EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS

THE OUTLAW OF TORN

To My Friend

JOSEPH E. BRAY

CHAPTER I

Here is a story that has lain dormant for seven hundred years. At first it

was suppressed by one of the Plantagenet kings of England. Later it was

forgotten. I happened to dig it up by accident. The accident being the

relationship of my wife's cousin to a certain Father Superior in a very

ancient monastery in Europe.

He let me pry about among a quantity of mildewed and musty manuscripts and

I came across this. It is very interesting -- partially since it is a bit

of hitherto unrecorded history, but principally from the fact that it

records the story of a most remarkable revenge and the adventurous life of

its innocent victim -- Richard, the lost prince of England.

In the retelling of it, I have left out most of the history. What

interested me was the unique character about whom the tale revolves -- the

visored horseman who -- but let us wait until we get to him.

It all happened in the thirteenth century, and while it was happening, it

shook England from north to south and from east to west; and reached across

the channel and shook France. It started, directly, in the London palace

of Henry III, and was the result of a quarrel between the King and his

powerful brother-in-law, Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester.

Never mind the quarrel, that's history, and you can read all about it at

your leisure. But on this June day in the year of our Lord 1243, Henry so

forgot himself as to very unjustly accuse De Montfort of treason in the

presence of a number of the King's gentlemen.