The Yeoman Adventurer

Yeoman Adventurer, The

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Title: The Yeoman Adventurer
Author: George W. Gough
Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7326] [This file was first posted
on April 14, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE
YEOMAN ADVENTURER ***

Nathan Harris, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks, and the Onlind Distributed
Proofreading Team

The Yeoman Adventurer
By George Gough

To
A. D. Steel-Maitland, M.P.
In Gratitude and Admiration

CONTENTS
I. THE GREAT JACK
II. THE SERGEANT OF DRAGOONS
III. MISTRESS MARGARET WAYNFLETE
IV. OUR JOURNEY COMMENCES
V. THE ANCIENT HIGH HOUSE
VI. MY LORD BROCTON
VII. THE RESULTS OF LOSING MY VIRGIL

VIII. THE CONJURER'S CAP
IX. MY CAREER AS A HIGHWAYMAN
X. SULTAN
XI. IN WHICH I SLIP
XII. THE GUEST-ROOM OF THE "RISING SUN"
XIII. PHARAOH'S KINE
XIV. "WAR HAS ITS RISKS"
XV. IN THE MOORLANDS
XVI. BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE
XVII. MY NEW HAT
XVIII. THE DOUBLE SIX
XIX. WHAT CAME OF FOPPERY
XX. THE COUNCIL AT DERBY
XXI. MASTER FREAKE KNOWS AT LAST
XXII. A BROTHER OF THE LAMP
XXIII. DONALD
XXIV. MY LORD BROCTON PILES UP HIS ACCOUNT
XXV. I SETTLE MY ACCOUNT WITH MY LORD BROCTON
XXVI. THE WAY OF A MAID WITH A MAN
EPILOGUE: THE LITTLE JACK

CHAPTER I
THE GREAT JACK
Our Kate, Joe Braggs, and I all had a hand in the beginning, and as
great results grew in the end out of the small events of that December
morning, I will set them down in order.
It began by my refusing point-blank to take Kate to the vicar's to watch
the soldiers march by. I loved the vicar, the grave, sweet, childless old
man who had been a second father to me since the sad day which made
my mother a widow, and but for the soldiers nothing would have been
more agreeable than to spend the afternoon with the old man and his
books. But my heart would surely have broken had I gone. A caged
linnet is a sorry enough sight in a withdrawing-room, but hang the cage
on a tree in a sunlit garden, with free birds twittering and flitting about
it, and you turn dull pain into shattering agony. The vicar's little study,
with the rows of books he had made me know and love with some
small measure of his own learning and passion, was the perch and
seed-bowl of my cage, the things in it, after my sweet mother and saucy
Kate, that made life possible, but still part of the cage, and it would
have maddened me to hop and twitter there in sight of free men with
arms in their hands and careers in front of them. Jack Dobson would
march by, the sweetness of life for Kate--little dreamed she that I knew
it--but for me the bitterness of death. Jack Dobson! I liked Jack, but not
clinquant in crimson and gold, with spurs and sword clanking on the
hard, frost-bitten road. I laughed at the idea; Jack Dobson, whom I had
fought time and time again at school until I could lick him as easily as I
could look at him; Jack Dobson, a jolly enough lad, who fought
cheerily even when he knew a sound thrashing was in store for him, but
all his brains were good for was to stumble through Arma virumque
cano, and then whisper, "Noll, you can fire a gun and shoot a man, but
how can you sing 'em?" And because his thin, shadowy, grasping father
was a man of much outward substance and burgess for the ancient
borough, Jack was cornet in my Lord Brocton's newly raised regiment
of dragoons, this day marching with other of the Duke of Cumberland's
troops from Lichfield to Stafford. And for me, the pride of old Bloggs

for Latin and of all the lads for fighting, the most