The Inn at the Red Oak

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The Inn at the Red Oak

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Title: The Inn at the Red Oak
Author: Latta Griswold
Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9856] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on October 24, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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THE INN AT THE RED OAK
BY LATTA GRISWOLD
1917

[Illustration: "It's a treasure right enough!" cried Dan.]

CONTENTS

PART I THE OLD MARQUIS
I THE MARQUIS ARRIVES AT THE INN
II THE LION'S EYE
III THE MARQUIS AT NIGHT
IV THE OAK PARLOUR
V THE WALK THROUGH THE WOODS

PART II THE TORN SCRAP OF PAPER
VI THE HALF OF AN OLD SCRAP OF PAPER
VII A DISAPPEARANCE
VIII GREEN LIGHTS
IX RECOLLECTIONS OF A FRENCH EXILE
X MIDNIGHT VIGILS

PART III THE SCHOONER IN THE COVE
XI THE SOUTHERN CROSS
XII TOM TURNS THE TABLES
XIII MADAME DE LA FONTAINE
XIV IN THE FOG
XV NANCY
XVI MADAME AT THE INN
XVII THE MARQUIS LEAVES THE INN

PART IV THE ATTACK ON THE INN
XVIII THE AVENUE OF MAPLES
XIX THE ATTACK
XX THE OAK PARLOUR
XXI THE TREASURE

The Inn at the Red Oak


PART I
THE OLD MARQUIS

CHAPTER I
THE MARQUIS ARRIVES AT THE INN
By the end of the second decade of the last century Monday Port had passed the height of prosperity as one of the principal depots for the West Indian trade. The shipping was rapidly being transferred to New York and Boston, and the old families of the Port, having made their fortunes, in rum and tobacco as often as not, were either moving away to follow the trade or had acquiesced in the changed conditions and were settling down to enjoy the fruit of their labours. The harbour now was frequently deserted, except for an occasional coastwise trader; the streets began to wear that melancholy aspect of a town whose good days are more a memory than a present reality; and the old stage roads to Coventry and Perth Anhault were no longer the arteries of travel they once had been.
To the east of Monday Port, across Deal Great Water, an estuary of the sea that expanded almost to the dignity of a lake, lay a pleasant rolling wooded country known in Caesarea as Deal. It boasted no village, scarcely a hamlet. Dr. Jeremiah Watson, a famous pedagogue and a graduate of Kingsbridge, had started his modest establishment for "the education of the sons of gentlemen" on Deal Hill; there were half-a-dozen prospering farms, Squire Pembroke's Red Farm and Judge Meath's curiously lonely but beautiful House on the Dunes among them; a little Episcopalian chapel on the shores of the Strathsey river, a group of houses at the cross roads north of Level's Woods, and the Inn at the Red Oak,--and that was all.
In its day this inn had been a famous hostelry, much more popular with travellers than the ill-kept provincial hotels in Monday Port; but now for a long time it had scarcely provided a livelihood for old Mrs. Frost, widow of the famous Peter who for so many years had been its popular host. No one knew when the house had been built; though there was an old corner stone on which local antiquarians professed to decipher the figures "1693," and that year was assigned by tradition as the date of its foundation.
It was a long crazy building, with a great sloping roof, a wide porch running its entire length, and attached to its sides and rear in all sorts of unexpected ways and places were numerous out houses and offices. Behind its high brick chimneys rose the thick growth of Lovel's Woods, crowning the ridge that ran between Beaver Pond and the Strathsey river to the sea. The house faced southwards, and from the cobbled court before it meadow and woodland sloped to the beaches and the long line of sand dunes that straggled out and lost themselves in Strathsey Neck. To