The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Son of Hagar, by Sir Hall Caine

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Title: A Son of Hagar
A Romance of Our Time

Author: Sir Hall Caine

Release Date: July 19, 2008 [eBook #26088]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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A SON OF HAGAR.

A Romance of Our Time

by

HALL CAINE,

Author of "The Bondsman," "The Deemster," etc.

"God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is."

New York
Hurst & Company
Publishers.

TO

R.D. BLACKMORE.

It must be an exceeding great reward, beyond all the rewards of material
success, to know that you have written a book that is deep, tranquil,
strong and pure. Again and again you have nobly earned that knowledge.
Across the more than thirty years that divide us, the elder from the
younger brother, the veteran from the raw comrade, let me offer my hand
to you as to a master of our craft.

To the author, then, of a romance that has no equal save in Scott, I
humbly dedicate this romance of mine.

H.C.

* * * * *

CUMBRIAN WORDS.

barn=child; dusta=dost thou; hasta=hast thou.

laal=little; leet=alight; girt=great.

sista=seest thou.

varra=very.

wadsta=wouldst thou.

wilta=wilt thou.

Shaf!=_an expression of contempt_.

PREFACE.

In my first novel, "The Shadow of a Crime," I tried to penetrate into
the soul of a brave, unselfish, long-suffering man, and to lay bare the
processes by which he raised himself to a great height of
self-sacrifice. In this novel the aim has been to penetrate into the
soul of a bad man, and to lay bare the processes by which he is tempted
to his fall. To find a character that shall be above all common
tendencies to guilt and yet tainted with the plague-spot of evil hidden
somewhere; then to watch the first sharp struggle of what is good in the
man with what is bad, until he is in the coil of his temptation; and
finally, to show in what tragic ruin a man of strong passions