Lawrence Clavering

A troubling portrait hangs in Lawrence Clavering's lodgings at Avignon, prompting him to explain the history behind his painted expression. He remembers his youth and the difficult period when he was master of Blackladies in England. His account begins at a Jesuit college in Paris in March 1715, where thoughts of travel compete with religious study. News that his kinsman Lord Bolingbroke wishes to see him opens a discussion about the future he has chosen.

A. E. W. Mason combines this personal account with a historical novel set against the Jacobite rebellion of 1715. Love, honour and political danger shape its concerns. In a later passage, Clavering rides towards Keswick at night, leading his horse around a quiet village and fearing that each shadow might conceal a soldier. Readers interested in how suspense grows from small details will find moonlight, hoofbeats and distant sounds closely tied to the narrator's anxious thoughts.