E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Graeme Mackreth,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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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 materialsuccess, 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 theyounger brother, the veteran from the raw comrade, let me offer my handto you as to a master of our craft.
To the author, then, of a romance that has no equal save in Scott, Ihumbly dedicate this romance of mine.
H.C.
CUMBRIAN WORDS.
barn=child; dusta=dost thou; hasta=hast thou.
laal=little; leet=alight; girt=great.
sista=seëst thou.
varra=very.
wadsta=wouldst thou.
wilta=wilt thou.
Shaf!=an expression of contempt.
In my first novel, "The Shadow of a Crime," I tried to penetrate intothe soul of a brave, unselfish, long-suffering man, and to lay bare theprocesses by which he raised himself to a great height ofself-sacrifice. In this novel the aim has been to penetrate into thesoul of a bad man, and to lay bare the processes by which he is temptedto his fall. To find a character that shall be above all commontendencies to guilt and yet tainted with the plague-spot of evil hiddensomewhere; then to watch the first sharp struggle of what is good in theman with what is bad, until he is in the coil of his temptation; andfinally, to show in what tragic ruin a man of strong passions, greatwill and power of mind may resist the force that precipitates him andsave his soul alive—this is, I trust, a motive no less worthy, no lessprofitable to study, in the utmost result no less heroic and inspiring,than that of tracing the upward path of noble types of mind. For methere has been a pathetic, and I think purifying, interest in lookinginto the soul of this man and seeing it corrode beneath the touch of apowerful temptation until at the last, when it seems to lie spent, itrises again in strength and shows that the human heart has no depths inwhich it is lost. If this character had been equal to my intention, itmight have been a real contribution to fiction, and far as I know it tofall short of the first deep blow of feeling in which it was conceived,it is, I think, new to the novel, though it holds a notable place in thedrama—it would be presumptuous to say where—unnecessary, also, as Ihave made no disguise of my purpose.
One of the usual disadvantages of choosing a leading character that isoff the lines of heroic portraiture is that the author may seem to be insympathy with a base part in life and with base opinions. In this novelI run a different risk. I shall not be surprised if I provoke somehostility in making the bad man justify his course by the gaunt and grimmorality that masquerades as the morality of our own time, while thegood man is made to justify his one dubious act by the full and sincereand just morality that too often wears now the garb of vice—themorality of the books of Moses. This nov