to convey the truth--namely, that one-fifth of the present work is a
reprint, and four-fifths of it a new composition.

CHARLES READE




CHAPTER I

Not a day passes over the earth, but men and women of no note do great
deeds, speak great words, and suffer noble sorrows of these obscure
heroes, philosophers, and martyrs, the greater part will never be known
till that hour, when many that are great shall be small, and the small
great; but of others the world's knowledge may be said to sleep: their
lives and characters lie hidden from nations in the annals that record
them. The general reader cannot feel them, they are presented so curtly
and coldly: they are not like breathing stories appealing to his heart,
but little historic hail-stones striking him but to glance off his
bosom: nor can he understand them; for epitomes are not narratives, as
skeletons are not human figures.

Thus records of prime truths remain a dead letter to plain folk: the
writers have left so much to the imagination, and imagination is so
rare a gift. Here, then, the writer of fiction may be of use to the
public--as an interpreter.

There is a musty chronicle, written in intolerable Latin, and in it
a chapter where every sentence holds a fact. Here is told, with harsh
brevity, the strange history of a pair, who lived untrumpeted, and died