The Adventures of Harry Revel

The Adventures of Harry Revel,
by Sir Arthur

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Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
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Title: The Adventures of Harry Revel
Author: Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

Release Date: January 3, 2007 [eBook #20261]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
ADVENTURES OF HARRY REVEL***
E-text prepared by Lionel Sear

THE ADVENTURES OF HARRY REVEL.

by
ARTHUR THOMAS QUILLER-COUCH.
1903
This e-text prepared from a reprint of a version published in 1903

PREFACE
When I started to set down these early adventures of Harry Revel, I
meant to dedicate them to my friend Mr. W. F. Collier of Woodtown,
Horrabridge: but he died while the story was writing, and now cannot
twit me with the pranks I have played among his stories of bygone
Plymouth, nor send me his forgiveness--as he would have done. Peace
be to him for a lover of Dartmoor and true gentleman of Devon!
So now I have only to beg, by way of preface, that no one will bother
himself by inquiring too curiously into the geography, topography, etc.
of this tale, or of any that I have written or may write. If these tales
have any sense of locality, they certainly will not square with the
ordnance maps; and even the magnetic pole works loose and goes
astray at times--a phenomenon often observed by sailors off the
sea-coast of Bohemia.
It may be permissible to add that the story which follows by no means
exhausts the adventures, civil and military, of Harry Revel. But the
recital of his further campaigning in company with Mr. Benjamin Jope,
and of the verses in which Miss Plinlimmon commemorated it, will
depend upon public favour.
A.T. QUILLER-COUCH.
THE HAVEN, FOWEY, March 28th, 1903.

CONTENTS.

I. I FIND MYSELF A FOUNDLING.
II. I START IN LIFE AS AN EMINENT PERSON.
III. I AM BOUND APPRENTICE.
IV. MISS PLINLIMMON.
V. THE SHADOW OF ARCHIBOLD.
VI. I STUMBLE INTO HORRORS.
VII. I ESCAPE FROM THE JEW'S HOUSE.
VIII. POOR TOM BOWLING.
IX. SALTASH FERRY.
X. I GO ON A HONEYMOON.
XI. FLIGHT.
XII. I FALL AMONG SMUGGLERS.
XIII. THE MAN IN THE VERANDAH.
XIV. THE MOCK-ORANGE BUSH.
XV. MINDEN COTTAGE.
XVI. MR. JACK ROGERS AS A MAN OF AFFAIRS.
XVII. LYDIA BELCHER INTERVENES.
XVIII. THE OWL'S CRY.
XIX. CHECKMATE.
XX. ISABEL'S REVENGE.

XXI. I GO CAMPAIGNING WITH LORD WELLINGTON.
XXII. ON THE GREATER TESSON.
XXIII. IN CIUDAD RODRIGO.
XXIV. I EXCHANGE THE LAUREL FOR THE OLIVE.
CHAPTER I.
I FIND MYSELF A FOUNDLING.
My earliest recollections are of a square courtyard surrounded by high
walls and paved with blue and white pebbles in geometrical
patterns--circles, parallelograms, and lozenges. Two of these walls
were blank, and had been coped with broken bottles; a third, similarly
coped, had heavy folding doors of timber, leaden-grey in colour and
studded with black bolt-heads. Beside them stood a leaden-grey
sentry-box, and in this sat a red-faced man with a wooden leg and a
pigtail, whose business was to attend to the wicket and keep an eye on
us small boys as we played. He owned two books which he read
constantly: one was Foxe's Martyrs, and the other (which had no title
on the binding) I opened one day and found to be The Devil on Two
Sticks.
The arch over these gates bore two gilt legends. That facing the
roadway ran: "Train up a Child in the Way he should Go," which
prepared the visitor to read on the inner side: "When he is Old he will
not Depart from it." But we twenty-five small foundlings, who seldom
evaded the wicket, and so passed our days with the second half of the
quotation, found in it a particular and dreadful meaning.
The fourth and last wall was the front of the hospital, a two-storeyed
building of grey limestone, with a clock and a small cupola of copper,
weather-greened, and a steeply pitched roof of slate pierced with
dormer windows, behind one of which (because of a tendency to walk
in my sleep) I slept in the charge of Miss Plinlimmon, the matron.
Below the eaves ran a line of eight tall windows, the three on the

extreme right belonging to the chapel; and below these again a
low-browed colonnade, in the shelter of which we played on rainy days,
but never in fine weather--though its smooth limestone slabs made an
excellent pitch for marbles, whereas on the pebbles in the yard
expertness could only be attained