The Broad Highway

The Broad Highway

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Farnol #3 in our series by Jeffery Farnol
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Title: The Broad Highway
Author: Jeffery Farnol
Release Date: March, 2004 [EBook #5257] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on June 16, 2002]

Edition: 10
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
BROAD HIGHWAY ***

Etext prepared by Polly Stratton and Andrew Sly

The Broad Highway
by Jeffery Farnol

To Shirley Byron Jevons The friend of my boyish ambitions This book
is dedicated As a mark of my gratitude, affection and esteem
J. F.

ANTE SCRIPTUM
As I sat of an early summer morning in the shade of a tree, eating fried
bacon with a tinker, the thought came to me that I might some day
write a book of my own: a book that should treat of the roads and
by-roads, of trees, and wind in lonely places, of rapid brooks and lazy
streams, of the glory of dawn, the glow of evening, and the purple
solitude of night; a book of wayside inns and sequestered taverns; a
book of country things and ways and people. And the thought pleased
me much.
"But," objected the Tinker, for I had spoken my thought aloud, "trees
and suchlike don't sound very interestin'--leastways--not in a book, for

after all a tree's only a tree and an inn, an inn; no, you must tell of other
things as well."
"Yes," said I, a little damped, "to be sure there is a highwayman--"
"Come, that's better!" said the Tinker encouragingly.
"Then," I went on, ticking off each item on my fingers, "come Tom
Cragg, the pugilist--"
"Better and better!" nodded the Tinker.
"--a one-legged soldier of the Peninsula, an adventure at a lonely tavern,
a flight through woods at midnight pursued by desperate villains,
and--a most extraordinary tinker. So far so good, I think, and it all
sounds adventurous enough."
"What!" cried the Tinker. "Would you put me in your book then?"
"Assuredly."
"Why then," said the Tinker, "it's true I mends kettles, sharpens scissors
and such, but I likewise peddles books an' nov-els, an' what's more I
reads 'em--so, if you must put me in your book, you might call me a
literary cove."
"A literary cove?" said I.
"Ah!" said the Tinker, "it sounds better--a sight better--besides, I never
read a nov-el with a tinker in it as I remember; they're generally dooks,
or earls, or barronites--nobody wants to read about a tinker."
"That all depends," said I; "a tinker may be much more interesting than
an earl or even a duke."
The Tinker examined the piece of bacon upon his knifepoint with a
cold and disparaging eye.
"I've read a good many nov-els in my time," said he, shaking his head,

"and I knows what I'm talking of;" here he bolted the morsel of bacon
with much apparent relish. "I've made love to duchesses, run off with
heiresses, and fought dooels--ah! by the hundred--all between the
covers of some book or other and enjoyed it uncommonly
well--especially the dooels. If you can get a little blood into your book,
so much the better; there's nothing like a little blood in a book--not a
great deal, but just enough to give it a 'tang,' so to speak; if you could
kill your highwayman to start with it would be a very good beginning
to your story."
"I could do that, certainly," said I, "but it would not be according to
fact."
"So much the better," said the Tinker; "who wants facts in a nov-el?"
"Hum!" said I.
"And then again--"
"What more?" I inquired.
"Love!" said the Tinker, wiping his knife-blade on the leg of his
breeches.
"Love?" I repeated.
"And plenty of it," said the Tinker.
"I'm afraid that is impossible," said I, after a moment's thought.
"How impossible?"