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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Corporal Sam and Other Stories, by A. T.
+Quiller-Couch
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Corporal Sam and Other Stories
+       Corporal Sam; The Copernican Convoy; Red Velvet; The Jew on the Moor; My Christmas Burglary; The Mayor's Dovecot: a Cautionary Tale; News From Troy!; Colonel Baigent's Christmas; Doctor Unonius; Mutual Exchange, Limited
+
+
+Author: A. T. Quiller-Couch
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 3, 2005  [eBook #16194]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CORPORAL SAM AND OTHER STORIES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Lionel Sear
+
+
+
+CORPORAL SAM AND OTHER STORIES
+
+by
+
+SIR ARTHUR THOMAS QUILLER-COUCH  ('Q').
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+   CORPORAL SAM.
+
+   THE COPERNICAN CONVOY.
+
+   RED VELVET.
+
+   THE JEW ON THE MOOR.
+
+   MY CHRISTMAS BURGLARY.
+
+   THE MAYOR'S DOVECOT: A CAUTIONARY TALE.
+
+   NEWS FROM TROY!
+
+   COLONEL BAIGENT'S CHRISTMAS.
+
+   DOCTOR UNONIUS.
+
+   MUTUAL EXCHANGE, LIMITED.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CORPORAL SAM.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Sergeant David Wilkes, of the First (Royal) Regiment of Foot--third
+battalion, B Company--came trudging with a small fatigue party down
+the sandy slopes of Mount Olia, on the summit of which they had been
+toiling all day, helping the artillerymen to drag an extra 24-pounder
+into battery.  They had brought it into position just half an hour
+ago, and already it had opened fire along with another 24-pounder and
+two howitzers mounted on the same rocky platform.  The men as they
+descended heard the projectiles fly over their heads, and paused,
+distinguishing the scream of the shells from the dull hum of the
+round-shot, to watch the effect of the marksmanship, which was
+excellent.
+
+Northwards, to their right, stretched the blue line of the Bay, where
+a single ship-of-war tacked lazily and kept a two-miles' offing.
+The smoke of the guns, drifting down on the land-breeze from the
+summit of Mount Olia, now hid her white sails, now lifted and
+revealed them in the late afternoon sunshine.  But although blue held
+the upper heavens--cloudless blue of July--the sunshine that reached
+the ship was murky, almost copper-coloured; for it pierced through a
+cloud of denser smoke that rolled continuously along the western
+horizon from the burning houses of San Sebastian.
+
+Sergeant Wilkes and his men, halting on the lower slope of the
+mountain where it fell away in sand-dunes to the estuary of the
+Urumea, had the whole flank of the fortress in view.  Just now, at
+half-tide, it rose straight out of the water on the farther bank--
+a low, narrow-necked isthmus that at its seaward end climbed to a
+cone-shaped rock four hundred feet high, crowned by a small castle.
+This was the citadel.  The town, through which alone it could be
+taken by force, lay under it, across the neck of the isthmus; and
+this again was protected on the landward side by a high rampart or
+curtain, strengthened by a tall bastion in its centre and covered by
+a regular hornwork pushed out from its front.  So much for the
+extremities, seaward and landward.  That flank of the place which
+it presented to the sandhills across the Urumea was clearly more
+vulnerable, and yet not easily vulnerable.  Deep water and natural
+rock protected Mount Orgullo, the citadel hill.  The sea-wall, for
+almost half its length, formed but a _fausse braye_ for the hornwork
+towering formidably behind it.  Only where it covered the town, in
+the space between citadel and hornwork, this wall became a simple
+rampart; stout indeed and solid and twenty-seven feet high, with two
+flanking towers for enfilading fire, besides a demi-bastion at the
+Mount Orgullo end, yet offering the weak spot in the defences.
+
+The British batteries had found and were hammering at it; not the
+guns upon Mount Olia, which had been hauled thither to dominate those
+of the citadel, but a dozen 24-pounders disposed, with a line of
+mortars behind them, on the lower slope above the estuary, where an
+out-cropping ridge of rock gave firm ground among the sand-dunes.
+The undulating line of these dunes hid this, the true breaching
+battery, from view of Sergeant Wilkes and his men, though they had
+halted within a hundred yards of it, and for at least an hour the
+guns had been given a rest.  Only, at long intervals, one or other of
+the mortars threw a bomb to clear the breach--already close upon a
+hundred feet wide--driven between the two flanking towers.
+It was behind this breach that the town blazed.  The smoke, carried
+down the estuary by the land-breeze, rolled heavily across the middle
+slopes of Mount Orgullo.  But above it the small castle stood up
+clearly, silhouetted against the western light, and from time to time
+one of its guns answered the fire from Mount Olia.  Save for this and
+the sound of falling timbers in the town, San Sebastian kept silence.
+
+'Wonder what it feels like?'
+
+Sergeant Wilkes, not catching the meaning of this, turned about
+slowly.  The speaker was a tall young corporal, Sam Vicary by name
+and by birth a Somerset lad--a curly haired, broad-shouldered fellow
+with a simple engaging smile.  He had come out with one of the later
+drafts, and nobody knew the cause of his enlisting, but it was
+supposed to be some poaching trouble at home.  At all events, the
+recruiting sergeant had picked up a bargain in him, for, let alone
+his stature--and the Royals as a regiment prided themselves on their
+inches--he was easily the best marksman in B Company.  Sergeant
+Wilkes, on whose recommendation he had been given his corporal's
+stripe, the day after Vittoria, looked on him as the hopefullest of
+his youngsters.
+
+'Feels like?' echoed the sergeant, following the young man's gaze and
+observing that it rested on the great breach.  'Oh! 'tis the assault
+you mean?  Well, it feels pretty much like any other part of the
+business, only your blood's up, and you don't have to keep yourself
+warm, waiting for the guns to tire.  When we stormed the San
+Vincenty, now, at Badajoz--'
+
+Some one interrupted, with a serio-comic groan.
+
+'You've started him now, Sam Vicary! Johnny-raws of the Third
+Battalion, your kind attention, pray, for Daddy Wilkes and the good
+old days when pipeclay _was_ pipeclay.  Don't be afraid, for though
+he took that first class fortress single-handed, you may sit upon his
+knee, and he'll tell you all about it.'
+
+'It's children you are, anyway,' said the sergeant, with a tolerant
+smile.  'But I'll forgive ye, when the time comes, if ye'll do the
+Royals credit--and, what's more, I'll never cast up that 'twas but a
+third battalion against a third-class place.  Nor will I need to,' he
+added, after a pause, 'if the general makes a throw for yon breach
+before clearing the hornwork.'
+
+'I wasn't thinkin' of the assault,' explained the young corporal,
+simply, 'but of the women and children.  It must be hell for them,
+this waitin'.'
+
+The same voice that had mocked the sergeant put up a ribald guffaw.
+
+'Didn't the general give warning,' it asked, 'when he summoned the
+garrison?  "I've got Sam Vicary here along with me," he said, "and so
+I give you notice, for Sam's a terror when he starts to work."'
+
+'If you fellows could quit foolin' a moment--' began Corporal Sam,
+with an ingenuous blush.  But here on a sudden the slope below them
+opened with a roar as the breaching battery--gun after gun--renewed
+its fire on the sea-wall.  Amid the din, and while the earth shook
+underfoot, the sergeant was the first to recover himself.
+
+'Another breach!' he shouted between the explosions, putting up both
+hands like a pair of spectacles and peering through the smoke.
+'See there--to the left; and that accounts for their quiet this last
+hour.'  He watched the impact of the shot for a minute or so, and
+shook his head.  'They'd do better to clear the horn work.
+At Badajoz, now--'
+
+But here he checked himself in time, and fortunately no one had
+heard him.  The men moved on and struck into the rutted track leading
+from the batteries to camp.  He turned and followed them in a brown
+study.  Ever since Badajoz, siege operations had been Sergeant
+Wilkes's foible.  His youngsters played upon it, drawing him into
+discussions over the camp-fire, and winking one to another as he
+expounded and illustrated, using bits of stick to represent
+parallels, traverses, rampart and glacis, scarp and counterscarp.
+But he had mastered something of the theory, after his lights, and
+our batteries' neglect of the hornwork struck him as unscientific.
+
+As he pursued the path, a few dozen yards in rear of his comrades, at
+a turn where it doubled a sharp corner he saw their hands go up to
+the salute, and with this slight warning came upon two of his own
+officers--Major Frazer and Captain Archimbeau--perched on a knoll to
+the left, and attentively studying the artillery practice through
+their glasses.  The captain (who, by the way, commanded B Company)
+signed to him to halt, and climbed down to him while the fatigue
+party trudged on.  Major Frazer followed, closing his field telescope
+as he descended.
+
+'What do you say to it?' asked Captain Archimbeau, with a jerk of his
+hand towards the great breach.
+
+'It can be done, sir,' Sergeant Wilkes answered.  'Leastways, it
+ought to be done.  But with submission, sir, 'twill be at wicked
+waste, unless they first clear the hornwork.'
+
+'They can keep it pretty well swept while we assault.  The fact is,'
+said Major Frazer, a tall Scotsman, speaking in his slow Scots way,
+'we assault it early to-morrow, and the general has asked me to find
+volunteers.'
+
+'For the forlorn hope, sir?'  The sergeant flushed a little, over the
+compliment paid to the Royals.
+
+Major Frazer nodded.  'There's no need to make it common knowledge
+just yet.  I am allowed to pick my men, but I have no wish to spend
+the night in choosing between volunteers.  You understand?'
+
+'Yes, sir.  You will get a plenty without travelling outside the
+regiment.'
+
+'Captain Archimbeau goes with us; and we thought, Wilkes, of asking
+you to join the party.'
+
+'You are very good, sir.' There was hesitation, though, in the
+sergeant's manner, and Major Frazer perceived it.
+
+'You understand,' he said coldly, 'that there is no obligation.
+I wouldn't press a man for this kind of service, even if I could.'
+
+The sergeant flushed.  'I was thinkin' of the regiment, sir,' he
+answered, and turned to his captain.  'We shall have our men
+supportin'?--if I may make bold to ask.'
+
+'The Royals are to show the way at the great breach, with the 9th in
+support.  The 38th tackle the smaller breach.  To make surer (as he
+says), the general has a mind to strengthen us up in the centre with
+a picked detachment of the whole division.'
+
+Sergeant Wilkes shook his head.  'I am sorry for that, sir.
+'Tisn't for me to teach the general; but I misdoubt all mixin' up of
+regiments.  What the Royals can do they can best do by themselves.'
+
+'Hurts your pride a bit, eh, sergeant?' asked the major, with a short
+laugh.  'And yet, my friend, it was only yesterday I overheard you
+telling your company they weren't fit to carry the slops of the Fifth
+division.'
+
+'It does 'em good, sir.  A man, if he wants to do good, must say a
+trifle more than he means, at times.'
+
+'You _can_ trust 'em, then?'
+
+'And that again, sir--savin' your presence--would be sayin' more than
+I mean.  For the lads, sir, are young lads, though willing enough;
+and young lads need to be nursed, however willing.  As between you
+and me, sir'--here he appealed to Captain Archimbeau--'B Company is
+the steadiest in the battalion.  But if the major takes away its
+captain, and upon top of him its senior sergeant--well, beggin' your
+pardon, a compliment's a compliment, but it may be bought too dear.'
+
+'Wilkes is right,' said the major, after a pause.  'To take the both
+of you would be risky; and unless I'm mistaken, Archimbeau, he thinks
+you will be the easier spared.'
+
+'I haven't a doubt he does,' agreed Captain Archimbeau, laughing.
+
+'But I do not, sir.' The sergeant seemed on the point to say more,
+but checked himself.
+
+'Well?'
+
+'It's not for me to give an opinion, sir, unless asked for it.'
+
+'I ask for it, then--your plain opinion, as a soldier.'
+
+'An officer's an officer--that's my opinion.  There's good and bad,
+to be sure; but an officer like the captain here, that the men can
+trust, is harder spared than any sergeant: let alone that you can
+easily spread officers too thick--even good ones, and even in a
+forlorn hope.'
+
+'He wants my place,' said Captain Archimbeau; 'and he salves my
+feelings with a testimonial.'
+
+'As for that, sir'--the sergeant conceded a grin--'I reckon you won't
+be far behind us when the trouble begins.  And if the major wants a
+good man from B Company, you'll agree with me, sir, that yonder he
+goes.'  And Sergeant Wilkes jerked a thumb after the tall young
+corporal, a moment before the sandhills hid his retreating figure.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The assault had been a muddle from the start.
+
+To begin with, after being ordered for one day (July 23rd) it had
+been deferred to the next; on reasonable grounds, indeed, for the
+town immediately behind the great breach was burning like a furnace;
+but it gave the troops an uneasy feeling that their leaders were
+distracted in counsel.  Nor, divided by the river, did the artillery
+and the stormers work upon a mutual understanding.  The heavy cannon,
+after a short experiment to the left of the great breach, had shifted
+their fire to the right of it, and had succeeded in knocking a
+practicable hole in it before dusk.  But either this change of plan
+had not been reported to the trenches, or the officer directing the
+assault inexplicably failed to adapt his dispositions to it.
+The troops for the great breach were filed out ahead of the 38th,
+which had farther to go.
+
+Worst of all, they were set in motion an hour before dawn, although
+Wellington had left orders that fair daylight should be waited for,
+and the artillery-men across the Urumea were still plying their guns
+on the sea-wall, to dissuade the besieged from repairing it in the
+darkness.  To be sure a signal for the assault--the firing of a mine
+against the hornwork--had been concerted, and was duly given; but in
+the din and the darkness it was either not heard or not understood.
+
+Thus it happened that the forlorn hope and the supporting companies
+of the Royals had no sooner cleared the trenches than their ranks
+shook under a fire of grape, and from our own guns.  There was no
+cure but to dash through it and take the chances, and Major Frazer,
+waving his sword, called on his men to follow him at the double.
+Ahead of them, along the foot of the sea-wall, the receding tide had
+left a strip of strand, foul with rock and rock pools and patches of
+seaweed, dark and slippery.  Now and again a shell burst and
+illuminated these patches, or the still-dripping ooze twinkled under
+flashes of musketry from the wall above; for the defenders had
+hurried to the parapet and flanking towers, and their fire already
+crackled the whole length of the strand.
+
+Sergeant Wilkes, running a pace or two behind the major, slipping and
+staggering at every second yard, was aware--though he could not see
+him--of young Corporal Sam close at his shoulder.  The lad talked to
+himself as he ran: but his talk was no more than a babble of quiet
+unmeaning curses, and the sergeant, who understood how the lust of
+fighting works in different men, did not trouble to answer until,
+himself floundering up to his knees in a saltwater pool, he flung out
+a hand for support and felt it gripped.
+
+'Damn them!'  The corporal, dragging him to solid foothold, cast a
+look up as a shell burst high overhead, and his face showed white
+with passion in the glare of it.  'Can't any one _tell_ them there's
+no sense in it!'
+
+'Take it easy, lad,' panted the sergeant, cheerfully.  'They're bound
+to understand in a minute, hearin' all this musketry.  Accidents will
+happen--and anyway they can't help seein' us at the breach.  Look at
+the light of it beyond the tower there!'
+
+They floundered on together.  The tower, not fifty yards away, jetted
+fire from every loophole; but its marksmen were aiming into the
+darkness, having been caught in a hurry and before they could throw
+down flares.  As the sergeant rushed to get close under the wall of
+it, a bullet sent his shako whizzing; but still he ran on, and came
+bareheaded to the foot of the breach.
+
+It ran down to the foreshore, a broadening scree of rubble, ruined
+masonry, broken beams of timber--some of them smouldering; and over
+the top of it shone the blaze of the town.  But the actual gap
+appeared to be undefended, and, better still, the rubbish on the near
+side had so piled itself that for half the way up the stormers could
+climb under cover, protected from the enfilading fire.  Already the
+major had dropped on hands and knees and was leading the way up,
+scrambling from heap to heap of rubbish.  Close after him went an
+officer in the uniform of the Engineers, with Corporal Sam at his
+heels.  The sergeant ducked his head and followed, dodging from block
+to block of masonry on the other side of which the bullets spattered.
+
+'Forward!  Forward the Royals!'
+
+The leaders were shouting it, and he passed on the shout.  As yet,
+not a man had fallen on the slope of the breach.  Two, more agile
+than he because by some years younger, overtook and passed him; but
+he was the sixth to reach the summit, and might reckon this very good
+work for a man of his weight.  Then, as he turned to shout again,
+three more of the forlorn hope came blundering up, and the nine stood
+unscathed on the summit of the gap and apparently with none to oppose
+them.
+
+But beyond it--between them and the town, and a sheer twenty feet
+below them, lay a pool of blazing tar, the flames of which roared up
+against their faces.
+
+'Forward the Royals!  Ladders--ladders!  Oh, for your life, forward
+with the ladders!'
+
+The major started the cry.  Corporal Sam, taking it up, screamed
+it again and again.  In the darkness, behind and below, the
+sergeant heard Captain Archimbeau calling to his men to hurry.
+One ladder-bearer came clattering up; but the ladders were in
+six-foot lengths, and a single length was useless.  Nevertheless, in
+his rage of haste, Corporal Sam seized it from the man, and was
+bending to clamp it over the pit, when from the parapet to the right
+a sudden cross-fire swept the head of the breach.  A bullet struck
+him in the hand.  He looked up, with the pain of it, in time to see
+Major Frazer spin about, topple past the sergeant's hand thrust out
+to steady him, and pitch headlong down the slope.  The ladder-bearer
+and another tall Royal dropped at the same moment.
+
+'Hi, sergeant!' spoke up the young Engineer officer very sharply and
+clearly, at the same time stepping a couple of paces down from the
+ridge over which a frontal fire of bullets now flew whistling from
+the loopholed houses in the town.  'For God's sake, shout and hurry
+up your men, or our chance this night is gone.'
+
+'I know it, sir--I know it,' groaned Wilkes.
+
+'Then shout, man! Fifty men might do it yet, but every moment is odds
+against.  See the swarm on the rampart there, to the right!'
+
+They shouted together, but in vain.  Four or five ladder-bearers
+mounted the slope, but only to be shot down almost at their feet.
+The Engineer officer, reaching forward to seize one of the
+ladder-lengths and drag it behind a pile of masonry under which he
+had taken cover, and thus for an instant exposing himself, dropped
+suddenly upon his face.  And now but Sergeant Wilkes and Corporal Sam
+were left clinging, waiting for the help that still tarried.
+
+What had happened was this.  The supporting columns, disordered by
+the scramble along the foreshore, arrived at the foot of the breach
+in straggling twos and threes; and here, while their officers tried
+to form them up, the young soldiers behind, left for the moment
+without commanders and exasperated by the fire from the flanking
+tower, halted to exchange useless shots with its defenders and with
+the enemy on the rampart.  Such fighting was worse than idle: it
+delayed them full in the path of the 38th, which now overtook them on
+its way to the lesser breach, and in five minutes the two columns
+were inextricably mixed, blocking the narrow space between wall and
+river, and exposed in all this dark confusion to a murderous fire.
+
+At length, and though less than a third of his men followed him,
+Captain Archimbeau led the supporters up the breach; but by this time
+the enemy had packed the ramparts on either side.  No soldiery could
+stand the hail of musketry, grape, and hand-grenades that rained upon
+the head of the column.  It hesitated, pushed forward again, and
+broke some fifteen feet from the summit, like a spent wave.  Then, as
+the Royals came pouring back, Lieutenant Campbell of the 9th, with
+all that could be collected of his picked detachment, forced his way
+up through the sheer weight of them, won clear, and made a fling for
+the crest.  In vain!  His first rush carried him abreast of the
+masonry under which Sergeant Wilkes and the corporal clung for cover.
+They rushed out to join him; but they had scarcely gained his side
+before the whole detachment began to give ground.  It was not that
+the men fell back; rather, the apex of the column withered down as
+man after man dropped beside its leader.  He himself had taken a
+wound.  Yet he waved his sword and carried them forward on a second
+charge, only to reach where he had reached before, and be laid there
+by a second bullet.
+
+Meanwhile the Royals, driven to the foot of the slope, were flung as
+a fresh obstacle in the path of the 38th still striving to press on
+for the lesser breach.  From his perch half-way up the ruins,
+Sergeant Wilkes descried Captain Archimbeau endeavouring to rally
+them, and climbed down to help him.  The corporal followed, nursing
+his wounded hand.  As they reached him a bugle sounded the recall.
+
+The assault had failed.  At the foot of the breach a soldier of the
+4th Regiment, mad with rage, foamed out a curse upon the Royals.
+Corporal Sam lifted his bleeding fist and struck him across the
+mouth.  The sergeant dragged the two apart, slipped an arm under his
+comrade's, and led him away as one leads a child.  A moment later the
+surge of the retreating crowd had almost carried them off their feet.
+But the sergeant kept a tight hold, and steered his friend back every
+yard of the way along the bullet-swept foreshore.  They were less
+than half-way across when the dawn broke; and looking in his face he
+saw that the lad was crying silently--the powder-grime on his cheeks
+streaked and channelled with tears.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+'I don't understand ye, lad,' said Sergeant Wilkes.
+
+'Fast enough you'd understand, if you'd but look me in the face,'
+answered Corporal Sam, digging his heel into the sand.
+
+The two men lay supine on a cushion of coarse grass; the sergeant
+smoking and staring up at the sky, the corporal, with his sound hand
+clasping his wounded one behind his head, his gaze fixed gloomily
+between his knees and across the dunes, on the still unrepaired
+breach in San Sebastian.
+
+A whole fortnight had dragged by since the assault: a fortnight of
+idleness for the troops, embittered almost intolerably by a sense
+that the Fifth Division had disgraced itself.  One regiment blamed
+another, and all conspired to curse the artillery--whose practice, by
+the way, had been brilliant throughout the siege.  Nor did the
+gunners fail to retort; but they were in luckier case, being kept
+busy all the while, first in shifting their batteries and removing
+their worst guns to the ships, next in hauling and placing the new
+train that arrived piecemeal from England; and not only busy, but
+alert, on the watch against sorties.  Also, and although the error of
+cannonading the columns of assault had never been cleared up, the
+brunt of Wellington's displeasure had fallen on the stormers.
+The Marquis ever laid stress on his infantry, whether to use them or
+blame them; and when he found occasion to blame, he had words--and
+methods--that scarified equally the general of division and the
+private soldier.
+
+'Fast enough you understand,' repeated Corporal Sam savagely.
+
+'I do, then, and I don't,' admitted Sergeant Wilkes, after a pause.
+The lad puzzled him; gave him few confidences, asked for none at all,
+and certainly was no cheerful companion; and yet during these days of
+humiliation the two had become friends, almost inseparable.
+'I've read it,' the sergeant pursued, 'in Scripture or somewhere,
+that a man what keeps a hold on himself does better than if he took a
+city.  I don't say as I understand that altogether; but it _sounds_
+right.'
+
+'Plucky lot of cities we take, in the Royals,' growled Corporal Sam.
+He nodded, as well as his posture allowed, towards San Sebastian.
+'And you call that a third-class fortress!'
+
+'Accidents will happen.' Sergeant Wilkes, puffing at his pipe, fell
+back philosophically on his old catchword.  'It takes you hard,
+because you're young; and it takes you harder because you had fed
+yourself up on dreams o' glory, and such-like.'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'Well, and you have to get over it, that's all.  A man can't properly
+call himself a soldier till he's learnt to get over it.'
+
+'If that's all, the battalion is qualifyin' fast!' Corporal Sam
+retorted bitterly, and sat up, blinking in the strong sunlight.
+Then, as Sergeant Wilkes made no reply, or perhaps because he guessed
+something in Sergeant Wilkes's averted face, a sudden compunction
+seized him.  'You feel it too?'
+
+'I got to, after all my trouble,' answered Sergeant Wilkes brusquely.
+
+'I'm sorry.  Look here--I wish you'd turn your face about--it's worse
+for you and yet you get over it, as you say.  How the devil do you
+manage?'
+
+Still for a while Sergeant Wilkes leaned back without making reply.
+But of a sudden he, too, sat upright, drew down the peak of his shako
+to shade his eyes, and drawing his pipe from his mouth, jerked the
+stem of it to indicate a figure slowly crossing a rise of the
+sandhills between them and the estuary.
+
+'You see that man?'
+
+'To be sure I do.  An officer, and in the R.A.--curse them!--though I
+can't call to mind the cut of his jib.'
+
+'You wouldn't.  His name's Ramsay, and he's just out of arrest.'
+
+'What has he done?'
+
+'A many things, first and last.  At Fuentes d'Onoro the whole French
+cavalry cut him off--him and his battery--and he charged back clean
+through them; ay, lad, through 'em like a swathe, with his horses
+belly-down and the guns behind 'em bounding like skipjacks; not a gun
+taken, and scarce a gunner hurt.  That's the sort of man.'
+
+'Why has he been under arrest?'
+
+'Because the Marquis gave him an order and forgot it.  And because
+coming up later, expecting to find him where he wasn't and had no
+right to be, the Marquis lost his temper.  And likewise, because,
+when a great man loses his temper, right or wrong don't matter much.
+So there goes Captain Ramsay broken; a gentleman and a born fighter;
+and a captain he'll die.  That's how the mills grind in this here
+all-conquering army.  And the likes of us sit here and complain.'
+
+'If a man did that wrong to me--' Corporal Sam jumped to his feet and
+stared after the slight figure moving alone across the sandhills.
+
+Had his curiosity led him but a few paces farther, he had seen a
+strange sight indeed.
+
+Captain Norman Ramsay, wandering alone and with a burning heart,
+halted suddenly on the edge of a sand-pit.  Below him four men stood,
+gathered in a knot--two of them artillery officers, the others
+officers of the line.  His first impulse was to turn and escape, for
+he shunned all companionship just now.  But a second glance told him
+what was happening; and, prompt on the understanding, he plunged
+straight down the sandy bank, walked up to a young artillery officer
+and took the pistol out of his hand.  That was all, and it all
+happened in less than three minutes.  The would-be duellist--and
+challenges had been common since the late assault--knew the man and
+his story.  For that matter, every one in the army knew his story.
+
+As a ghost he awed them.  For a moment he stood looking from one to
+the other, and so, drawing the charge, tossed the pistol back at its
+owner's feet and resumed his way.
