


Produced by David Widger





THE WEAVERS

By Gilbert Parker



CONTENTS

  BOOK I
  I.        AS THE SPIRIT MOVED
  II.       THE GATES OF THE WORLD
  III.      BANISHED
  IV.       THE CALL

  BOOK II
  V.        THE WIDER WAY
  VI.       "HAST THOU NEVER BILLED A MANY"
  VII.      THE COMPACT
  VIII.     FOR HIS SOUL'S SAKE AND THE LAND'S SAKE
  IX.       THE LETTER, THE NIGHT, AND THE WOMAN
  X.        THE FOUR WHO KNEW
  XI.       AGAINST THE HOUR OF MIDNIGHT
  XII.      THE JEHAD AND THE LIONS
  XIII.     ACHMET THE ROPEMAKER STRIKES
  XIV.      BEYOND THE PALE

  BOOK III
  XV.       SOOLSBY'S HAND UPON THE CURTAIN
  XVI.      THE DEBT AND THE ACCOUNTING
  XVII.     THE WOMAN OF THE CROSS-ROADS
  XVIII.    TIME, THE IDOL-BREAKER
  XIX.      SHARPER THAN A SWORD
  XX.       EACH AFTER HIS OWN ORDER
  XXI.      "THERE IS NOTHING HIDDEN WHICH SHALL NOT BE REVEALED"
  XXII.     AS IN A GLASS DARKLY
  XXIII.    THE TENTS OF CUSHAN
  XXIV.     THE QUESTIONER
  XXV.      THE VOICE THROUGH THE DOOR
  XXVI.     "I OWE YOU NOTHING"
  XXVII.    THE AWAKENING

  BOOK IV
  XXVIII.   NAHOUM TURNS THE SCREW
  XXIX.     THE RECOIL
  XXX.      LACEY MOVES
  XXXI.     THE STRUGGLE IN THE DESERT
  XXXII.    FORTY STRIPES SAVE ONE
  XXXIII.   THE DARK INDENTURE
  XXXIV.    NAHOUM DROPS THE MASK

  BOOK V
  XXXV.     THE FLIGHT OF THE WOUNDED
  XXXVI.    "IS IT ALWAYS SO-IN LIFE?"
  XXXVII.   THE FLYING SHUTTLE
  XXXVIII.  JASPER KIMBER SPEAKS
  XXXIX.    FAITH JOURNEYS TO LONDON

  BOOK VI
  XL.       HYLDA SEEKS NAHOUM
  XLI.      IN THE LAND OF SHINAR
  XLII.     THE LOOM OF DESTINY




INTRODUCTION

When I turn over the hundreds of pages of this book, I have a feeling
that I am looking upon something for which I have no particular
responsibility, though it has a strange contour of familiarity. It is as
though one looks upon a scene in which one had lived and moved, with the
friendly yet half-distant feeling that it once was one's own possession
but is so no longer. I should think the feeling to be much like that of
the old man whose sons, gone to distant places, have created their
own plantations of life and have themselves become the masters of
possessions. Also I suppose that when I read the story through again
from the first page to the last, I shall recreate the feeling in which
I lived when I wrote it, and it will become a part of my own identity
again. That distance between himself and his work, however, which
immediately begins to grow as soon as a book leaves the author's hands
for those of the public, is a thing which, I suppose, must come to one
who produces a work of the imagination. It is no doubt due to the fact
that every piece of art which has individuality and real likeness to
the scenes and character it is intended to depict is done in a kind of
trance. The author, in effect, self-hypnotises himself, has created
an atmosphere which is separate and apart from that of his daily
surroundings, and by virtue of his imagination becomes absorbed in
that atmosphere. When the book is finished and it goes forth, when the
imagination is relaxed and the concentration of mind is withdrawn, the
atmosphere disappears, and then. One experiences what I feel when I take
up 'The Weavers' and, in a sense, wonder how it was done, such as it is.

The frontispiece of the English edition represents a scene in the House
of Commons, and this brings to my mind a warning which was given me
similar to that on my entering new fields outside the one in which
I first made a reputation in fiction