Kent Knowles: Quahaug

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Kent Knowles: Quahaug

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Kent Knowles: Quahaug, by Joseph C. Lincoln (#12 in our series by Joseph C. Lincoln)
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Title: Kent Knowles: Quahaug
Author: Joseph C. Lincoln
Release Date: June, 2004 [EBook #5980] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on October 5, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, KENT KNOWLES: QUAHAUG ***

This eBook was produced by Don Lainson.

KENT KNOWLES: QUAHAUG
by
JOSEPH C. LINCOLN

1914

CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I.
Which is not a chapter at all
II. Which repeats, for the most part, what Jim Campbell said to me and what I said to him
III. Which, although it is largely family history, should not be skipped by the reader
IV. In which Hephzy and I and the Plutonia sail together
V. In which we view, and even mingle slightly with, the upper classes
VI. In which we are received at Bancroft's Hotel and I receive a letter
VII. In which a dream becomes a reality
VIII. In which the pilgrims become tenants
IX. In which we make the acquaintance of Mayberry and a portion of Burgleston Bogs
X. In which I break all previous resolutions and make a new one
XI. In which complications become more complicated
XII. In which the truth is told at last
XIII. In which Hephzy and I agree to live for each other
XIV. In which I play golf and cross the channel
XV. In which I learn that all abbeys are not churches
XVI. In which I take my turn at playing the invalid
XVII. In which I, as well as Mr. Solomon Cripps, am surprised
XVIII. In which the pilgrimage ends where it began
XIX. Which treats of quahaugs in general

KENT KNOWLES: QUAHAUG
CHAPTER I
Which is Not a Chapter at All
It was Asaph Tidditt who told me how to begin this history. Perhaps I should be very much obliged to Asaph; perhaps I shouldn't. He has gotten me out of a difficulty--or into one; I am far from certain which.
Ordinarily--I am speaking now of the writing of swashbuckling romances, which is, or was, my trade--I swear I never have called it a profession--the beginning of a story is the least of the troubles connected with its manufacture. Given a character or two and a situation, the beginning of one of those romances is, or was, pretty likely to be something like this:
"It was a black night. Heavy clouds had obscured the setting sun and now, as the clock in the great stone tower boomed twelve, the darkness was pitchy."
That is a good safe beginning. Midnight, a stone tower, a booming clock, and darkness make an appeal to the imagination. On a night like that almost anything may happen. A reader of one of my romances--and readers there must be, for the things did, and still do, sell to some extent--might be fairly certain that something WOULD happen before the end of the second page. After that the somethings continued to happen as fast as I could invent them.
But this story was different. The weather or the time had nothing to do with its beginning. There were no solitary horsemen or strange wayfarers on lonely roads, no unexpected knocks at the doors of taverns, no cloaked personages landing from boats rowed by black-browed seamen with red handkerchiefs knotted about their heads and knives in their belts. The hero was not addressed as "My Lord"; he was not "Sir Somebody-or-other" in disguise. He was not young and handsome; there was not even "a certain something in his manner and bearing which hinted of an eventful past." Indeed there was not. For, if this particular yarn or history or chronicle which I had made up my mind to write, and which I am writing now, had or has a hero, I am he. And I am Hosea Kent Knowles, of Bayport, Massachusetts, the latter the village in which I was born and in which I have lived most of the time since I was twenty-seven years old. Nobody calls me "My Lord." Hephzy has always called me "Hosy"--a name which