text:  Nearly four years elapsed before he took possession of the place; four years during which Sir Laurence Altham had never set foot in the hall and was heard of only through his follies and excesses; and when Mr Sparks at length made his appearance with his handsome train of equipages and surrounded by his still handsomer family so far from meeting him with sullen silence the tenantry began to regret that they had not erected a triumphal arch of evergreens for his entrance into the park as had been proposed by the less eager of the Althamites