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
Character set encoding: US-ASCII
*** 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 stirring deed of arms available was shooting rabbits. So, consuming inwardly with thoughts of my hard fate, I refused to go to the vicar's. Mother should go. For her it would be a real treat, and Kate would be the better under her quiet, seeing eyes.
"Well then," said Kate, "grump at home