Snow is falling and covering the house when she hears the knock at the door. The face that meets her gaze is sunken and hollow, ravaged with pain, and pitiful. His right arm is in a sling under his tattered military cloak. "My husband will never forgive me," she says with a sort of sob, opening the door to give him shelter. She has sworn to let no one in -- for the tax money he collected is hidden beneath the kitchen floorboards. Then in the night she hears the faint scratching -- someone working at the lock of the door, from the outside! Yet the haggard refugee is sleeping soundly . . . and who could want to break into such a poor house as this?

Author Biography

Mary Cholmondeley (1859 - 1925) was an English novelist. She began writing with serious intent in her teens. She wrote in her journal in 1877, "What a pleasure and interest it would be to me in life to write books. I must strike out a line of some kind, and if I do not marry (for at best that is hardly likely, as I possess neither beauty nor charms) I should want some definite occupation, besides the home duties." She succeeded in publishing some stories in The Graphic and elsewhere. Her first novel was The Danvers Jewels (1887), a detective story that won her a small following. It appeared in the Temple Bar magazine published by Richard Bentley, after fellow novelist Rhoda Broughton had introduced her to George Bentley. It was followed by Sir Charles Danvers (1889), Diana Tempest (1893) and A Devotee (1897). The satirical Red Pottage (1899) was a best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic and is reprinted occasionally. It satirizes religious hypocrisy and the narrowness of country life and was denounced from a London pulpit as immoral. It was equally sensational because it "explored the issues of female sexuality and vocation, recurring topics in late-Victorian debates about the New Women." Despite the book's great success, however, the author received little money for it because she had sold the copyright.