"gp46w10" - читать интересную книгу автора (Parker Gilbert)

would be lost. To be too audacious, even to exaggerate, is no crime in
youth nor in the young artist. As a farmer once said to me regarding a
frisky mount, it is better to smash through the top bar than to have
spring-halt.

The Trespasser took its place, and, as I think, its natural place, in the
development of my literary life. I did not stop to think whether it was
a happy theme or not, or whether it had popular elements. These things
did not concern me. When it was written I should not have known what was
a popular theme. It was written under circumstances conducive to its
artistic welfare; if it has not as many friends as 'The Right of Way' or
'The Seats of the Mighty' or 'The Weavers' or 'The Judgment House', that
is not the fault of the public or of the critics.




TO DOUGLAS ROBINSON, Esq.,

AND

FRANK A. HILTON, Esq.

My dear Douglas and Frank:

I feel sure that this dedication will give you as much pleasure as it
does me. It will at least be evidence that I do not forget good days in
your company here and there in the world. I take pleasure in linking
your names; for you, who have never met, meet thus in the porch of a
little house that I have built.

You, my dear Douglas, will find herein scenes, times, and things familiar
to you; and you, my dear Frank, reflections of hours when we camped by an
idle shore, or drew about the fire of winter nights, and told tales worth
more than this, for they were of the future, and it is of the past.

Always sincerely yours,
GILBERT PARKER.




THE TRESPASSER

CHAPTER I

ONE IN SEARCH OF A KINGDOM

Why Gaston Belward left the wholesome North to journey afar, Jacques
Brillon asked often in the brawling streets of New York, and oftener in