+
+Corporal Sam, who had merely seen the slight figure pass beyond the
+edge of the dunes, went back and flung himself again on the warm
+bank.
+
+'If a man did that wrong to me--' he repeated.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Certainly, just or unjust, the Marquis could make himself infernally
+unpleasant.  Having ridden over from head-quarters and settled the
+plans for the new assault, he returned to his main army and there
+demanded fifty volunteers from each of the fifteen regiments
+composing the First, Fourth, and Light Divisions--men (as he put it)
+_who could show other troops how to mount a breach_.  It may be
+guessed with what stomach the Fifth Division digested this; and among
+them not a man was angrier than their old general, Leith, who now,
+after a luckless absence, resumed command.  The Fifth Division, he
+swore, could hold their own with any soldiers in the Peninsula.
+He was furious with the seven hundred and fifty volunteers, and,
+evading the Marquis's order, which was implicit rather than direct,
+he added an oath that these interlopers should never lead his men to
+the breaches.
+
+Rage begets rage.  During the misty morning hours of August 31st, the
+day fixed for the assault, these volunteers, held back and chafing
+with the reserves, could scarcely be restrained from breaking out of
+the trenches.  'Why,' they demanded, 'had they been fetched here if
+not to show the way?'--a question for which their officers were in no
+mood to provide a soft answer.
+
+Yet their turn came.  Sergeant Wilkes, that amateur in
+siege-operations, had rightly prophesied from the first that the
+waste of life at the breaches would be wicked and useless until the
+hornwork had been silenced and some lodgment made there.  So as the
+morning wore on, and the sea-mists gave place to burning sunshine,
+and this again to heavy thunder-clouds collected by the unceasing
+cannonade, still more and more of the reserves of the Fifth Division
+were pushed up, until none but the volunteers and a handful of the
+9th Regiment remained in the trenches.  Them, too, at length Leith
+was forced to unleash, and they swept forward on the breaches yelling
+like a pack of hounds; but on the crest-line they fared at first no
+better than the regiments they had taunted.  Thrice and four times
+they reached it only to topple back.  The general, watching the fight
+from the batteries across the Urumea, now directed the gunners to
+fire over the stormers' heads; and again a cry went up that our men
+were being slaughtered by their own artillery.  Undismayed by this,
+with no recollections of the first assault to daunt them, a company
+of the Light Division took advantage of the fire to force their way
+over the rampart on the right of the great breach and seize a
+lodgment in some ruined houses actually within the town.  There for
+an hour or so these brave men were cut off, for the assault in
+general made no headway.
+
+It must have failed, even after five hours' fighting, but for an
+accident.  A line of powder-barrels collected behind the traverses by
+the great breach took fire and blew up, driving back all the French
+grenadiers but the nearest, whom it scattered in mangled heaps.
+As explosion followed explosion, the bright flame spread and ran
+along the high curtain.  The British leapt after it, breaking through
+the traverse and swarming up to the curtain's summit.  Almost at the
+same moment the Thirteenth and Twenty-fourth Portuguese, who had
+crossed the river by a lower ford, hurled themselves over the lesser
+breach to the right; and as the swollen heavens burst in a storm of
+rain and thunder, from this point and that the besiegers, as over the
+lip of a dam, swept down into the streets.
+
+'Treat men like dogs, and they'll behave like dogs,' grumbled
+Sergeant Wilkes, as he followed to prevent what mischief he might.
+But this, he well knew, would be little enough.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Corporal Sam Vicary, coming up to the edge of the camp-fire's light,
+stood there for a moment with a white face.  The cause of it--though
+it would have been a sufficient one--was not the story to which the
+men around the fire had been listening; for the teller, at sight of
+the corporal, had broken off abruptly, knowing him to be a religious
+fellow after a fashion, with a capacity for disapproval and a pair of
+fists to back it up.  So, while his comrades guffawed, he rather
+cleverly changed the subject.
+
+'Oh, and by the way, talkin' of the convent'--he meant the Convent of
+Santa Teresa, a high building under the very slope of the citadel,
+protected by its guns and still held by the enemy, after three days'
+fighting--'do any of you know a small house to the left of it, with
+only a strip of garden between?  Sort of a mud-nest it is, like a
+swallow's, stuck under overhang o' the cliff.  No?  Well, that's a
+pity, for I hear tell the general has promised five pounds to the
+first man who breaks into that house.'
+
+'But why, at all?' inquired a man close on his right.
+
+'I know the place,' put in another; 'a mean kind of building, with
+one window lookin' down the street, and that on the second floor, as
+you might say.  It don't look to me the sort of house to hold five
+pounds' worth, all told--let be that, to force it, a man must cross
+half the fire from the convent, and in full view.  Five pounds be
+_damned!_  Five pounds isn't so scarce in these times that a man need
+go there to fetch it for his widow.'
+
+The corporal was turning away.  For three days San Sebastian had been
+a hell, between the flames of which he had seen things that sickened
+his soul.  They sickened it yet, only in remembrance.  Yes, and the
+sickness had more than once come nigh to be physical.  His throat
+worked at the talk of loot, now that he knew what men did for it.
+
+'The general ain't after the furnitcher,' answered the first speaker.
+'It consarns a child.'
+
+'A child ain't no such rarity in San Sebastian that anybody need
+offer five pounds for one.'
+
+'What's this talk about a child?' asked Sergeant Wilkes, coming in
+from his rounds, and dropping to a seat by the blaze.  He caught
+sight of Corporal Sam standing a little way back, and nodded.
+
+'Well, it seems that, barring this child, every soul in the house has
+been killed.  The place is pretty certain death to approach, and the
+crittur, for all that's known, has been left without food for two
+days and more.  'Tis a boy, I'm told--a small thing, not above four
+at the most.  Between whiles it runs to the window and looks out.
+The sentries have seen it more'n a dozen times; and one told me he'd
+a sight sooner look on a ghost.'
+
+'Then why don't the Frenchies help?' some one demanded.  'There's a
+plenty of 'em close by, in the convent.'
+
+'The convent don't count.  There's a garden between it and the
+house, and on the convent side a blank wall--no windows at all, only
+loopholes.  Besides which, there's a whole block of buildings in full
+blaze t'other side of the house, and the smoke of it drives across so
+that 'tis only between whiles you can see the child at all.  The odds
+are, he'll be burnt alive or smothered before he starves outright;
+and, I reckon, put one against the other, 'twill be the mercifuller
+end.'
+
+'Poor little beggar,' said the sergeant.  'But why don't the general
+send in a white flag, and take him off?'
+
+'A lot the governor would believe--and after what you and me have
+seen these two days!  A nice tenderhearted crew to tell him,
+"If you please, we've come for a poor little three-year-old."
+Why, he'd as lief as not believe we meant to _eat_ him.'
+
+Sergeant Wilkes glanced up across the camp-fire to the spot where
+Corporal Sam had been standing.  But Corporal Sam had disappeared.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Although the hour was close upon midnight, and no moon showed,
+Corporal Sam needed no lantern to light him through San Sebastian;
+for a great part of the upper town still burned fiercely, and from
+time to time a shell, soaring aloft from the mortar batteries across
+the river, burst over the citadel or against the rocks where the
+French yet clung, and each explosion flung a glare across the
+heavens.
+
+He had passed into the town unchallenged.  The fatigue parties,
+hunting by twos and threes among the ruins of the river-front for
+corpses to burn or bury, doubtless supposed him to be about the same
+business.  At any rate, they paid him no attention.
+
+Just within the walls, where the conflagration had burnt itself out,
+there were patches of black shadow to be crossed carefully.
+The fighting had been obstinate here, and more than one blazing house
+had collapsed into the thick of it.  The corporal picked his way
+gingerly, shivering a little at the thought of some things buried, or
+half-buried, among the loose stones.  Indeed, at the head of the
+first street his foot entangled itself in something soft.  It turned
+out to be nothing more than a man's cloak, or _poncho_, and he
+slipped it on, to hide his uniform and avoid explanations should he
+fall in with one of the patrols; but the feel of it gave him a scare
+for a moment.
+
+The lad, in fact, was sick of fighting and slaughter--physically ill
+at the remembrance and thought of them.  The rage of the assault had
+burnt its way through him like a fever and left him weak, giddy,
+queasy of stomach.  He had always hated the sight of suffering, even
+the suffering of dumb animals: and as a sportsman, home in England,
+he had learnt to kill his game clean, were it beast or bird.
+In thought, he had always loathed the trade of a butcher, and had
+certainly never guessed that soldiering could be--as here in San
+Sebastian he had seen it--more bestial than the shambles.
+
+For some reason, as he picked his road, his mind wandered away from
+the reek and stink of San Sebastian and back to England, back to
+Somerset, to the slopes of Mendip.  His home there had overlooked an
+ancient battle-field, and as a boy, tending the sheep on the uplands,
+he had conned it often and curiously, having heard the old men tell
+tales of it.  The battle had been fought on a wide plain intersected
+by many water-dykes.  Twice or thrice he had taken a holiday to
+explore it, half expecting that a close view would tell him something
+of its history; but, having no books to help him, he had brought back
+very little beyond a sense of awe that so tremendous a thing had
+happened just there, and (unconsciously) a stored remembrance of the
+scents blown across the level from the flowers that lined the dykes--
+scents of mint and meadow-sweet at home there, as the hawthorn was at
+home on the hills above.
+
+He smelt them now, across the reek of San Sebastian, and they wafted
+him back to England--to boyhood, dreaming of war but innocent of its
+crimes--to long thoughts, long summer days spent among the unheeding
+sheep, his dog Rover beside him--an almost thoroughbred collie, and a
+good dog, too, though his end had been tragic. . . . But why on earth
+should his thoughts be running on Rover just now?
+
+Yet, and although, as he went, England was nearer to him and more
+real than the smoking heaps between which he picked his way, he
+steered all the while towards the upper town, through the square, and
+up the hill overlooked by the convent and the rocky base of the
+citadel.  He knew the exact position of the house, and he chose a
+narrow street--uninhabited now, and devastated by fire--that led
+directly to it.
+
+The house was untouched by fire as yet, though another to the left of
+it blazed furiously.  It clung, as it were a swallow's nest, to the
+face of the cliff.  A garden wall ran under the front; and, parallel
+with the wall, a road pretty constantly swept by musketry fire from
+the convent.  At the head of the street Corporal Sam stumbled against
+a rifleman who, sheltered from bullets at the angle of the crossing,
+stood calmly watching the conflagration.
+
+'Hallo!' said the rifleman cheerfully; 'I wanted some more audience,
+and you're just in time.'
+
+'There's a child in the house, eh?' panted Corporal Sam, who had come
+up the street at a run.
+
+The rifleman nodded.  'Poor little devil!  He'll soon be out of his
+pain, though.'
+
+'Why, there's heaps of time! The fire won't take hold for another
+half-hour.  What's the best way in? . . . You an' me can go shares,
+if that's what you're hangin' back for,' added Corporal Sam, seeing
+that the man eyed him without stirring.
+
+'Hi! Bill!' the rifleman whistled to a comrade, who came slouching
+out of a doorway close by, with a clock in one hand, and in the other
+a lantern by help of which he had been examining the inside of this
+piece of plunder.  'Here's a boiled lobster in a old woman's cloak,
+wants to teach us the way into the house yonder.'
+
+'Tell him to go home,' said Bill, still peering into the works of the
+clock.  'Tell him we've _been_ there.'  He chuckled a moment, looked
+up, and addressed himself to Corporal Sam.  'What regiment?'
+
+'The Royals.'
+
+The two burst out laughing scornfully.  'Don't wonder you cover it
+up,' said the first rifleman.
+
+Corporal Sam pulled off his _poncho_.  'I'd offer to fight the both
+of you,' he said, 'but 'tis time wasted with a couple of white-livers
+that don't dare fetch a poor child across a roadway.  Let me go by;
+_you_'ll keep, anyway.'
+
+'Now look here, sonny--'  The first rifleman blocked his road.
+'I don't bear no malice for a word spoken in anger: so stand quiet
+and take my advice. That house isn't goin' to take fire.  'Cos why?
+'Cos as Bill says, we've _been_ there--there and in the next house,
+now burnin'--and we know.  'Cos before leavin'--the night before last
+it was--some of our boys set two barrels o' powder somewheres in the
+next house, on the ground floor, _with_ a slow match.  That's why
+_we_ left; though, as it happened, the match missed fire.  But the
+powder's there, and if you'll wait a few minutes now you'll not be
+disapp'inted.'
+
+'You left the child behind!'
+
+'Well, we left in a hurry, as I tell you, and somehow in the hurry
+nobody brought him along.  I'm sorry for the poor little devil, too.'
+The fellow swung about.  'See him there at the window, now!  If you
+want him put out of his pain--'
+
+He lifted his rifle.  Corporal Sam made a clutch at his arm to drag
+it down, and in the scuffle both men swayed out upon the roadway.
+And with that, or a moment later, he felt the rifleman slip down
+between his arms, and saw the blood gush from his mouth as he
+collapsed on the cobbles.
+
+Corporal Sam heard the man Bill shout a furious oath, cast one
+puzzled look up the roadway towards the convent, saw the flashes
+jetting from its high wall, and raced across unscathed.  A bullet
+sang past his ear as he found the gate and hurled himself into the
+garden.  It was almost dark here, but dark only for a moment. . . .
+For as he caught sight of a flight of steps leading to a narrow
+doorway, and ran for them--and even as he set foot on the lowest--of
+a sudden the earth heaved under him, seemed to catch him up in a
+sheet of flame, and flung him backwards--backwards and flat on his
+back, into a clump of laurels.
+
+Slowly he picked himself up.  The sky was dark now; but, marvellous
+to say, the house stood.  The mass of it yet loomed over the laurels.
+Yes, and a light showed under the door at the head of the steps.
+He groped his way up and pushed the door open.
+
+The light came through a rent in the opposite wall, and on the edge
+of this jagged hole some thin laths were just bursting into a blaze.
+He rushed across the room to beat out the flame, and this was easily
+done; but, as he did it, he caught sight of a woman's body, stretched
+along the floor by the fireplace, and of a child cowering in the
+corner, watching him.
+
+'Come and help, little one,' said Corporal Sam, still beating at the
+laths.
+
+The child understood no English, and moreover was too small to help.
+But it seemed that the corporal's voice emboldened him, for he drew
+near and stood watching.
+
+'Who did _this_, little one?' asked Corporal Sam, nodding towards the
+corpse, as he rubbed the charred dust from his hands.
+
+For a while the child stared at him, not comprehending; but by-and-by
+pointed beneath the table and then back at its mother.
+
+The corporal walked to the table, stooped, and drew from under it a
+rifle and a pouch half-filled with cartridges.
+
+'Tell him we've _been_ there.'  He seemed to hear the rifleman Bill's
+voice repeating the words, close at hand.  He recognised the badge on
+the pouch.
+
+He was shaking where he stood; and this, perhaps, was why the child
+stared at him so oddly.  But, looking into the wondering young eyes,
+he read only the question, 'What are you going to do?'
+
+He hated these riflemen.  Nay, looking around the room, how he hated
+all the foul forces that had made this room what it was! . . .
+And yet, on the edge of resolve, he knew that he must die for what he
+meant to do . . . that the thing was unpardonable, that in the end he
+must be shot down, and rightly, as a dog.
+
+He remembered his dog Rover, how the poor brute had been tempted to
+sheep-killing at night, on the sly; and the look in his eyes when,
+detected at length, he had crawled forward to his master to be shot.
+No other sentence was possible, and Rover had known it.
+
+Had he no better excuse?  Perhaps not. . . . He only knew that he
+could not help it; that this thing had been done, and by the consent
+of many . . . and that as a man he must kill for it, though as a
+soldier he deserved only to be killed.
+
+With the child's eyes still resting on him in wonder, he set the
+rifle on its butt and rammed down a cartridge; and so, dropping on
+hands and knees, crept to the window.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Early next morning Sergeant Wilkes picked his way across the ruins of
+the great breach and into the town, keeping well to windward of the
+fatigue parties already kindling fires and collecting the dead bodies
+that remained unburied.
+
+Within and along the sea-wall San Sebastian was a heap of burnt-out
+ruins.  Amid the stones and rubble encumbering the streets, lay
+broken muskets, wrenched doors, shattered sticks of furniture--
+mirrors, hangings, women's apparel, children's clothes--loot dropped
+by the pillagers as valueless, wreckage of the flood.  He passed a
+very few inhabitants, and these said nothing to him; indeed, did not
+appear to see him, but sat by the ruins of their houses with faces
+set in a stupid horror.  Even the crash of a falling house near by
+would scarcely persuade them to stir, and hundreds during the last
+three days had been overwhelmed thus and buried.
+
+The sergeant had grown callous to these sights.  He walked on,
+heeding scarcely more than he was heeded, came to the great square,
+and climbed a street leading northwards, a little to the left of the
+great convent.  The street was a narrow one, for half its length
+lined on both sides with fire-gutted houses; but the upper half,
+though deserted, appeared to be almost intact.  At the very head, and
+close under the citadel walls, it took a sharp twist to the right,
+and another twist, almost equally sharp, to the left before it ended
+in a broader thoroughfare, crossing it at right angles and running
+parallel with the ramparts.
+
+At the second twist the sergeant came to a halt; for at his feet,
+stretched across the causeway, lay a dead body.
+
+He drew back with a start, and looked about him.  Corporal Sam had
+been missing since nine o'clock last night, and he felt sure that
+Corporal Sam must be here or hereabouts.  But no living soul was in
+sight.
+
+The body at his feet was that of a rifleman; one of the volunteers
+whose presence had been so unwelcome to General Leith and the whole
+Fifth Division.  The dead fist clutched its rifle; and the sergeant
+stooping to disengage this, felt that the body was warm.
+
+'Come back, you silly fool!'
+
+He turned quickly.  Another rifleman had thrust his head out of a
+doorway close by.  The sergeant, snatching up the weapon, sprang and
+joined him in the passage where he sheltered.
+
+'I--I was looking for a friend hereabouts.'
+
+'Fat lot of friend you'll find at the head of _this_ street!' snarled
+the rifleman, and jerked his thumb towards the corpse.  'That makes
+the third already this morning.  These Johnnies ain't no sense of
+honour left--firing on outposts as you may call it.'
+
+'Where are they firing from?'
+
+'No "they" about it.  You saw that cottage--or didn't you?--right
+above there, under the wall; the place with one window in it?
+There's a devil behind it somewheres; he fires from the back of the
+room, and what's more, he never misses his man.  You have Nick's own
+luck--the pretty target you made, too; that is unless, like some that
+call themselves Englishmen and ought to know better, he's a special
+spite on the Rifles.'
+
+The sergeant paid no heed to the sneer.  He was beginning to think.
+
+'How long has this been going on?' he asked.
+
+'Only since daylight.  There was a child up yonder, last night; but
+it stands to reason a child can't be doing this.  He never misses, I
+tell you.  Oh, you had luck, just now!'
+
+'I wonder,' said Sergeant Wilkes, musing.  'I'll try it again,
+anyway.'  And while the rifleman gasped he stepped out boldly into
+the road.
+
+He knew that his guess might, likely enough, be wrong: that, even
+were it right, the next two seconds might see him a dead man.
+Yet he was bound to satisfy himself.  With his eyes on the sinister
+window--it stood half open and faced straight down the narrow
+street--he knelt by the corpse, found its ammunition pouch, unbuckled
+the strap and drew out a handful of cartridges.  Then he straightened
+himself steadily--but his heart was beating hard--and as steadily
+walked back and rejoined the rifleman in the passage.
+
+'You have a nerve,' said the rifleman, his voice shaking a little.
+'Looks like he don't fire on redcoats; but you have a nerve all the
+same.'
+
+'Or else he may be gone,' suggested the sergeant, and on the instant
+corrected himself; 'but I warn you not to reckon upon that.  Is there
+a window facing on him anywhere, round the bend of the street?'
+
+'I dunno.'
+
+The rifleman peered forth, turning his head sideways for a cautious
+reconnoitre.  'Maybe he _has_ gone, after all--'
+
+It was but his head he exposed beyond the angle of the doorway; and
+yet, on the instant a report cracked out sharply, and he pitched
+forward into the causeway.  His own rifle clattered on the stones
+beside him, and where he fell he lay, like a stone.
+
+Sergeant Wilkes turned with a set jaw and mounted the stairs of the
+deserted house behind him.  They led him up to the roof, and there he
+dropped on his belly and crawled.  Across three roofs he crawled, and
+lay down behind a balustrade overlooking the transverse roadway.
+Between the pillars of the balustrade he looked right across the
+roadway and into the half-open window of the cottage.  The room
+within was dark save for the glimmer of a mirror on the back wall.
+
+'Kill him I must,' growled the sergeant through his teeth, 'though I
+wait the day for it.'
+
+And he waited there, crouching for an hour--for two hours.
+
+He was shifting his cramped attitude a little--a very little--for
+about the twentieth time, when a smur of colour showed on the mirror,
+and the next instant passed into a dark shadow.  It may be that the
+marksman within the cottage had spied yet another rifleman in the
+street.  But the sergeant had noted the reflection in the glass, that
+it was red.  Two shots rang out together.  But the sergeant, after
+peering through the parapet, stood upright, walked back across the
+roofs, and regained the stairway.
+
+The street was empty.  From one of the doorways a voice called to him
+to come back.  But he walked on, up the street and across the roadway
+to a green-painted wicket.  It opened upon a garden, and across the
+garden he came to a flight of steps with an open door above.  Through
+this, too, he passed and stared into a small room.  On the far side
+of it, in an armchair, sat Corporal Sam, leaning back, with a hand to
+his breast; and facing him, with a face full of innocent wonder,
+stood a child--a small, grave, curly-headed child.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+'I'm glad you done it quick,' said Corporal Sam.
+
+His voice was weak, yet he managed to get out the words firmly,
+leaning back in the wooden armchair, with one hand on his left
+breast, spread and covering the lower ribs.
+
+The sergeant did not answer at once.  Between the spread fingers he
+saw a thin stream welling, darker than the scarlet tunic which it
+discoloured.  For perhaps three seconds he watched it.  To him the
+time seemed as many minutes, and all the while he was aware of the
+rifle-barrel warm in his grasp.
+
+'Because,' Corporal Sam pursued with a smile that wavered a little,
+half wistfully seeking his eyes, 'you'd 'a had to do it, anyway--
+wouldn't you?  And any other way it--might--'a been hard.'
+
+'Lad, what _made_ you?'
+
+It was all Sergeant Wilkes could say, and he said it, wondering at
+the sound of his own voice.  The child, who, seeing that the two were
+friends and not, after all, disposed to murder one another, had
+wandered to the head of the stairs to look down into the sunlit
+garden shining below, seemed to guess that something was amiss after
+all, and, wandering back, stood at a little distance, finger to lip.
+
+'I don't know,' the corporal answered, like a man with difficulty
+trying to collect his thoughts.  'Leastways, not to explain to you.
+It must 'a been comin' on for some time.'
+
+'But _what_, lad--_what?_'
+
+'Ah--"what?" says you.  That's the trouble, and I can't never make
+you _see_--yes, make you _see_--the hell of it.  It began with
+thinkin'--just with thinkin'--_that first night you led me home from
+the breach_.  And the things I saw and heard; and then, when I came
+here, only meanin' to save _him_--'
+
+He broke off and nodded at the child, who catching his eye, nodded
+back smiling.
+
+He and the corporal had evidently made great friends.
+
+But the corporal's gaze, wavering past him, had fixed itself on a
+trestle bed in the corner.
+
+'There was a woman,' he said.  'She was stone cold; but the child
+told me--until I stopped his mouth, and made a guess at the rest.
+I took her down and buried her in the garden.  And with that it came
+over me that the whole of it--the whole business--was wrong, and that
+to put myself right I must kill, and keep on killing.  Of course I
+knew what the end would be.  But I never looked for such luck as
+_your_ coming. . . . I was ashamed, first along, catching sight o'
+you--not--not ashamed, only I didn't want you to see.  But when you
+took cover an' waited--though I wouldn't 'a hurt you for worlds--why
+then I knew how the end would be.'
+
+'Lad,' said the sergeant, watching him as he panted, 'I don't
+understand you, except that you're desperate wrong.  But I saw you--
+saw you by the lookin'-glass, behind there; and 'tis right you should
+know.'
+
+'O' course you saw me. . . . I'm not blamin', am I?  You had to do
+it, and I had to take it.  That was the easiest way.  I couldn' do no
+other, an' you couldn' do no other, that bein' your duty.  An' the
+child, there--'
+
+Sergeant Wilkes turned for a moment to the child, who met his gaze,
+round-eyed; then to his friend again.
+
+But the corporal's head had dropped forward on his chest.
+
+The sergeant touched his shoulder, to make sure; then, with one look
+behind him, but ignoring the child, reeled out of the room and down
+the stairs, as in a dream.  In the sunny garden the fresh air revived
+him and he paused to stare at a rose-bush, rampant, covered with
+white blossoms against which the bees were humming.  Their hum ran in
+his head so that he failed to notice that the sound of musketry had
+died down.  An hour before it had been death to walk, as he did,
+under the convent wall and out into the street leading to the lesser
+breach.  The convent had, in fact, surrendered, and its defenders
+were even now withdrawing up the hill to the citadel.  He found the
+lesser breach and climbed down it to the shore of the Urumea, beside
+the deserted ford across which the Portuguese had waded on the
+morning of the second assault.  Beyond it shone the sandhills,
+hiding our batteries.
+
+He sat down on the bank and pulled off boots and socks, preparing to
+wade; but turned at a slight sound.
+
+The child had followed him and stood half-way down the ruins of the
+breach, wistful, uncertain.
+
+In a rage, as one threatens off an importunate dog, Sergeant Wilkes
+waved an arm.  The child turned and slunk away, back into San
+Sebastian.
+
+
+
+
+THE COPERNICAN CONVOY.
+
+
+
+[The story is told by Will Fleming, of the Inner Temple,
+Barrister-at-law, and sometime Cornet of the 32nd Troop of Horse in
+the Parliament Army, then (December, 1643) quartered at Farnham, on
+the Hants border.]
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+I dare say that, since the world began and men learned to fight, was
+never an army moderately prosperous and yet fuller of grumblers than
+was ours during the latter weeks of November and the first fortnight
+of December, 1643.  In part the blame lay upon our general, Sir
+William Waller, and his fondness for night attacks and beating up of
+quarters.  He rested neither himself nor his men, but spent them
+without caring, and drove not a few to desert in mere fatigue.
