>>> YOU ARE VIEWING A 200 LINE SAMPLE OF EBOOK# E07062 <<< TITLE: THE YEOMAN ADVENTURER AUTHOR: GEORGE W. GOUGH EBOOK: E07062 (O'Briens Book Cellar) LANGUAGE: ENGLISH The Yeoman Adventurer By George Gough To A. D. Steel-Maitland, M.P. In Gratitude and Admiration CONTENTS I. THE GREAT JACK II. THE SERGEANT OF DRAGOONS III. MISTRESS MARGARET WAYNFLETE IV. OUR JOURNEY COMMENCES V. THE ANCIENT HIGH HOUSE VI. MY LORD BROCTON VII. THE RESULTS OF LOSING MY VIRGIL VIII. THE CONJURER'S CAP IX. MY CAREER AS A HIGHWAYMAN X. SULTAN XI. IN WHICH I SLIP XII. THE GUEST-ROOM OF THE "RISING SUN" XIII. PHARAOH'S KINE XIV. "WAR HAS ITS RISKS" XV. IN THE MOORLANDS XVI. BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE XVII. MY NEW HAT XVIII. THE DOUBLE SIX XIX. WHAT CAME OF FOPPERY XX. THE COUNCIL AT DERBY XXI. MASTER FREAKE KNOWS AT LAST XXII. A BROTHER OF THE LAMP XXIII. DONALD XXIV. MY LORD BROCTON PILES UP HIS ACCOUNT XXV. I SETTLE MY ACCOUNT WITH MY LORD BROCTON XXVI. THE WAY OF A MAID WITH A MAN EPILOGUE: THE LITTLE JACK CHAPTER I THE GREAT JACK Our Kate, Joe Braggs, and I all had a hand in the beginning, and as great results grew in the end out of the small events of that December morning, I will set them down in order. It began by my refusing point-blank to take Kate to the vicar's to watch the soldiers march by. I loved the vicar, the grave, sweet, childless old man who had been a second father to me since the sad day which made my mother a widow, and but for the soldiers nothing would have been more agreeable than to spend the afternoon with the old man and his books. But my heart would surely have broken had I gone. A caged linnet is a sorry enough sight in a withdrawing-room, but hang the cage on a tree in a sunlit garden, with free birds twittering and flitting about it, and you turn dull pain into shattering agony. The vicar's little study, with the rows of books he had made me know and love with some small measure of his own learning and passion, was the perch and seed-bowl of my cage, the things in it, after my sweet mother and saucy Kate, that made life possible, but still part of the cage, and it would have maddened me to hop and twitter there in sight of free men with arms in their hands and careers in front of them. Jack Dobson would march by, the sweetness of life for Kate--little dreamed she that I knew it--but for me the bitterness of death. Jack Dobson! I liked Jack, but not clinquant in crimson and gold, with spurs and sword clanking on the hard, frost-bitten road. I laughed at the idea; Jack Dobson, whom I had fought time and time again at school until I could lick him as easily as I could look at him; Jack Dobson, a jolly enough lad, who fought cheerily even when he knew a sound thrashing was in store for him, but all his brains were good for was to stumble through _Arma virumque cano_, and then whisper, "Noll, you can fire a gun and shoot a man, but how can you sing 'em?" And because his thin, shadowy, grasping father was a man of much outward substance and burgess for the ancient borough, Jack was cornet in my Lord Brocton's newly raised regiment of dragoons, this day marching with other of the Duke of Cumberland's troops from Lichfield to Stafford. And for me, the pride of old Bloggs for Latin and of all the lads for fighting, the most stirring deed of arms available was shooting rabbits. So, consuming inwardly with thoughts of my hard fate, I refused to go to the vicar's. Mother should go. For her it would be a real treat, and Kate would be the better under her quiet, seeing eyes. "Well then," said Kate, "grump at home over your beastly Virgil." Mother, who understood as only mothers can, said nothing, and prepared my favourite dishes for dinner. The meal over, and the house-place 'tidied,' which seldom meant more than the harassing of a few stray specks of dust, Kate in her best fripperies and mother in her churchgoing gown started for the vicar's. I stood in the porch and watched them across the cobbled yard and along the road till they dropped out of sight beyond the bridge. Then Kate's share