HEARTS AND THE HIGHWAY
Reading edition
A ROMANCE OF THE ROAD
First set forth by Lady Katharine Clanranald and Sir Hugh Richmond and now transcribed by Cyrus Townsend Brady
Author of "The Island of Regeneration," "The Better Man," etc.
WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS By F. C. YOHN
A. L. BURT COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
Published, March 1911
Dedicated to MRS. HARRIETTE ROSCOE ELLARD
AND HER DEVOTED ASSOCIATES IN THE LIVELIEST AND MOST ENTHUSIASTIC WOMAN'S AUXILIARY SOCIETY THAT I KNOW
PREFACE
This story is exactly what it purports to be, a romance, as the reader who cares to follow the Highway with the Hero and Heroine whose adventures thereon are hereafter set forth will see. It makes no pretence at being an historical novel, and yet, perhaps, it is only fair to the Manes of Lady Grizel Ogilby to point out that she herself once played a dashing rôle, somewhat like that attributed to Lady Katharine Clanranald, in a similar emergency in Scottish history and at a similar crisis in the family fortunes. I am just a little tired, for the nonce, of the problem story, and I have turned to this with a keen relish in which I humbly trust the reader will share. Variety is the life of literature: if I confined myself to one kind of books, or to one kind of sermons, I should be a dead author and a dead preacher as well.
The relaxations of life are not to be found in idleness, but in doing things that are different. It is a far cry from The Island of Regeneration to The Better Man and from The Better Man to Hearts and the Highway. And it will be a farther cry, perhaps, to the next story! Here's hoping that each may find a place and welcome in some gracious reader's heart.
CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY.
ST. GEORGE'S RECTORY, KANSAS CITY, Mo., New Year's Day, 1911.
CONTENTS
BOOK I
THE WINNING OF A HUSBAND
As Set Forth by the Lady of the Quest, with a Necessary Interlude by the Gentleman in Person
CHAPTER I
In Which I, Lady Katharine Clanranald, Come to a Desperate but Manly Resolution
CHAPTER II
Wherein Worthy Master Dunner Finds My Lord Carthew's Clothes Vastly Becoming to Me as I Ride Away
CHAPTER III
How I Ate, Drank, and Gamed with Sir Hugh Richmond, Under Whom I Would Fain See Service
CHAPTER IV
Wherein I Played the Highwayman and What Befell Me on the Road
CHAPTER V
In Which I Ride Away with My Captor, Who Threatens Me with Death for High Treason
CHAPTER VI
In Which, by the Favour of the King's Messenger, I am Permitted to Ride South Again on My Quest
CHAPTER VII
Wherein, at the Request of Lady Katharine Clanranald, Whom He Loved, Sir Hugh Richmond Takes up the Tale, Relating What Happened to Him in the Tolbooth Prison
CHAPTER VIII
How I Got the News of a Noble Self-Sacrifice, How It Affected Me, and What I Resolved to Do for Sir Hugh Richmond
CHAPTER IX
My Interview with the King of England and the Good and Bad Angels That Attended Him
CHAPTER X
In Which I Bargain Successfully for That Which Is as Dear to Me as the Life of My Father
CHAPTER XI
Wherein Sir Hugh Richmond Finds Me, Not Unwilling, Thrust upon Him
BOOK II
THE KEEPING OF A WIFE
As Described by the Gentleman Who Did It, with an Incidental Digression by the Lady Herself
CHAPTER XII
In Which I, Sir Hugh Richmond, Who Tell This Tale, Find That It Is Easier to Marry Lady Katharine Clanranald than to Keep Her for My Own
CHAPTER XIII
Wherein I Set Down in Due Course the Resolution to Which I Came, Which Boded Ill to the King, as I Rode Southward
CHAPTER XIV
Wherein, by the Grace of God, Our Own Determination, and the Speed of Our Good Horses, We Reach Monkwearmouth in Time
CHAPTER XV
Shows How the Lord Chief Justice of England Kept a Love Tryst and What Befell Him at the Boar's Head Inn
CHAPTER XVI
How My Lord Stenwold Settled His Account and Paid His Debt in Full
CHAPTER XVII
In Which Lady Katharine Richmond, at the Request of Her Husband, Tells How She and Lord Stenwold Came to Stenwold House
CHAPTER XVIII
Wherein Lady Katharine Describes What Took Place in the Antechamber Where the King Made Love to Her
CHAPTER XIX
Wherein Sir Hugh Richmond Interrupts a Tête-à-Tête Between His Wife and one James Stewart
CHAPTER XX
How Sir Hugh and Lady Katharine, with Some Assistance from General Feversham, at Last and Finally Overcame the Majesty of England