+This was his way, and it differed from the way of my Lord Essex, who
+rather spilled his strength by lethargy and grieved over it.
+'Twas notorious these two generals loved not one another: and 'tis
+not for me, who never served under Essex, to take sides.  But I will
+say this for General Waller--that he spared himself as little as any
+common soldier; never forgot the face of a good servant; and in
+general fed his men well and hated arrears of pay like the devil.
+
+Nevertheless, and hate it though he might, our pay was in arrears.
+Moreover, apart from their fatigue of marching and counter-marching,
+the bulk of our infantry had been drawn from the London train-bands--
+the Red Westminster Regiment and the Auxiliaries, Green and Yellow,
+of London City and the Tower Hamlets; tradesmen, that is to say, who
+wearied to be home again with their wives and families after six
+months' separation, and others  (such as the White Regiment of
+Auxiliaries) freshly drafted, that had scarce got over the
+remembrance of parting.  These regiments, too, comprised many score
+of apprentices, whom Parliament allowed to count their time of
+military service as though it had been spent with their masters: and
+as apprentice and master marched side by side, and it often fell that
+the youngster won promotion, with leave to order his elder about, you
+may guess there were heart-burnings.  Add to this that it kept these
+good citizens chafing to note how often (and indeed regularly)
+advancement passed them over to light on some young gentleman of
+family or 'imp,' as they growled, 'from the Inns of Court.'
+
+We lay--in horse and foot some five thousand strong--well centred in
+and about the town and castle of Farnham, with a clear road to London
+behind us and in front a nearly equal enemy planted across our
+passage to the West.  You may take a map with ruler and pencil and
+draw a line through from Winchester to Oxford, where the King kept
+his Court.  On the base of it, at Winchester, rested General Hopton's
+main force.  North and east of it, at Alton, my Lord Crawford stood
+athwart the road with sufficient cavalry and Colonel Bolle's regiment
+of foot; yet farther north, Basing House, with my Lord of
+Winchester's garrison, blocked the upper path for us; and yet beyond,
+Sir Edward Ford's regiment held the passes of the hills toward
+Oxford; so that for the while, and in face of us, messengers, troops,
+even artillery, might pass to and fro without challenge.  This line
+of defence, though it forestalled us on every road, was weak in that
+it drew out Hopton's strength and attenuated it at too great
+distances.  This our general perceived, and nursed himself for a
+sudden blow.
+
+Now I must mention that with the entry of December there fell the
+beginning of a cruel frost, that lasted six weeks and was enough to
+make this winter memorable without help of wars or bloodshed.
+At the first we all hailed it, as hardening the roads, which for a
+month had been nigh impassable: and either commander took speedy
+advantage of it--Hopton to make a swift diversion into Sussex and
+capture Arundel Castle (which was but a by-blow, for in a few weeks
+he had lost it again), and our own general to post up with his short,
+quick legs to London, where in two days he had wrung from Essex good
+reinforcements, with promise of pay for the troops and a consignment
+of leathern guns--a new invention and extremely portable.  By the
+evening of December 5th he was back among us and despatching us
+north, south, and east to keep the enemy jumping while our supplies
+drew in.
+
+It was one of those night skirmishes or surprises that brought me
+promotion.  For on the evening of December 10th our troop, being
+ordered out to beat up the neighbourhood of Odiham, on the way fell
+in with a half-squadron of the Lord Crawford's cuirassiers, and in
+the loose pistol-firing we took five prisoners and lost our cornet,
+Master John Ingoldby.  The next day we rested; and that morning, as I
+sat on a rusty harrow by the forge close beside Farnham Church and
+watched the farrier roughing my horse, our Sergeant-Major Le Gaye, a
+Walloon, came up to me and desired me to attend on Colonel Stuckey,
+who presently and with many kind expressions told me that I was
+chosen to fill the room of the dead cornet.
+
+Now this was flattering: and you may think with what elation of mind
+I took it, being eager and young (in fact, scarce turned twenty).
+But almost it jumped beyond my ambitions at the time.  I was one of
+five sergeants of the troop, the unripest among them and already
+accounted lucky.  I knew well that this advancement had passed them
+and reached me less for my deserving than because our colonel
+preferred to have his commands carried by men of decent birth.
+I knew the whole army to be sore already over fifty like promotions,
+and foresaw grumbling.
+
+'I bear ye no malice'--this was the way that Roger Inch took it, our
+senior sergeant.  'But you'll allow 'tis disheartening to be set
+aside for a lawyer-fellow that, a year ago, had never groomed
+horse-hair but on his own wig.'  And so--but less kindly--the rest of
+my fellow-sergeants expressed themselves.
+
+None the less they were ready enough, that evening, to join in
+drinking to my new honours.  The place was the Bear Inn, in Farnham;
+the liquor, warmed ale; and I paid the scot.  Towards midnight
+Sergeant Inch had so far forgot his rancour as to strike up his song
+of _Robin and the Night Owl_--'Robin,' I should explain, being the
+Earl of Essex, and the 'Night Owl' our own general, so nicknamed for
+his activities after dark.
+
+We broke no regulations by this revelry, being allowed by custom,
+after a night in saddle, to spend the next as we chose, provided that
+we kept to quarters.  For me, though I had done better in bed,
+snatching a little sleep, the time was past for seeking it.  A picket
+of ours had been flung out to westward of the town, on the Alton
+Road, and at twelve o'clock I was due to relieve it.  So I pushed the
+drink around, and felt their grudge against me lessening while
+Sergeant Inch sang,--
+
+     'Robin's asleep, for Robin is nice;
+        Robin has delicate habits;
+      But "Whoo!" says the gray Night Owl--once, twice,
+      And three times "Whoo!" for the little shy mice,
+        The mice and the rats and the rabbits,
+                                    "Who-oo!"'
+
+At the close of every verse he mimicked an owl's call to the life--
+having in his young days been a verderer of the New Forest, on the
+edge of Bradley Plain; and at the end of his third verse, in the
+middle of a hoot, was answered by a trumpet not far away upon the
+road to Alton.
+
+At the sound of it we sprang up, all of us, and two or three ran out
+into the street: for the beating up of quarters had become a bad
+habit with the two armies, useless as the most of us thought it.
+The night outside was freezing villainously: it struck chill into me
+after the hot room and the ale-drinking.  The moon, as I remember,
+was high, shedding a soft foggy light down the roadway: and there, by
+the inn doorway, I stood for a minute or two, with my hand on my
+sword, peering and listening.  To right and left, and from behind me,
+came sounds of men moving in their billets to the alarm and waiting,
+as I was waiting.  But no noise of attack followed the first summons;
+and by-and-by I drew back as a brisk footfall broke the hush and came
+hurrying down to the doorway of the Bear, where it halted.
+
+'Is that you, Fleming?' said the voice of old Price, our Welsh
+quartermaster.  'Then turn out quick to the West Gate!  The enemy has
+sent in a trumpet in form, and you are to convey him up to the
+Castle.'
+
+Without delay I fetched my roan mare from the stable, mounted, and
+rode out beyond the West Gate to a point where the little River Wey
+runs close alongside the high-road.  There I found the trumpet in
+converse with our picket, and took stock of him by aid of the
+sergeant's lantern.  He was a blackavised, burly fellow, with heavy
+side-locks, a pimpled face, and about the nose a touch of blue that,
+methought, did not come of the frosty air.  He sat very high in
+saddle, upon a large-jointed bay, and wore a stained coat that
+covered his regimentals and reached almost to his rowels.  A dirty
+red feather wagged over his hat-brim.  As I rode up he greeted me
+with a jovial brotherly curse, and hoped--showing me his letter--that
+we kept good drink at the Castle.  'And if so,' he added, 'your
+little William the Conqueror may keep me so long as he has a mind
+to.'
+
+I told him, as we rode back and into Farnham, that Sir William, as a
+rule, made quick despatch of business.
+
+'He made pretty quick despatch of it at Lansdowne,' said my Cavalier,
+and started trolling a catch,--
+
+     'Great William the Con,
+      So fast he did run,
+      That he left half his name behind him!'
+
+Perceiving him to be an ill-bred fellow, and that to answer his
+jeering would be time wasted, I turned the talk upon his message.
+
+'The Lord Crawford sends for an exchange of prisoners?' I hazarded.
+
+'The Lord Crawford does not waste a man of my talents in swapping of
+prisoners,' was the response.  'And when Orlando Rich takes the road
+and risks his health on such a night as this, you may be sure 'tis on
+business of moment.'
+
+I questioned him no further.  We rode through the park (the sentries
+taking my password), and came to the guardroom of the Castle, where,
+as we dismounted, the general's quartermaster lounged out and called
+for a couple of men to take our horses.  Then, learning that my
+companion brought a message from Lord Crawford, he made no delay but
+led us straight to the general's room.
+
+Though the clock in the corner had gone midnight, the general sat in
+a litter of papers with a lamp at his elbow and his legs stretched
+out to a bright sea-coal fire.  With him was closeted Colonel
+Pottley, of the London train-bands, and by the look of the papers
+around them they had been checking the lists (as two days later there
+was heavy court-martialling among the newly arrived drafts and
+cashiering of officers that had misbehaved in Middlesex).
+
+'You come from the Earl of Crawford?' asked the general, not rising
+from his chair, but holding out a hand for the letter.
+
+The messenger presented it, with a good soldierly salute; and so
+stood, pulling at his moustachios and looking fierce.  'Your name?'
+
+'Sergeant Orlando Rich, of the Earl's Loyal Troop.'  The general
+broke the seal, ran his eye over the paper, and let out a short
+laugh.
+
+'His lordship sends me his loving compliment and prays me to spare
+him a runlet of sack or of malvoisy, for that his own wine is drunk
+out and the ale at Alton does not agree with his stomach.'
+
+'Nor with any man's,' corroborated Sergeant Rich.
+
+'He promises to send me a fat ox in exchange, and--' the General
+glanced to the foot of the scrawl, turned the paper over, and found
+it blank save for the name and direction--'and that, it seems, is
+all.  No talk of prisoners. . . . Truly an urgent message to send
+post at midnight!'
+
+'If you had seen his lordship's condition--' murmured Sergeant Rich.
+
+'His lordship shall have a full hogshead; but not by you;' the
+General shot a shrewd glance at the man and bade me step outside
+and summon the quartermaster who waited in the corridor.
+'Quartermaster,' said he, 'convey this visitor of ours to the
+kitchens.  Give him what meat and wine he demands.  Let him depart
+when he will and carry as much as he will--under his skin.
+Meantime order out three of the pack-nags, and tell the cellarer to
+fetch up six firkins of the sack sent down to me last Thursday by Mr
+Trenchard.  Have them slung, a pair to each horse, and well secured--
+for the roads are slippery.  And you, Master Fleming--'
+
+I saluted; flushing, perhaps, a little with pleasure that he
+remembered my name.
+
+'Do you mount guard to-night?  Then we must find you a substitute.
+What say you to convoying this wine, with a trumpet, to my Lord
+Crawford?  You may choose half a dozen of your troop to ride with
+you.  The road to Alton cannot easily be missed; and, if it could--
+why, these night sallies are the best of training for a young
+soldier.  I doubt, Master Fleming, that since this morning, when I
+promoted you cornet, you have heard talk that glanced upon your
+rawness, hey?  Well, here is a chance for you to learn.  For my part
+I call no man a finished campaigner until he can smell his way
+through a strange country in the dark.  You fancy the errand?
+Then go, and prosper: and be sure my Lord Crawford will treat you
+kindly, when he has once tasted my wine.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The stroke of one in the morning, sounding after us from Farnham
+clock through the fine frosted air, overtook us well upon the road.
+I had made speed, and so had the quartermaster and cellarer.  As for
+Sergeant Orlando Rich, if he had not achieved speed he had at least
+made haste.  Before I started my pack-horses from the guardroom door
+the cellarer came to me and reported him drunk as a fly; and stepping
+into the great kitchen for a slice of pasty, to fortify me against
+the night's work, I saw my hero laid out and snoring, with his
+shoulder-blades flat on the paved floor.  So I left him to sleep it
+off.
+
+A fellow of the general's own guard helped me lead my horses to the
+door of the Bear, and there I tumbled out my substitute, and six
+passably good troopers I had chosen to take with me.  They were
+Carey, our youngest sergeant, and as good-natured a fellow as I knew;
+Randles, who stood well for advancement to the post my own promotion
+had left vacant; and four other privates--Shackell, Wyld, Masters,
+and Small Owens (as we called him), a Welshman from the Vale of
+Cardigan.  To prime them for the ride I called up the landlord and
+dosed them each with a glass of hot Hollands water; and forth we set,
+in good trim and spirits.
+
+For two miles after passing our picket we ambled along at ease.
+The moon was low in the south-west, but as yet gave us plenty of
+light; and the wind--from the quarter directly opposite--though
+bitter and searching, blew behind our right shoulders and helped us
+cheerfully along.  Our troubles began in a dip of the road on this
+side of the hamlet of Froyl, where an autumn freshet, flooding the
+highway, had been caught by the frost and fixed in a rippled floor of
+ice.  We had seen duly to the roughing of our own chargers; and even
+they were forced at this passage to feel their steps mincingly; but
+the pack-horses, for whom I had only the quartermaster's assurance,
+had been handled (if indeed at all) by the inexpertest of smiths.
+The poor beasts sprawled and slithered this way and that, and in the
+end, as if by consent, came to a pitiful halt, their knees shaking
+under them.  So they appeared willing to wait and tremble until
+morning: but on my order Randles, Owen, and Masters, dismounting, led
+them and their own horses, foot by foot, on to sure ground.
+
+For a mile beyond, and some way past Froyl, was safe going if we
+avoided the ruts.  But here the moon failed us; and when Carey lit a
+lantern to help, it showed us that the carriers had no stomach left
+in them.  One, though the froth froze on him, was sweating like a
+resty colt.  The other two, if we slacked hold on their halter-ropes,
+would lurch together, halt, and slue neck to neck like a couple of
+timid dowagers hesitating upon a question of delicacy.
+
+It was here that there came into my head the ill-starred thought of
+leading them off the road and through the fields close alongside of
+it on our left hand.  The road itself I knew pretty well, and that it
+bore gradually to the left, all the way to Alton.  Carey, whom I
+consulted, agreed that we could find it again at any time we chose.
+So, and without more ado, we opened the next gate we came to and
+herded the beasts through.
+
+The first two fields, being stubble, served us well; and the next,
+a pasture, was even better.  Beyond this we had some trouble to
+find a gate, but at length Masters hit on one a little way out of
+our course, and it led to a wide plowland, freshly turned but
+hard-frozen, in the furrows of which our horses boggled a good deal.
+We pushed across it, holding our line in a long slant back towards
+the loom of the tall hedge that (as we agreed) marked the course of
+the highway.  On the far side of the plow this hedge ran down hill
+towards us and more sharply than I had reckoned: yet before regaining
+it we had to cross another pasture.  I was the surer that this must
+be the road because of a light that shone straight ahead of us, which
+I took to be the direction of Holibourne village.  I should mention,
+too, that on our left all the way the ground descended in an easy
+slope, but the frost had bound the little river running below and
+held it silent.
+
+Sure enough on the far side of the pasture we came to a gate, and
+Shackell, who was leading, announced that the high-road lay beyond.
+But a minute later he called to us that this could not be: it was too
+narrow, a mere lane in fact; and with that, as we pressed up to the
+gate, the mischief happened.
+
+The cause of it was a poor starved jackass, that had been sheltering
+himself under the lee of the hedge, and now, as we all but trampled
+him, heaved himself out of the shadow with a bray of terror.
+The sound, bursting upon us at close quarters, was as a stone hurled
+into a pool.  Round went our horses' rumps, and up went heels and
+hoofs.  I heard Little Owens cry aloud that his nose was broken.
+'Catch hold of the pack-beasts!' I shouted, as they shied back
+upon us, and two were caught and held fast--I know not by whom.
+The third, the resty one, springing backwards past me, almost on his
+haunches, jerked his halter wide of my clutch, and in a moment was
+galloping full flight down the slope.
+
+With a call to the others to stand steady and wait for me, I wheeled
+my mare about and rode off in chase, to round him up.  The almost
+total darkness made this hunting mighty unpleasant; but I knew that,
+bating the chance of being flung by a mole-hill, I had my gentleman
+safe enough.  For, to begin with, he must soon find the pace irksome,
+with two firkin casks jolting against his ribs; and at the foot of
+the descent the river would surely head him off.  To be sure it was
+frozen hard and he might have crossed it dry-footed, but the alders
+on the bank frighted him back, and presently I had him penned in an
+angle between hedge and stream.  Here, as I slowed up and advanced to
+coax him, from out of the darkness behind him there broke suddenly a
+shouting and pounding of hoofs, and close in front of me (but hidden
+by the hedge) a troop of horsemen clattered down from the farther
+slope and up the lane where my comrades were gathered.
+
+If for a moment I doubted what it all might mean, a couple of
+pistol-shots, followed by a loose volley that mixt itself with oaths
+and yells, all too quickly put this out of doubt.  My men were being
+charged, without question or challenge, by a troop of the enemy,
+while separated by a quarter of a mile of darkness and stiff rising
+ground from me, who alone carried their credentials.  Little need to
+say in what hurry I wheeled my mare about to the slope, struck spur,
+dragged my trumpet loose on its sling and blew, as best I could, the
+call that both armies accepted for note of parley.  Belike (let me do
+the villains this credit), with the jolt and heave of the mare's
+shoulders knocking the breath out of me, I sounded it ill, or in
+the noise and scuffle they heard confusedly and missed heeding.
+The firing continued, at any rate, and before I gained the gate the
+fight had swept up the lane.
+
+I swung out upon the hard stones and dashed after it.  But the enemy,
+by this, had my fellows on the run, and were driving them at stretch
+gallop.  To worsen my plight, as I pursued I caught sound of hoofs
+pounding behind and, as it seemed, overtaking me; supposed that a
+horseman was riding me down; and, reining the mare back fiercely,
+slued about to meet his onset.  It proved to be the poor pack-horse I
+had left in the valley!  He must have galloped like a racer; but now
+he came to a halt, and thrust his poor bewildered face towards me
+through the darkness.  Commending him to the devil, I wheeled about
+once more and struck spur; and as I galloped, he galloped anew
+behind.
+
+This diversion had cost me a good fifty yards.  I knew well enough
+that the lane sooner or later must lead out into the high-road, and
+made sure that if my fellows gained it first they would head back for
+Farnham.  (What would befall me I left to Providence!)  But some two
+or three of the enemy must have raced ahead and cut off that retreat;
+for when I came to it the way to the right lay open indeed, but the
+whole welter was pounding down the road to the left, straight for
+Alton.  Again I followed, and in less than two hundred yards was
+pressing close upon three or four of the rearmost riders.  This
+seemed to me good opportunity for another call on my trumpet, and I
+blew, without easing my speed.  On the sound of it, one of the dark
+figures in front swung round in saddle and fired, I saw the flash and
+the light of it on his gorget and morion: and with that, the bullet
+glancing against my mare's shoulder, she swerved wildly, leapt high,
+and came down with forelegs planted, pitching me neck-and-crop out of
+saddle upon the frozen road.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Doubtless the fall stunned me; but doubtless also not for more than a
+few seconds.  For I awoke to the drum of distant hoofs, and before it
+died clean away I had recovered sense enough to take its bearing in
+the direction of Farnham.  Strangely enough, towards Alton all was
+quiet.  Sitting up, with both hands pressing my head, for just a
+moment I recognised the gallop for my own mare's.  Another beat time
+with it.  I asked myself, why another?  She would be heading for
+home--wounded, perhaps--scared certainly.  But why with a companion?
+. . . Then, suddenly, I remembered the poor pack-beast; and as I
+remembered him, all my faculties grew clouded.
+
+Or so, at least, I must suppose; for of the sudden silence on the
+Alton road I thought not at all.  What next engaged me was a feeling
+of surprise that, of my two hands pressed on my temples, the right
+was cold, but the left, though it met the wind, unaccountably warm--
+the wrist below it even deliciously, or so it felt until rubbing my
+palms together I found them sticky, with blood.
+
+The blood, I next discovered, was welling from a cut on my left
+temple.  Putting up my fingers, I felt the fresh flow running over a
+crust of it frozen on my cheek; and wondered how I might stanch it.
+I misdoubted my strength to find the lane again and creep down to the
+river; and the river, moreover, would be frozen.  For a certainty I
+should freeze to death where I lay, and even more surely on the road
+back to Farnham I must faint and drop and, dropping, be frozen.
+With that, I remembered the light we had seen shining ahead of us as
+we crossed the fields; and staggered along in search of it, after
+first groping for my morion, which had rolled into the hedge some
+paces away.
+
+For a while, confused in my bearings, I sought on the wrong hand; but
+by-and-by caught the twinkle of it through a gate to the left, and
+studied it, leaning my arms on the bar.  The house whence it shone
+could not be any part of Holibourne village, but must stand somewhere
+on high rising ground across the valley.  I might reckon to reach it
+by turning back and taking the lane in which we had been surprised:
+but this meant fetching a long circuit.  I was weakening with loss of
+blood, and--it coming into my mind that the river below would be
+hard--I resolved to steer a straight line and risk obstacles.
+
+As it turned out, there were none, or none to throw me back.  At the
+stream-side, holding by an elder-bough, I tested the ice with my
+weight, proved it firm, crossed without so much as cracking it, and
+breasted a bare grassy slope, too little to be called a down, where a
+few naked hawthorns chafed and creaked in the wind.  Above it was an
+embankment rounded like a bastion, up the left side of which I
+crept--or, you might almost say, crawled--and, reaching the top,
+found myself close under the front of a dwelling-house.
+
+It was coated with whitewash, the glimmer of which showed me the
+queer shape of the building even in the darkness.  It consisted of
+two stories, both round as pepper-pots.  Above the first ran a narrow
+circular thatch, serving as a mat (so to say) for the second and
+smaller pepper-pot.  I could not discern how this upper story was
+roofed, but the roof had a hole in it, from which poured a stray ray
+of light.  Light shone too, but through a blind, from a small window
+close under the eaves.  The lower story showed none at all.
+
+I rapped on the door.  There came no response, though I waited and
+listened for a full minute.  I rapped again and shouted; and was
+about to challenge for the third time, when the threshold showed a
+chink of light.  Muffled footsteps came down the passage, and with
+much creaking the bolts were undrawn.
+
+'Who knocks?' demanded a man's voice, somewhat shrill and querulous.
+'Cannot a poor scholar rest in peace, and at this time o' night?'
+
+'In the name of Charity!' I urged.
+
+He flung the door open and stood with a hand-lamp held high,
+surveying me: a little old man, thin as a rat, in skullcap, furred
+gown, and list slippers.  The lamp shone down on his silvered hair
+and on a pair of spectacles he had pushed up to the edge of his cap;
+and showed me a face mildly meditative from the brow down to the
+chin, which by contrast was extremely resolute.
+
+'More soldiers!' he observed testily.  'The plague take it that they
+and the meteors must choose the same night to drop from heaven!
+How many of you, this time?'
+
+I answered that I was alone, and would have added a word on my
+plight; but this, beneath the lamp-light, he could not miss
+perceiving, for my face and the left shoulder of my buff coat were a
+mask of blood.
+
+'H'm!'--he cut me short.  'It may sound to you unfeeling: but if
+Heaven persists in sending me soldiers I had rather physic than feed
+them:' and with that he stood aside as inviting me to enter.  Be sure
+I obeyed him gladly, and, stepping inside, rested my hand for a
+moment against the jamb of a door that stood open to the right.
+The ray of his lamp, as he held it near to examine me, gave me a
+glimpse of the room within--of a table with cloth awry, of overturned
+flagons lying as they had spilt their wine-stains, of chairs and
+furniture pushed this way and that.
+
+'So your predecessors have left me,' said the old gentleman, catching
+the direction of my gaze and nodding.  'Whether or no they have left
+me enough for the morning's breakfast is a matter my servant must
+discover when he comes over from Holibourne at daylight.'
+
+'They were Malignants, sir, as I guess: the Earl of Crawford's men.'
+
+'Devil a groat care I what you call them, or they call themselves!
+I study the heavens and take no heed of your sublunary divisions.
+But they have eaten and drunk me out of house and home; at that hour,
+too, when the most meteors were predicted: and what is worse they
+invaded my garret in their clumsy jack-boots, and have thrown my
+Orchestra Coeli out of gear.  I was mending it when you knocked.
+By the way,' he added more kindly, 'I can go on mending it while you
+wash your wound, which will appear less horrid when cleansed of all
+this blood.  I have a fire upstairs, and hot water.  Come.'
+
+He closed the outer door and, taking me gently by the elbow,
+half-supported me up the stairway, which was little better than a
+ladder, and led direct to the strangest room I have ever set eyes on.
+
+It was circular--in diameter perhaps twelve feet--with a high conical
+roof.  The roof had an inner lining of wood, and through a hole in
+it--where a panel had been slid back--a large optic-glass, raised on
+a pivot-stand, thrust its nose out into the night.  Close within the
+door stood an oaken press, and beside it, on a tripod, a brazier
+filled with charcoal and glowing.  A truckle-bed, a chair, and two
+benches made up the rest of the furniture: and of the benches one was
+crowded with all manner of tools--files by the score, pliers, small
+hammers, besides lenses, compasses, rules, and a heap of brass
+filings; the other, for two-thirds of its length, was a litter of
+books and papers.  But the end nearest to the working-bench had been
+cleared, and here stood a mighty curious intricate mechanism of
+wheels and brass wire and little brass balls, with fine brass chains
+depending through holes in the board.  My host flung a tender look at
+it across his shoulder as he stepped to the press to fetch basin and
+towel.
+
+'The oaf has dislocated the pin of the fly-wheel,' he grunted.
+'Praise Heaven, he never guessed that it worked on a diamond, or
+slight chance had my poor toy with his loutish fingers stuck in it!'
+
+He filled the basin with water from a copper ewer that rested close
+to the brazier on a file of folios, and set it to heat.  'I doubt I
+must give up the meteors to-night,' he continued, and went back to
+his machine, with which, I could see, his fingers were itching to be
+busy.
