Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England The Black Tor, by George Manville Fenn, A Tale of the Reign of James the First. _______________________________________________________________________ As always with this author there is plenty of action in this book. Two teenage boys of about the same age come from families which have been in intense rivalry for centuries. Each of them lives in a castle set among the wild and desolate hills of Derbyshire, an almost mountainous area in the Midlands of England, known generally as the Peak District. The boys know each other but as enemies. Yet events occur which draw them together as allies, but they dare not call themselves friends. A roguish band of ex-soldiers have arrived in the district, and set up camp out on the moors, from whence they descend to steal from, rob and loot the houses of the poorer folk. The boys privately form an alliance using the men working on their fathers' land as a private army, to attack and rid the land of these desperadoes. Their first attack results in dreadful failure. But then they revise their ideas of what they can use for weaponry, and are finally successful. Yet another excellent book from the prolific pen of this great author. NH _______________________________________________________________________ THE BLACK TOR, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN, A TALE OF THE REIGN OF JAMES THE FIRST. CHAPTER ONE. ONE CAPTAIN PURLROSE. About as rugged, fierce-looking a gang of men as a lad could set eyes on, as they struggled up the steep cliff road leading to the castle, which frowned at the summit, where the flashing waters of the Gleame swept round three sides of its foot, half hidden by the beeches and birches, which overhung the limpid stream. The late spring was at its brightest and best, but there had been no rain; and as the men who had waded the river lower down, climbed the steep cliff road, they kicked up the white limestone dust, and caked their wet high boots, which, in several instances, had opened holes in which toes could be seen, looking like curious reptiles deep in gnarled and crumpled shells. "Beggars! What a gang!" said Ralph Darley, a dark, swarthy lad of perhaps seventeen, but looking older, from having an appearance of something downy beginning to come up that spring about his chin, and a couple of streaks, like eyebrows out of place, upon his upper lip. He was well dressed, in the fashion of Solomon King James's day; and he wore a sword, as he sat half up the rugged slope, on a huge block of limestone, which had fallen perhaps a hundred years before, from the cliff above, and was mossy now, and half hidden by the ivy which covered its side. "Beggars," he said again; "and what a savage looking lot."