The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lady Of Blossholme, by H. Rider Haggard

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Title: The Lady Of Blossholme

Author: H. Rider Haggard

Release Date: April 13, 2006 [EBook #3813]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LADY OF BLOSSHOLME ***

Produced by John Bickers; Dagny

THE LADY OF BLOSSHOLME

By H. Rider Haggard

CHAPTER I

SIR JOHN FOTERELL

Who that has ever seen them can forget the ruins of Blossholme Abbey,
set upon their mount between the great waters of the tidal estuary to
the north, the rich lands and grazing marshes that, backed with woods,
border it east and south, and to the west by the rolling uplands,
merging at last into purple moor, and, far away, the sombre eternal
hills! Probably the scene has not changed very much since the days of
Henry VIII, when those things happened of which we have to tell, for
here no large town has arisen, nor have mines been dug or factories
built to affront the earth and defile the air with their hideousness and
smoke.

The village of Blossholme we know has scarcely varied in its population,
for the old records tell us this, and as there is no railway here its
aspect must be much the same. Houses built of the local grey stone do
not readily fall down. The folk of that generation walked in and out of
the doorways of many of them, although the roofs for the most part are
now covered with tiles or rough slates in place of reeds from the dike.
The parish wells also, fitted with iron pumps that have superseded the
old rollers and buckets, still serve the place with drinking-water
as they have done since the days of the first Edward, and perhaps for
centuries before.

Although their use, if not their necessity, has passed away, not far
from the Abbey gate the stocks and whipping-post, the latter arranged
with three sets of iron loops fixed at different heights and of varying
diameters to accommodate the wrists of man, woman, and child, may still
be found in the middle of the Priests' Green. These stand, it will be
remembered, under a quaint old roof supported on rough, oaken pillars,
and surmounted by a weathercock which the monkish fanc