+
+I asked, 'Is that, sir, an invention of yours?'
+
+'Ay, soldier,' he answered; 'mine solely; the child of my brain's
+begetting.'  His hands hovered over the delicate points and wires.
+'And to be murdered thus by a great thumb-fingered dragoneer!'
+With a lens and a delicate needle, he began to peer and prise in it;
+and anon, fixing the lens in his eye, reached out for his hand-lamp.
+
+'To what use have you designed it, sir?' I asked, after a while spent
+in watching him.
+
+'To no use at all, soldier,' he answered, more tartly.  'The water is
+warm, and you can bathe your hurt and afterwards I will plaster it.'
+While I laved my temple with the edge of the towel, between the dip
+of the water I heard his voice in broken sentences: 'To no use at
+all. . . . Would a man ask the sun to what use it danced? . . .
+or the moon and planets? . . .'
+
+I looked up, dabbing my wound gently.  His voice had risen and
+stretched itself on a high, monotonous pitch.  He was declaiming
+verse.
+
+     'Who doth not see the measures of the Moon?
+      Which thirteen times she dances every year,
+      And ends her Pavane thirteen times as soon
+      As doth--
+
+Hey?  Do you know the lines, soldier?'  He stepped forward and peered
+close at my head while I shook it.  'Tush! a cut, a trifle!  Go on
+bathing. . . . The lines, sir, were writ by Sir John Davies, the
+first of English poets.'
+
+'Indeed, sir,' said I.  'Now at the Inner Temple, before mixing
+myself in these troubles, I used to read much poetry and dispute on
+it with other young men.  We had our several laureates; but believe
+me-and despise if you will--although we had heard tell of Sir John
+Davies, I doubt if one in six of us had read a line of him.'
+
+'Ay, indeed,' he caught me up, 'I have scarce read a line of any
+other.  Having discovered him I had no need.  For allow me to
+observe--although I know nothing about it--that in poetry the Subject
+is nine points of excellence; and, Sir John Davies having hit on the
+most exalted subject tractable by the Muse, it follows that he must
+be the most exalted poet.  Let me tell you--if it will shorten
+argument--that in general, and in all walks of life, I hate the
+second-best.'
+
+'I have heard, sir,' said I, 'that this masterpiece was a poem on
+Dancing.  But you must be thinking of another.'
+
+'Not at all, young man,' my host replied, poring anew into his toy.
+'"Orchestra" is the name of it; the subject, Dancing.  But what
+dancing!--the sun, the moon, the stars--Eh?  Halleluia, but it goes
+again!'
+
+Sure enough, bending over the basin, I heard a buzz of wheels, and
+looked up to see the whole machine springing like a score of
+whipping-tops gone mad, the brass balls swinging and rotating so fast
+that the eye lost them in little twinkling circles and ellipses, the
+wheels whirring and filling the room with their hum.
+
+My astronomer had dived under the bench.  I saw for the moment little
+more than his posterior and the soles of his list slippers.
+
+'You'll pardon me,' I heard him grunt, and the speed of the machinery
+slackened as he attached a couple of leaden weights to the dependent
+chains.  He backed, crawled out, and stood erect; adjusted his
+spectacles, and stood beaming upon his invention.
+
+'But what is the signification, sir?' I asked, rising from my chair
+and stepping close.
+
+'Ah! You improve, soldier.  It hath signification, not use: and it
+signifies the motion of the heavens.  See--this larger ball is the
+sun; and here, on their several rods, the planets--all swinging in
+their courses.  By a pointer on this dial-plate--observe me now--I
+reduce the space of a day to one, two, three minutes, as I chose,
+retarding or accelerating, but always in just proportion.  'Tis set
+for these December days; you will remark the sun's ambit--how it lies
+south of the zenith, and how far short it rises and falls from the
+equinoctial points.  But wait awhile, and in a few minutes--that is
+to say, days--you shall see him start to widen his circuit.  Here now
+is Saturn, with his rim: and here Venus--mark how delicately she
+lifts, following the motion of her lord--`
+
+     'Just with the Sun her dainty feet doth move--'
+
+'And this is Dancing--Orchestra Coeli--the Dancing of the Firmament.'
+
+'Wonderful!' I cried.
+
+'You shall say so presently!  So far you have only seen: now hear!'
+
+He drew out a small brass pin from the foot of the mechanism, and at
+once it began to hum, on three or four notes such as children make
+with a comb and a scrap of paper.
+
+The notes lifted and fell, and the little balls--each in his separate
+circle--wheeled and spun, twinkling in time with them, until my head,
+too, began to swim.
+
+'It will run for an hour now,' my host assured me.  'Indeed, with one
+to watch and draw up the weights at due intervals, it will run for
+ever.'
+
+'It dizzies me,' said I.
+
+'Your head is light, belike, with the loss of blood.  Sit you back in
+the chair, and I will try now what may be done with ointment and
+plaster.'
+
+He forced me to seat myself and, fetching a small medicine-box from
+the press, began to operate.  His fingers were extraordinarily quick
+and thin, and so delicate of touch that I felt no pain, or very
+little: but though I lay with my head far back and saw the machine no
+longer, it had set my brain spinning, and the pressure of his hands
+appeared to be urging it round and round, while his voice (for he
+talked without intermission) mingled and interwove itself with the
+drone of the music from the table.  He was reciting verses; from his
+favourite poem, no doubt.  But though the sound of them ran in my
+ears like a brook, I can remember one couplet only,--
+
+     'And all in sundry measures do delight,
+      Yet altogether keep no measure right. . . .'
+
+I dare say that, yielding to the giddiness, I swooned: and yet I can
+remember no interval.  The circles seemed to have hold of me, to be
+drawing me down, and yet down; until, like a diver half-bursting for
+breath, I found strength, sprang upwards, and reached the surface
+with a cry.
+
+The cry rang in my ears yet.  But had it come, after all, from my own
+lips?  I gripped the arms of the chair in a kind of terror, and
+leaned forward, staring at my host, who had fallen back a pace, and
+stood between me and the lamp.
+
+'Pardon me, sir,' I found voice to say after a pause 'I must have
+fallen into a doze, I think.  My head--'  I put a hand up to it and
+discovered that it was bandaged.  He did not answer me, but appeared
+to be listening.  'My head--'  I repeated, and again stopped short--
+this time at sound of a cry.
+
+It came from the night without: and at once I knew it to be a
+repetition of the sound that had aroused me.  Nor was it, in fact, a
+cry, though it rose like a cry against the wind: rather, a confused
+uproar of voices, continuous, drawing nearer and nearer.
+
+Then, as I stared at my host and he at me, the noise became
+articulate as drunken singing--'_Tow, row, row!  Tow, row, row! . . .
+Crop-headed Puritans, tow, row, row. . . . Boot and saddle, and tow,
+row, row!_--and, nearing so, broke into chorus,--
+
+     'Waller and Hazelrigg, Stapleton, Scroop--
+      Way!  Make way for His Majesty's troop!
+      Crop-headed Puritans durstn't deny
+      His Majesty's gentlemen riding by,
+      With boot and saddle and tow-row-row!'
+
+'Good Lord!' muttered my host, casting out his two hands in despair.
+'More soldiers!'
+
+But by this time I had my hand on the door.  'Guide me down the
+stairs,' I commanded; 'down to the door!  And, before you open it,
+quench the light!'
+
+By the time we reached the door the voices were close at hand, coming
+down the lane: and by each note of them I grew more clearly
+convinced.  'Sir,' I asked in a whisper, 'does this lane lead off
+from the road on the near side of Alton?
+
+For a moment it seemed that he did not hear me.  'Pray Heaven I
+dowsed the light in time!' he chattered.  'Three visits in one night
+is more than my sins deserve. . . . Yes; the lane enters a half-mile
+this side of Alton, and returns back--'
+
+'Well enough I know where it returns back' said I.  'Man, did you
+bewitch them?--as, a while ago, you bewitched me?'
+
+'Eh?'
+
+I felt that he was peering at me in the dark.
+
+'_Something_ has bewitched them,' I persisted.  'Either the wine or
+that devil's toy of yours has hold of them; or the both, belike.
+These are the same men, and have travelled full circle, listen to
+them!--'tis the music of the spheres, sir.'
+
+'I believe you are right,' said my host, with a chuckle.
+'O, Copernicus!'
+
+I drew the door open gently and looked aloft.  The night, before so
+starry, was now clouded over.  The troopers--I could hear their
+horses' hoofs above the whoops and yells of their chorusing--were
+winding downhill by a sunken way within ten yards of me.  A gravel
+path lay between me and the hedge overlooking it.  This I saw by the
+faint upcast rays of the lanterns they had lit for guidance.
+I tip-toed across to the hedge, and, peering over, was relieved of my
+last doubt: for at the tail of the procession and under charge of one
+drunken trooper for whipper-in, rode all my poor comrades with arms
+triced behind them and ankles lamentably looped under their horses'
+bellies.
+
+Even as they passed a thought came into my head: and the face of the
+whipper-in--seen dimly in the shadow of a lantern he joggled at his
+saddle-bow--decided me.  I slipped off my sash, looped it loosely in
+my hand, and so, without waiting to say farewell to my host, slid
+down the bank into the lane.
+
+Though I shot over the frozen bank a deal faster than ever I intended
+and dropped on the roadway with a thud, the trooper, bawling his
+chorus, did not turn in his saddle.  I tip-toed after him, between a
+walk and a run, and still he did not turn.  Not till I was level with
+his stirrup did he guess that I was on him; and even so he could
+scarcely roar out a curse before I had my sash flung over him and
+with a jerk fetched him clean out of his saddle.  As he pitched
+sideways, the lantern fell with a clatter and rolled into the hedge.
+
+'What the devil's up with you, back there!'  At the noise, I heard
+two or three of the midmost troopers rein up.
+
+'Right!  All right!'  I called forward to them, catching the horse's
+bridle and at the same time stooping over the poor fool--to gag him,
+if need were.  He lay as he had fallen.  I hope I have not his death
+to my account, and for certain no corpse lay in the road when I
+passed along it a few hours later.
+
+'Right!' I called sturdily, deepening my voice to imitate that of my
+victim as nearly as I could match it--
+
+     'Crop-headed Puritans, tow-row-row!'
+
+Still shouting the chorus, I mastered the reluctant horse, swung
+myself into saddle, and edged up towards my comrades.
+
+'Carey! Shackell!' I called softly, overtaking them.
+
+At the sound of my voice, they came near to letting out a cry that
+had spoilt all.  Masters, indeed, started a yell: but Small Owens
+(whose bands I had fortunately cut the first) reached out a hand and
+clapped it over his mouth.
+
+'How many be they?' I asked as we rode.
+
+'Twenty-two,' answered Randles, chafing his wrists, 'and all drunk as
+lords.'
+
+'If we had arms,' said Carey, 'we might drive the whole lot.'
+
+'But since you have not,' said I, 'we must pitch our attempt lower.
+In three minutes we shall reach the high-road; and then strike spurs
+all to the right for Farnham!'
+
+But our luck proved better than we hoped.  For as we drew near the
+exit of the lane, I heard a voice challenge.  The chorus, which had
+lasted us all the way, ceased on a sudden, and was taken up by a
+pistol-shot.  At once I guessed that here must be help, and, feeling
+for my trumpet, found it and blew the call.  Naked of weapons as my
+comrades were, we charged down on the rear, broke it, and flung it
+upon the darkness, where by this time we could hear the voice of
+Wilkins, our sergeant-major, bellowing above the tumult.
+
+Within five minutes this double charge settled all.  The pack-horses
+were ours again, with twenty-one inebriate prisoners.  My mare,
+galloping home with the third pack-horse at her heels, had alarmed
+the picket, and Wilkins, with twenty men, had turned out to scour the
+Alton road.
+
+So, while we secured our drunkards to the last man, I had leisure to
+bless my fortune.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+By this time dawn had begun to grow in the sky behind us.  I handed
+over the prisoners to Wilkins and Carey, and gave Wyld and Masters
+leave to return with them to Farnham: 'for,' said I, 'they seem the
+weariest, and Shackell and Small Owens will serve well enough for
+escort by daylight.'
+
+Wilkins stared.  'You are not telling me,' said he, that you intend
+going forward with that silly wine, and you in such plight!'
+
+'There's my orders, to begin with,' said I; 'and--bless the man!--you
+don't suppose, after this night's work, I mean to miss the fun of it,
+now that the luck is turned and is running.  As for the wine, Lord
+Crawford will get but three firkins for his hogshead; but if his
+rascals choose to play highwaymen upon a peaceful convoy, that is
+_his_ look-out.  And as for my plight, I shall present myself with
+these bandages and ask him what manner of troops he commands, that do
+violence upon a trumpet honourably sent to him and on his own
+petition.'
+
+And this (to shorten my tale) I did.  With Shackell and Small Owens I
+herded my two pack-horses along the road to Alton, and arrived at the
+earl's outposts without mishap and within half an hour past daybreak.
+There I sounded my trumpet, and was led without ado to his lordship's
+headquarters.
+
+I found him seated with his secretary and with a grave, handsome man,
+Colonel John Bolle, that commanded his regiment of infantry, and was
+killed next day defending Alton Church (I have heard), in the very
+pulpit.  This Colonel Bolle bowed to me very courteously, but the
+earl (as one could tell at first sight) was sulky: belike by
+deprivation of his favourite drink.  Or perhaps the ale he took in
+lieu of it--he had a tankard at his elbow--had soured on his stomach.
+
+'Hey?' he began, frowning, as he broke the seal of my letter.
+'Are all General Waller's troopers in this condition?  Or does he
+think it manners to send me a trumpeter in such trim?'
+
+'My lord,' said I, 'your wine and my poor self have come by a
+roundabout road, and on the way have been tapped of a trifle.'
+
+'By whom, sir?'
+
+'By certain of your men, my lord.'
+
+'I'll hang 'em for it, then.'
+
+'I thank you, my lord; but for that you must treat with General
+Waller.'  And I told him the tale, or so much of it as I thought was
+good for him.
+
+At the close he eyed me awhile angrily, with his brows drawn down.
+
+'You are an impudent knave, sir, to stand and tell me this to my
+face.  Look ye here, Bolle'--he swung round upon the colonel, who had
+put forth a hand as though to arrest this unseemly abuse.  'How do I
+know that this dog has not tampered with the wine?  By God!' he broke
+out as a servant entered with a stoup of it, 'I'll not drink it--I'll
+not drink a drop of it--until this fellow has first tasted it, here,
+in our presence.'
+
+I believe that I went white: but 'twas with rage.  'Give me a glass
+of it,' I answered; and, as the servant filled and handed to me,
+'The wine, my lord, came on your own petition and at your own risk,
+as I must remind you.  Nevertheless, I will drink--to your long life,
+and better manners.'  I drank, set down the glass, and asked, after a
+pause, 'May I go, my lord?'
+
+'You may go to the devil!'
+
+I hesitated.  'There was, as I remember, some little mention of an
+ox--'
+
+'You may tell your master to come and fetch it,' he growled.
+
+Well, my master did fetch it, and with speed.  That same night he
+assembled five thousand men without beat of drum in the park at
+Farnham, and at seven o'clock we marched off towards Basing.  On the
+way to Crondall, we of the horse halted for an hour to let the foot
+regiments catch up with us, and all together headed down upon Alton.
+In this way, at nine in the morning, we came down upon the west of
+the town, while the earl kept watch on the roads to the eastwards;
+and charged at once.
+
+I say that the earl kept watch; but in truth he had put this duty
+upon his captains, while he still fuddled himself with our general's
+sack.  He and his horse never gave fight, but galloped before us on
+the road to Winchester; along which, after close on an hour's chase,
+our trumpets recalled us as our infantry forced the doors of Alton
+Church, and cut up Colonel Bolle's regiment that still resisted
+there.  The Earl of Crawford left a good half of his wine behind, and
+two days later our general, who had sent for me, showed me this
+letter--
+
+     'To Sir W. Waller.
+
+     'Sir,--I hope your gaining of Alton cost you dear.  It was your
+      lot to drink of your own sack, which I never intended to have
+      left for you.  I pray you favour me so much as to send me your
+      own chirurgeon, and upon my honour I will send you a person
+      suitable to his exchange.--Sir, your servant,
+
+     'Crawford.'
+
+From this happy success it was my fortune, that same afternoon, to
+lead our troop back to Farnham.  Coming on the way to the entrance of
+a lane on our right, I avoided the high-road for the by-path.
+It twisted downhill to the river, crossed it, and by-and-by in a dip
+of the farther slope, brought me in sight of a round cottage of two
+stories.  No smoke arose from it, though the twilight was drawing in
+upon a frost that searched our bones as we rode.  No inhabitant
+showed a face.  But I waved a hand in passing, and I am mistaken if a
+hand did not respond from the upper story--by drawing a shutter
+close.
+
+
+
+RED VELVET.
+
+
+[August, 1644.  The Story is told by Ralph Medhope, Captain of the
+Twenty-second (or Gray-coat) Troop of Horse in the Parliament Army,
+then serving in Cornwall.]
+
+We were eight men in the picket.  My cornet, Ned Penkevill, rode
+beside me; our trumpeter, Israel Hutson, a pace or two behind; with
+five troopers following.  I could tell you their names, but there is
+no need, for I alone of the eight come into the story.  The rest rode
+to their death that night, and met it in the dawn, like men.
+
+We rode northward and inland along the downs high over the left bank
+of the Fowey River; with good turf and heather underfoot, and with
+the moon behind our right shoulders.  She was the harvest moon, now
+in her last quarter, and from her altitude I guessed it, by west
+country time, to be well past four of the morning or within an hour
+of daybreak.  But because she hung bright up here, we pricked forward
+warily, using every pit and hollow.  We had left our breast-pieces,
+back-pieces, and gorgets behind us, with Penkevill's standard, for
+the main troop to carry; and rode in plain gray jerkins--bareheaded
+too, since on mounting the rise above the valley-fog we had done off
+our morions (for fear of the moonlight) and hidden them in a
+furze-brake, where belike next summer the heather-bees found and made
+hives of them.
+
+Fog, rolling up from the sea--seven or eight miles away--filled all
+the valley below us: and this fog was the reason of our riding.
+For the valley formed the neck of a trap in which the King held our
+general with two thousand five hundred horse, six thousand infantry,
+and I know not how many guns.  His own artillery lined the heights
+under which we rode--that is, to left or east of the river; he had
+pushed across a couple of batteries to the opposite hills, and
+between them easily commanded the valley.  It was just the ease of it
+that made him careless and gave us our chance.  He had withdrawn the
+better part of his horse to the coast, to make a display against our
+scattered base; and our general, aware of this, was even meditating
+an assault on the heights when the sudden fog changed his plans and
+he resolved to march his horse, under cover of it, straight through
+the trap.  The risk, to be sure, was nearly desperate; since, for
+aught he knew, the King was marching back his troops under the same
+cover, and to be caught in that narrow valley (which was plashy,
+moreover, and in places flooded) would mean the total loss of his
+cavalry.  Yet he had spoken cheerfully when I took leave of him and
+rode off with my seven men--our business being to watch along the
+enemy's lines for any movement, to sound a warning if necessary, and,
+if surprised or caught, so to behave as to lead suspicion away from
+the movement of the main body.
+
+The enemy kept loose watch up here.  We could see his camp-fires
+dotted on the ridge between us and the dark woods of Boconnock, where
+the owls hooted; but either we were lucky or his outposts had been
+carelessly set.  Clearly no alarm had reached these encampments.
+But Heaven knew what might be happening, or preparing to happen, in
+the valley.  There at any moment the report of a single musket might
+tell us that all was lost.
+
+Penkevill--a good lad--insisted that all was well.  Our men had been
+due to start at two o'clock, and all delay allowed for, by this time
+they should be past the gut of the valley, where an opposing force
+would certainly choose to post itself.
+
+My answer to this was that, even allowing it, we must wait for the
+sound of fighting at Respryn Bridge, farther up the vale, or at one
+of the two fords a little below it.  For there, and there only, could
+our men cross the river, as they must to hit off any line of escape
+through Liscard and into Devon.  The bridge we knew to be held by a
+guard, and almost to a certainty the fords, though swollen by recent
+rains, would be watched also.  It was a part of the plan to surprise
+and force these crossings, and no question but that--unless their
+guard had been strengthened--they could be forced.  But as certainly
+the guard, however weak, would make at least some show of fight; so
+certainly, indeed, that the sound of firing here was to announce
+success and be our signal to rejoin the main body.
+
+Now from this bridge of Respryn a highway climbs from the valley and
+runs due east across the downs; that is to say, straight athwart the
+track we were holding; and our orders were on no account to cross
+this highway, but to halt at some little distance on the near side of
+it, place ourselves in cover, and so await the signal.  For the enemy
+held it--we could spy a couple of their camp-fires on the rise where
+it crosses Five Barrow Hill, with a third somewhat nearer, by the
+cross lanes called Grey Mare--and it would assuredly be patrolled.
+If in attempting to cross it we fell foul of the patrol, the alarm
+might draw their troops down towards the bridge; and again, if we
+crossed it without mishap, we should be no better placed and might
+easily overshoot our mark, for somewhere alongside this road our
+general would direct his retreat, over the heather and short turf
+that stretched for miles ahead and for a mile or more on either
+hand--fair open country and for cavalry the best in the world.
+
+Accordingly we found cover in a belt of fir-trees overlooking the
+valley, and for a while possessed our souls in patience.  We were
+early, having come without mishap or challenge, and to expect a like
+speed of two thousand five hundred men--riding in thick fog through
+water-meadows, with ditches to be crossed and gates to be found and
+passed--was in the last degree unreasonable.  Nevertheless, dawn
+could not be far off, and as the minutes dragged by, my spirits sank
+and my thoughts ran on a score of possible disasters.
+
+By-and-by the sky began to pale.  We heard a small troop of horsemen
+coming down the road at a walk--a patrol perhaps, or perhaps they
+were riding down to relieve the guard by the bridge.  We listened and
+made out their number to be twenty or thereabouts.  The wind had
+shifted--another good reason for keeping on our side of the road--and
+blew from them to us; but our horses were well trained.  The troop
+drew level with our hiding; we could hear the jingling of their bits,
+and with that came our signal.  A couple of pistol shots rang out;
+they made every man of us start in his saddle, and they were followed
+by a volley.
+
+In my surprise I had dug spur and pushed out beyond our clump of
+firs, almost before it struck me that the sound came not from the
+valley but from ahead of us, across the road and some way up the
+slope.  My first motion had been to charge the troopers in the
+roadway, to drive them (or at least to check them) from helping at
+the bridge; and I had done more wisely by holding to it, even upon
+second thought, for they had wheeled towards the sound and so gave
+their backs to us.  While they stood thus we might have charged
+through them, and all had been well.
+
+As it was, they offered us this chance for a moment only; and then,
+striking spur, scrambled up the bank on the far side of the road and
+headed across the turf at a gallop.  We looked, and slowly we
+understood.  For half a mile away, up the rise of the downs, a broad
+dark shadow was moving; and we had scarcely discerned it before, in
+the pale of the dawn, small points of light wavered and broke upon
+morions, gorgets, cuirasses.  That moving shadow was our own main
+body, climbing the hill at a gentle trot.
+
+A few picketers hung on their rear.  It was these, of course, that
+had given the alarm: and by-and-by the trumpets taking it up on Five
+Barrow Hill, a body of four hundred horse came over the rise at a
+gallop and bore down obliquely on the mass--very confidently at
+first: but at closer quarters it lost heart and started off to harass
+the right flank of the solid mass, that paid it little attention and
+held on its way without swerving.
+
+Before this we had put our horses in motion, to overtake the patrol
+(as I will call it) and break through to join our comrades.  But here
+it was that our delay proved fatal.  For turning at the sound of our
+gallop, and belike judging us to be the advance-guard of a second
+large body of horse, the leader of the patrol wheeled his men about,
+halted them for a moment, and so charged them straight down upon us.
+In numbers they were more than two to one, with the advantage of the
+slope, and albeit we fought fiercely for a minute, they broke us and
+drove us back headlong on the road.  Nor did they stop here, but,
+having us on the run, headed us right down the road to the bridge.
+
+Here, at the bridge-head, finding it unguarded, I managed to wheel
+about and beat off a couple of pursuers: and Israel Hutson and one of
+the troopers joining me, we three blocked the passage and could not
+be dislodged.  For the bridge was extremely narrow; so narrow,
+indeed, that in either parapet the builders had provided an embrasure
+here and there, for the foot-traveller to step aside if he should
+meet a passing wagon.
+
+The cavaliers, confronted by this remnant of us, and still perhaps
+believing that we counted on support, drew off some thirty yards, and
+were plainly in two minds whether to attack us again or to drop the
+business and ride back towards the trumpet-calls now sounding
+confusedly along the crest of the downs; when, to their and our worse
+dismay, was heard a pounding of hoofs on the road behind us, and over
+the bridge at our backs came riding a rabble of mounted men with a
+woman at their head--a woman dressed all in scarlet with a black
+flapping hat and a scarlet feather.  What manner of woman she was I
+had no time to guess.  But she rode with uplifted arm, grasping a
+pistol and waving the others forward; and her followers--who in no
+way resembled soldiers--poured after her, shouting, clearly bent on
+our destruction.
+
+I had managed to recharge my two pistols; and now, thrusting one into
+my belt and grasping the other, with my sword dangling handy on a
+wrist-knot, I dismounted and slipped into the nearest embrasure,
+there to sell my life as dearly as might be.  As I did so I heard,
+above the pounding of hoofs, five or six shots fired, and saw Hutson
+fling up his arms in the act of dismounting, fall his length across
+the roadway, and lie still under the feet of my own terrified horse.
+The trooper made a plunge forward as if to hurl himself through the
+patrol; and they, no doubt, disposed of him.  I never saw him again.
+
+For me, I faced upon the new assailants, as the spitting of bullets
+on the parapet directed me, and found little time to wonder what
+manner of people these were who so plainly intended to murder me.
+Some rode on cart-horses; one or two flourished pitchforks; and if
+ever a man had a sense of taking his leave of life in a nightmare it
+was I during that next minute.  It seemed that a dozen were on me.
+I cannot remember letting off my second pistol; but for some time,
+with my back to the angle of the embrasure, I held my own with almost
+astonishing ease, and might have held it for many minutes--my
+opponents being more savage than skilful--had not one of them
+barbarously hurled his pitchfork at me as a man throws a spear.
