Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History

The Yeoman Adventurer

Open Original Text

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Yeoman Adventurer
 
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Yeoman Adventurer

Author: George W. Gough

 
Release date: January 1, 2005 [eBook #7326]
 Most recently updated: August 3, 2012

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7326

Credits: Produced by Nathan Harris, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks,
 and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading
 Team

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YEOMAN ADVENTURER ***

Produced by Nathan Harris, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading
Team

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, 

Next