KENT KNOWLES: QUAHAUG



CHAPTER I

Which is Not a Chapter at All


It was Asaph Tidditt who told me how to begin this history. Perhaps I
should be very much obliged to Asaph; perhaps I shouldn't. He has gotten
me out of a difficulty--or into one; I am far from certain which.

Ordinarily--I am speaking now of the writing of swashbuckling
romances, which is, or was, my trade--I swear I never have called it
a profession--the beginning of a story is the least of the troubles
connected with its manufacture. Given a character or two and a
situation, the beginning of one of those romances is, or was, pretty
likely to be something like this:

"It was a black night. Heavy clouds had obscured the setting sun and
now, as the clock in the great stone tower boomed twelve, the darkness
was pitchy."

That is a good safe beginning. Midnight, a stone tower, a booming clock,
and darkness make an appeal to the imagination. On a night like that
almost anything may happen. A reader of one of my romances--and
readers there must be, for the things did, and still do, sell to some
extent--might be fairly certain that something WOULD happen before the