The New Forest Spy
Book details
- Title
- The New Forest Spy
- Publication year listed
- 1885
- Format
- Public domain eBook
- Reading access
- Free online reader; no registration required
- Source record
- View on Archive.org
About this book
The New Forest Spy
Author: George Manville Fenn (1831-1909)
Year: 1885
The hero, living in a big house in the New Forest, is a teenager, Waller Froy. His father is away, and he is out fishing in the Forest, when he encounters a strange boy of his own age. Initially they each assume the other to be an adversary, but Waller then realises that the other boy is harmless, and has become lost from a party of Jacobite gentlemen from France. Of course this is ridiculous, because we are now in the days of King George the Third, and no Jacobite revival is likely or possible, but the soldiers are out looking for this lad and his former companions. So Waller decides to take him home and look after him till he is a bit less starved. The boy's name is Godfrey Boyne. But from a tiny incident news gets out that there are strange noises in the house, as though there was another person in the attics. And so the military, accompanied by the village constable, arrive, to search the house. This is a very comic event, and the soldiers retreat empty-handed. Help comes from an unexpected quarter, and Waller manages to organise his friend Godfrey with a trip back to France in a local fishing boat. It's a short book, or a long short story, and was published under the same bind