doctor, with no pretension to good looks except his deep and quiet eyes, born of little more than peasant stock, had found himself at the age of hventy-eight or thereabouts doing locum tenens for Dr. Brady, of Knocklynn. Knocklynn is situated in "a great wild country." The villages are small and scattered, the fanners poor and struggling. 'There is no middle-class there, unless the village shopkeepers count for such. 'There could be no lonelier spot for a young man cast away there as was Maurice Grace. Hardly any society came his way. The priest, a traveling school inspector or official of the Department of Agriculture or the Post Office: these made about the only society available. There were a few great houses in the neighborhood. But these houses-Arlo, Clounty now because of a recent tragedy, Kilrush House, where the master as but a child, the House of Drolnore-were nearly as much above Maurice Grace as the sky over him.