+One point of it pierced and stuck in the upper muscles of my left
+arm; the other pricked pretty sharply upon a rib; and the pain of
+this double stroke forced me to drop my sword and make a snatch at
+the accursed missile, to pluck it out.  'Twas the work of two seconds
+at most, and then with a jerk upon the wrist-knot I had the
+sword-hilt again in my grip; but it let three stout ruffians in upon
+me to finish me.  And this they were setting about with a will when,
+as I beat up a stroke that threatened to cleave my skull, I heard a
+voice calling on them to hold, and the lady in scarlet forced her
+horse between us.  As the brute's shoulder pressed me back into the
+angle of my embrasure she held out her pistol at arm's length, her
+finger on the trigger, and pointed it at close quarters full on my
+face.
+
+'You are my prisoner.'
+
+I stared up and along the pistol barrel and met her eyes.  They
+looked down on me disdainfully, with no mercy in them, but (it seemed
+to me) a certain curiosity.  A slight frown puckered her brows.
+She had spoken in a cold, level voice, and if her colour was pale,
+her manner and bearing showed no trace of agitation.
+
+'Would seem,' said I, 'there is no choice.  I submit, madam--to your
+pleasure, but not to the rabble you lead.'
+
+At this her eyebrows lifted a little.  'A gentleman?' I heard her
+say, but rather to herself than to me.
+
+'To the extent,' I answered, 'of having a distaste for pitchforks.'
+
+She made no reply to this, but turned about on her men who were
+murmuring and calling to one another to cut my throat.  'I think you
+heard me say that this officer is my prisoner.  The man who forgets
+it I will have flogged and afterwards shot.  And now stand back, if
+you please.'
+
+I had made a motion to hand her my sword, but she signed to me to
+keep it, and rode off towards the patrol, leaving the crowd to stare
+at me.  Being unsure how far her authority prevailed with them, I
+stuck to my embrasure, and kept an eye lifting for danger, while I
+wiped, as carelessly as might be, the sweat from my forehead--for the
+work had been hot while it lasted.  I had laid out a couple of these
+yokels in good earnest, and while their comrades dragged them away,
+and, propping them against the parapet opposite, called for water to
+bathe their wounds, I became unpleasantly sensible of my own hurts.
+The stab in my upper arm, though it bled little, kept burning as
+though the pitchfork had been dipped in poison; and from the less
+painful scratch on the ribs I was losing blood; I could feel it
+welling under my shirt, and running warm down the hollow of my groin.
+Loss of blood, they say, will often clarify a man's eyesight and
+quicken his other faculties; or it may be that, as the morning sun
+ate up what remained of the fog, all around me--the bridge and the
+persons upon it, the trees up the valley, the river tumbling
+between--on a sudden grew distinct to the view.  At any rate, in my
+memory, as out of a blurred print, springs the apparition of my lady
+as she came riding back from her parley with the patrol, with the
+sunlight on her flaming feather and habit of red velvet, and her
+horse's shadow moving clear-cut along the granite parapet.  Nay, it
+seemed that her voice, too, had a sharper edge as she spoke to me.
+
+'I have explained to the captain, yonder, that you are my prisoner.
+Which is your horse?--the dark bay, I think.'  For they had captured
+mine as well as poor Hutson's, and a servant held the pair by the
+bridge-end.
+
+'It is, madam.'
+
+She motioned to the man to lead him forward.  'Now mount,' she said;
+'and follow me, if you please.  You may keep your sword.'
+
+Mounting, to a man in my plight, was no such easy matter; but she had
+walked forward to give some directions about the wounded men, and did
+not perceive the pain it cost me.  Yet (I told myself) she must have
+seen me take my wound; and her indifference angered me.
+Having mounted and found my stirrups, I shut my teeth hard.
+
+'Are you ready?' she asked, glancing back over her shoulder.
+
+'At your service, madam.'
+
+Without another word or look she started at a brisk trot, which I
+forced my horse to copy, though it gave me the most discomfort of any
+she could have chosen; and at my heels rode three of her servants on
+great clattering cart-horses.  The highway beyond the bridge rose
+with a gentle slope, much obscured by trees.  Between them, a short
+distance up the hill, I caught sight of a lodge-gate, with a park and
+a fair avenue beyond it; but of these I had no more than a glimpse,
+for almost at once my lady led us off to the right and along a rutted
+cart-track, black with the mould of rotted leaves, that wound up the
+valley bottom and close alongside of the river.  The sun was high
+enough by this to pierce through the foliage of elms and alders
+overhanging the stream and dapple the scarlet habit ahead of me with
+pretty spots and patterns of shadow; but not yet high enough to reach
+the low-lying summer-leases  (as they would be called in my county)
+by which the river curved.  And here were cattle, yet half-awake,
+heaving themselves out of their lairs to stretch themselves and begin
+to browse.  The war had not touched this part of the valley; and but
+for a shot or two fired now and again on the distant hidden hills, we
+might have deemed it a hundred miles removed.  Nay, we had ridden
+scarcely six furlongs before we came to an old man angling.  His back
+was towards us, and he did not turn to spare us so much as a look.
+
+The cart-track, though here and there it descended close to the brink
+and crossed a plashet left by the late floods, held the most of its
+course partly level, and some twenty feet above the river.  So we
+rode for a mile, and came in sight of a second bridge, newer and more
+massive than the first, for it carried one of the main highways of
+the county.  Here also at the confluence of two streams the valley
+widened, and as we emerged on the highway out of the gloom my eyes
+rested on a broad grassy park sloping up from the bridge, and crowned
+with terraces and a noble house.
+
+The entrance to this park lay but a gunshot up the road on our left;
+and, coming to it, my lady drew rein.
+
+'Your name?' she asked.
+
+'Medhope.'
+
+'It is singular that I should have found a gentleman,' said she, in a
+musing, half-doubtful voice, as I leaned from my saddle, stifling the
+pain, and unhasped the gate for her.
+
+Said I dryly, 'The Parliament army, madam, includes a few of us.
+I know not why you should press this point: and 'faith you took me
+without waiting for credentials; but if it please you I am even a
+poor knight of the shire.'
+
+'My husband is fortunate,' said she; and put her horse to the trot
+again.
+
+While yet I pondered what she might mean by this--for she said it
+without the ghost of a smile--we reached the house and rode into a
+great empty back-court, where nevertheless was the main entrance--an
+arched doorway with a broad flight of steps.  Here she slipped from
+her saddle, commanded me to alight, and gave my horse over to our
+escort, to lead him to stable.  Signing to me, she led the way up the
+steps, and I followed, half-dizzy with loss of blood.  The great door
+stood open.  We passed into a cool hall, paved with lozenges of
+polished granite, white and black; and through this, with a turn to
+the left, down a long corridor similarly paved and hung with
+tapestries.  To the right of this corridor were many doors, of which
+she led me past five or six, and then pausing at one for me to
+overtake her, pushed it open.
+
+The room within was of goodly size, and flooded with the morning
+sunshine that poured through three long windows.  In the midst of it
+stood a table laid for breakfast, and at the head of the table,
+backed by a sideboard loaded with cold meats, sat a man plying
+knife and fork, and with a flagon handy beside him--a heavy,
+broad-shouldered man, with a copper-red complexion, and black hair
+that grew extraordinarily low upon his forehead.  This and a short,
+heavy jaw gave him a morose, sullen look.  I guessed his age at
+something near thirty.
+
+The sight of us standing in the doorway appeared to annoy him.
+He scowled for a moment at my lady, and dropped his eyes, while (as
+it seemed to me) a rush of angry blood suffused his face and gave it
+a purplish tint; but anon lifted and fixed them on me with a stare
+that as plainly as words demanded my business.  My lady also turned
+to me.
+
+'This,' she said, 'is my husband, Sir Luke Glynn.'  She faced about
+on him.  'I have brought you here Captain Medhope, an officer of the
+rebel army, to take what repayment you are ready to give.  He is, I
+may warn you, a good swordsman.'
+
+Whatever she meant by this, she said it coldly, and as coldly kept
+her eyes on him awaiting his answer.  Still avoiding them he
+continued to stare at me, and presently, pushing aside his tankard,
+leaned back in his chair with a rough laugh.
+
+'My good Kate,' said he brutally, 'I took you at least for a
+sportswoman?'  Still leaning back he pointed towards me.
+'Your friend is hurt, wherever you found him.  Better ring for Pascoe
+and put him to bed.'
+
+'Hurt?' she echoed, and turned to me, where I stood swaying, with a
+hand on the table's edge, and a face (I dare say) as white as the
+diapered cloth.  Her eyes rested on me at first increduously, then
+with dismay.
+
+'It is not serious,' I stammered.  'If some one will set a chair for
+me--no, not there--clear of the rug.  My boots are full of blood, I
+think.'
+
+With this I must have fallen in a faint, straight into her arms, and
+the faint must have lasted a few minutes.  For when my senses came
+back some one had removed my jack-boots and stockings, and a hand had
+opened my shirt wide at the breast and found the wound.  The hand was
+Lady Glynn's; and on the other side of me stood her husband with a
+goblet of wine, some of which he had managed to coax down my throat.
+
+The wine doubtless had revived me, yet not so that I noted all this
+at once or distinctly.  For the while I lay back with closed eyes,
+and heard--as it were in a dream--my host and hostess talking
+together.
+
+'A scratch, as you see,' said Lady Glynn.  'There is no need to send
+for a surgeon--who belike would only take blood from him: and he has
+lost enough already.  A few hours' rest--if, when I have bathed the
+wound, you and Pascoe will carry him upstairs--'
+
+'You are considerate, truly,' he answered.  'No doubt, having hired
+your bully, you wish to make the best of him.  But--I put it to you--
+in asking _me_ to nurse him you overshoot my Christian virtue.'
+
+'I think not,' she corrected him in a cool, level voice.  'That is,
+if you will consider him for what he is, the messenger of your
+honour.  For the rest, he happens to be no bully but a gentleman--
+though I confess,' she added, 'this comes to you by purest luck: I
+had no time to pick or choose.  Lastly, I have not hired him; but--'
+
+'But what?' he asked, as she came to a deliberate pause.
+
+'But, if you force me to it, I may try.'
+
+What she meant by this, I, lying between them with closed eyes, could
+not guess: but I suppose that, meeting her look, he understood.
+
+'You?' he said at length, hoarsely.  'You?' he repeated, and broke
+out with a furious oath.  'No, by--, Kate, you can't mean it!
+You can't--it's not like you . . . there, take your hand from him, or
+I'll slit his throat, there, as he lies!'
+
+But her hand, though it trembled, rested still on my breast, above
+the wound.  'If you lay hand on him, I go straight to the King; and
+if you hurt me, I have provided that a letter reaches the King.
+You are trapped every way, husband; and--and let us have no violence,
+please, for here comes Pascoe at last with the hot water.'
+
+It had cost me some self-command to keep my eyes closed during this
+talk.  I opened them as a gray-headed servant came bustling in with a
+steaming pan.  For just a second they encountered Lady Glynn's.
+Perhaps some irregular pulse of the heart--she had not withdrawn her
+hand--or some catch in my breathing warned her in the act of turning.
+She gazed down on me as if to ask how much I had heard: but almost on
+the instant motioned to the old man to come close.
+
+'Have you a sponge?' she asked.
+
+'It is in the pan, my lady.'
+
+She took it, rinsed it twice or thrice to make sure the water was not
+too hot, and fell to bathing my wound.  Her hand was exquisitely
+light; the sense of the warm water delicious; and again I closed my
+eyes.  But in this exchange of glances my previous image of her had
+somehow faded or been transformed, and with a suddenness that to this
+day I cannot account for.  To be sure I had formed it in haste and
+amid the distractions of a pretty sharp combat.  On the way to the
+house she had kept well ahead--and drawn rein but to converse with me
+for less than half a minute.  Only once--as she came riding back
+across the bridge from her parley with the patrol--had I taken stock
+(as you might say) of her looks; and, even so, my eyes had been
+occupied with her scarlet habit and feather, her bearing, her seat in
+the saddle, and the tone in which she spoke her commands, rather than
+with her actual features.  That these were handsome I had certainly
+noted: but that I had noted them more particularly at the time I only
+discovered now, and by contrast.
+
+Here, too, I should say that my age was forty-five and a trifle
+over; and that all my life I have been (as my comrades have often
+assured me) strangely insensible to the charms of women and
+indifferent to their good looks; and I tell this not because I am
+proud of it--for Heaven knows I am not--but that the reader may put
+no misconstruction, even a passing one, upon the rest of my story.
+I never for a moment stood in danger of loving Lady Glynn, as she
+never for a moment stood in danger of liking me.  But I pitied her;
+and by virtue of this pity I was able to do for an hour or two what I
+had never done before and have never since tried or wished or cared
+to do again--to see clearly into a woman's mind.
+
+But this came later.  For the present, lying there while she sponged
+my wound, I saw only that she was a great deal younger than I had
+deemed; and not only young but in distress; and not only distressed
+but in some sort helpless.  In short, here was a woman so unlike the
+termagant who had charged across the bridge that I could hardly
+reconcile the two or believe them to be one.
+
+The sponging over, the old man Pascoe handed her a bandage and, at a
+sign from her, lifted my shoulders a little while she passed it under
+my back.  To do this her two arms must needs go around my body under
+the shirt: and I fancy that the sight drove her husband wellnigh past
+control: for he growled like a dog and I heard a splash of wine fall
+on the floor from the goblet he was still holding.
+
+He obeyed, however, and gave me his arm--albeit sulkily--when
+commanded to help me upstairs: and although 'twas done on an impulse
+and with no thought of mischief, I did not improve his temper by
+pausing in the doorway and casting a look back at his lady.  She was
+kneeling by the pan, rinsing out the sponge; and with her back
+towards us.  She did not turn, and so my look went unrewarded; yet--
+though this must have been merest fancy--her attitude strengthened my
+certainty that she was in distress and in need of help.
+
+In the great tapestried bedroom to which the two men conveyed me Sir
+Luke's demeanour changed, and in a fashion at first puzzling.
+Having laid me on the bed and taken my assurance that I rested
+easily, he sent Pascoe off for a cup of wine and a manchet of bread,
+and, while these were being fetched, hung aimlessly about the room,
+now walking to and fro with his hands in his pockets, and anon
+halting to stare out of window.  By-and-by Pascoe brought the tray,
+set it on a small table beside the bed, and retired.  Sir Luke made
+as if to follow him, but paused at the door, shut it, and, coming
+back, stood gloomily frowning at me across the bed's foot.
+
+'Where did my wife pick you up?' he asked.
+
+'On the bridge,' I answered, 'where a mob--as I take it, of your
+retainers--were having at me with pitchforks as a prelude to cutting
+my throat.'
+
+'Was this your first meeting?'
+
+I opened my eyes upon him, with a lift of the brows.  'Yes,' said I
+quietly, as though marvelling why he asked it.  I think he had the
+grace to feel abashed.  At any rate he lowered his eyes; nor though
+he lifted them presently did he seem able to fix them upon mine.
+
+'You were some sort of rearguard, I suppose?  They tell me the main
+body of your horse rode clean through and escaped.  Do you happen to
+know what became of Chester?'
+
+'Chester?' I echoed.
+
+'He commanded our post at the bridge, as I understand. . . . When I
+say "ours" 'tis from habit merely.  In the early part of the campaign
+I led a troop, but withdrew from His Majesty's service more than a
+month ago, not being able to stomach Dick Grenville.  You know Dick
+Grenville?'
+
+'By repute.'
+
+'But not Chester? . . . Chester was at one time his led-captain: but
+they have quarrelled since, and it looks as if--'
+
+He did not finish the sentence, but left me to guess what remained.
+
+'You mean,' said I, 'it looks as if Chester sold the pass?  Well, if
+he did, I know nothing about it, or about him.  This is the first I
+have heard of him.  But speaking at a venture, I should say that
+either his neck's in a halter or he has changed sides and is riding
+off with our troops.'
+
+Sir Luke nodded, but said nothing; and after a while strode to the
+window.  When he spoke again it was with his back turned to me.
+
+'I wonder,' he said, 'my fellows didn't kill you out of hand.'
+
+'They were making a plaguy near bid for it,' I answered; 'but Lady
+Glynn interposed.'
+
+'And that's the strange part of the business.  All rebels, as a rule,
+are poison to her. . . . As for me, you understand, a man on campaign
+picks up a sort of feeling for the enemy.  He gets to see that all
+the right's not on one side, nor all the wrong on t'other.  I dare
+say, now, that your experience is much the same?'  I did not answer
+this and after a pause he went on, still staring out of window,
+'I believed in the Lord's Anointed, for my part: but allowing, for
+argument's sake, the right's on that side, there's enough villainy
+and self-seeking mixed up with it to poison an honest man. . . .
+I shouldn't wonder now that there's something to be said even for
+Chester.'
+
+'That hardly seems possible,' said I, wondering what his drift might
+be.
+
+'I don't know.  Wait till you've heard his side of the case. . . .
+But to go back to our subject--you see I don't bear you any malice: I
+am out of this quarrel, and--saving my lady's obstinacy--I don't
+see--I really don't see why I should billet myself with His Majesty's
+prisoners.  What's more, I have an estate in the east of the county,
+a little this side of Plymouth.  They quartered a troop of your
+fellows upon it last year, and the place, I hear, is a wilderness.
+ . . . If I could get to it, or to Plymouth--well, one good turn
+deserves another, eh?--that is, if you're fit to travel?'
+
+I think that at this point he faced around and eyed me for the first
+time.  But I made show that I had dropped asleep.  I heard him swear
+under his breath, and half a minute later he left the room.
+
+He had been offering me escape.  But why?  I turned his words over,
+and the more I turned them the less I liked them.  He had given me a
+suspicious number of openings to prove that the right lay with my
+party.  It seemed to me that, on half a hint, this man meant to
+desert.  Yes, and his wife--I recalled her words--held him in some
+trap.  And yet, recalling her face, I could not shake off the fancy
+that she, rather than he, stood in need of help.
+
+Pondering all this, still with my eyes closed, I dropped asleep in
+good earnest.
+
+I awoke from a sleep of many hours, to see old Pascoe standing at the
+bed's foot.  No doubt his entrance had disturbed me.
+
+He carried my boots in one hand, a can of hot water in the other, my
+stockings and a clean shirt across his arm; and he announced that the
+hour was four o'clock, and at half-past four Sir Luke and his lady
+would be dining.  If I felt myself sufficiently recovered, they
+desired the pleasure of my company.
+
+I sat upright on the bed.  My head yet swam, but sleep had refreshed
+me, and a pull at the wine--which had stood all this while untasted--
+set me on pretty good terms with myself.  I bade the old man carry my
+compliments to his lady and tell her that I will thankfully do her
+pleasure.  'But first,' said I, 'you must stand by and see me into a
+clean shirt.'
+
+He did more.  The stab in my upper arm had bled a little, and the
+shirt-sleeve could not be pulled from it without pain.  He drew a
+pair of scissors from his side-pocket and cut the linen away from
+around the wound: and then, having noted my weakness, helped me to
+wash and dress, drew on stockings and boots for me, nor left me until
+he had buckled on my sword-belt, and then only with an excuse that he
+must change his coat before waiting at table.  Sir Luke and Lady
+Glynn (he assured me) would be by this time awaiting me in the
+dining-room.
+
+Sure enough I found them there, my lady standing by the midmost
+window and gazing down upon the park, Sir Luke by the fireplace with
+an arm resting on the high mantel-ledge and one muddied boot jabbing
+at the logs of a new-made fire till the flame roared up the chimney.
+I wondered what madness could command so huge a blaze in the month of
+August (albeit 'twas the last of the month), until he turned and I
+saw that he had been drinking heavily.
+
+It seemed that Lady Glynn had not heard me enter, for as I paused, a
+little within the doorway, she leaned forward without turning and
+pushed open a lattice of the window.  I supposed that she did this to
+abate the heat of the fire in the room.  But no; she was leaning and
+listening to the sound of guns far in the west.  The sound--I had
+heard it in my sleep and again at intervals while dressing--broke
+heavily on the mist that damped the panes and drifted through the
+opening with a breeze that set the curls waving about her neck and
+puffed out the silken shawl she had drawn around her naked shoulders.
+
+Sir Luke looked up, and was the first to catch sight of me.
+
+'Hear the guns?' he said.  'Your foot hasn't the luck of your horse.
+The King caught 'em, drove 'em back over Lestithiel Bridge, and has
+been keeping 'em on the run all day, pressing 'em t'wards the coast.'
+
+'Is that the report?' I asked.
+
+'That's my report,' he answered; 'and'--thrusting forward one bemired
+boot--'you may count on it.  I've been following and watching the
+fun.'
+
+By this time Lady Glynn had turned and came past her husband to greet
+me, without throwing him a look.
+
+'You are the better for your rest?' she asked.  'At least I see that,
+though wounded, you have contrived to pay me the compliment of
+wearing fresh linen and a clean pair of boots.'
+
+This was awkward, and--what was worse--she said it awkwardly, with a
+sprightliness, gracious yet affected, that did not become her at all.
+She meant, of course, to annoy her husband, and his face showed that
+she had succeeded.  He turned away to the fire with a sulky frown,
+while she stood smiling, holding out a hand to me.
+
+I touched it respectfully, and let it drop.  'The credit,' said I,
+'belongs all to your servant Pascoe.'
+
+'And here he is,' she took me up gaily, as Pascoe appeared in the
+doorway.  'Is dinner ready?'
+
+'To be served at once, my lady.'
+
+'Then will you lead me to my seat, Captain Medhope?  Yours is beside
+me, on the right; yes, close there.  My husband, at his end, can
+enjoy the fire.'
+
+We took our seats.  I was hungry, and the dinner good.  I ate of
+everything, but can only recall an excellent grill of salmon and a
+roast haunch of venison: the reason being that Lady Glynn kept me in
+continued talk.  Poor lady!--I had almost said, poor child!--for her
+desperate artlessness became the more apparent to me the more she
+persisted.  Even I, who, as the reader has been told, have the
+smallest skill in the ways of women, could see that here was one, of
+high breeding but untutored, playing at a game at once above and
+beneath her; almost as far above her achieving as it lay beneath her
+true contempt.  She knew that women can inveigle men; but in the
+practice of it I am very sure that her dairymaid could have given her
+lessons.
+
+But what am I saying?  Her poor coquetries did not deceive me, but
+she never meant them to deceive me.  They accomplished, after all,
+just that for which she intended them.  They deceived and maddened
+her half-drunken lout of a husband.  Her dress, too, was something
+shameless.  She wore above her scarlet skirt (which I verily believe
+was the same she had ridden in) a bodice of the same bright colour,
+low as a maid-of-honour's, that displayed her young neck and bust.
+About her neck she had fastened a string of garnets.  She had loaded
+her fingers with old-fashioned rings, of which the very dullness made
+me wince to see them employed in this sorry service.  And I guessed
+that before my entrance this unusual finery had provoked her husband
+to fury.
+
+A length of table lay between us and him.  He sat silent, regarding
+us under lowered brows, eating little, draining glass after glass.
+Angry though he was, her voice seemed to lay a spell on him.
+She talked of a thousand things, but especially of the Parliament
+campaign, plying me with question after question--of our numbers, our
+discipline, our hardships during the past three weeks, of our
+general's plan of escape, and, in particular, of the part I had borne
+in it.  And when I answered she listened with smiles, as though King
+and Parliament lay balanced in her affections.  And this was the
+termagant that a few hours ago had ridden us down and trampled across
+poor Hutson's body!
+
+All this I took at its true value, answering her with steady
+politeness, telling myself that as her purpose was to goad her
+husband, so no word of mine should give him an excuse for an
+outbreak.  It takes two to make a quarrel, they say.  But when three
+are mixed up in it (and one a woman), the third cannot always count
+on remaining passive.
+
+I had managed to tide over the meal with fair success.  We had
+reached the dessert, and Pascoe (whose presence may have laid some
+restraint upon his master) had withdrawn.  A dish of pears lay before
+Lady Glynn, and she asked me to peel one for her.  I know not if this
+simple request laid the last straw on Sir Luke's endurance, but he
+filled his glass again and said with brutal insolence,--
+
+'You are fortunate, Captain Medhope, in exciting my wife's interest.
+I assure you that until your gallantry bewitched her, she had been
+used to speak of all rebels as cowards in grain.'
+
+'I hope, Sir Luke,' said I, 'you, with experience of us, have tried
+to teach her better.'
+
+'In faith, no,' he replied yet more brutally, backing his sneer with
+a laugh.  'I saw no reason for that.'
+
+'And yet,' said I deliberately, peeling my pear, 'you told me to-day
+that something might be said even for such a man as your friend
+Chester.'
+
+He jumped up with an oath.  Yet I believe he might even now have
+restrained himself had not his wife--and with a face as pale as a
+ghost's--laid a hand on my arm.
+
+'I had forgotten your wound,' she said, ignoring her husband.
+'You handle the knife awkwardly.  Let me cut the fruit and we will
+share.'
+
+With a turn of the hand Sir Luke hurled back his chair, and it fell
+with a crash.
+
+'By God, Kate! if you have hired this man, he shall murder first and
+do his love-making afterwards.  Nay, but I'll stop that, too.
+Look first to yourself, madame!'
+
+He had whipped out his sword and was actually running upon her before
+I could get mine clear.  But I was in time to beat down his point and
+then--for he was slow-witted and three-parts drunk--with a trick of
+wrist that luckily required little strength, I disarmed him.
+His sword struck the farther edge of the table, smashed a decanter of
+wine and dropped to the floor.
+
+We were standing now, all three; Lady Glynn a little behind my elbow.
+
+'Are you going to kill him?' she asked, and he heard.
+
+For a moment he stared at her stupidly, then at the stream of wine
+running across the table, then back at her--and, so staring, flung up
+both hands and plunged forward.  His brow, as he fell like an ox,
+thudded against the chair from which, a moment since, she had arisen.
+
+I caught up a candle.  But she was before me and had dropped on her
+knees beside him.  In his fall he had rolled over on his side, and
+for a moment I supposed her to be busy loosening his collar.
+But no--as I held the candle close she was feeling in his pockets,
+and in the light of it she held up a bunch of keys.
+
+'I am glad you did not kill him,' she said simply, rising from her
+knees.  'There was no need.'
