By
ROGER POCOCK
Author of
A MAN IN THE OPEN, CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE, ETC
Good people, since God alone, can make you wise
and kind, the jester's province is
merely to amuse you
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1915
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I The Glamour of Youth
II The Age of Knighthood
III The Swing of Events
IV The Passions of War
V The Wumps
VI Brat
VII A Ship Without a Rudder
VIII Mr. Rams
IX The Sacrifice
X The Ordeal by Torture
XI The Soul of La Mancha
XII Inspector Buckie's Narrative
THE CHEERFUL BLACKGUARD
I
I, José de la Mancha y O'Brien, wasborn on the ninth day of November, 1865, inSpain, of an Irish mother and a Spanish sire. Tenyears later my parents entered the service of God,my father from a battle-field, my mother living ina convent.
With my brother, Don Pedro, the Brat, then eightyears old, I was sent away from Spain to Tita, afat Irish aunt, whose highly poisonous husband,Uncle Tito, was English, and lived in London.From their house, when he was old enough, I tookthe Brat to my school where I attended to hismorals with a small strap. I had been busy forseveral terms explaining to the other chaps at schoolthat they were heretics and doomed to hell, and asmy skin was not large enough to hold the lickingsthey supplied me, they paid the balance to my littlebrother. He spoke as yet but very broken Englishand could not understand why he should share withme the glories of an early martyrdom. He shunnedme.
Yet, when in 1883 I went to college, the Brat wasnot content to be left alone. Indeed he ran fromschool, and when I next heard from him, was inAmerica, where he had gone to work for a mancalled Lane. When the summer vacation left mefree, Aunt Tita supplied me with money and sentme off to collect my Brat. I was to bring him homeand place him at a private school in Oxford whereI could always keep him out of mischief. Thus Iset out, determined to tear the Brat's hide off overhis ears when I caught him. Perhaps he expectedas much and was ungrateful, for when in due courseI arrived in Winnipeg—from whence his letterappeared to have been posted—I could find no trace ofmy brother or of any man called Lane in Manitoba.There the search ended in bitter disappointment.
When I had lost my brother, with nothing left inall the world to love, a dog adopted me. RichMixed was named