Produced by Charles Bowen Transcriber's Note: 1. Page Scan Source: https://books.google.com/books?id=kbZMAAAAcAAJ (the Bavarian State Library) THE ROCK AHEAD. A NOVEL. BY EDMUND YATES, AUTHOR OF "LAND AT LAST," ETC. _COPYRIGHT EDITION_. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LEIPZIG BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ. 1868. _The Right of Translation is reserved_. To M. E--d. Forgues. My dear Sir, Although I have not the pleasure of your personal acquaintance, I venture to ask you to accept the dedication of this book, in slight acknowledgment of the admirable manner in which you have reproduced two of my previous stories (_Broken to Harness_ and _The Forlorn Hope_) in the pages of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, and of the flattering way in which you have frequently referred to my writings in that excellent periodical. Faithfully yours, EDMUND YATES. _London, April 1868_. CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. PROLOGUE CHAPTER I. Whispered. II. Pondered. III. Proposed. IV. Settled. BOOK THE FIRST. I. Rowley Court. II. In Possession. III. Carabas House. IV. Breaking Cover. V. Memory-haunted. VI. Lloyd's Luck. VII. The Linnet's Cage. VIII. The Linnet's first Flight. IX. Soaring. BOOK THE SECOND. I. Progress. II. Integratio Amoris. III. At the Crystal Palace. THE ROCK AHEAD. PROLOGUE. CHAPTER I. Whispered. Hot in Brighton, very hot. The August sun reflected off white-chalk cliff and red-brick pavement, and the sea shining and sparkling like a sapphire; the statue of George the Fourth, in its robe of verdigris, looking on in blighted perspiration at the cabmen at its base, as though imploring a drink; the cabmen lolling undemonstratively on the boxes of their vehicles, not seeking for employment, and--partly by reason of the heat, but more, perhaps in consequence of the money received recently at the races--rather annoyed than otherwise when their services were called into requisition. For the Brighton races had just taken place, and the town, always so full, had been more crammed than ever. All the grand hotels had been filled with the upper ten thousand, who moved easily over from Chichester and Worthing and Bognor, where they had been staying for Goodwood, which immediately precedes Brighton; and all the lodgings had been taken by the betting-men and the turfites,--the "professionals," with whom the whole affair is the strictest matter of business, and to whom it is of no interest whether the race is run at Torquay or Wolverhampton, in blazing sunshine or pouring hailstorm, so long as the right thing "comes off," and they "land the winner."