+
+'No need?' I repeated stupidly, swaying with weakness.
+
+'You shall see.'
+
+She slipped by me and from the room.  I bent and loosened Sir Luke's
+collar, and essayed to lift him, but had to relinquish the effort and
+drop into a chair, where I sat staring at the fallen wreck.  While I
+stared, still dizzy, I heard the voice of old Pascoe behind me.
+
+'We can manage it, sir--I think--between us.'  He stepped past me,
+and together we lifted his master and staggered with him to a couch,
+where he lay, breathing hard.
+
+Pascoe motioned me back to my chair, where I sat and panted.
+
+While I sat, she came back.  I did not hear her approach, but only
+her voice whispering to me to come: and I followed her forth from the
+room and out into the corridor, and along the corridor to the porch
+as a man walking in his sleep.
+
+There was a lantern by the porch, and in the light of it my horse
+stood, saddled and ready.
+
+'You will take the road up the valley,' she said, 'and cross by the
+second bridge.  The road beyond that bears due east and is
+unguarded.'
+
+'But what is this?' I asked, as I put a hand to the pommel of the
+saddle and felt something hard and heavy slung there beside it.
+
+'It is the price of the pass, or half of it.  There is another bag on
+the off side, and between them they hold, I believe, six hundred
+pounds.'
+
+'That was his price?'
+
+'That was the price.  And now go: take it back to your general.'
+
+'You must help me to mount,' said I.
+
+She helped me to mount.
+
+'The second bridge, you will remember,' said she, as I found my
+stirrups.
+
+'I will remember.  Is that all?'
+
+'That is all: though, if you wish it, I will thank you and say that
+you have behaved well.'
+
+'I did not wish it,' said I, 'though now you have said it, I am glad.
+You hate me, I understand.'
+
+'And I thank you for understanding.  Yes, you have behaved well.'
+
+'Good-night, then, and God bless you!'
+
+I shook rein and jogged out of the courtyard into the mirk and mist.
+I never saw her again.
+
+
+Not till years later did I learn that she, too, had left her
+husband's roof that night and after (it cannot be doubted) many
+adventures of which no history has reached me, joined the Court in
+its exile at the Hague; where, as I am told, she died.
+
+Her husband recovered and lived to accomplish his end by drink.
+There were whispers against him, but no certain proof that he had
+ever acted as intermediary in selling the pass.  His defenders could
+always urge his notorious poverty.  Before his death he had parted
+with more than two-thirds of his estate.  There was no child to
+inherit the remainder.
+
+To the end he asserted that his wife had run from him unfaithfully,
+and was pitied for it.  So I hear, at least, and do not care; as I am
+sure she would not have cared.  She had saved his honour, with my
+poor help, and having saved it, was quit of us both.
+
+I pray the foreign earth may rest lightly on her.
+
+
+
+THE JEW ON THE MOOR.
+
+
+[The scene is the kitchen of a small farm-house above the Walkham
+River, on the western edge of Dartmoor.  The walls, originally of
+rough granite, have had their asperities smoothed down by many layers
+of whitewash.  The floor is of lime-ash, nicely sanded.  From the
+ceiling--formed of rude, unplaned beams and the planching of the
+bedroom above--depends a rack crowded with hams and sides of bacon,
+all wrapped in newspapers.  In the window a dozen geraniums are
+blooming, and beyond them the eye rests on the slope of Sharpitor and
+the distant ridge of Sheepstor.  The fireplace, which faces the
+window, is deep and capacious, and floored with granite slabs.
+On these burns a fire of glowing peat, and over the fire hangs a
+crock of milk in process of scalding.  In the ingle behind it sits
+the relator of this story, drying his knees after a Dartmoor shower.
+From his seat he can look up the wide chimney and see, beyond the
+smoke, the sky, and that it is blue again and shining.  But he
+listens to the farmer's middle-aged sister, who stands at the table
+by the window, and rolls out a pie-crust as she talks.  (The farmer
+is a widower, and she keeps house for him.) She talks of a small
+picture--a silhouette executed in black and gold--that adorns the
+wall-space between the dresser and the tall clock, and directly above
+the side-table piled with the small library of the house.
+The portrait is a profile of a young man, somewhat noticeably
+handsome, in a high-necked coat and white stock collar.]
+
+'It is none of our family, though it came to us near on a hundred
+years ago.  It came from America.  A young gentleman sent it over
+from Philadelphia to my grandmother, with a letter to say he was
+married and happy, and would always remember her.  Perhaps he did;
+and, again, perhaps he didn't.  That was the last my grandmother
+heard of him.
+
+'But it wasn't made in America.  It was made in the War Prison, over
+yonder at Princetown, where they keep the convicts now.  I've heard
+the man that drew and cut it out was a French sergeant, with only one
+arm.  He had lost the other in the war, and his luck was to be left
+until the very last draft.  He finished it the morning he was
+released, and he gave it to the young American--Adams, his name was--
+for a keepsake.  The Americans had to stay behind, because their war
+wasn't over yet.
+
+'It came to my grandmother in this way: She was married to my
+grandfather that owned this very farm, and lived in this very house;
+and twice a week she would drive over to the prison, to the market
+that used to be held there every day from before noon till nightfall.
+Sometimes my grandfather drove with her, but oftener not.  She could
+take care of herself very well.
+
+'She sold poultry and pork, eggs and butter, and vegetables; lard
+sometimes, and straw, with other odds and ends.  (The prisoners used
+the straw for plaiting bonnets.) Scores of salesmen used to travel to
+the prison every day, from Tavistock, Okehampton, Moreton, and all
+around the Moor: Jews, too, from Plymouth, with slop-clothing.
+But in all this crowd my grandmother held her own.  The turnkeys knew
+her; the prisoners liked her for her good looks and good temper, and
+because she always dealt fair; and the agent (as they called the
+governor in those days) had given orders to set aside a table and
+trestles for her twice a week, close inside the entrance of the
+market square, on the side where the bettermost French prisoners
+lived in a building they called the Petty Caution.
+
+'But with the prisoners, though many a time her heart melted for
+them, she was always very careful, and let it be known that she never
+smuggled tobacco or messages even for her best customers.  After a
+while they got to understand this, and (though you may think it
+queer) liked her none the less.  The agent, on his part, trusted
+her--and the turnkeys and the military officials--and didn't respect
+her the less because she never told tales, though they knew she might
+have told many.
+
+'This went on, staid and regular, for close upon three years; and
+then, one fine October evening, my grandmother, after reaching home
+with her little cart, unharnessing and bedding up the donkey in his
+stable, walked out to the orchard, where my grandfather was looking
+over his cider apples, and says she to him,--
+
+'"William, I've a-done a dreadful deed."
+
+'My grandfather took off his hat, and rubbed the top of his head.
+"Good Lord!" he says.  "You don't tell me!"
+
+'"I've helped a prisoner to escape," says she.
+
+'"Then we'm lost and done for,"  says my grandfather.  "How did it
+come about?"  And with that he waited a little, and said, "Damme, my
+dear, if any other person had brought me this tale I'd have tanned
+his skin."  For I must tell you my grandfather and grandmother doted
+on one another.
+
+'"I know you would," said my grandmother, dismally.  "And I can't
+think how the temptation took me.  But the poor creatur' was little
+more'n a boy--and there were a-something in the eyes of him--"
+She meant to say there was a-something that reminded her of her own
+eldest, that she had lost a dozen years before.
+
+'I don't know whether my grandfather understood or whether he didn't.
+But all he said was, "However did you contrive it?"
+
+'"It came," she said, "of my takin' they six white rabbits to market.
+I sold mun all; and when they were sold, and the hutch standin'
+empty--"  My grandmother pulled out her handkerchief and dabbed her
+eyes.
+
+'"You drove him out in the rabbit hutch?" asked my grandfather.
+
+'"With a handful of straw between him and the bars," she owned.
+"He's nobbut a boy.  You can't think how easy.  And the look of him
+when he crep' inside--"
+
+'"Where is he?" asked my grandfather.
+
+'"Somewheres hangin' about the stable at this moment," she told him,
+with a kind o' sob.
+
+'So my grandfather went out to the back.  He could not find the
+prisoner in the stable, but by-and-by he caught sight of him on the
+slope of the stubble field behind it.  The poor lad had taken a hoe,
+and was pretending to work it, while he edged away in the dimmety
+light.
+
+'"Hallo!" sings out my grandfather across the gate; and goes striding
+up the field to him.  "If I were you," says he, "I wouldn't hoe
+stubble; because that's a new kind of agriculture in these parts, and
+likely to attract notice."
+
+'"I was doin' my best," twittered the prisoner.  He was a
+delicate-lookin' lad, very white just now about the gills.
+"I come from Marblehead," he explained, "and, bein' bred to the sea,
+I didn't think it would matter."
+
+'"It will, you'll find, if you persevere with it.  But come indoors.
+We'll stow you in the cider-loft for to-night, after you've taken a
+bite of supper.  And to-morrow--well, I'll have to think that out,"
+said my grandfather.
+
+'For the next few hours he felt pretty easy.  He and his wife had a
+good reputation with the agent, who would take a long time before
+suspecting them of any hand in an escape.  The three ate their supper
+together in good comfort, though from time to time my grandfather
+pricked up his ears as though he heard the sound of a gun.  But the
+wind blew from the south-west that night, and if a gun was fired the
+sound did not carry.
+
+'When supper was done my grandmother made a suggestion that the lad,
+instead of turning out to the cider-loft, should sleep in the garret
+overhead; and my grandfather, after a look at the lad's face, shut
+his lips, and would not gainsay her, though--as in bed he couldn't
+help reminding her--it would be difficult to pass off a visitor in
+the garret, with two blankets, for a housebreaker.
+
+'As it happened, though, they were not disturbed that night.  But my
+grandfather, for thinking, took a very little sleep, and in the
+morning he went up to the garret with the best plan he could devise.
+
+'"I've been turnin' it over," he said, "and there's no road will help
+you across the Moor for days to come.  You must bide here till the
+hue-an'-cry has blown over, and meantime the missus must fit up some
+disguise for you; but you must bide in bed, for a man can't step out
+o' this house, front or back, without bein' visible from all the tors
+around.  So rest where you be, and I'll just dander down along
+t'wards Walkhampton, where the Plymouth road runs under Sharpitor,
+an' where I've been meanin' to break up a taty-patch this long time
+past.  There's alway a plenty goin' and comin' 'pon the road, an'
+maybe by keepin' an eye open I'll learn what line the chase is
+takin'."
+
+'So my grandfather shouldered his biddick and marched off, down and
+across the valley, marked off his patch pretty high on the slope, and
+fell to work.  Just there he could keep the whole traffic of the road
+under his eye, as well as the fields around his house; and for a
+moment it gave him a shock as he called to mind that in the only
+field that lay out of sight he'd left a scarecrow standing--in a
+patch that, back in the summer, he had cropped with pease for the
+agent's table up at the War Prison.  To be sure, 'twasn't likely to
+mislead a search-party, and, if it did, why a scarecrow's a
+scarecrow; but my grandfather didn't like the thought of any of these
+gentry being near the house.  If they came at all they might be
+minded to search further.  So he determined that when dinner-time
+came he would go back home and take the scarecrow down.
+
+'The road (as I said) was always pretty full of traffic, coming and
+going between Plymouth and the War Prison.  There were bakers'
+wagons, grocery vans, and vans of meat, besides market carts from
+Bickleigh and Buckland.  My grandfather watched one and another go
+by, but made out nothing unusual until--and after he had been digging
+for an hour, maybe--sure enough he spied a mounted soldier coming up
+the road at a trot, and knew that this must be one of the searchers
+returning.  In a minute more he recognised the man for an
+acquaintance of his, a sergeant of the garrison, and by name
+Grimwold, and hailed him as he came close.
+
+'"Hallo! Is that you?" says the sergeant, reining up.  "And how long
+might you have been workin' there?"
+
+'"Best part of an hour," says my grandfather.  "What's up?"
+
+'"There's a prisoner escaped, another o' those damned Yankees," says
+the sergeant.  "I've been laying the alarm all the way to Plymouth.
+You ha'n't seen any suspicious-lookin' party pass this way, I
+suppose?"
+
+'My grandfather said very truthfully that he hadn't, but promised
+very truthfully that he would keep an eye lifting.  So the sergeant
+wished him good-day and rode on towards Two Bridges.
+
+'For the next twenty minutes nothing passed but a tax-cart and a
+market woman with a donkey; and a while after them a very
+queer-looking figure hove in sight.
+
+''Twas a man walking, with a great sack on his shoulders and two or
+three hats on his head, one atop of another.  By the cut of his jib,
+as they say, my grandfather knew him at once for one of the Plymouth
+Jews, that visited Princetown by the dozen with cast-off clothes for
+sale, and silver change for the gold pieces that found their way
+sometimes into the prison as prize-money.  Sometimes, too, they
+carried away the Bank of England notes that the Frenchmen were so
+clever at forging.  But though, as he came near, the man had Jew
+written all over him, my grandfather couldn't call to mind that he'd
+ever seen this particular Jew before.
+
+'What is more, it was plain enough in a minute that the Jew didn't
+recognise my grandfather; for, catching sight of him aloft there on
+the slope, first of all he gave a start, next he walked forward a few
+steps undecided-like, and last he pulled up, set down his bundle like
+a man tired, and looked behind him down the road.  The road was
+empty, so he turned his attention to my grandfather, and after
+looking at him very curiously for half a minute, "Good-morning," says
+he.
+
+'By this time my grandfather had guessed what was passing in the
+man's mind, and it came into his own to have a little fun.
+
+'"Good-morning, stranger," said he, through his nose, mimicking so
+well as he could the American manner of speaking.
+
+'"How long have you been at work there, my man?" asks the Jew, still
+glancing up and down the road.
+
+'"A long time," answers my grandfather, putting on a scared look, and
+halting in his words.  "This piece of ground belongs to me"--which
+was true enough, but didn't sound likely; for he was always a
+careless man in his dress (the only matter over which he and my
+grandmother had words now and then), and to-day, feeling he had the
+whip-hand of her, he had taken advantage to wear an old piece of
+sacking in place of a coat.
+
+'"Oh, indeed," says the Jew, more than dubious, and thinking, no
+doubt, of the three guineas that was the regular reward for taking an
+escaped prisoner.
+
+'"It's the tarnal truth," says my grandfather, and fell to whistling,
+like a man facing it out.  But the tune he chose was "Yankee Doodle!"
+This, of course, made the Jew dead sure of his man.  But he was a
+lean little wisp of a man, and my grandfather too strongly built to
+be tackled.  So the pair stood eyeing one another until, glancing up,
+my grandfather saw three soldiers come round the corner of the road
+from Plymouth, and with that he dropped his biddick and turned like a
+desperate man.
+
+'The Jew saw them too, and almost upon the same instant.
+"Help, help!" he yelled, and leaving his bag where he had dropped it,
+tore down the road to meet the soldiers, waving both arms and still
+shouting, "Help!  A prisoner!  A prisoner!"
+
+'My grandfather always said afterwards that, when he heard this, he
+fairly groaned.  He wasn't by any means humorous as a rule, and, so
+far as he was concerned, the joke had gone far enough; and he used to
+add as a warning that a man may go so far in a joke he can't help but
+go farther--'tis like hysterics with women.  At any rate, he saw the
+soldiers coming for him at the double, spreading themselves to head
+him off, and as they came he broke and ran straight up the slope
+towards the head of the tor.
+
+'This violent exercise didn't suit him at all, and glad enough he
+was, after two minutes of it, to note that the soldiers were
+shortening the distance hand over fist.  For a moment he had a mind
+to drop, as though worn out with hunger and exhaustion, but his face
+and shape wouldn't lend themselves to that deceit.  So he held on and
+did his best, until the foremost soldier drew within thirty yards and
+shouted out, threatening to fire.  Turning and seeing that he had his
+musket almost at the "present," my grandfather dropped his arms,
+stood still, and allowed them to take him like a lamb.
+
+'"But," said he, sulky-like, "if 'tis to the prison you mean to carry
+me, then carry me you shall.  Back to the road I'll go with you, but
+not a step farther on my own legs, and on that you may bet your last
+dollar."
+
+'The soldiers--they were three raw youngsters of the Somerset
+Militia--threatened at first to prick him along the road with their
+bayonets.  But by this time the little Jew had come up panting and
+yet almost capering with excitement.
+
+'"No bloodthed!" said he, in his lisping way.  "I'll have no
+bloodthed!  The man 'ith worth three guineath to me ath he ith.
+He thall have a cart, if it cotht me five shillingth!  Where 'th the
+nearetht village?"
+
+'He ran off and down the road, while my grandfather sat down on the
+turf along with the soldiers, and smoked a pipe of tobacco.
+Very nice lads they were, too; but he felt shy in their company,
+thinking how badly he had deceived them, and also that the joke was
+near running dry.  For, whatever cart the Jew might hire, the driver
+couldn't help recognising a man so widely known as my grandfather.
+
+'But his luck stood yet.  For the little man hadn't run above
+three-quarters of a mile on the road and was not half-way towards
+Buckland--his nearest chance of a cart--when he came full tilt upon a
+light wagon and three more soldiers, with a fourth riding behind, and
+all conveying the prisoners' weekly pocket-money up to Princetown, in
+sacks filled with small change.  Here was a chance to save breath as
+well as carriage hire, and the little Jew charged down on them so
+fiercely, as they crawled up the hill, that the corporal who sat on
+the money with a musket across his knees, had nearly shot him for a
+highwayman before giving him time to explain.
+
+'They whipped up the horses though, when they heard his story; and
+so, coming to the road under Sharpitor, and halting, they very soon
+had my grandfather trussed and laid upon the bags of money, and
+jogged away with him towards the Two Bridges, the Jew and three
+militiamen tramping behind at the cart-tail.
+
+'It was one o'clock, or a little past, when they drove up to the
+prison gate; and a mist beginning to gather above North Hessary, as
+at this time of year it often does after a clear morning.
+My grandfather, looking out from under the tilt of the cart, felt as
+he'd never felt before what a cheerless place it must seem to a
+new-comer, and his heart melted a little bit further towards the lad
+he was hiding at home.
+
+'"Hallo!" says the sentry at the gate.
+
+'"You'll say something more than Hallo! when you see what we've got
+inside here," promised the corporal.
+
+'Then they bundled my grandfather out in the light of day, and the
+corporal proudly told the sentry to summon the agent at once.
+
+'"Good Lord!" said the sentry, "if it bain't Farmer Mugford!"
+
+'Just then, as it happened, forth stepped the agent himself from the
+wicket, starting for his walk that he took for his health's sake
+every afternoon.  Captain Sharpland his name was, and later on, when
+the Americans mutinied, he was accused of treating them harshly, but
+my grandfather said that a kinder-hearted man never stepped.
+
+'"Hallo," says Captain Sharpland, halting and putting up his
+eyeglass.  "Why, Mugford, whatever is the meaning of this?"
+
+'"You'd best ask the Jew here, sir," my grandfather answered, nursing
+his sulks.
+
+'"If you pleathe, noble captain," put in the Jew, who didn't yet
+guess anything amiss, "we've thecured the ethcaped prithoner--after a
+tuthle--"
+
+'"And pray, who the devil may you be?" asked Captain Sharpland,
+screwing his eyeglass into his eye.  He disliked Jews, upon
+principle.
+
+'"Tho pleathe you, noble captain, my name 'th Nathan Nathaniel, of
+Thouththide Thtreet, Plymouth: and on my way thith morning, ath you
+thee, I came on the prithoner--"'
+
+'"Prisoner be--" began Captain Sharpland, but broke off to swear at
+the sentry, that was covering his face with his hands to hide his
+grins.  "My good Mr Mugford, will _you_ explain?"
+
+'"With pleasure, sir," my grandfather answered, and told his story,
+while the Jew's eyes grew wider and wider, and his jaw dropped lower
+and lower.
+
+'"You claim compensation, of course?" said Captain Sharpland at the
+close, and as gravely as he could, though he too had to smooth a hand
+over his upper lip.
+
+'"Why, as for that, sir"--my grandfather was taken aback--"I took it
+for a joke, and bear no grudge against Government for it."
+
+'"It wouldn't help you if you did," said Captain Sharpland.  "But I
+suggest that Mr Nathan, here, owes you a trifle--shall we put it at
+twenty pounds?"
+
+'But here Mr Nathan cast up his hands with a scream, and would have
+sat down in the roadway.  The soldiers caught him, and held him
+upright, and you may guess if, in their temper at being fooled, they
+twisted his arms a bit.
+
+'"Take him to my quarters, and we will discuss it," commanded Captain
+Sharpland, turning back to the wicket again, and leading the way.
+Well, the Jew, when he reached the agent's quarters, rolled on to his
+knees, and whined so long, beating down the price, that 'twas well
+after four o'clock before he counted out the five guineas which was
+the least sum Captain Sharpland would hear of.  My grandfather
+counted them into his pocket, scarcely believing his good fortune.
+He stayed behind after the creature had slunk away out of the room--
+to have a laugh with the captain, who very heartily offered him a
+glass of grog upon the top of it; and with that it came over him how
+he was deceiving this good man.  He couldn't accept the drink; he
+could scarcely muster up face to say "Good-night, sir, and thank
+you," and if he, too, as he went out, didn't carry his tail between
+his legs, I doubt if he felt much better satisfied with himself than
+did Mr Nathan.
+
+'But just outside the gate he found something to distract his mind.
+The soldiers, in a rage at being made to look foolish, had been
+waiting there for Mr Nathan with their belts; and my grandfather
+arrived in time to hear the wretched man howling for mercy, as they
+chevied him away over the moor under the lee of North Hessary and
+into the dusk.
+
+'He stood and listened for a minute or so, but by-and-by there was an
+end of the yells, and the soldiers came strolling back, laughing
+together, as men who had taken a pleasant little revenge but not
+pushed it too far.  So he turned his face for home, and reached it a
+little after nightfall; and there he turned out his pocket in front
+of my grandmother, who could not believe a word of the tale until she
+had handled each guinea separately.  Then she, too, flung her apron
+over her head, and laughed till she was weak.  But my grandfather
+wanted to know if by rights he oughtn't to share the money with the
+prisoner.
+
+'My grandmother couldn't make up her mind about this, and advised him
+to sleep on it.  The young man (she said) had faithfully kept his bed
+all day, but was growing resty.  So my grandfather, before supping,
+took a light and went upstairs to the garret.
+
+'"We've kept the scent wide to-day," he reported, very cheerful-like.
+"But you'll have to lie still for a while yet."
+
+'"Lyin' here puts a strain on a man," the lad grumbled.  "Couldn't I
+take a turn in the fields, now that dark has fallen?  I'd promise not
+to stray far from the house."
+
+'"That's a notion," my grandfather agreed.  "I once had to lie in bed
+two days with a quinsy, and I hated it."  He considered for a while,
+and could see no objection.  "Come down and sup with us," he said;
+"and afterwards, if the missus agrees, you can take a stroll.
+But don't make too much noise when you let yourself in again."
+
+'Well, so it was fixed; and after supper the lad put on a pair of
+high-lows my grandfather lent him, and started off for a ramble in
+the night air, with a plenty of instructions about the safest paths.
+At nine o'clock, which was their regular hour, my grandfather and
+grandmother made out the light and went to bed, leaving the door on
+the latch.  It was an hour before my grandfather could get to sleep.
+He was thinking of the five guineas, and how they ought rightfully to
+be divided.
+
+'At five in the morning his wife woke him, and declared that in her
+belief the lad was still abroad.  If he had returned and gone to his
+garret she must have heard; but she had heard nothing.  She harped on
+this till my grandfather climbed out and went to the garret for a
+look; and sure enough the bed was empty.
+
+'They lay awake till daylight, the pair of them, cogitating this and
+that.  But when the dawn came, my grandfather could stand it no
+longer.  He pulled on his breeches and boots, went downstairs, and
+had scarcely thrown open the door before he heard screams and saw a
+wretched figure, naked to the shirt, running across the yard towards
+the house.  It was Nathan the Jew, and he tumbled in front of my
+grandfather, and caught hold of him by the boots while he yelled for
+mercy.
+
+'What do you suppose, was the explanation?  My grandfather could
+scarcely make head or tail of it, even after listening to the Jew's
+story.  And neither he nor my grandmother ever set eyes on the
+prisoner lad again.  But about nine months later there came a letter
+from America that helped to clear things up.
+
+'The poor boy--so he wrote in his letter--being turned loose under
+the sky after fifteen months of captivity, just couldn't go back to
+the garret.  Though the night was pitch black and full of mist, and
+the stars hidden, he wanted no more than to pace to and fro, and look
+up and open his chest to it.  To and fro he went, a bit farther each
+time, but always keeping my grandfather's directions somewhere at the
+back of his mind, and always searching back till he could see the
+glimmer of whitewash showing him where the house stood.  In the
+letter he sent to my grandmother he told very freely of the thoughts
+that came to him there while he felt his way back and forth; and to a
+staid woman that had never been shut up behind bars the writing--or
+the most of it--was mad enough.  "Liberty! Liberty!" it kept saying:
+and "good though it was, how much better if he'd been able to see
+just one star through the fog!"
+
+'By little and little he stretched his tether so far, forgetting how
+the time went, that the dawn overtook him a good half-mile from the
+house; and through the gray of it he caught sight of a man standing
+about fifty yards away, and right in his path.  He turned to run, and
+then his heart almost jumped out of his mouth as he saw another man
+standing to catch him with arms held wide!
+
+'But what had happened was, he had strayed into the pea-patch and
+the figure with its arms stretched out was no man at all, but a
+scarecrow.  The lad had no sooner made sure of this than he whipped
+behind it, stretched out his hands upon the cross-trees that served
+it for arms, and clung there, praying.
+
+'Now the man creeping down the field was Nathan the Jew.  He had been
+wandering the Moor all night, crazy with terror; and when the dawn
+showed him a house, he could have turned Christian and dropped on his
+knees.  But casting a glance over his shoulder as he ran towards it,
+he caught sight of the scarecrow.  For a second or two he ran faster,
+believing it to be either a man or a ghost.  He took another glance
+back and came to a halt.
+
+'He knew it now for a scarecrow.  He stood, and he stood, and he eyed
+it.
