CONTENTS

CHAPTERPAGE
I.—The woman ... whose hands are as bands[ 1]
II.—The vintage of Abi-Ezer[ 13]
III.—“The wreck of the Hesperus”[ 23]
IV.—The migrants[ 33]
V.—The scale ascending[ 44]
VI.—A molehill levelled[ 49]
VII.—And a mountain upreared[ 55]
VIII.—A blow in the dark[ 64]
IX.—The eye to the string[ 72]
X.—The string to the shaft[ 78]
XI.—And the shaft to the mark[ 85]
XII.—The way of a maid with a man[ 88]
XIII.—“Through a glass darkly”[ 99]
XIV.—The anchor comes home[ 107]
XV.—When hate and fear strike hands[ 118]
XVI.—The goodly company of misery[ 125]
XVII.—“As apples of gold in pictures of silver”[ 131]
XVIII.—“Let the righteous smite me friendly”[ 139]
XIX.—The leading of the blind[ 149]
XX.—The demoniac[ 159]
XXI.—“A rod for the fool’s back”[ 166]
XXII.—How the smoking flax was quenched[ 177]
XXIII.—How Dorothy blew the embers alive[ 190]
XXIV.—“Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein”[ 201]
XXV.—“Silence is an answer to a wise man”[ 213]
XXVI.—In the valley of the shadow[ 221]
XXVII.—Showing how faith may out-buffet a fact [ 234]
XXVIII.—How the judge gave of his best[ 243]
XXIX.—In which a wilful man has his way[ 255]
XXX.—How love and friendship threw a main[ 260]
XXXI.—A feast of mingled cups[ 266]
XXXII.—Such friends are exultation’s agony[ 276]
XXXIII.—Te morituri salutamus[ 281]
XXXIV.—The wing-beat of Azrael[ 290]
XXXV.—The wisdom of many and the wit of one[ 297]
XXXVI.—In which a fox doubles once too often[ 310]
XXXVII.—The law of the Medes and Persians[ 321]
XXXVIII.—In which darts are counted as stubble[ 326]

A PRIVATE CHIVALRY

CHAPTER I
THE WOMAN ... WHOSE HANDS ARE AS BANDS

The lights of Silverette were beginning to prick the dusk in the valley, and the clanging of a piano, diminished to a harmonious tinkling, floated up the mountain on the still air of the evening. At the Jessica workings, a thousand feet above the valley, even the clangour of a tuneless piano had its compensations; and to one of the two men sitting on the puncheon-floored porch of the assayer’s cabin the minimized tinkling was remindful of care-free student ramblings in the land of the zither. But the other had no such pleasant memories, and he rose and relighted his cigar.

“That is my cue, Ned. I must go down and do that whereunto I have set my hand.”

“‘Must,’ you say; that implies necessity. I don’t see it.”

“I couldn’t expect you to see or to understand the necessity; but it is there, all the same.”

The objector was silent while one might count ten, but the silence was not of convincement. It was rather a lack of strong words to add to those which had gone before. And when he began again it was only to clinch insistence with iteration.