TANE FORD

CHAPTER I

_COUSIN RUPERT GAINS A RECRUIT_

It has not happened to many men, as I think, to have fallen into the
hands of as cruel and bloodthirsty a monster as ever defiled God's
earth, and to have escaped to tell the tale. Yet it is of this that I
have come to write; and of all the hardships and perils which I went
through from the time I fled from my father's house to seek for
treasure in the East Indies; and of the battles in which I fought; and
of the madness of love and jealousy which I knew; and of how the man I
trusted became my enemy, and pursued me with his vengeance; and of the
treasure which I found in the palace of the Hindoo king; and of how I
returned at last to my own home.

Nor do I greatly expect that the hearing of these things will be
effectual to hinder those who come after me from adventuring in their
turn, for young blood will have its way, like sap in the veins of a
growing tree. But there are times when I think that if I could have
looked forward and seen what was to come, and all the dire straits
through which I was to pass--both among my own countrymen and in those
distant lands--I might have given a different welcome to my cousin
Rupert when he came riding into Brandon, on the evening of that day
which was to be the last of my boyhood.

I had come out of the house before supper was laid, as I often used,
and had made my way along the edge of the dyke which runs through our
meadows into the broad, which we call Breydon Water; and there by the
margin of the broad I stood, while the sun was setting behind me, and
watched the light flush and fade over the grey spire and high red
roofs of Yarmouth town. Many a night I had come there to the same spot
and gazed with wistful eyes at that prospect; for though I was, in a
manner, familiar with the old town, and had gone in there on market
days many a time since I was a boy, yet, at this hour, and seen across
the water in the bright blaze of the sunset, it seemed to be strangely
removed and glorified--like that city which Christian had a prospect
of from the Delectable Mountains--and I could never think of it as
other than an enchanted region, the gate of the great world, where
the hours throbbed with action, and life was more full and splendid
than in our lonely grange among the broads; and my heart was fretted
within me, and day by day the longing grew upon me to break out of the
narrow limits in which my life was bound, and t