Excerpt from The Queen's Man: A Romance of the Wars, of the Roses The attorney obeyed him, his thin voice ringing through such silence as could be had on that November afternoon, with the great west Wind making an organ accompaniment, rattling the lattices and roaring in the wide chimney. There was an unearthly pause, the stillness of death for a minute or two, through which the voice piped clearly; then the thundering waves came rolling up once more over moor and meadow and forest, and the wind yelled and screeched' with more fury for the long breath it had taken. Logs were burning on the hearth, and Sir William, a noble-looking old man with a white beard, was sitting in his high carved chair Close to the chimney corner, his velvet gown folded round his knees. In the middle of the vaulted room, his own room, reached by a short flight of steps from the castle hall, four persons sat opposite to him at a table, one of them reading, the other three listening to the will, the contents of which they all knew already for three of them were executors, and the fourth, Sir William's secretary, had acted as clerk to Timothy Toste on The occasion. 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.