A Joyous Adventure

ot a Scarlet Pimpernel novel, but one set in the same universe. Excerpt: This interview had occurred in May in the year 1800. A few months later half a dozen were gathered round a deal table in the low whitewashed room of the _Cabaret du Pélican, a lonely house which stands at the extreme end of the village street of Soulanges. They were eating bread and cheese and drinking cider. The room gave on a side door of the cabaret. It was bare, save for the table, a rickety bench or two and an old-fashioned clock up on the wall. In the corner nearest the door a number of muskets, staves and scythes were propped up. On the table a couple of tallow candles guttered in their pewter sconces._