+
+'The scarecrow had a suit of clothes that was all tatters, and an old
+beaver hat.  It was the hat that took Nathan's fancy.  Beaver hats
+cost a deal of money in those days: but they had a knack of lasting,
+and Nathan had scarcely ever met with one, however old, that he
+couldn't sell for a few pence.  For a minute or so he stood there,
+letting his sense of business get the better of his fright; then he
+swallowed down the last doubt sticking in his throat, walked straight
+up to the scarecrow, and made a grab at the hat.
+
+'"Leave my head alone, can't you?" said the scarecrow.  And with that
+Mr Nathan dropped in a fit; yet not so quick but that before dropping
+he caught a straight blow full on the jaw.
+
+'When he came to, his coat was gone, and his bag, and his hats,
+including the scarecrow's.  But the rest of the scarecrow stood over
+him, with its arms stretched out just as before; and he picked
+himself up and ran from it.
+
+'As for the lad, by this time he had made the best of two miles
+towards Plymouth.  In his letter he apologised very prettily to my
+grandmother for not saying good-bye.  He owed his life to her, he
+said; but being taken unawares he had done the best he could in the
+circumstances.'
+
+
+
+MY CHRISTMAS BURGLARY.
+
+
+[_From the Memoirs of a Pierrot_.]
+
+I had come with high expectations, for Mr Felix, a bachelor of
+sixty-five, was reputed to have made for thirty years this particular
+cabinet his idol.  Any nabob or millionaire can collect.  Mr Felix,
+being moderately well to do, had selected.  He would have none but
+the best; and the best lay stored delicately on cotton-wool, ticketed
+with the tiniest handwriting, in a nest of drawers I could have
+unlocked with a hairpin.
+
+The topmost drawer contained scarabs (of which I am no connoisseur);
+the second some two dozen intaglios, and of these, by the light of my
+bull's-eye lantern, I examined five or six before sweeping the lot
+into my bag--Europa and the Bull, Ganymede in the eagle's claw, Agave
+carrying the head of Pentheus, Icarus with relaxed wing dropping
+headlong to a sea represented by one wavy line; each and all
+priceless.  In the third drawer lay an unset emerald, worth a king's
+ransom, a clasp of two amethysts, and a necklace of black pearls
+graduated to a hair's-breadth.  By this time I could see--I read it
+even in the exquisite parsimony of the collection--that I had to deal
+with an artist, and sighed that in this world artists should prey
+upon one another.  The fourth drawer was reserved for miniatures, the
+most of them circleted with diamonds: the fifth for snuff-boxes-gold
+snuffboxes bearing royal ciphers, snuff-boxes of tortoise-shell and
+gold, snuff-boxes of blue enamel set with diamonds.  A couple of
+these chinked together as they dropped into the bag.  The sound
+startled me, and I paused for a moment to look over my shoulder.
+
+The window stood open as I had left it.  Outside, in the windless
+frosty night, the snow on the house-roofs sparkled under a wintering
+moon now near the close of her first quarter.  But though the night
+was windless, a current of air poured into the room, and had set a
+little flame dancing in the fireplace where, three minutes ago, the
+sea-coals had held but a feeble glow, half-sullen.  Downstairs, in
+some distant apartment, fiddles were busy with a waltz tune,
+and a violoncello kept the beat with a low thudding pizzicato.
+For Mr Felix was giving a Christmas party.
+
+I turned from this hasty glance to pick up another snuff-box.
+As my fingers closed on it the music suddenly grew louder, and I
+looked up as the door opened, and a man stood on the threshold--a
+short, square-set man, dressed in black.
+
+'Eh?'  He gave a little start of surprise.  'No, no, excuse me, my
+friend, but you are seeking in the wrong cabinet.'
+
+Before I could pull myself together, he had stepped to the window and
+closed it.  'You had best keep quite still,' he said, 'and then we
+can talk.  There are servants on the stairs below, and should you
+attempt the way you came there are three constables just around the
+corner.  I hired them to regulate the carriage traffic: but now that
+the last guest has arrived, they will be cooling their heels for a
+spell; and I have a whistle.  I have also a pistol.'  With a turn of
+his hand he flung open a door in a dark armoire beside the window,
+dived a hand into its recesses, and produced the weapon.  'And it is
+loaded,' he added, still in the same business-like voice, in which,
+after his first brief exclamation, my ear detected no tremor.
+
+'By all means let us talk,' I said.
+
+He was crossing to the fireplace, but wheeled about sharply at the
+sound of my voice.  'Eh?  An educated man, apparently!'  Laying the
+pistol on the mantelshelf, he plucked a twisted spill of paper from a
+vase hard by, stooped, ignited it from the flame dancing in the
+sea-coals, and proceeded to light the candles in an old-fashioned
+girandole that overhung the fireplace.  There were five candles, and
+he lit them all.
+
+They revealed him a clean-shaven, white-haired man, meticulously
+dressed in black--black swallowtail coat, open waistcoat, and frilled
+shirt-front, on which his laundress must have spent hours of labour;
+closely fitting black knee-breeches, black silk stockings, black
+polished shoes.  They silhouetted, too, in the moment before he swung
+round on me, an enormous nose, like a punchinello's, and the outline
+of a shapely head, sufficiently massive to counterbalance and save it
+from caricature.  The size of the head again would have suggested
+deformity, but for the broad shoulders that carried it.  As he faced
+me squarely with his back to the hearth, his chest and shoulders
+narrowing to the hips of a runner, and still narrowing (though he
+stood astraddle) to ankles and feet that would not have disgraced a
+lady, he put me in mind of a matador I had seen years before, facing
+his bull in the ring at Seville.  The firelight behind them
+emphasised the neat outline of his legs.  He carried a black cloak on
+his left arm, and in his left hand an opera-hat, pressed flat against
+his left side.  In closing the window, in finding and producing the
+pistol, and again in lighting the candles, he had used his right hand
+only.
+
+'A gentleman?' he asked, contracting his brows and eyeing me.
+
+'Well,' said I, with an uncomfortable, nervous laugh, that itself
+accused my breeding, so inferior it was to the situation, 'possibly
+you are one of those who mix up the name with moral conduct--'
+
+'To some extent,' he answered, without seeming to interrupt.
+'Every one does, I fancy.'
+
+'At any rate I won't challenge it,' said I.  'But you may, if you
+will, call me a man of some education.  I was at Magdalen once, but
+left Oxford without taking my degree.'
+
+'Ah!'  He inclined his head a little to one side.  'Cards?'
+
+'Certainly not,' I answered with heat.  'I own that appearances are
+against me, but I was never that kind of man.  As a matter of fact,
+it happened over a horse.'
+
+He nodded.  'So you, too, though you won't challenge the name, have
+to mix up moral conduct with your disposition.  We draw the line
+variously, but every one draws it somewhere. . . . Magdalen, hey?
+If I mistake not, the foundationers of Magdalen--including, perhaps,
+some who were undergraduates with you--are assembled in the college
+hall at this moment to celebrate Christmas, and hear the choir sing
+Pergolese's "Gloria."'
+
+'The reminder hurts me,' said I--'if that be any gratification to
+you.'
+
+'A sentimentalist?'  Mr Felix's eyes twinkled.
+
+'Better and better!  I have the very job for you--but we will discuss
+that by-and-by.  Only let me say that you must have dropped on me,
+just now, from heaven--you really must.  But please don't make a
+practice of it!  I have invested too much in my curios; and others
+have invested more. . . . That snuff-box, for instance, which you
+were handling a moment ago . . . at one time in its history it cost--
+ay, and fetched--close on two hundred millions of money.'
+
+I began to have hopes that I was dealing with a madman.
+
+'Or rather,' he corrected himself, 'the money was paid for a pinch of
+the snuff it contains.  Open it carefully, if you please! and you
+will behold the genuine rappee, the very particles over which France
+fought with Austria.  What says Virgil?  '_Hi motus animorum atque
+heac cerlamina tanta Pulveris exigui jactu_'--yes, but in this
+instance, you see, the pinch of dust was the exciting cause.
+Sir, the Austrian ambassador, one fatal afternoon, refused to take
+from the box in your hand that which, three weeks later, and all too
+late, he would gladly have purchased with many millions.  Observe the
+imperial crown on the lid, with the bees around it, as if to
+illustrate Virgil's warning.  I bought the thing myself, sir, for six
+napoleons, off a dealer in the Rue du Fouarre: but the price will
+rise again.  Yes, certainly, I count on its fetching three hundred
+pounds at least when I have departed this life, and three hundred
+pounds will go some little way towards my monument.'
+
+'Your monument?' I echoed.
+
+He nodded again.  'In good time, my friend, you shall hear about it;
+for you make, I perceive, a good listener.  You have gifts, though
+you do less than justice to them.  Suffice it to say that I am a
+sentimentalist, like yourself.  I never married nor begat children;
+and I have but a shaky belief in the future state; but my
+sentimentality hankers after--you may even say it postulates--some
+kind of continuity.  I cannot discuss this here and now, for by the
+sound of the violins, the dance is coming to an end, and my guests
+will be growing impatient.  But you remember Samson's riddle?
+Well, out of my corpse (I trust) shall come forth honey: whereas out
+of yours, unless you employ your talents better--'  He broke off, and
+stepped close up to me.  'Ah, but excuse me,' he said, and reaching
+out a hand, caught me suddenly by the collar.
+
+The arrest--I made sure it was an arrest--took me unprepared, and
+threw me off my balance.  I broke away a pace, drawing back my fist
+to strike: and in that moment I felt his hand relax with a curious
+fluttering movement as though his fingers drummed on the back of my
+neck.  I heard him laugh too: and before I could hit out he sprang
+back, holding in his hand a white rabbit!
+
+'An old trick--eh?--and a simple one.'  He pressed out the spring of
+his opera hat, dropped the rabbit inside, dived his hand after it,
+and drew out two white rabbits by the ears.  'But it will amuse my
+young friends downstairs, and I practise this kind of thing at odd
+whiles.'
+
+He set the rabbits on the floor, where they gave themselves a shake,
+and hopped off towards the shelter of the window-curtains.
+
+'Now you are the very man I wanted,' said he, 'and I am going to make
+you sing for your supper.'  He stepped to the armoire, and drew out a
+long cloak of scarlet, furred with ermine.  'I had meant to wear this
+myself,' he went on; but stopped all of a sudden at sight of my face,
+and began to laugh quietly, in a way that made me long to take him by
+the throat.  'Dear me, dear me!  I understand!  Association of
+ideas--Court of Assize, eh?  But this is no judicial robe, my friend:
+it belongs to Father Christmas.  Here's his wig now--quite another
+sort of wig, you perceive--with a holly wreath around it.  And here's
+his beard, beautifully frosted with silver.'  He held wig and beard
+towards the window, and let the moonlight play over them.  'On with
+them, quick! . . . And the boots.'  Again he dived into the armoire,
+and produced a pair of Bluchers, the long ankle leathers gummed over
+with cotton-wool, to represent snow.  'It's lucky they reach a good
+way up the leg, seeing the cloak is a trifle short for a man of your
+inches.'  He stepped back a pace and surveyed me as I fitted on the
+beard.
+
+'There are punishments and punishments,' said I.  'And I hope,
+whatever your game may be, you will remember that there's punishment
+in dressing up like a tom-fool.'
+
+'Ah, but you'll catch the spirit of it!' he assured me: and then,
+rubbing his hands, he appeared to muse for a moment.  'I ought,' said
+he, with a glance towards the fireplace, 'I really ought to send
+Father Christmas down by way of the chimney.  The flue opens just
+above here, and I believe it would accommodate you; but I am not very
+sure if my housekeeper had it swept last spring.  No,' he decided,
+'the music has ceased, and we must lose no time.  I will spare you
+the chimney.'
+
+He called to his rabbits, picked them up as they came hopping from
+behind the curtains, popped them into his hat, shut it with a snap,
+and lo! they had vanished.
+
+'You'll excuse me,' I ventured, as he stepped to the door; 'but--but
+the--the few articles here in the bag--'
+
+'Oh, bring them along with you: bring them along by all means!
+We may have a present or two to make, down below.'
+
+From the head of the staircase we looked down into a hall gaily lit
+with paper lanterns.  Holly and ivy wreathed the broad balustrade,
+and the old pictures around the walls.  A bunch of mistletoe hung
+from a great chandelier that sparkled with hundreds of glass prisms,
+and under it a couple of footmen in gilt liveries and powder crossed
+at that moment with trays of jellies and syllabubs.
+
+They were well-trained footmen, too; for at sight of me descending
+the stairs in my idiotic outfit they betrayed no surprise at all.
+One of them set his tray down on a table, stepped neatly ahead as Mr
+Felix reached the lowest stair, and opened a door for us on the
+right.  I found myself at a stand on the threshold, blinking at a
+blaze of light, and staring up a perspective of waxed floor at a
+miniature stage which filled the far end of the room.  Light, as
+every one knows, travels farther than sound: were it not so, I should
+say that almost ahead of the blaze there broke on us a din of
+voices--of happy children's voices.  Certainly it stunned my ears
+before I had time to blink.
+
+The room was lined with children--scores of children: and some of
+them were gathered in little groups, and some of them, panting and
+laughing from their dance, had dropped into the chairs ranged along
+the walls.  But these were the minority.  The most of the guests lay
+in cots, or sat with crutches beside them, or with hands dropped in
+their laps.  These last were the blind ones.  I do not set up to be a
+lover of children: but the discovery that the most of these small
+guests were crippled hit me with a kind of pitiful awe; and right on
+top of it came a second and worse shock, to note how many of them
+were blind.
+
+To me these blind eyes were the only merciful ones, as Mr Felix
+beckoned Father Christmas to follow him up to the stage between the
+two lines of curious gazers.  'O--oh!' had been their first cry as
+they caught sight of me in the doorway: and 'O--oh!' I heard them
+murmuring, child after child, in long-drawn fugue, as we made our way
+up the long length of the room that winked detection from every
+candle, every reflector, every foot of its polished floor.
+
+We gained the stage together by a short stairway draped with flags.
+Mr Felix with a wave of his opera-hat, called on the orchestra to
+strike up 'A Fine Old English Gentleman' (meaning me or, if you like
+it, Father Christmas: and I leave you to picture the fool I looked).
+Then, stepping to the footlights, he introduced me, explaining that
+he had met me wandering upstairs, rifling his most secret drawers to
+fill my bag with seasonable presents for them.  Five or six times he
+interrupted his patter to pluck a cracker or a bon-bon out of my
+beard, and toss it down to his audience.  The children gasped at
+first, and stared at the magic spoil on the floor.  By-and-by one
+adventurous little girl crept forward, and picked up a cracker, and
+her cry of delight as she discovered that it was real, gave the
+signal for a general scramble.  Mr Felix continued his patter without
+seeming to heed it: but his hand went up faster and faster to my
+beard and wig, and soon the crackers were falling in showers.
+I saw children snatch them off the floor and carry them to their
+blind brothers and sisters, pressing them between the wondering,
+groping hands with assurance that they were real. . . . Mr Felix saw
+it too, and his flow of words ceased with a gulp, as though a
+flowing spring gurgled suddenly and withdrew itself underground.
+'I am a sentimentalist,' he said to me quickly, in a pause which
+nobody heeded; for by this time crackers were banging to right and
+left, and the children shouting together.  Their shouts rose to one
+yell of laughter as, recovering himself, he dived at my neck, and
+produced the two struggling rabbits.  His opera-hat opened with a
+snap, and in they went.  A second later it shut flat again, and they
+were gone, into thin air.  He opened the hat with a puzzled frown,
+plunged a hand, and dragged forth yard upon yard of ribbon--red,
+green, white, blue, yellow ribbon, mixed up with packs of playing
+cards that, with a turn of the hand he sent spinning into air, to
+fall thick as leaves in Vallombrosa.
+
+'Your turn!' he panted as, at the end of the ribbon he lugged out an
+enormous cabbage, and trundled it down the room.  Catching my bag
+from me, he shook his cloak over it once, and returned it to my
+hands, bulging, stuffed full to the brim with toys--dolls, tops,
+whips, trumpets, boxes of animals, boxes of tin soldiers. . . .
+
+'Father Christmas, now!  Make way for Father Christmas!'
+
+The infection took me, and stumbling down from the stage by the
+stairway, I fell to distributing the largesse left and right.
+The first bagful carried me less than a third of the way down the
+room: for I gave with both hands, and, when a blind child fumbled
+long with a toy, dropped it at his feet, and tried another, and yet
+another till his smile suited me.  The dropped toys lay where they
+had fallen.  The spirit of the game had made me reckless; and I
+halted with a cold shiver as my fingers touched the gems at the
+bottom of the bag, and, looking down the room, I was aware that my
+store was exhausted, and as yet two-thirds of the children had
+received no gift.  I turned--all in a cold shiver--to retrace my
+steps and pick up the toys at the blind children's feet, and as I did
+so, felt myself a bungler past pardon.  But in the act of turning, I
+cast a look back at the stage: and there stood Mr Felix, nodding
+approval and beckoning.  So, as in a dream, I went back, 'Capital!'
+was his only comment.  Taking my bag, he passed his cloak over it
+again, and again handed it to me, stuffed to the brim.
+
+Thrice I returned to him; but the third refill was a scanty one,
+since by this time there lacked but half a score of the taller
+children to be satisfied.  To these, too, I distributed their gifts,
+and when every eager pair of hands had been laden, I wheeled about
+for the next word of command.
+
+But Mr Felix had skipped down from the stage, letting the curtain
+fall behind him.  He stood with his back to me, waving both arms to
+the orchestra; and as the musicians plunged at the opening bars of
+the Toy Symphony, the curtain rose, almost as soon as it had dropped;
+and rose upon a scene representing a street with shops decked for
+Christmas, and snow upon their eaves and window ledges.
+
+Then, still to the strains of the Toy Symphony, a Harlequin ran in,
+with a Columbine, whom he twisted upon his bent knee, and tossed
+lightly through the upper window of a baker's shop, himself diving a
+moment later, with a slap of his wand, through the flap of the
+fishmonger's door, hard by.  Next, as on a frozen slide, came the
+Clown, with red-hot poker, the Pantaloon tripping over his stick, and
+two Constables wreathed in strings of sausages.  The Clown boxed the
+Pantaloon's ears; the Pantaloon passed on the buffet to the
+Constables, and all plunged together into the fishmonger's.
+The Clown emerged running with a stolen plaice, passed it into the
+hands of the Pantaloon, who followed, and was in turn pursued off the
+scene by the Constables: but the fishmonger, issuing last in chase,
+ran into the Clown, who caught up a barrel of red herrings and
+bonneted him.  The fishmonger extricated himself, and the two began
+to pelt each other with herrings, while the children screamed with
+laughter. . . .
+
+It was a famous harlequinade; and, as usual, it concluded the
+entertainment.  For after a harlequinade, what can stand between a
+child and happy dreams?--especially if he go to them with his arms
+full of Christmas presents.  Five minutes after the curtain had
+fallen I found myself standing beside Mr Felix in the hall, while he
+bade good-night to his guests.  Carriages of his hiring had arrived
+for them, and the coachmen apparently had received their orders.
+A dozen well-trained nurses moved about the hall, and, having dressed
+the little ones--who by this time were almost too drowsy with
+pleasure to thank their entertainer--carried them out into the
+portico, where the liveried footmen stood by the carriage doors.
+Slam! went the doors, and one after another--with scarcely a word of
+command-the carriages bowled off over the thick snow.
+
+When the last guest had gone, Mr Felix turned to me.
+
+'The play is over,' said he.  'When I am gone, it will be repeated
+year after year at Christmas, at the Cripples' Hospital.  My will
+provides for that, and that will be my monument.  But for a few years
+to come I hope to hold the entertainment here, in my own house.
+Come, you may take off your robe and wig and go in peace.  I would
+fain have a talk with you, but I am tired, as perhaps you may guess.
+Go, then--and go in peace!'
+
+Motioning the footman to fall back, he walked out with me and down
+the steps of the portico; but halted on the lowest step by the edge
+of the frozen snow, and with a wave of the hand dismissed me into the
+night.
+
+I had gained the end of the street and the bridge that there spans
+the river before it occurred to me that I was carrying my bag, and--
+with a shock--that my bag still held the stolen jewels.
+
+By the second lamp on the bridge I halted, lifted the bag on to the
+snow-covered parapet, thrust in a hand, and drew forth--a herring!
+
+Herrings--red herrings--filled the bag to the brim.  I dragged them
+forth, and rained handful after handful overboard into the black
+water.  Still, below them, I had hopes to find the jewels.  But the
+jewels were gone.  At least, I supposed that all were gone, when--
+having jettisoned the last herring--I groped around the bottom of the
+bag.
+
+Something pricked my finger.  I drew it out and held it under the
+lamp-light.  It was a small turquoise brooch, set around with
+diamonds.
+
+For at least two minutes I stared at it, there, under the lamp; had
+slipped it half-way into my waistcoat pocket; but suddenly took a new
+resolve, and walked back along the street to the house.
+
+Mr Felix yet stood on the lower step of the portico.  Above him,
+still as a statue, a footman waited at the great house-door, until it
+should please his master to re-enter.
+
+'Excuse me, sir--' I began, and held up the brooch.
+
+'I meant it for you,' said Mr Felix quietly, affably.  'I gave
+precisely five pounds for it, at an auction, and I warn you that
+it is worth just thrice that sum.  Still, if you would prefer
+ready-money, as in your circumstances I dare say you do,--he felt in
+his breeches pocket--'here are the five sovereigns, and--once more--
+go in peace.'
+
+
+
+THE MAYOR'S DOVECOT: A CAUTIONARY TALE.
+
+
+In the first quarter of the nineteenth century there lived at Dolphin
+House, Troy, a Mr Samuel Pinsent, ship-chandler, who by general
+consent was the funniest fellow that ever took up his abode in the
+town.  He came originally from somewhere in the South Hams, but this
+tells us nothing, for the folk of the South Hams are a decent, quiet
+lot, and you might travel the district to-day from end to end without
+coming across the like of Mr Pinsent.
+
+He was, in fact, an original.  He could do nothing like an ordinary
+man, and he did everything jocosely, with a wink and a chuckle.
+To watch him, you might suppose that business was a first-class
+practical joke, and he invariably wound up a hard bargain by slapping
+his victim on the back.  Some called him Funny Pinsent, others The
+Bester.  Few liked him.  Nevertheless he prospered, and in 1827 was
+chosen mayor of the borough.
+
+In person, Mr Pinsent was spare and diminutive, with a bald head, a
+tuft of badger-gray hair over either ear, and a fresh-coloured,
+clean-shaven face, extraordinarily wrinkled about the face and at the
+corners of the eyes, which twinkled at you from under a pair of
+restless stivvery eyebrows.  You had only to look at them and note
+the twitch of his lips to be warned of the man's facetiousness.
+
+Mr Pinsent's office--for he had no shop-front, and indeed his
+stock-in-trade was not of a quality to invite inspection--looked out
+upon the Town Square; his back premises upon the harbour, across a
+patch of garden, terminated by a low wall and a blue-painted
+quay-door.  I call it a garden because Mr Pinsent called it so; and,
+to be sure, it boasted a stretch of turf, a couple of flower-beds, a
+flagstaff, and a small lean-to greenhouse.  But casks and coils of
+manilla rope, blocks, pumps, and chain-cables, encroached upon the
+amenities of the spot--its pebbled pathway, its parterres, its raised
+platform overgrown with nasturtiums, where Mr Pinsent sat and smoked
+of an evening and watched the shipping; the greenhouse stored sacks
+of ship-bread as well as pot-plants; and Mrs Salt, his housekeeper
+(he was unmarried), had attached a line to the flagstaff, and aired
+the washing thereon.
+
+But the pride of the garden was its dovecote, formed of a large
+cider-barrel on a mast.  The barrel was pierced with pigeon-holes,
+and fitted with ledges on which the birds stood to preen themselves.
+Mr Pinsent did not profess himself a fancier.  His columbarium--a
+mixed collection of fantails and rocketers--had come to him by a
+side-wind of business, as offset against a bad debt; but it pleased
+him to sit on his terrace and watch the pretty creatures as they
+wheeled in flight over the harbour and among the masts of the
+shipping.  They cost him nothing to keep, for he had always plenty of
+condemned pease on hand; and they multiplied in peace at the top of
+their mast, which was too smooth for any cat to climb.
+
+One summer's night, however, about midway in the term of his
+mayoralty, Mr Pinsent was awakened from slumber by a strange sound of
+fluttering.  It came through the open window from the garden, and
+almost as he sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes it warned him that
+something serious was amiss with his dovecote.  He flung off the
+bed-clothes and made a leap for the window.
+
+The night was warm and windless, with a waning moon in the east, and
+as yet no tremble of the dawn below it.  Around the foot of the
+dovecote the turf lay in blackest shadow; but a moon-ray overtopping
+the low ridge of Mr Garraway's back premises (Mr Pinsent's next-door
+neighbour on the left), illuminated the eastern side of the barrel,
+the projecting platform on which it rested, and a yard or more of the
+mast, from its summit down--or, to be accurate, it shed a pale
+radiance on a youthful figure, clinging there by its legs, and upon a
+hand and arm reaching over the platform to rob the roost.
+
+'You infernal young thief!' shouted Mr Pinsent.
+
+As his voice broke upon the night across the silent garden, the hand
+paused suddenly in the act of dragging forth a pigeon which it had
+gripped by the neck.  The bird, almost as suddenly set free, flapped
+across the platform, found its wings and scuffled away in flight.
+The thief--Mr Pinsent had been unable to detect his features-slid
+down the mast into darkness, and the darkness, a moment later, became
+populous with whispering voices and the sound of feet stealing away
+towards the yet deeper shadow of Mr Garraway's wall.
+
+'Who goes there?' challenged Mr Pinsent again.  'Villains! Robbers!
+You just wait till I come down to you!  I've a gun here, by George!
+and if you don't stand still there and give me your names--'
+
+But this was an empty threat.  Mr Pinsent, though nothing of a
+sportsman, did indeed possess a gun, deposited with him years ago as
+security against a small loan.  But it hung over the office
+chimney-piece downstairs, and he could not have loaded it, even if
+given the necessary powder and shot.  Possibly the boys guessed this.
+At any rate, they made no answer.
