The Inn at the Red Oak

The Inn at the Red Oak

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Title: The Inn at the Red Oak
Author: Latta Griswold
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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