"The Debatable Land": A Novel

THE FOLLOWING IS A LIST OF TWELVE AMERICAN NOVELS PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS DURING 1901, WRITTEN FOR THE MOST PART BY NEW AMERICAN WRITERS, AND DEALING WITH DIFFERENT PHASES OF CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN LIFE. EASTOVER COURT HOUSE . By Henry Burnham Boone and Kenneth Brown. THE SENTIMENTALISTS . By Arthur Stanwood Pier. MARTIN BROOK . By Morgan Bates. A VICTIM OF CIRCUMSTANCES . By Geraldine Anthony. DAYS LIKE THESE . By Edward W. Townsend. WESTERFELT . By Will N. Harben. THE MANAGER OF THE B & A . By Vaughan Kester. THE SUPREME SURRENDER . By A. Maurice Low. THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS . By Florence Wilkinson. LET NOT MAN PUT ASUNDER . By Basil King. WHEN LOVE IS YOUNG . By Roy Rolfe Gilson. THE DEBATABLE LAND . By Arthur Colton.
A Novel By Arthur Colton
New York and London Harper & Brothers Publishers 1901
Copyright, 1901, by Harper & Brothers.
All rights reserved.
R.H. LOINES
For the Debatable Land, being that portion of ground which, lying between two countries, belongeth to neither, does of all regions abound most in disturbance, adventures, even legends, and, as men say, in warlocks and witches. Thus the astute German, Hermantius, significantly calleth the region of youth a debatable land, and seeketh to illustrate time by space. — The Dictionary of Devices.
Part I
The Debatable Land
Widow Bourn's house stood behind the church, and blue flowers grew contentedly on the sloping green, shy fancies of a maiden spring that never lasted out a summer's experience. New England churches have not that air of nestling comfort which seemed to Meister Eckhart so sweet a symbol. They crown the hills with square frames and sharpened steeples, churches militant, plate-mailed in clapboards, with weather-vane aimed defiantly into the wind. Their doors are closed, their windows shuttered against all days of the week saving one. But Widow Bourn found the proximity comfortable. The church militant faced the issues of the spirit for her, and subdued them. She plodded through her Bible, drawing contentment from texts that meant no such matter, seeing in the ecclesiast's despondency only reflections connected here and there with sermons. It is a pleasant thing to stand on the shore when other people are in the floods, the melancholy Roman poet remarked, meaning that it would be , because it was something his ever-journeying spirit in the waste seas of thought rendered impracticable for himself.