1
Beau Brocade
by Baroness Orczy
1908
Part I: The Forge
Part II: The Heath
Part III: Brassington
Part IV: H.R.H The Duke of Cumberland
Part I: The Forge
Chapter I
By Act of Parliament
The gaffers stood round and shook their heads.
When the Coporal had finished reading the Royal Proclamation, one or two of them sighed in a desultory fashion, others murmured casually, "Lordy! Lordy! to think on it! Dearie me!"
The young ones neither sighed nor murmured. They looked at one another furtively, then glanced away again, as if afraid to read each other's throughs, and in a shameful manner wiped their moist hands against their rough cord breeches.
There were no women present fortunately: there had been heavy rains on the Moor these last three days, and what roads there were had become well-nigh impassable. Only a few men--some half-dozen, perhaps--out of the lonely homesteads from down Brassington way, had tramped in the wake of the little squad of soldiers, in order to hear this Act of Parliament read a the cross-roads, and to see the document duly pinned to the old gallows-tree.
Fortunately the rain had ceased momentar