Under the Storm

Under the Storm

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Under the Storm, by Charlotte M. Yonge #36 in our series by Charlotte M. Yonge
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Title: Under the Storm
Author: Charlotte M. Yonge
Release Date: July, 2004 [EBook #6006] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on October 15, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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This Project Gutenberg Ebook of Under the Storm: or Steadfast's Charge by Charlotte M Yonge was prepared by Sandra Laythorpe [email protected]. A web page for Charlotte M Yonge will be found at www.menorot.com/cmyonge.htm.

UNDER THE STORM
or
STEADFAST'S CHARGE
by
CHARLOTTE M YONGE
Author of "The Heir of Redclyffe," &c.

CONTENTS.
Chapter I
.--The Trust
" II.--The Stragglers
" III.--Kirk Rapine
" IV.--The Good Cause
" V.--Desolation
" VI.--Left to Themselves
" VII.--The Hermit's Gulley
" VIII.--Stead in Possession
" IX.--Wintry Times
" X.--A Terrible Harvest Day
" XI.--The Fortunes of War
" XII.--Farewell to the Cavaliers
" XIII.--Godly Venn's Troop
" XIV.--The Question
" XV.--A Table of Love in the Wilderness
" XVI.--A Fair Offer
" XVII.--The Groom in Grey
" XVIII.--Jeph's Good Fortune
" XIX.--Patience
" XX.--Emlyn's Service
" XXI.--The Assault of the Cavern
" XXII.--Emlyn's Troth
" XXIII.--Fulfilment

UNDER THE STORM:
OR
STEADFAST'S CHARGE.

CHAPTER I
.
THE TRUST.

"I brought them here as to a sanctuary." SOUTHEY.
Most of us have heard of the sad times in the middle of the seventeenth century, when Englishmen were at war with one another and quiet villages became battlefields.
We hear a great deal about King and Parliament, great lords and able generals, Cavaliers and Roundheads, but this story is to help us to think how it must have gone in those times with quiet folk in cottages and farmhouses.
There had been peace in England for a great many years, ever since the end of the wars of the Roses. So the towns did not want fortifications to keep out the enemy, and their houses spread out beyond the old walls; and the country houses had windows and doors large and wide open, with no thought of keeping out foes, and farms and cottages were freely spread about everywhere, with their fields round them.
The farms were very small, mostly held by men who did all the work themselves with the help of their families.
Such a farm belonged to John Kenton of Elmwood. It lay at the head of a long green lane, where the bushes overhead almost touched one another in the summer, and the mud and mire were very deep in winter; but that mattered the less as nothing on wheels went up or down it but the hay or harvest carts, creaking under their load, and drawn by the old mare, with a cow to help her.
Beyond lay a few small fields, and then a bit of open ground scattered with gorse and thorn bushes, and much broken by ups and downs. There, one afternoon on a big stone was seated Steadfast Kenton, a boy of fourteen, sturdy, perhaps loutish, with an honest ruddy face under his leathern cap, a coarse smock frock and stout gaiters. He was watching the fifteen sheep and lambs, the old goose and gander and their nine children, the three cows, eight pigs, and the old donkey which got their living there.
From the top of the hill, beyond the cleft of the river Avon, he could see the smoke and the church towers of the town of Bristol, and beyond it, the slime of the water of the Bristol Channel; and nearer, on one side, the spire of Elmwood Church looked up, and, on the other, the woods round Elmwood House, and these ran out as it were, lengthening and narrowing into a wooded cleft or gulley, Hermit's Gulley, which broke the side of the hill just below where Steadfast stood, and had a little clear stream running along the bottom.
Steadfast's little herd knew the time of day as well as if they all had watches in their pockets, and they never failed to go down and have a drink at the brook before going back to the farmyard.
They did not need to be driven, but gathered into the