Chapter I: Front Matter

Transcriber's Notes:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_), and text enclosed by equal signs is in bold (=bold=)

The web browser version of this book contains links to Midi, PDF, and MusicXML files for the music scores on pages 94 and 319-320.

Additional Transcriber's Notes are at the end.

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Sir Christopher

Sir Christopher

_A Romance of a Maryland
Manor in 1644_

BY
MAUD WILDER GOODWIN

Author of "The Head of a Hundred," "White Aprons,"
"The Colonial Cavalier," etc.

_Illustrated by_
HOWARD PYLE, AND OTHER ARTISTS

Boston
Little, Brown, and Company
1901

_Copyright, 1901_,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.

_All rights reserved_

Entered at Stationers' Hall

UNIVERSITY PRESS · JOHN WILSON
AND SON · CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.

TO

BLANCHE WILDER BELLAMY

AND

FREDERICK PUTNAM BELLAMY

Preface

On a bluff of the Maryland coast stand a church, a school, a huddle of gravestones, and an obelisk raised to the memory of Leonard Calvert. These alone mark the site of St. Mary's, once the capital of the Palatinate.

It is near this little town, about the middle of the seventeenth century, that my story begins, among the feuds then raging between Catholic and Protestant, Cavalier and Roundhead, Marylander and Virginian. The Virginians of that day were but a generation removed from the pioneers who suffered in the massacre of 1622; and the sons and daughters of those early settlers whose lives were traced in "The Head of a Hundred"[A] appear in the present romance.

The adventures of Romney Huntoon, of the Brents, and, most of all, of Christopher Neville and Elinor Calvert, furnish the material of my story; but I venture to hope that the reader will feel beneath the incidents and adventures that throbbing of the human heart which has chiefly interested me.

FOOTNOTE:

[A] Published 1895.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. ROBIN HOOD'S BARN 1

II. ST. GABRIEL'S AND ST. INIGO'S 16

III. BLESSING AND BANNING 34

IV. THE LORD OF THE MANOR 49

V. PEGGY 72

VI. THE KING'S ARMS 90

VII. IN GOOD GREEN WOOD 108

VIII. A CLUE 130

IX. A REQUIEM MASS 144

X. THE ORDEAL BY TOUCH 159

XI. THE GREATER LOVE 172

XII. HOW LOVERS ARE CONVINCED 180

XIII. A CHANGE OF VENUE 196

XIV. IN WHICH FATE TAKES THE HELM 215

XV. DIGITUS DEI 223

XVI. LIFE OR DEATH 240

XVII. ROMNEY 256

XVIII. THE EMERALD TAG 274

XIX. THE ROLLING YEAR 292

XX. A BIRTHNIGHT BALL 309

XXI. A ROOTED SORROW 334

XXII. CANDLEMAS EVE 354

XXIII. "HEY FOR ST. MARY'S, AND WIVES FOR US
ALL!" 370

XXIV. THE CALVERT MOTTO 392

Illustrations

"'Let me go to him!' she shrieked, in her anguish
of soul" _Frontispiece_
_From a drawing by Howard Pyle_

"Stretch out thy rod, Cecil" _Page_ 58
_From a drawing by James E. McBurney_

"You are quite a courtier, Master Huntoon" " 116
_From a drawing by S. M. Palmer_

"This is love indeed" " 194
_From a drawing by S. M. Arthurs_

"He sang to the music of his lute, and she to the
accompaniment of her whirring wheel" " 301
_From a drawing by S. M. Palmer_

"As it is, I am satisfied. Go!" " 390
_From a drawing by James E. McBurney_

SIR CHRISTOPHER