SUSSEX GORSE
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE TRAMPING METHODIST
STARBRACE
SPELL LAND
ISLE OF THORNS
THREE AGAINST THE WORLD
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
WILLOW'S FORGE AND OTHER POEMS
SUSSEX GORSE
THE STORY OF A FIGHT
BY
SHEILA KAYE-SMITH
NEW YORK
ALFRED A. KNOPF
MCMXVI
CONTENTS
| PAGE | ||
| Prologue. | The Challenge | 1 |
| Book I | The Beginning of the Fight | 22 |
| Book II | The Woman's Part | 78 |
| Book III | The Elder Children | 120 |
| Book IV | Treacheries | 192 |
| Book V | Almost Under | 243 |
| Book VI | Struggling Up | 331 |
| Book VII | The End in Sight | 382 |
| Book VIII | The Victory | 432 |
SUSSEX GORSE
PROLOGUE THE CHALLENGE
§ 1.
Boarzell Fair had been held every year on Boarzell Moor for as long asthe oldest in Peasmarsh could remember. The last Thursday in October wasthe date, just when the woods were crumpling into brown, and fogsblurred the wavy sunsets.
The Moor was on the eastern edge of the parish, five miles from Rye.Heaving suddenly swart out of the green water-meadows by Socknersh, itpiled itself towards the sunrise, dipping to Leasan House. It washummocked and tussocked with coarse grass—here and there a spread ofheather, growing, like all southern heather, almost arboreally. Inplaces the naked soil gaped in sores made by coney-warrens or uprootedbushes. Stones and roots, sharn, shards, and lumps of marl, mixedthemselves into the wealden clay, which oozed in red streaks ofpotential fruitfulness through their sterility.
The crest of Boarzell was marked by a group of firs, very gaunt andwind-bitten, rising out of a mass