



Produced by Polly Stratton and Andrew Sly










The Broad Highway

by Jeffery Farnol




  To
  Shirley Byron Jevons
  The friend of my boyish ambitions
  This book is dedicated
  As a mark of my gratitude, affection and esteem

  J. F.





ANTE SCRIPTUM


As I sat of an early summer morning in the shade of a tree, eating
fried bacon with a tinker, the thought came to me that I might some day
write a book of my own: a book that should treat of the roads and
by-roads, of trees, and wind in lonely places, of rapid brooks and lazy
streams, of the glory of dawn, the glow of evening, and the purple
solitude of night; a book of wayside inns and sequestered taverns; a
book of country things and ways and people.  And the thought pleased me
much.

"But," objected the Tinker, for I had spoken my thought aloud, "trees
and suchlike don't sound very interestin'--leastways--not in a book,
for after all a tree's only a tree and an inn, an inn; no, you must
tell of other things as well."

"Yes," said I, a little damped, "to be sure there is a highwayman--"

"Come, that's better!" said the Tinker encouragingly.

"Then," I went on, ticking off each item on my fingers, "come Tom
Cragg, the pugilist--"

"Better and better!" nodded the Tinker.

"--a one-legged soldier of the Peninsula, an adventure at a lonely
tavern, a flight through woods at midnight pursued by desperate
villains, and--a most extraordinary tinker.  So far so good, I think,
and it all sounds adventurous enough."

"What!" cried the Tinker.  "Would you put me in your book then?"

"Assuredly."

"Why then," said the Tinker, "it's true I mends kettles, sharpens
scissors and such, but I likewise peddles books an' nov-els, an' what's
more I reads 'em--so, if you must put me in your book, you might call
me a literary cove."

"A literary cove?" said I.

"Ah!" said the Tinker, "it sounds better--a sight better--besides, I
never read a nov-el with a tinker in it as I remember; they're
generally dooks, or earls, or barronites--nobody wants to read about a
tinker."

"That all depends," said I; "a tinker may be much more interesting than
an earl or even a duke."

The Tinker examined the piece of bacon upon his knifepoint with a cold
and disparaging eye.

"I've read a good many nov-els in my time," said he, shaking his head,
"and I knows what I'm talking of;" here he bolted the morsel of bacon
with much apparent relish.  "I've made love to duchesses, run off with
heiresses, and fought dooels--ah! by the hundred--all between the
covers of some book or other and enjoyed it uncommonly well--especially
the dooels.  If you can get a little blood into your book, so much the
better; there's nothing like a little blood in a book--not a great
deal, but just enough to give it a 'tang,' so to speak; if you could
kill your highwayman to start with it would be a very good beginning to
your story."

"I could do that, certainly," said I, "but it would not be according to
fact."

"So much the better," said the Tinker; "who wants facts in a nov-el?"

"Hum!" said I.

"And then again--"

"What more?" I inquired.

"Love!" said the Tinker, wiping his knife-blade on the leg of his
breeches.

"Love?" I repeated.

"And plenty of it," said the Tinker.

"I'm afraid that is impossible," said I, after a moment's thought.

"How impossible?"

"Because I know nothing about love."

"That's a pity," said the Tinker.

"Under the circumstances, it is," said I.

"Not a doubt of it," said the Tinker, beginning to scrub out the
frying-pan with a handful of grass, "though to be sure you might learn;
you're young enough."

"Yes, I might learn," said I; "who knows?"

"Ah! who knows?" said the Tinker.  And after he had cleansed the pan to
his satisfaction, he turned to me with dexter finger upraised and brow
of heavy portent.  "Young fellow," said he, "no man can write a good
nov-el without he knows summat about love, it aren't to be expected--so
the sooner you do learn, the better."

"Hum!" said I.

"And then, as I said afore and I say it again, they wants love in a
book nowadays, and wot's more they will have it."

"They?" said I.

"The folk as will read your book--after it is written."

"Ah! to be sure," said I, somewhat taken aback; "I had forgotten them."

"Forgotten them?" repeated