Read "When Charles the First was King" by J.S. Fletcher online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
And now, whether I would or not, I was forced into active participation in this war which was being fought out 'twixt Englishman and Englishman, and made to take a part in it which I had never dreamt of playing. It was the first day of July, 1644. A hot, cloudless day it had been, with never a speck on the sky that one could interpret into a sign of rain. We had got our hay in, and Timothy Grass and another man were busily engaged in thatching the two great stacks that we had built at the end of our stackyard. Early as it was, our corn was beginning to turn, and I looked forward to commencing harvest in three weeks' time, feeling sure that the oats would then be ready. We had had no rain during the hay-harvest, and I hoped that we should be similarly favoured during the corn-harvest. If only the war would keep away from us until we got our corn in, I felt it would be well.
I walked out with Rose that evening through the meadows leading towards Went Vale. Unconsciously my feet turned in the direction I had taken that spring morning long years before, when I set out for the ruined sheepfold to find the stormcock's nest.