The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First
Fenn George Manville
English
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Below is a summary of The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First
The Black Tor, by George Manville Fenn,
A Tale of the Reign of James the First.
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As always with this author there is plenty of action in this book. Two
teenage boys of about the same age come from families which have been
in intense rivalry for centuries. Each of them lives in a castle set
among the wild and desolate hills of Derbyshire, an almost mountainous
area in the Midlands of England, known generally as the Peak District.
The boys know each other but as enemies. Yet events occur which draw
them together as allies, but they dare not call themselves friends. A
roguish band of ex-soldiers have arrived in the district, and set up
camp out on the moors, from whence they descend to steal from, rob and
loot the houses of the poorer folk.
The boys privately form an alliance using the men working on their
fathers' land as a private army, to attack and rid the land of these
desperadoes. Their first attack results in dreadful failure. But then
they revise their ideas of what they can use for weaponry, and are
finally successful.
Yet another excellent book from the prolific pen of this great author.
NH
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THE BLACK TOR, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN,
A TALE OF THE REIGN OF JAMES THE FIRST.
CHAPTER ONE.
ONE CAPTAIN PURLROSE.
About as rugged, fierce-looking a gang of men as a lad could set eyes
on, as they struggled up the steep cliff road leading to the castle,
which frowned at the summit, where the flashing waters of the Gleame
swept round three sides of its foot, half hidden by the beeches and
birches, which overhung the limpid stream. The late spring was at its
brightest and best, but there had been no rain; and as the men who had
waded the river lower down, climbed the steep cliff road, they kicked up
the white limestone dust, and caked their wet high boots, which, in
several instances, had opened holes in which toes could be seen, looking
like curious reptiles deep in gnarled and crumpled shells.
"Beggars! What a gang!" said Ralph Darley, a dark, swarthy lad of
perhaps seventeen, but looking older, from having an appearance of
something downy beginning to come up that spring about his chin, and a
couple of streaks, like eyebrows out of place, upon his upper lip. He
was well dressed, in the fashion of Solomon King James's day; and he
wore a sword, as he sat half up the rugged slope, on a huge block of
limestone, which had fallen perhaps a hundred years before, from the
cliff above, and was mossy now, and half hidden by the ivy which covered
its side.
"Beggars," he said again; "and what a savage looking lot."
As they came on, it began to dawn upon him that they could not be
beggars, for if so, they would have been the most truculent-looking
party that ever asked for the contributions of the charitable. One, who
seemed to be their leader, was a fierce, grizzled, red-nosed fellow,
wearing a rusty morion, in which, for want of a feather, a tuft of
heather was stuck; he wore a long cloak, as rusty-looking as his helmet;
and that he carried a sword was plain enough, for the well-worn scabbard
had found a very convenient hole in the cloak, through which it had
thrust itself in the most obtrusive manner, and looked like a tail with
a vicious sting, for the cap of the leathern scabbard had been lost, and
about three inches of steel blade and point were visible.
Ralph Darley was quick at observation, and took in quickly the fact that
all the men were armed, and looked shabbier than their leader, though
not so stout; for he was rubicund and portly, where he ought not to have
been, for activity, though in a barrel a tubby space does indicate
strength. Neither were the noses of the other men so red as their
leader's, albeit they were a villainous-looking lot.
"Not beggars, but soldiers," thought Ralph; "and they've been in the
wars."
He was quite right, but he did not stop to think that there had been no
wars for some years. Still, as aforesaid, he was right, but the war the
party had been in was with poverty.
"What in the world do they want in this out-of-the-way place--on the
road to nowhere?" thought Ralph. "If they're not beggars, they have
lost their way."
He pushed back the hilt of his sword, and drew up one leg, covered with
its high, buff-leather boot, beneath him, holding it as he waited for
the party to come slowly up; and as they did, they halted where he sat,
at the side of the road, and the leader, puffing and panting, took off
his rusty morion with his left hand, and wiped his pink, bald head,
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