



Produced by Gardner Buchanan





THE IMPERIALIST


By Sara Jeannette Duncan, 1861-1922 (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)


1904




CHAPTER I

It would have been idle to inquire into the antecedents, or even the
circumstances, of old Mother Beggarlegs. She would never tell; the
children, at all events, were convinced of that; and it was only the
children, perhaps, who had the time and the inclination to speculate.
Her occupation was clear; she presided like a venerable stooping hawk,
over a stall in the covered part of the Elgin market-place, where she
sold gingerbread horses and large round gingerbread cookies, and brown
sticky squares of what was known in all circles in Elgin as taffy. She
came, it was understood, with the dawn; with the night she vanished,
spending the interval on a not improbable broomstick. Her gingerbread
