Transcriber's Notes: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_), and text enclosed by equal signs is in bold (=bold=) The web browser version of this book contains links to Midi, PDF, and MusicXML files for the music scores on pages 94 and 319-320. Additional Transcriber's Notes are at the end. * * * * * Sir Christopher [Illustration] Sir Christopher _A Romance of a Maryland Manor in 1644_ BY MAUD WILDER GOODWIN Author of "The Head of a Hundred," "White Aprons," "The Colonial Cavalier," etc. _Illustrated by_ HOWARD PYLE, AND OTHER ARTISTS [Illustration] Boston Little, Brown, and Company 1901 _Copyright, 1901_, BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. _All rights reserved_ Entered at Stationers' Hall UNIVERSITY PRESS · JOHN WILSON AND SON · CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. TO BLANCHE WILDER BELLAMY AND FREDERICK PUTNAM BELLAMY Preface On a bluff of the Maryland coast stand a church, a school, a huddle of gravestones, and an obelisk raised to the memory of Leonard Calvert. These alone mark the site of St. Mary's, once the capital of the Palatinate. It is near this little town, about the middle of the seventeenth century, that my story begins, among the feuds then raging between Catholic and Protestant, Cavalier and Roundhead, Marylander and Virginian. The Virginians of that day were but a generation removed from the pioneers who suffered in the massacre of 1622; and the sons and daughters of those early settlers whose lives were traced in "The Head of a Hundred"[A] appear in the present romance. The adventures of Romney Huntoon, of the Brents, and, most of all, of Christopher Neville and Elinor Calvert, furnish the material of my story; but I venture to hope that the reader will feel beneath the incidents and adventures that throbbing of the human heart which has chiefly interested me. FOOTNOTE: [A] Published 1895. Contents CHAPTER PAGE I. ROBIN HOOD'S BARN 1 II. ST. GABRIEL'S AND ST. INIGO'S 16 III. BLESSING AND BANNING 34 IV. THE LORD OF THE MANOR 49 V. PEGGY 72