The Wreathed Dagger Author:Margaret Young General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1909 Original Publisher: Cassell Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select ... more »from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III It was late afternoon of the fourteenth day of October of the year 1648. A grey, drizzling mist had swept down from the hills and settled thick upon Thirlby House. The towers and well-manned defences of that loyal stronghold, and the encompassing lines of its Roundhead foe were blotted for the time from each other's sight. But in the lull from open conflict which of necessity ensued, both besiegers and besieged kept the look out against surprise with a sharpened care. Now and again a quick challenge, the crack of a musket, cut through the muffling air, followed by a roar of laughter at a false alarm. Cavaliers laughed lightly in that year of disaster, as men laugh who toss their lives to adorn a lost cause. For six years had passed since the bright November morning that had brought Sir Roger Arden back to his desolate home, and the fortunes of the war, long varying, had set at last, slowly, steadily, and persistently, against the King, and in favour of the Parliament. For seventeen weeks Sir Roger Arden had held Thirlby for King Charles against a greatenvironing force of seasoned rebels, commanded by General Cromwell's tough and trusted right- hand man, Colonel Hales. The Lord-General, called away himself to the North, to chastise the turncoat Scots, had deputed the best officer and the largest force he could afford, to reduce that nest of hornets, Thirlby House. But Hales, to his deep chagrin, had in seventeen weeks made but little way against a crew of hot-blooded boys, who neither knew nor cared when they were beaten, handled, as they were, by the astute an...« less