of these introductory events became manifest. Search high, search low, there was no sign of my dear, dumpy Virgil, in yellowing parchment with red edges. I found Kate's cookery-book, and would have flung it through the window, but my eye caught the quaint inscription on the fly-leaf, in her big, pot-hooky handwriting: "KATHERINE WHEATMAN, her book, God give her grease to larn to cook. At the Hanyards. Jul. 1739." The simple words stung me like angry hornets. Our red-headed Kate was no scholar, but at any rate her reading was more useful in our little world than mine; for this was where she learned the artistry of the dainties and devices Jack Dobson and I were so fond of. And if I did not soon learn to do something well, even were it only how to farm my five hundred acres to a profit, Kate's cooking would really require the miraculous aid suggested in her unintentional and, to me, biting epigram. I put the book down, and gave over the hunt for my Virgil. It would probably be useless in any case, since Kate had a cunning all her own, and had surely bestowed it far beyond any searching of mine. I contented myself with a fair reprisal, stowing a stray ribbon of hers in my breeches' pocket, and sat down to smoke. My pipe would not draw, and I smashed it in trying to make it. The tall oak clock tick-tocked on in the house-place, and Jane sang on at her churning in the dairy across the yard. I sat gazing at the fire, where I could see nothing but Jack Dobson in his martial grandeur, and I hated him for his greatness, and despised myself for my pettiness. All the same it was unendurable, and it was a relief to see Joe Braggs tiptoeing carefully across the yard dairywards. The rascal should have been patching a gap in the hedge of Ten-acres, and here he was, foraging for a jug of ale. He could wheedle Jane as easily as he could snare a rabbit, but I would scarify him out of his five senses, the hulk. The singing stopped, and then the churning, and five minutes later I crept up to the kitchen door, which was ajar. There was my lord Joe, a jug of ale in hand, his free arm round Jane's neck. How endurable these two found life at the Hanyards! I caught a fragment of their gossip. "Be there such things as rale quanes, Jin?" "Of course," she replied. "There's pictures of 'em in one of Master Noll's books. Crowns on their yeds, too." "There's one on 'em down 'tour house, Jin, but she ain't got no crown. But bless thee, wench, I'd sooner kiss thee than look at fifty quanes." Jane yelped as I murdered an incipient kiss by knocking the jug out of his hand across the kitchen, but in kicking him out of doors I tripped over a bucket of water, and about half a score fine dace flopped miserably on the wet floor. "Dunna carry on a' that'n, Master Noll," said Joe. "I only com' up t'ouse to bring you them daceys." "And what the devil do I want with them?" said I angrily. Joe knew me. He said, "There's a jack as big as a gate-post in that 'ole between the reeds along th' 'igh bonk." He saw the cock of my eye, and went on: "I saw 'im this mornin', an' 'eard 'im. 'E made a splosh like a sack o' taters droppin' off the bridge. So I just copped 'e a few daceys, thinkin' as you'd be sure to go after 'im." "Put them in some fresh water, Joe, and you, Jane, fill him another jug. I'll own up to Mistress Kate for smashing the other." I fetched my rod and tackle, picked up the bucket of dace, and set off across the fields to the river. The bank nearer the house, and about three hundred yards from it, stood from two to six feet above the water, being lowest where a brick bridge carried the road to the village. The opposite bank was very low, and was fringed in summer with great masses of reeds and bulrushes, now withered down nearly to nothing, but still showing the pocket of deep water where the jack had "sploshed like a sack o' taters." It was opposite the highest part of our bank--the Hanyards was bounded by the river in this direction--and the bridge was about one hundred yards <<< END OF SAMPLE... (THE FULL EBOOK HAS 688621 TOTAL CHARACTERS) >>>