

E-text prepared by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Mary Meehan, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)



THE WHARF BY THE DOCKS

A Novel

by

FLORENCE WARDEN

Author of "The Mystery of the Inn by the Shore," etc.

1896







CHAPTER I.

SOMETHING AMISS.


Everybody knows Canterbury, with its Old-World charms and its
ostentatious air of being content to be rather behind the times, of
looking down upon the hurrying Americans who dash through its cathedral
and take snap-shots at its slums, and at all those busy moderns who
cannot afford to take life at its own jog-trot pace.

But everybody does not know the charming old halls and comfortable,
old-fashioned mansions which are dotted about the neighboring country,
either nestling in secluded nooks of the Kentish valleys or holding a
stately stand on the wooded hills.

Of this latter category was The Beeches, a pretty house of warm, red
brick, with a dignified Jacobean front, which stood upon the highest
ground of a prettily wooded park, and commanded one of those soft,
undulating, sleepy landscapes which are so characteristically English,
and of which grazing sheep and ruminating cows form so important a
feature. A little tame, perhaps, but very pleasant, very homely, very
sweet to look upon by the tired eyes that have seen enough of the
active, bustling world.

Mr. George Wedmore, of the firm of Wedmore, Parkinson and Bishop,
merchants of the city of London, had bought back the place, which had
formerly belonged to his family, from the Jews into whose hands it had
fallen, and had settled there to spend in