The Mountain Marriage Or The Bandolero

Author : Mayne Reid
Publisher : Independently Published
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (527 download)

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Download or read book The Bandolero written by Mayne Reid and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2020-06-10 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty years ago, not twenty miles from the Land's End, there lived a Cornish gentlemannamed Trevannion. Just twenty years ago he died, leaving to lament him a brace of noble boys, whose mother all three had mourned, with like profound sorrow, but a short while before."Squire" Trevannion, as he was called, died in his own house, where his ancestors for hundredsof years before him had dispensed hospitality. None of them, however, had entertained soprofusely as he; or rather improvidently, it might be said, since in less than three months after hisdeath the old family mansion, with the broad acres appertaining to it, passed into the hands of analien, leaving his two sons, Ralph and Richard, landless, houseless, and almost powerless. Onethousand pounds apiece was all that remained to them out of the wreck of the patrimonial estates.It was whispered that even this much was not in reality theirs, but had been given to them by thevery respectable solicitor who had managed their father's affairs, and had furthermore managedto succeed him in the ownership of a property worth a rental of three thousand a year.Any one knowing the conditions under which the young Trevannions received their twothousand pounds must have believed it to be a gift, since it was handed over to them by thefamily solicitor with the private understanding that they were to use it in pushing their fortuneselsewhere, -anywhere except in Cornwall!The land-pirate who had plucked them-for in reality had they been plucked-did not wish themto stay at home, divested, as they were, of their valuable plumage. He had appropriated their finefeathers, and cared not for the naked bodies of the birds.There were those in Cornwall who suspected foul play in the lawyer's dealings with the youngTrevannions, among others, the victims themselves. But what could they, do? They were utterlyignorant of their late father's affairs, -indeed, with any affairs that did not partake of the natureof "sports." A solicitor "most respectable,"-a phrase that has become almost synonymous withrascality, -a regular church-goer, -accounts kept with scrupulous exactness, -a man of honestface, distinguished for probity of speech and integrity of heart, -what could the Trevannions do?What more than the Smiths and the Browns and the Joneses, who, notwithstanding theirpresumed greater skill in the ways of a wicked lawyer world, are duped every day in a similarmanner. It is an old and oft-repeated story, -a tale too often told, and too often true, -that of thefamily lawyer and his confiding client, standing in the relationship of robber and robbed.