Transcriber's Notes: 1. Transcribed from page images published as a serial on page 2 in the Cheshire Observer starting 18 January 1902 (http://newspapers.library.wales/view/4281236/4281238) and ending with 26 April 1902 as provided on the internet by Welsh Newspapers Online.
CONTENTS | |
| CHAPTER. | |
| [I.] | THE CONVICT'S RETURN. |
| [II.] | THE STILL FORM IN THE HOUSE. |
| [III.] | YOUNG LOVE, TRUE LOVE. |
| [IV.] | A STRANGE EPISODE. |
| [V.] | A SHADOW OF THE PAST. |
| [VI.] | MR. CASS SPEAKS. |
| [VII.] | WEBSTER'S CHILDHOOD. |
| [VIII.] | HERCULES AND OMPHALE. |
| [IX.] | THE EMBASSY OF GEOFFREY HERON. |
| [X.] | THE GREAT SECRET. |
| [XI.] | RUTH'S DIPLOMACY. |
| [XII.] | THE TOY HORSE. |
| [XIII.] | JOB, THE SAPENGRO |
| [XIV.] | THE CLAIRVOYANT. |
| [XV.] | THE PUNISHMENT OF CURIOSITY. |
| [XVI.] | JENNIE BRAWN MAKES A DISCOVERY. |
| [XVII.] | HERON FOLLOWS THE TRAIL. |
| [XVIII.] | THE MONEY-LENDER. |
| [XIX.] | JOB BECOMES CIVILISED. |
| [XX.] | WHAT MR. CASS HAD TO SAY. |
| [XXI.] | RUTH IS COMFORTED. |
| [XXII.] | AT BAY. |
| [XXIII.] | STILL IN DOUBT |
| [XXIV.] | ANOTHER PIECE OF EVIDENCE. |
| [XXV.] | ANOTHER PIECE OF EVIDENCE. |
| [XXVI.] | THE PENANCE OF INEZ. |
| [XXVII.] | A DOUBTFUL WITNESS. |
| [XXVIII.] | THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS. |
| [XXIX.] | THE END OF THE TURNPIKE HOUSE. |
| [XXX.] | THE END OF THE TURNPIKE HOUSE. |
THE TURNPIKE HOUSE.
By FERGUS HUME,
Author of "The Mystery of a Hansom Cab," "The Crimson Cryptogram," "The Golden Idol," "Aladdin in London," "The Dwarf's Chamber," etc.
[CHAPTER I.]
THE CONVICT'S RETURN.
It stood where four roads met--a square building of two storeys, with white-washed walls and a high slate roof. The fence, and the once trim garden, had vanished with the turnpike gate; and a jungle of gooseberry bushes, interspersed with brambles, shut off the house from the roads. And only by courtesy could these be so-called, for time and neglect had almost obliterated them.
On all sides stretched a flat expanse of reaped fields, bleak-looking and barren in the waning November twilight. Mists gathered thickly over ditch and hedge and stubbled furrow a constant dripping could be heard in the clumps of trees looming here and there in the fog.
Through the kitchen-garden jungle a narrow, crooked path led up to the door where two rough stones ascended to a broken threshold. Indeed, the whole house appeared ragged in its poverty. Many of the windows were stuffed up with rags; walls, cracked and askew, exuded green slime; moss interspersed with lichen, filled in the crevices of the slates upon the roof. A dog would scarcely have sought such a kennel, yet a dim light in the left-hand window of the lower storey shewed that this kennel was inhabited. There sat within--a woman and a child.