The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Poacher, by Frederick Marryat

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Title: The Poacher
Joseph Rushbrook

Author: Frederick Marryat

Release Date: May 22, 2007 [EBook #21574]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POACHER ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

The Poacher, by Captain Marryat.

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Captain Frederick Marryat was born July 10 1792, and died August 8 1848.
He retired from the British navy in 1828 in order to devote himself to
writing. In the following 20 years he wrote 26 books, many of which are
among the very best of English literature, and some of which are still
in print.

Marryat had an extraordinary gift for the invention of episodes in his
stories. He says somewhere that when he sat down for the day's work, he
never knew what he was going to write. He certainly was a literary
genius.

"The Poacher" was published in 1841, the eighteenth book to flow from
Marryat's pen.

This e-text was transcribed in 1998 by Nick Hodson, and was reformatted
in 2003, and again in 2005.

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THE POACHER, BY CAPTAIN FREDERICK MARRYAT.

CHAPTER ONE.

IN WHICH THERE IS MORE ALE THAN ARGUMENT.

It was on a blusterous windy night in the early part of November, 1812,
that three men were on the high road near to the little village of
Grassford, in the south of Devonshire. The moon was nearly at the full,
but the wild scud, and occasionally the more opaque clouds, passed over
in such rapid succession, that it was rarely, and but for a moment or
two, that the landscape was thrown into light and shadow; and the wind,
which was keen and piercing, bent and waved the leafless branches of the
trees which were ranged along the hedgerows, between which the road had
been formed.

The three individuals to whom we have referred appeared all of them to
have been indulging too freely in the ale which was sold at the
public-house about half a mile from the village, and from which they had
just departed. Two of them, however, comparatively