CLEMENT SHORTER.

August 1925.

CONTENTS

[*THE TWELVE ADVENTURERS]1
[AN ADVENTURE IN IRELAND]19
[*THE SEARCH AFTER HAPPINESS]25
[THE ADVENTURES OF ERNEST ALEMBERT]45
[ALBION AND MARINA]75
[*THE RIVALS]95
[THE FAIRY GIFT]105
[*LOVE AND JEALOUSY]121
[*NAPOLEON AND THE SPECTRE]137
[*THE TRAGEDY AND THE ESSAY]145
[*A PEEP INTO A PICTURE BOOK]161
[*MINA LAURY—I]181
[*MINA LAURY—II]193

The stories marked with an asterisk (*) are now
published for the first time.

I am alone; it is the dead of night;
I am not gone to rest, because my mind
Is too much raised for sleep. The silent light
Of the dim taper streams its unseen wind,
And quite as voiceless, on the hearth, burns bright
The ruddy ember: now no ear can find
A sound, however faint, to break the lull
Of which the shadowy realm of dreams is full.

Charlotte Brontë

THE TWELVE ADVENTURERS

‘The Twelve Adventurers’ is the first of two stories in the earliest of Charlotte Brontë’s manuscripts, and was written by her when she was only twelve years of age.

Her early admiration for the hero of the story, the ‘Great Duke,’ was first noted by Mrs. Gaskell in The Life of Charlotte Brontë, 1857, vol. i. p. 94, where she says: