E-text prepared by Roger Frank
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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A SPECIAL LIMITED EDITION
IN CONNECTION
WITH THE
De WILLOUGHBY CLAIM
BY
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT
AUTHOR OF
“A LADY OF QUALITY,” “LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY,” ETC.
THE PEOPLE’S LIBRARY
Issued Monthly
By The American News Company
NEW YORK
THE AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY
PUBLISHERS’ AGENTS
39-41 CHAMBERS STREET
Copyright, 1899
by CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
All rights reserved
The owners of the copyright of this volume sanction theissue of this edition as a paper-covered book, to be sold atfifty cents; but, while not wishing to interfere with anypurchaser binding his own copy, they do not sanctionplacing on the market any volumes of this edition boundin any other form.
In Connection with
The De Willoughby Claim
High noon at Talbot’s Cross-roads, with the mercurystanding at ninety-eight in the shade—though there wasnot much shade worth mentioning in the immediate vicinityof the Cross-roads post-office, about which, upon the occasionreferred to, the few human beings within sight and soundwere congregated. There were trees enough a few hundredyards away, but the post-office stood boldly and unflinchinglyin the blazing sun. The roads crossing each other stretchedthemselves as far as the eye could follow them, the red claytransformed into red dust which even an ordinarily livelyimagination might have fancied was red hot. The shrill,rattling cry of the grasshoppers, hidden in the long yellowsedge-grass and drouth-smitten corn, pierced the stillnessnow and then with a suddenness startling each time it brokeforth, because the interval between each of the pipings wasgiven by the hearers to drowsiness or heated unconsciousnaps.
In such napping and drowsiness the present occupantsof the post-office were indulging. Upon two empty goodsboxes two men in copperas-coloured jean garments reclinedin easy attitudes, their hats tilted over their eyes, while several2others balanced their split-seated chairs against thehouse or the post-porch and dozed.
Inside the store the postmaster and proprietor tilted hischair against the counter and dozed also, though fitfully, andwith occasional restless changes of position and smotheredmaledictions against the heat. He was scarcely the build ofman to sleep comfortably at high noon in midsummer. His