Category: Historical Novels
D F E Sykes was a gifted scholar, solicitor, local politician, and newspaper proprietor. He listed his own patrimony as 'Fred o' Ned's o' Ben o' Billy's o' the Knowle' a reference to Holme village above Slaithwaite in the Colne Valley. As the grandson of a clothier, his associ...
D F E Sykes was a gifted scholar, solicitor, local politician, and newspaper proprietor. He listed his own patrimony as 'Fred o' Ned's o' Ben o' Billy's o' the Knowle' a referen...
2. CHAPTER I.THE _Hanging Gate_ is a public-house of venerable aspect. It stands at the corner of one of four cross ways, where the road from the summit of Harrop Edge cuts the turnpike from...
3. CHAPTER II.MR. Black did not sleep well that night. He had fevered visions of Alpine crevasses, of St. Bernard dogs and of fair blanched faces set in long dank tresses of clinging hair. He...
4. CHAPTER III.THE Workhouse for the Saddleworth Union is a low stone building of no great dimensions, standing on about as bleak and cold a site as could well I have been selected. It stands...
5. CHAPTER IVTHE ancient village of Holmfirth on the river Holme was, in former days, of considerably more pretension than it is to-day, when the neighbouring town of Huddersfield dwarfs the...
6. CHAPTER V.HAPPY'S the wooing that's not long a-doing, and Jabez Tinker, his mind resolved, was not the man to let the grass grow under his feet. Martha was not the one to insist on all th...
7. mill. Folk ought to be glad they can send their children to work, toearn their own living. How would they live if they couldn't? But there's no gratitude left in the world--that's a fact. But there's your uncle finished his nap, and you'd best b...
8. CHAPTER VI.Tom Pinder was "apprenticed"--so the phrase ran--to Jabez Tinker with all the form and circumstance and not a little of the verbal exuberance of the law. The manufacturer bound...
9. CHAPTER VII.TIME passed, as it will pass even in Holmfirth. Tom is still an apprentice, but in no fear of stick or strap from Sam Buckley, or any other Sam. The first Factory Act has become...
10. CHAPTER VIII.THE legacy left him by Mr. Black amounted to no less than a hundred pounds, which seemed to Tom a vast sum. Mr. Redfearn was sole executor of the will. Tom took possession of th...
11. CHAPTER IX.NEHEMIAH WIMPENNY, of Holmfirth, "Gentleman, one of Her Majesty's &c.," in other words a solicitor, was the only legal practitioner in the village or neighbourhood, and though n...
12. CHAPTER XIT is one thing for a maiden to invite a young man to a garden, and quite another to know what to do with him when she gets him there. It would have puzzled Dorothy to say exact...
13. CHAPTER XITHAT was a grand moment for Ben and Tom when the shuttle of the goit at Co-op Mill was drawn, and the water from the dam began to stream into the wheel-race and catch the bucket...
14. CHAPTER XIITO say that the service of the bill in Chancery on Tom was like a bolt from the blue would be but feebly to describe the consternation with which he perused the portentous docum...
15. CHAPTER XIII.FROM this time onward for some months there is little to record. The parties to the great law suit awaited with what patience they might the final trial of the all-important iss...
16. CHAPTER XIV.Tom Pinder lost no time in waiting upon his solicitor and acquainting him with his desire that the proceedings should be stayed even if to stay them meant an ignominious surrend...
17. CHAPTER XV.SOME ten days or so after the events recorded in the last chapter, a stout woman past the middle age sat by a large four-posted bed in a spacious and well-furnished bedroom. The...