Richard Burke had run away from his Irish home to sea. He
served on Admiral Rooke's flagship at the battle of La Hogue, and, rising
in the navy to the rank of warrant officer, bought a ship with the
savings of twenty years and fitted it out for unauthorized trade with the
East Indies. His daring, skill, and success attracted the attention of
the officers of the Company. He was invited to enter the Company's
service. As captain of an Indiaman he sailed backwards and forwards for
ten years; then at the age of fifty retired with a considerable fortune
and married the daughter of a Shropshire farmer. The death of his wife's
relatives led him to settle on the farm their family had tenanted for
generations, and it was at Wilcote Grange that his three children were
born.
Fifteen years separated the elder son from the younger; between them came
a daughter, who married early and left the neighborhood. Four years after
Desmond's birth the old man died, leaving the boy to the guardianship of
his brother.
There lay the seed of trouble. No brothers could have been more unlike
than the two sons of Captain Burke. Richard was made on a large and
powerful scale; he was hard working, methodical, grasping, wholly
unimaginative, and in temper violent and domineering. Slighter and less
robust, though not less healthy, Desmond was a boy of vivid imagination,
high strung, high spirited, his feelings easily moved, his pride easily
wounded. His brother was too dull and stolid to understand him, taking
for deliberate malice what was but boyish mischief, and regarding him as
sullen when he was only dreamily thoughtful.
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