Excerpt from The Confessions of Claud: A Romance I think that my early childhood must have shaped some thought like this. Each new year brought the sure advance closer. And it was the steadfast, pitiless march of a foe. Dull booms from blasting-works began to reach us through the more temperate seasons. Every spring we heard them a little more clearly. I knew what they meant; I had learned; I was now eight years old. We held our home by no legal right we were mere squatters upon an unguarded terri tory, valueless when first found, but now gaining with speed in worth and note. Soon we must fare to other quarters. The fiat of dismissal might reach us to-morrow; it might be delayed for many morrows yet. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.