Produced by Al Haines [Illustration: Cover art] THE SWORD OF THE KING BY RONALD MACDONALD NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1900 COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY THE CENTURY CO. THE KNICKERBOCKER PRESS, NEW YORK INTRODUCTION It is matter of no small difficulty and hesitation for a woman to tell a story--in especial, her own story--from the beginning of it even to the end, and to hold, as it were, a straight course throughout. The perplexities, I say, are many, and among them not the least is found in these same words, _beginning_ and _end_. For where truly his story has its inception, and what will be its ultimate word, might well puzzle the wisest man of this age, or any other. It has been well said, indeed, that the history of a man is the history of his troubles--but that fashion of considering will bring us, by no devious road, to the latter days of the Garden of Eden and the Fall of Man. Now either I have somewhere read, or my own heart has privily told me, that the story of a woman is the story of her love. And this I take to be truth, and do therefore resolve that the first chapter of my story shall be the first of my heart. But, lest my book itself should lack apology, I will first tell how it comes that I, the mere wife and daughter of country gentlemen, and of learning, as will be seen, wholly insufficient to the undertaking, should write a book at all. I write, it is true, but for my own people--for the family that I pray may be long in the land. But in these days, fortunate indeed, yet full of swift and dubious change--these days when every second man, it would seem, must print a book--these days when all the presses in London are not enough to set before us the tithe of what is committed by ink to paper--in these days, I say, none can be assured that what he now pens shall not by some chance hit of fortune attain the resurrection of print. And if this thing befall my work of love, and if the book then prove, not the cere-cloth of the embalmer, but a second and perpetual life to the thoughts of a most happy daughter, wife, and mother long departed and forgotten, I would stand well with my reader. If any stranger, then, do read, let him believe that I have no taint in me of that _scabies scribendi_, mentioned by Horace, and mightily inveighed against last Sunday in the pulpit of Royston Church by our good vicar. This itch must be spreading fast, I thought, if there be danger of it here, where scarce a full score of the good man's hearers can spell in a hornbook. And now, lo! I am in dread lest I be thought infected--I, a woman, with all good things that come to women, and one to whom the holding of the pen is soon a weariness.