



Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




Hollowdell Grange, by George Manville Fenn.

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This is one of Fenn's earliest books.  The theme is that a boy from
London goes down to stay in the country with his cousins, where the way
of life is so very different, and challenging, from all that he had
known in the great city.  The descriptions of country life of those days
are very well done, but we must make one warning--that many of the
countrymen we meet in the story speak with a strong Lincolnshire accent,
and the author has done his best to represent these sounds with what
must very often look like mistakes in transcription.

There are all sorts of country situations to be encountered, from
working with animals, to meeting the various village characters, to a
near drowning, and even, at the very end to an attempted rescue, one
that failed, of a drowning boy caught in a sluice on the beach.

There may well be a few mistakes, because the copy used was very old,
and the pages very browned, while at the same time not very well
printed.  But we have done our best and at least what we offer here is
better than what you would have got from the book itself in its aged
condition.  As so often with this kind of book it makes a very good
audio-book, and listening to it is a great pleasure.

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HOLLOWDELL GRANGE, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN.



CHAPTER ONE.

A FISH OUT OF WATER.

It was such a fine hot Midsummer day at Hollowdell station, that the
porter had grown tired of teasing the truck-driver's dog, and fallen
fast asleep--an example which the dog had tried to follow, but could
not, because there was only one shady spot within the station-gates, and
that had been taken possession of by the porter; so the poor dog had
tried first one place, and then another, but they were all so hot and
stifling, and the flies kept buzzing about him so teasingly, that he
grew quite cross, and barked and snapped so at the tiresome insects,
that at last he woke Jem Barnes, the porter, who got up, stretched
himself, yawned very rudely and loudly, and then, looking in at the
station-clock, he saw that the 2:30 train from London was nearly due, so
he made up his mind not to go to sleep again until it had passed.

It _was_ a hot day--so hot that the great black tarpaulins over the
goods-waggons were quite soft, and came off all black upon Jem Barnes's
hands.  The air down the road seemed to quiver and dance over the white
chalky dust; while all the leaves upon the trees, and the grass in the
meadows, drooped beneath the heat of the sun.  As to the river, it shone
like a band of silver as it wound in and out, and here and there; and
when you looked you could see the reflection of the great dragon-flies
as they flitted and raced about over the glassy surface.  The reeds on
the bank were quite motionless; while, out in the middle, the fat old
chub could be seen basking in the sunshine, wagging their great broad
fantails in the sluggish stream, too lazy even to snap up the flies that
passed over their heads.  All along the shallows the roach and dace lay
in shoals, flashing about, every now and then, in the transparent water
like gleams of silver light.  Down in the meadows, where the ponds were,
and the shady trees grew, the cows were so hot that they stood up to
their knees in the muddy water, chewing their grass with half-shut eyes,
and whisking their long tails about to keep the flies at a distance.
But it was of no use to whisk, for every now and then a nasty, spiteful,
hungry fly would get on some poor cow's back, creep beneath the hair,
and force its horny trunk into the skin so sharply, that the poor animal
would burst out into a doleful lowing, and, sticking its tail up, go
galloping and plunging through the meadow in such a clumsy way as only a
cow can display.  A few fields off the grass was being cut, and the
sharp scythes of the mowers went tearing through the tall, rich, green
crop, and laid it low in long rows as the men, with their regular
strokes, went down the long meadows.  Every now and then, too, they
would make the wood-side re-echo with the musical ringing sound of the
scythes, as the gritty rubbers glided over the keen edges of the