Produced by Nathan Harris, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team The Yeoman Adventurer By George Gough To A. D. Steel-Maitland, M.P. In Gratitude and Admiration CONTENTS I. THE GREAT JACK II. THE SERGEANT OF DRAGOONS III. MISTRESS MARGARET WAYNFLETE IV. OUR JOURNEY COMMENCES V. THE ANCIENT HIGH HOUSE VI. MY LORD BROCTON VII. THE RESULTS OF LOSING MY VIRGIL VIII. THE CONJURER'S CAP IX. MY CAREER AS A HIGHWAYMAN X. SULTAN XI. IN WHICH I SLIP XII. THE GUEST-ROOM OF THE "RISING SUN" XIII. PHARAOH'S KINE XIV. "WAR HAS ITS RISKS" XV. IN THE MOORLANDS XVI. BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE XVII. MY NEW HAT XVIII. THE DOUBLE SIX XIX. WHAT CAME OF FOPPERY XX. THE COUNCIL AT DERBY XXI. MASTER FREAKE KNOWS AT LAST XXII. A BROTHER OF THE LAMP XXIII. DONALD XXIV. MY LORD BROCTON PILES UP HIS ACCOUNT XXV. I SETTLE MY ACCOUNT WITH MY LORD BROCTON XXVI. THE WAY OF A MAID WITH A MAN EPILOGUE: THE LITTLE JACK CHAPTER I THE GREAT JACK Our Kate, Joe Braggs, and I all had a hand in the beginning, and as great results grew in the end out of the small events of that December morning, I will set them down in order. It began by my refusing point-blank to take Kate to the vicar's to watch the soldiers march by. I loved the vicar, the grave, sweet, childless old man who had been a second father to me since the sad day which made my mother a widow, and but for the soldiers nothing would have been more agreeable than to spend the afternoon with the old man and his books. But my heart would surely have broken had I gone. A caged linnet is a sorry enough sight in a withdrawing-room, but hang the cage on a tree in a sunlit garden, with free birds twittering and flitting about it, and you turn dull pain into shattering agony. The vicar's little study, with the rows of books he had made me know and love with some small measure of his own learning and passion, was the perch and seed-bowl of my cage, the things in it, after my sweet mother and saucy Kate, that made life possible, but still part of the cage, and it would have maddened me to hop and twitter there in sight of free men with arms in their hands and careers in front of them. Jack Dobson would march by, the sweetness of life for Kate--little dreamed she that I knew it--but for me the bitterness of death. Jack Dobson! I liked Jack, but not clinquant in crimson and gold, with spurs and sword clanking on the hard, frost-bitten road. I laughed at the idea; Jack Dobson, whom I had fought time and time again at school until I could lick him as easily as I could look at him; Jack Dobson, a jolly enough lad, who fought cheerily even when he knew a sound thrashing was in store for him, but all his brains were good for was to stumble through _Arma virumque cano_, and then whisper, "Noll, you can fire a gun and shoot a man, but how can you sing 'em?" And because his thin, shadowy, grasping father was a man of much outward substance and