Beau Brocade: A Romance

The jolting of the carriage along the quaggy road had been well nigh unendurable. Mistress Betty was groaning audibly. But Lady Patience, with her fair head resting against the...

There was something more than ordinary affection between Philip, Earl of Stretton, and his sister, Lady Patience Gascoyne. Those who knew them in the days of their happiness sai...

John Stich ventured no further opposition, well knowing the reckless spirit which his own quiet devotion was powerless to keep in check; moreover, Lady Patience, closely followe...

A sudden turn of the path brought her within sight of the cross-ways and of the old gallows, on which a fragment of rain-spattered rag still fluttered ghostlike in the wind.

When the Corporal had finished reading the Royal Proclamation, one or two of them sighed in a desultory fashion, others murmured casually, "Lordy! Lordy! to think on it! Dearie...

Both through the back and the front door a crowd of excited soldiers had pushed their way into the inn, whilst the folk in the bar-parlour, attracted by the sudden noise, presse...

About half an hour ago, when Jack Bathurst suddenly burst in upon Lord Stretton in the dingy little parlour upstairs, he gave the lad no inkling of what was happening down below...

Mistress Pottage, sad-eyed, melancholy, and for ever sighing, had been patiently waiting to receive Sir Humphrey Challoner's orders. She had understood from his man that his Hon...

He waited a little while, and gradually a smile of the deepest satisfaction spread over his bird-like countenance; he rubbed his meagre knees up and down with his thin hands, in...

Sir Humphrey Challoner had not been long in making up his mind to take Master Mittachip's pernicious advice. He twisted the old adage that "everything is fair in love" to a just...

Jock Miggs came in, making as little noise, and taking up as little room as possible. Dressed in a well-worn smock and shabby corduroy breeches, he had a curious shrunken, timid...

That Beau Brocade should have emerged unconquered after all out of the terrible position in which he was placed last night, seemed to the worthy smith nothing short of miraculou...

Inside the forge all was still, whilst the last of the muffled sounds died away in the distance. John Stich had not resumed work. It was his turn now to stare moodily before him.

A while ago, in an agony of longing, he had cried out for a moment's respite! for a disguise! and now there stood before him Jock Miggs in smock and broad-brimmed hat, with pipe...

Sir Humphrey Challoner had not returned to the Moorhen after his visit to the forge until the sun was very low down in the west. He had bidden the attorney to await him at the i...

Dressed in his gold-laced coat, bob-tail wig and three-cornered hat, his fine calves encased in the whitest of cotton stockings, his buckled shoes veritable mirrors of shiny bri...

"The rascal may hope to win his pardon through the Gascoyne influence, by rendering her ladyship this service. Where'er he may be at this moment, I am quite sure that his eye is...

As, worn-out, pallid, aching in every limb, he dragged himself wearily forward on hands and knees, it would have been difficult to recognise in this poor, suffering fragment of...

Patience's first thought as soon as she reached the road was for Betty; she helped the poor girl to her feet and tried to get some coherent explanation from her.

The fact that the Squire of Hartington had openly declared his admiration for her, surely gave her no cause for suspecting him of enmity towards her brother. She knew that Sir H...

Hemmed in by a compact little group of soldiers at the foot of the stairs, and with three men on guard at the head of it, Bathurst and Patience had but a few minutes in which to...

Thus it was that when Sir Humphrey Challoner, after his lengthy interview with Mittachip, stepped out of the porch of the Royal George on his way to the Court House, he found th...

The Packhorse Inn, lower down the village, was not nearly so frequented as was the Royal George. Its meagre, dilapidated appearance frightened most customers away. A few yokels...

John Stich too had heard that laugh; for a moment he paused in his work, straightened his broad back and leant his heavy hammer upon the anvil, whilst a pleasant smile lit up hi...

The uncertainty of what the immediate future might bring, the fast-sinking hope, the slowly-creeping despair, the agony of dull, weary hours: Patience had gone through the whole...

"My lady! my lady!" cried Betty, excitedly, as soon as she caught her mistress's eye, "I have just spied Sir Humphrey Challoner at the window of the Royal George, just over the...

By the time Squire West and the whole of the parish of Brassington had realised what a terrible practical joke had been perpetrated on them by the stranger, the latter was far o...

"Those gallant lobsters won't be long in finding out that they've been hoodwinked," he said, "an I mistake not, they'll return here anon with a temper slightly the worse for wea...

Squire West was an elderly man, with a fine military presence and a pleasant countenance beneath his bob-tail wig: in his youth he had been reckoned well-favoured, and had been...

Jock Miggs, still trussed and pinioned, had been hauled out of the pound. Master Inch, the beadle, resplendent in gold-laced coat and the majesty of his own importance, had take...

That they had been very influential and wealthy people at one time, there could be no doubt. There was a room at Old Hartington Manor where James I. had slept for seven nights,...

During those few seconds or that eternity, the world was re-created for him: for him it became more beautiful than he had ever conceived it in his dreams. A woman's smile had ch...

It was in the middle of the afternoon when His Royal Highness, having attended to other important affairs, and partaken of a hasty meal at the Royal George, finally found leisur...

The presence of Philip at the inn had done much to cheer Patience in her weary waiting. He and John Stich had reached the Packhorse some time before cockcrow, and the landlord h...

Patience closed her eyes for a moment: her spirit, which had gone a-roaming into the land of dreams, where dwell heroes and proud knights of old, came back to earth once more.

Beau Brocade drew rein on the spur of the hill. He had galloped all the way from the forge, out towards the sunset, then on, ever on, over gorse and bracken, on red sandy soil a...

"Begad! the gods do indeed favour me!" he said, his good-looking, jovial face expressing unalloyed delight. "I come to this forsaken spot on God's earth, and find the fairest in...

John Stich, half crazy with joy, was tossing his cap in the air, and in the fulness of his heart was stealing a few kisses from Mistress Betty's pretty mouth.

I. BY ACT OF PARLIAMENT II. THE FORGE OF JOHN STICH III. THE FUGITIVE IV. JOCK MIGGS, THE SHEPHERD V. "THERE'S NONE LIKE HER, NONE!" VI. A SQUIRE OF HIGH DEGREE VII. THE HALT AT...

XX. A THRILLING NARRATIVE XXI. MASTER MITTACHIP'S IDEA XXII. AN INTERLUDE XXIII. A DARING PLAN XXIV. HIS HONOUR, SQUIRE WEST XXV. SUCCESS AND DISAPPOINTMENT XXVI. THE MAN HUNT X...

XXX. SUSPENSE XXXI. "WE'VE GOTTEN BEAU BROCADE" XXXII. A PAINFUL INCIDENT XXXIII. THE AWAKENING XXXIV. A LIFE FOR A LIFE XXXV. QUITS XXXVI. THE AGONY OF PARTING XXXVII. REPARATI...