The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Prisoner, by Alice Brown

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Prisoner

Author: Alice Brown

Release Date: July 10, 2009 [EBook #29366]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRISONER ***

Produced by David Clarke, Woodie4 and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

THE PRISONER

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO . DALLAS
ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED

LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.

TORONTO

THE PRISONER

BY

ALICE BROWN

AUTHOR OF "MY LOVE AND I," "CHILDREN OF
EARTH," "ROSE MACLEOD," ETC.

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1916

_All rights reserved_

Copyright, 1916
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1916
Reprinted June, 1916 July, 1916 Twice August, 1916.

THE PRISONER

I

There could not have been a more sympathetic moment for coming into the
country town--or, more accurately, the inconsiderable city--of Addington
than this clear twilight of a spring day. Anne and Lydia French with
their stepfather, known in domestic pleasantry as the colonel, had hit
upon a perfect combination of time and weather, and now they stood in a
dazed silence, dense to the proffers of two hackmen with the urgency of
twenty, and looked about them. That inquiring pause was as if they had
expected to find, even at the bare, sand-encircled station, the imagined
characteristics of the place they had so long visualised. The handsome
elderly man, clean-shaven, close-clipped, and, at intervals when he
recalled himself to a stand against discouragement, almost military in
his bearing, was tired, but entrenched in a patient calm. The girls were
profoundly moved in a way that looked like gratitude: perhaps, too,
exalted as if, after reverses, they had reached a passionately desired
goal. Anne was the elder sister, slender and sweet, grave with the
protective fo