The Broad Highway

Produced by Polly Stratton and Andrew Sly
The Broad Highway
by Jeffery Farnol
To Shirley Byron Jevons The friend of my boyish ambitions This book is dedicated As a mark of my gratitude, affection and esteem
As I sat of an early summer morning in the shade of a tree, eating fried bacon with a tinker, the thought came to me that I might some day write a book of my own: a book that should treat of the roads and by-roads, of trees, and wind in lonely places, of rapid brooks and lazy streams, of the glory of dawn, the glow of evening, and the purple solitude of night; a book of wayside inns and sequestered taverns; a book of country things and ways and people. And the thought pleased me much.
But, objected the Tinker, for I had spoken my thought aloud, trees and suchlike don't sound very interestin'—leastways—not in a book, for after all a tree's only a tree and an inn, an inn; no, you must tell of other things as well.
Yes, said I, a little damped, to be sure there is a highwayman—
Come, that's better! said the Tinker encouragingly.
Then, I went on, ticking off each item on my fingers, come Tom Cragg, the pugilist—
Better and better! nodded the Tinker.
—a one-legged soldier of the Peninsula, an adventure at a lonely tavern, a flight through woods at midnight pursued by desperate villains, and—a most extraordinary tinker. So far so good, I think, and it all sounds adventurous enough.
What! cried the Tinker. Would you put me in your book then?