THE SERF THE SERF By GUY THORNE _Author of "When It Was Dark" "A Lost Cause," etc., etc._ Illustration R. F. FENNO & COMPANY 18 East 17th Street----New York GREENING & CO., LTD., London TO THE MEMBERS OF THE NATIONAL LIBERAL CLUB. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE. I. 1 II. 25 III. 52 IV. 79 V. 103 VI. 128 VII. 150 VIII. 168 IX. 189 X. 205 XI. 217 XII. 230 XIII. 242 XIV. 250 XV. 270 XVI. 286 XVII. 297 THE SERF CHAPTER I "When Christ slept" _This is the history of a man who lived in misery and torture, and was held as the very dirt of the world. In great travail of body and mind, in a state of bitter and sore distress, he lived his life. His death was stern and pitiless, for they would have slain a dog more gently than he._ _And yet, while his lords and masters survive only in a few old chronicles of evil Latin, or perhaps you may see poor broken effigies of them in a very ancient church, the thoughts that Hyla thought still run down time, and have their way with us now. They seared him with heat and scourged him with whips, and hung him high against the sunset from the battlements of Outfangthef Tower, until his body fell in pieces to the fen dogs in the stable yards below. Yet the little misshapen man is worthy of a place in your hearts._ _Geoffroi de la Bourne is unthought-of dust; Fulke, his son, claims fame by three lines in an old compte-book as a baron who enjoyed the right of making silver coin. In the anarchy of King Stephen's reign he coined money, using black metal--"moneta nigra"--with no small profit to himself. So he has three lines in a chronicle._ _Hyla, serf and thrall to him, has had never a word of record until now._