The White Company

The White Company

By Arthur Conan Doyle.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. Dedication
4. The White Company
   1. I: How the Black Sheep Came Forth from the Fold
   2. II: How Alleyne Edricson Came Out Into the World
   3. III: How Hordle John Cozened the Fuller of Lymington
   4. IV: How the Bailiff of Southampton Slew the Two Masterless Men
   5. V: How a Strange Company Gathered at the Pied Merlin
   6. VI: How Samkin Aylward Wagered His Featherbed
   7. VII: How the Three Comrades Journeyed Through the Woodlands
   8. VIII: The Three Friends
   9. IX: How Strange Things Befell in Minstead Wood
   10. X: How Hordle John Found a Man Whom He Might Follow
   11. XI: How a Young Shepherd Had a Perilous Flock
   12. XII: How Alleyne Learned More Than He Could Teach
   13. XIII: How the White Company Set Forth to the Wars
   14. XIV: How Sir Nigel Sought for a Wayside Venture
   15. XV: How the Yellow Cog Sailed Forth from Lepe
   16. XVI: How the Yellow Cog Fought the Two Rover Galleys
   17. XVII: How the Yellow Cog Crossed the Bar of Gironde
   18. XVIII: How Sir Nigel Loring Put a Patch Upon His Eye
   19. XIX: How There Was Stir at the Abbey of St. Andrew’s
   20. XX: How Alleyne Won His Place in an Honorable Guild
   21. XXI: How Agostino Pisano Risked His Head
   22. XXII: How the Bowmen Held Wassail at the Rose de Guienne
   23. XXIII: How England Held the Lists at Bordeaux
   24. XXIV: How a Champion Came Forth from the East
   25. XXV: How Sir Nigel Wrote to Twynham Castle
   26. XXVI: How the Three Comrades Gained a Mighty Treasure
   27. XXVII: How Roger Clubfoot Was Passed Into Paradise
   28. XXVIII: How the Comrades Came Over the Marches of France
   29. XXIX: How the Blessed Hour of Sight Came to the Lady Tiphaine
   30. XXX: How the Brushwood Men Came to the Château of Villefranche
   31. XXXI: How Five Men Held the Keep of Villefranche
   32. XXXII: How the Company Took Counsel Round the Fallen Tree
   33. XXXIII: How the Army Made the Passage of Roncesvalles
   34. XXXIV: How the Company Made Sport in the Vale of Pampeluna
   35. XXXV: How Sir Nigel Hawked at an Eagle
   36. XXXVI: How Sir Nigel Took the Patch from His Eye
   37. XXXVII: How the White Company Came to Be Disbanded
   38. XXXVIII: Of the Homecoming to Hampshire
5. Colophon
6. Uncopyright

Imprint

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To the hope of the future
The reunion of the English-speaking races
this little chronicle
of our common ancestry is inscribed

South Norwood

September 29, 1891

The White Company

I

How the Black Sheep Came Forth from the Fold

The great bell of Beaulieu was ringing. Far away through the forest might be heard its musical clangor and swell. Peat-cutters on Blackdown and fishers upon the Exe heard the distant throbbing rising and falling upon the sultry summer air. It was a common sound in those parts⁠—as common as the chatter of the jays and the booming of the bittern. Yet the fishers and the peasants raised their heads and looked questions at each other, for the angelus had already gone and vespers was still far off. Why should the great bell of Beaulieu toll when the shadows were neither short nor long?

All round the Abbey the monks were trooping in. Under the long green-paved avenues of gnarled oaks and of lichened beeches the white-robed brothers gathered to the sound. From the vineyard and the vine-press, from the bouvary or ox-farm, from the marl-pits and salterns, even from the distant ironworks of Sowley and the outlying grange of St. Leonard’s, they had all turned their steps homewards. It had been no sudden call. A swift messenger had the night before sped round to the outlying dependencies of the Abbey, and had left the summons for every monk to be back in the cloisters by the third hour after noontide. So urgent a message had not been issued within the memory of old lay-brother Athanasius, who had cleaned the Abbey knocker since the year after the Battle of Bannockburn.

A stranger who knew nothing either of the Abbey or of its immense resources might have gathered from the appearance of the brothers some conception of the varied duties which they were called upon to perform, and of the busy, widespread life which centred in the old monastery. As they swept gravely in by twos and by threes, with bended heads and muttering lips there were few who did not bear upon them some signs of their daily toil. Here were two with wrists and sleeves all spotted with the ruddy grape juice. There again was a bearded brother