Basil Gauntlet stands alone on the bleak Borderlands, a ruined gentleman cut off from Netherwood, his birthright, and nearly every hope he once had. In this military romance of inheritance, pride, and loss, he traces the bitter history that destroyed his family: a grandfather's disowning will, a father broken in prison, a mother lost to grief, and a childhood spent in the grip of the harsh lawyer Nathan Wylie. Raised in poverty and humiliation, Basil endures legal drudgery, religious severity, and constant reminders of his exclusion, yet he clings to secret reading, dreams of freedom, and faint memories of maternal tenderness. His lonely world brightens with the arrival of Ruth Wylie, whose warmth and beauty awaken his first love. Their innocent passion grows in secret until Nathan discovers them, driving them into concealment, fear, and defiance. When Basil is mistaken for a thief and nearly shot, he is forced to break away, nursing both heartbreak and ambition. Cut off with only a shilling, he turns toward military life as war fever swells around the French expedition at Portsmouth. Amid ships, supplies, patriotic excitement, and the machinery of invasion, Basil enters a world of danger and opportunity, where duty, suspicion, and political intrigue begin to shape his fate. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.
