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Transcriber's Note:
The book has an extra Chapter XIV following Chapter XV (i.e.,the chapter sequence is XIV, XV, XIV, XVI). The numbering has been leftas printed.
The Smugglers' Cave
NOVELS BY
GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM
- THE SMUGGLERS' CAVE
- GOODLY PEARLS
- THE GUN RUNNERS
- THE GRAND DUCHESS
- KING TOMMY
- SEND FOR Dr. O'GRADY
- GENERAL JOHN REGAN
- THE MAJOR'S NIECE
- HYACINTH
- BENEDICT KAVANAGH
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
Limited London
The
Smugglers' Cave
By GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM
Hodder and Stoughton
Limited London
Made and Printed in Great Britain by Wyman & Sons Ltd., London, Reading and Fakenham[5]
An Introduction
Meant to make easy the task of those whoreview novels without reading them and to awakenthe interest of others who read novels withoutreviewing them.
This is the story of the Hailey Compton VillagePageant.
Pageants, good and bad, great and small,were commonplace affairs a few years ago.Every summer half a dozen of them werewidely advertised and probably a dozen moreran blameless courses unnoticed except bythose who took part in them. They werestarted by enthusiasts, worked up by energeticcommittees, kept within the bounds of historicpossibility by scholarly experts. They cameand went, amused a few people, bored a greatmany and left not a trace of their brief existencebehind them.
The Hailey Compton Pageant was staged in[6]a small unimportant village. The peoplewho organised it, the vicar's wife and thelocal innkeeper, were unknown to fame.It had, at first, no backing in the pressexcept a few paragraphs slipped into provincialpapers by Miss Beth Appleby, ayoung journalist of promise but small attainment.It had, at first, no aristocratic patronage,except the half-hearted support of SirEvelyn Dent. It began in a casual, almostaccidental way.
Yet the Hailey Compton Pageant excitedEngland from end to end, set every club inLondon gossiping, inspired a spate of articlesin the daily papers, smirched the reputation ofan earl and went near wrecking, at the ne