+
+Possibly, too (for a white nightcap and nightshirt were discernible
+in almost pitchy darkness), they saw him strut back from the window
+to slip downstairs and surprise them.  Mr Pinsent paused only to
+insert his feet into a pair of loose slippers, and again, as he
+unbolted the back door, to snatch a lantern off its hook.  Yet by the
+time he ran out upon the garden the depredators had made good their
+escape.
+
+He groped inside the lantern for the tinder-box, which lay within,
+handy for emergencies; found it, and kneeling on the grass-plot
+beside the mast, struck flint upon steel.  As he blew upon the tinder
+and the faint glow lit up his face and nightcap, a timorous
+exclamation quavered down from one of the upper windows.
+
+'Oh, sir!  Wha--whatever is the matter?'  It was the voice of Mrs
+Salt, the housekeeper.
+
+For a moment Mr Pinsent did not answer.  In the act of thrusting the
+brimstone match into the lantern his eye had fallen on a white object
+lying on the turf and scarcely a yard away--a white fan-tail pigeon,
+dead, with a twisted neck.  He picked up the bird and stared around
+angrily into the darkness.
+
+'Robbery is the matter, ma'am,' he announced, speaking up to the
+unseen figure in the window.  'Some young ruffians have been stealing
+and killing my pigeons.  I caught 'em in the act, and a serious
+matter they'll find it.'  Here Mr Pinsent raised his voice, in case
+any of the criminals should be lurking within earshot.  'I doubt,
+ma'am, a case like this will have to go to the assizes.'
+
+'Hadn't you better put something on?' suggested another voice, not
+Mrs Salt's, from somewhere on the left.
+
+'Eh?'  Mr Pinsent wheeled about and peered into the darkness.
+'Is that you, Garraway?'
+
+'It is,' answered Mr Garraway from his bedroom window over the wall.
+'Been stealin' your pigeons, have they?  Well, I'm sorry; and yet in
+a way 'tis a relief to my mind.  For, first along, seeing you, out
+there, skipping round in your shirt with a lantern, I'd a fear you
+had been taken funny in the night!'
+
+'Bless the man!' said Mr Pinsent.  'Do you suppose I'd do this for a
+joke?'
+
+I don't know,' responded Mr Garraway, with guarded candour.
+'I feared it.  But, of course, if they've stolen your pigeons, 'tis
+another matter.  A very serious matter, as you say, and no doubt your
+being mayor makes it all the worse.'
+
+Now this attitude of Mr Garraway conveyed a hint of warning, had Mr
+Pinsent been able to seize it.  The inhabitants of Troy have, in
+fact, a sense of humour, but it does not include facetiousness.
+On the contrary, facetiousness affronts and pains them.  They do not
+understand it, and Mr Pinsent understood nothing else.  Could he have
+been told that for close upon twenty years he had been afflicting his
+neighbours with the pleasantries he found so enjoyable, his answer
+had undoubtedly been 'The bigger numskulls they!' But now his doom
+was upon him.
+
+He ate his breakfast that morning in silence.  Mrs Salt, burning to
+discuss the robbery, set down the dishes with a quite unnecessary
+clatter, but in vain.  He scarcely raised his head.
+
+'Indeed, sir, and I've never known you so upset,' she broke out at
+length, unable to contain herself longer.  'Which I've always said
+that you was wonderful, the way you saw the bright side of everything
+and could pass it off with a laugh.'
+
+'Good Lord!' said Mr Pinsent testily.  'Did I ever call midnight
+robbery a laughing matter?'
+
+'No--o,' answered Mrs Salt, yet as one not altogether sure.
+'And I dare say your bein' mayor makes you take a serious view.'
+
+Breakfast over, the mayor took hat and walking-stick for his
+customary morning stroll along the street to Butcher Trengrove's to
+choose the joint for his dinner and pick up the town's earliest
+gossip.  It is Troy's briskest hour; when the dairy carts, rattling
+homeward, meet the country folk from up-the-river who have just
+landed at the quays and begun to sell from door to door their poultry
+and fresh eggs, vegetables, fruit, and nosegays of garden flowers;
+when the tradesmen, having taken down their shutters, stand in the
+roadway, admire the effect of their shop-windows and admonish the
+apprentices cleaning the panes; when the children loiter and play at
+hop-scotch on their way to school, and the housewives, having packed
+them off, find time for neighbourly clack over the scouring of
+door-steps.
+
+It might be the mayor's fancy and no more, but it certainly appeared
+to him that the children smiled with a touch of mockery as they met
+him and saluted.  For aught he knew any one of these grinning imps--
+confound 'em!--might be implicated in the plot.  The townsmen gave
+him 'good-morning' as usual, and yet not quite as usual.  He felt
+that news of the raid had won abroad; that, although shy of speaking,
+they were studying his face for a sign.  He kept it carefully
+cheerful; but came near to losing his temper when he reached
+Trengrove's shop to find Mr Garraway already there and in earnest
+conversation with the butcher.
+
+'Ah! good-mornin' again! I was just talkin' about you and your
+pigeons,' said Mr Garraway, frankly.
+
+'Good-morning, y'r Worship,' echoed Butcher Trengrove.  'And what can
+I do for y'r Worship this fine morning?  I was just allowin' to Mr
+Garraway here that, seein' the young dare-devils had left you a bird
+with their compliments, maybe you'd fancy a nice cut of rumpsteak to
+fill out a pie.'
+
+'This isn't exactly a laughing matter, Mr Trengrove.'
+
+'No, no, to be sure!' Butcher Trengrove composed his broad smile
+apologetically.  But, after a moment, observing Mr Pinsent's face and
+that (at what cost he guessed not) it kept its humorous twist, he let
+his features relax.  'I was allowin' though, that if any man could
+get even with a bit of fun, it would be y'r Worship.'
+
+'Oh, never fear but I'll get even with 'em,' promised his Worship,
+affecting an easiness he did not feel.
+
+'Monstrous, though! monstrous!' pursued the butcher.  'The boys of
+this town be gettin' past all control.  Proper young limbs, I call
+some of 'em.'
+
+'And there's the fellow that's to blame,' put in Mr Garraway, with a
+nod at a little man hurrying past the shop, on the opposite pavement.
+This was Mr Lupus, the schoolmaster, on his way to open school.
+'Hi! Mr Lupus!'
+
+Mr Lupus gave a start, came to a halt, and turned on the shop door a
+pair of mildly curious eyes guarded by moon-shaped spectacles.
+Mr Lupus lived with an elderly sister who kept a bakehouse beside the
+Ferry Landing, and there in extra-scholastic hours he earned a little
+money by writing letters for seamen.  His love-letters had quite a
+reputation, and he penned them in a beautiful hand, with flourishes
+around the capital letters; but in Troy he passed for a person of
+small account.
+
+'I--I beg your pardon, gentlemen!  Were you calling to me?' stammered
+Mr Lupus.
+
+'Good-morning, Lupus!'  The mayor nodded to him.  'We were just
+saying that you bring up the boys of this town shamefully.  Yes, sir,
+shamefully.'
+
+'No, indeed, your Worship,' protested Mr Lupus, looking up with a
+timid smile, as he drew off his spectacles and polished them.
+'Your Worship is pleasant with me.  I do assure you, gentlemen, that
+my boys are very good boys, and give me scarcely any trouble.'
+
+'That's because you sit at school in your daydreams, and don't take
+note of the mischief that goes on around you.  A set of anointed
+young scoundrels, Mr Lupus!'
+
+'You don't mean it, sir.  Oh, to be sure you don't mean it! Your
+Worship's funny way of putting things is well known, if I may say so.
+But they are good boys, on the whole, very good boys; and you should
+see the regularity with which they attend.  I sometimes wish--meaning
+no offence--that you gentlemen of position in the town would drop in
+upon us a little oftener.  It would give you a better idea of us,
+indeed it would.  For my boys are very good boys, and for regularity
+of attendance we will challenge any school in Cornwall, sir, if you
+will forgive my boasting.'
+
+Now this suggestion of Mr Lupus, though delicately put, and in a
+nervous flutter, ought by rights to have hit the mayor and Mr
+Garraway hard; the pair of them being trustees of the charity under
+which the Free Grammar School was administered.  But in those days
+few public men gave a thought to education, and Mr Lupus taught
+school, year in and year out, obedient to his own conscience, his own
+enthusiasms; unencouraged by visitation or word of advice from his
+governors.
+
+The mayor, to be sure, flushed red for a moment; but Mr Garraway's
+withers were unwrung.
+
+'That don't excuse their committing burglary and stealing his
+Worship's pigeons,' said he.  Briefly he told what had happened.
+
+Mr Lupus adjusted and readjusted his spectacles, still in a nervous
+flurry.
+
+'You surprise me, gentlemen.  It is unlike my boys--unlike all that I
+have ever believed of them.  You will excuse me, but if this be true,
+I shall take it much to heart.  So regular in attendance, and--
+stealing pigeons, you say?  Oh, be sure, sirs, I will give them a
+talking-to--a severe talking-to--this very morning.'
+
+The little schoolmaster went his way down the street in a flutter.
+Mr Pinsent stared after him abstractedly.
+
+'That man,' said he, after a long pause, 'ought to employ some one to
+use his cane for him.'
+
+With this, for no apparent reason, his eye brightened suddenly.
+But the source of his inspiration he kept to himself.  His manner was
+jocular as ever as he ordered his steak.
+
+On his way home he knocked at the door of the town sergeant, Thomas
+Trebilcock, a septuagenarian, more commonly known as Pretty Tommy.
+The town sergeant was out in the country, picking mushrooms; but his
+youngest granddaughter, who opened the door, promised to send him
+along to the mayor's office as soon as ever he returned.
+
+At ten o'clock, or a little later, Pretty Tommy presented himself,
+and found Mr Pinsent at his desk engaged in complacent study of a
+sheet of manuscript, to which he had just attached his signature.
+
+'I think this will do,' said Mr Pinsent, with a twinkle, and he
+recited the composition aloud.
+
+Pretty Tommy, having adjusted his horn spectacles, took the paper and
+read it through laboriously.
+
+'You want me to cry it through the town?'
+
+'Certainly.  You can fetch your bell, and go along with it at once.'
+
+'Your Worship knows best, o' course.'  Pretty Tommy appeared to
+hesitate.
+
+'Why, what's wrong with it?'
+
+'Nothin',' said Tommy, after a slow pause and another perusal, 'only
+'tis unusual--unusual, and funny at the same time; an' that's always
+a risk.'  He paused again for a moment, and his face brightened.
+'But there!' he said, ''tis a risk you're accustomed to by this
+time.'
+
+Half an hour later the sound of the town sergeant's bell at the end
+of the street called tradesmen from their benches and housewives from
+their kitchens to hear the following proclamation, to which Tommy had
+done honour by donning his official robe (of blue, gold-laced) with a
+scarlet pelisse and a cocked hat.  A majestic figure he made, too,
+standing in the middle of the roadway with spectacles on nose, and
+the great handbell tucked under his arm--
+
+                       'O YES! O YES! O YES!
+
+     'Take you all notice: that whereas some evil-disposed boys did
+      last night break into the premises of Samuel Pinsent,
+      Worshipful Mayor of this Borough, and did rob His Worship of
+      several valuable pigeons; His Worship hereby offers a reward of
+      Five Shillings to the parent or parents of any such boy as will
+      hand him over, that the Mayor may have ten minutes with him in
+      private.  Amen.
+
+                       'GOD SAVE THE KING!'
+
+Mr Pinsent, seated in his office, heard the bell sounding far up the
+street, and chuckled to himself.  He chuckled again, peering through
+his wire blinds, when Pretty Tommy emerged upon the square outside
+and took his stand in the middle of it to read the proclamation.
+It collected no crowd, but it drew many faces to the windows and
+doorways, and Mr Pinsent observed that one and all broke into grins
+as they took the humour of his offer.
+
+He rubbed his hands together.  He had been angry to begin with; yes--
+he would confess it--very angry.  But he had overcome it and risen to
+his reputation.  The town had been mistaken in thinking it could put
+fun on him.  It was tit-for-tat again, and the laugh still with
+Samuel Pinsent.
+
+He ate his dinner that day in high good humour, drank a couple of
+glasses of port, and retired (as his custom was on warm afternoons)
+to his back-parlour, for an hour's siesta.  Through the open window
+he heard the residue of his pigeons murmuring in their cotes, and the
+sound wooed him to slumber.  So for half an hour he slept, with an
+easy conscience, a sound digestion, and a yellow bandanna
+handkerchief over his head to protect him from the flies.  A tapping
+at the door awakened him.
+
+'There's a woman here--Long Halloran's wife, of Back Street--wishes
+to see you, sir,' announced the voice of Mrs Salt.
+
+'Woman!' said the mayor testily.  'Haven't you learned by this time
+that I'm not to be disturbed after dinner?'
+
+'She said her business was important, sir.  It's--it's about the
+pigeons,' explained Mrs Salt.
+
+And before he could protest again, Mrs Halloran had thrust her way
+into the room and stood curtseying, with tears of recent weeping upon
+her homely and extremely dirty face.  Behind her shuffled a lanky,
+sheepish-eyed boy, and took up his stand at her shoulder with a look
+half-sullen, half-defiant.
+
+'It's about my Mike, sir,' began Mrs Halloran, in a lachrymose voice,
+and paused to dab her eyes with a corner of her apron.  'Which I'm
+sure, sir, we ought to be very grateful to you for all your kindness
+and the trouble you're takin', and so says the boy's father.
+For he's growin' up more of a handful every day, and how to manage
+him passes our wits.'
+
+'Are you telling me, Mrs Halloran, that this boy of yours is the
+thief who stole my pigeons?'
+
+Mr Pinsent, looking at the boy with a magisterial frown, began to
+wish he had not been quite so hasty in sending round the town
+sergeant.
+
+'You did, didn't you, Mike?' appealed Mrs Halloran.  And Mike,
+looking straight before him, grunted something which might pass for
+an admission.  'You must try to overlook the boy's manner, sir.
+He's case-hardened, I fear, and it goes sore to a mother's heart that
+ever I should rear up a child to be a thief.  But as Halloran said to
+me, "Take the young limb to his Worship," Halloran says, "and maybe a
+trifle of correction by a gentleman in his Worship's position will
+have some effect," he says.  But I hope, sir, you won't visit all the
+punishment on Mike, for he didn't do it alone; and though I'm not
+sayin' he don't deserve all he gets, 'tisn't fair to make him the
+only scapegoat--now is it, sir?'
+
+'My good woman, I--I have no such intention,' stammered the mayor,
+glancing at the lad again, and liking his appearance worse than ever.
+
+'I thank your Worship.' Mrs Halloran dropped a quick curtsey.
+'And so I made free to tell Halloran, who was in doubt of it.
+"Mr Pinsent," I said, "is a just-minded man, an' you may be sure," I
+said, "he'll mete out the same to all, last as well as first."'
+
+'Yes, yes!'  The mayor took her up impatiently and paused for a
+moment, still eyeing the boy.  'Er--by the way, what age is your
+son?'
+
+'Rising fifteen, sir; christened fifteen years ago last St Michael's
+Day, which is the twenty-ninth of September, though little good it
+done him.  He takes after his father, sir.  All the Hallorans shoot
+up tall, like runner beans; and thick in the bone.  Or so his father
+says.  For my part, I've never been to Ireland; but by the looks of
+en you'd say not a day less than seventeen.  It seems like
+blood-money, my takin' five shillin' and handin' the child over--at
+his tender age--and me his own mother that nursed en!'
+
+Here Mrs Halloran, whose emotions had been mastering her for some
+moments, broke down in a violent fit of sobbing; and this so affected
+her offspring that he emitted a noise like the hoot of a dog.
+As he started it without warning, so abruptly he ended it, and looked
+around with an impassive face.
+
+It was uncanny.  It shook the mayor's nerve.  'My dear Mrs Halloran,
+if you will let me have a word or two with your son--'
+
+'Oh, I know!' she wailed.  'That's how you put it.  But you give me
+over the money, sir, and let me go quick, before I weaken on it.
+You never had a child of your own, Mr Pinsent--and more's the pity
+for the child--but with one of your own you'd know what it feels
+like!'
+
+Mr Pinsent felt in his trouser-pocket, drew forth two half-crowns,
+and pressed them into Mrs Halloran's dirty palm.  With a sob and a
+blessing she escaped.  He heard her run sobbing down the passage to
+the front door.  Then he turned upon Mike.
+
+The boy had sidled round with his back against the wall, and stood
+there with his left elbow up and his fists half clenched.  For the
+space of half a minute the mayor eyed him, and he eyed the mayor.
+
+'Sit down, Mike,' said the mayor gently.
+
+'Goo!  What d'ye take me for?' said Mike, lifting his hands a little.
+
+'Sit down, I tell you.'
+
+'Huh--yes, an' let you cop me over the head?  You just try it--that's
+all; you just come an' try it?'
+
+'I--er--have no intention of trying it,' said Mr Pinsent.
+'It certainly would not become me to administer--to inflict--corporal
+punishment on a youth of your--er--inches.  What grieves me--what
+pains me more than I can say, is to find a boy of your--er-size
+and er--development--by which I mean mental development, sense of
+responsibility--er--mixed up in this disgraceful affair.
+I had supposed it to be a prank, merely--a piece of childish
+mischief--and that the perpetrators were quite small boys.'
+(Here--not a doubt of it--Mr Pinsent was telling the truth.)
+
+'Why,' he went on, with the air of one making a pleasant little
+discovery, 'I shouldn't be surprised to find you almost as tall as
+myself!  Yes.  I declare I believe you are quite as tall!  No'-he
+put up a hand as Mike, apparently suspecting a ruse, backed in a
+posture of defence--'we will not take our measures to-day.  I have
+something more serious to think about.  For you will have noticed
+that while I suspected this robbery to be the work of small
+thoughtless boys, I treated it lightly; but now that I find a great
+strapping fellow like you mixed up in the affair, it becomes my
+business to talk to you very seriously indeed.'
+
+And he did.  He sat down facing Mike Halloran across the table, and
+read him a lecture that should have made any boy of Mike's size
+thoroughly ashamed of himself; and might have gone on admonishing for
+an hour had not Mrs Salt knocked again at the door.
+
+'If you please,' announced Mrs Salt, 'here's the Widow Barnicutt from
+the Quay to see you, along with her red-headed 'Dolphus.'
+
+'Which,' said the Widow Barnicutt, panting in at her heels and
+bobbing a curtsey, 'it's sorry I am to be disturbin' your Worship,
+and I wouldn't do it if his poor father was alive and could give 'em
+the strap for his good.  But the child bein' that out of hand that
+all my threats do seem but to harden him, and five shillin' a week's
+wage to an unprovided woman; and I hope your Worship will excuse the
+noise I make with my breathin', which is the assma, and brought on by
+fightin' my way through the other women.'
+
+Mr Pinsent gasped, and put up a hand to his brow.
+
+'The other women?' he echoed.  'What other women?'
+
+'The passage is full of 'em,' said Mrs Salt, much as though she were
+reporting that the house was on fire.
+
+'Ay,' said the widow, 'but my 'Dolphus is the guilty one--I got his
+word for it.'
+
+'There's Maria Bunny,' persisted Mrs Salt, beginning to tick off the
+list on her fingers, 'Maria Bunny with her Wesley John, and Mary
+Polly Polwarne with her Nine Days' Wonder, and Amelia Trownce with
+the twins, and Deb Hicks with the child she christened Nonesuch,
+thinkin' 'twas out of the Bible; and William Spargo's second wife
+Maria with her step-child, and Catherine Nance with her splay-footed
+boy that I can never remember the name of--'
+
+'Oh! send 'em away!' bawled Mr Pinsent.  'Send 'em away before their
+husbands come home from work and raise a riot!'  Then he recollected
+himself.  'No, fetch 'em all in here, from the street,' said he,
+dropping into a chair and taking his head in both hands.  'Fetch 'em
+all in, and let me deal with 'em!'
+
+
+The town, when it laughed over the story next day, found the cream of
+the joke in this--Bester Pinsent, in promising Mrs Halloran that her
+boy should but share punishment with the rest, had forgotten in his
+agitation of mind to stipulate that the reward should also be
+divided.  As it was, he had paid her the full five shillings, and the
+rest of the women (there were twenty-four) would be content with
+nothing less.
+
+But it was really little Mr Lupus, the schoolmaster, that--all
+unconsciously--had the last word.  Trotting past Butcher Trengrove's
+shop next morning, on his way to open school, Mr Lupus caught sight
+of his Worship standing within the doorway, halted, and came across
+the street with a nervous flush on his face.
+
+'Mr Mayor, sir, if I may have a word with you?  Begging your pardon,
+sir, but it lies on my conscience--all night, sir, it has been
+troubling me--that I boasted to you yesterday of my boys' good
+attendance.  Indeed, sir, it has been good in the past. But yesterday
+afternoon!  Oh, sir, I fear that you were right, after all, and
+something serious is amiss with the boys of this town!'
+
+I regret that I cannot report here the precise words of Mr Pinsent's
+reply.
+
+
+
+NEWS FROM TROY!
+
+
+Troy--not for the first time in its history--is consumed with
+laughter; laughter which I deprecate, while setting down as an
+impartial chronicler the occasion and the cause of it.
+
+You must know that our venerable and excellent squire, Sir Felix
+Felix-Williams, has for some years felt our little town getting, as
+he puts it, 'beyond him.'  He remembers, in his father's time, the
+grass growing in our streets.  The few vessels that then visited the
+port brought American timber-props for the mines out of which the
+Felix-Williams estate drew its royalties, and shipped in exchange
+small cargoes of emigrants whom, for one reason or another, that
+estate was unable to support.  It was a simple system, and Sir Felix
+has often in talk with me lamented its gradual strangulation, in his
+time, by the complexities of modern commerce.--You should hear, by
+the way, Sir Felix pronounce that favourite phrase of his 'in my
+time'; he does it with a dignified humility, as who should say,
+'Observe, I am of the past indeed, but I have lent my name to an
+epoch.'
+
+As a fact the access of a railway to our little port, the building of
+jetties for the china-clay trade, the development of our harbour
+which now receives over 300,000 tons of shipping annually--all these
+have, in ways direct and indirect, more than doubled the old
+gentleman's income.  But to do him justice, he regards this scarcely
+at all.  He sets it down--and rightly--to what he has taken to call
+on public occasions 'the expansion of our Imperial Greatness'; but in
+his heart of hearts he regrets his loosening hold on a population
+that was used to sit under his fig-tree and drink of his cistern.
+With their growth the working classes have come to prefer self-help
+to his honest regulation of their weal.  There has been no quarrel:
+we all love Sir Felix and respect him, though now and then we laugh
+at him a good deal.
+
+There has been no quarrel, I repeat.  But insensibly we have lost the
+first place in his affections, which of late years have concentrated
+themselves more and more upon the small village of Kirris-vean,
+around a corner of the coast.  By its mere beauty, indeed, any one
+might be excused for falling in love with Kirris-vean.  It lies,
+almost within the actual shadow of Sir Felix's great house, at the
+foot of a steep wooded coombe, and fronts with diminutive beach and
+pier the blue waters of our neighbouring bay.  The cottages are
+whitewashed and garlanded with jasmine, solanum, the monthly rose.
+Fuchsias bloom in their front gardens; cabbages and runner beans
+climb the hillside in orderly rows at their backs.  The women curtsey
+to a stranger; the men touch their hats; and the inhabitants are
+mostly advanced in years, for the young men and maidens leave the
+village to go into 'good service' with testimonials Sir Felix takes a
+delight to grant, because he has seen that they are well earned.
+If you were to stand at the cross-roads in the middle of Eaton Square
+and say 'Kirris-vean!' in a loud voice, it is odds (though I will not
+promise) that a score of faces would arise from underground and gaze
+out wistfully through area-railings.  For no one born in Kirris-vean
+can ever forget it.  But Kirris-vean itself is inhabited by
+grandparents and grandchildren (these last are known in Eaton Square
+as 'Encumbrances').  It has a lifeboat in which Sir Felix takes a
+peculiar pride (but you must not launch it unless in fine weather, or
+the crew will fall out).  It has also a model public-house, The Three
+Wheatsheaves, so named from the Felix-Williams' coat of arms.
+The people of Troy believe--or at any rate assert--that every one in
+Kirris-vean is born with a complete suit of gilt buttons bearing that
+device.
+
+Few dissipations ripple the gentle flow--which it were more
+descriptive perhaps to call stagnation--of life in that model
+village.  From week-end to week-end scarcely a boat puts forth from
+the shelter of its weed-coated pier; for though Kirris-vean wears the
+aspect of a place of fishery, it is in fact nothing of the kind.
+Its inhabitants--blue-jerseyed males and sun-bonneted females--sit
+comfortably on their pensions and tempt no perils of the deep.
+Why should they risk shortening such lives as theirs?  A few
+crab-pots--'accessories,' as a painter would say--rest on the beach
+above high-water mark, the summer through; a few tanned nets hang,
+and have hung for years, a-drying against the wall of the
+school-house.  But the prevalent odour is of honeysuckle.  The aged
+coxswain of the lifeboat reported to me last year that an American
+visitor had asked him how, dwelling remote from the railway, the
+population dealt with its fish.  'My dear man,' said I, 'you should
+have told him that you get it by Parcels' Post from Billingsgate.'
+
+I never know--never, in this life shall I discover--how rumour
+operates in Troy, how it arrives or is spread.  Early in August a
+rumour, incredible on the face of it, reached me that Kirris-vean
+intended a Regatta! . . . For a week I disbelieved it; for almost
+another week I forgot it; and then lo! Sir Felix himself called on me
+and confirmed it.
+
+A trio of young footmen (it appeared) had arrived in Kirris-vean to
+spend a holiday on board-wages--their several employers having gone
+northward for the grouse, to incommodious shooting-boxes where a few
+servants sufficed.  Finding themselves at a loose end (to use their
+own phrase for it) these three young men had hit on the wild--the
+happy--the almost delirious idea of a Regatta; and taking their
+courage in their hands had sought an interview with Sir Felix, to
+entreat his patronage for the scheme.  They had found him in his most
+amiable mood, and within an hour--the old gentleman is discursive--he
+had consented to become Patron and President and to honour the
+gathering with his presence.  But observe; the idea cannot have
+originated before August the 12th, on which day the trio arrived from
+London; yet a whisper of it had reached me on the 2nd or 3rd.
+I repeat that I shall never understand the operation of rumour in
+Troy.
+
+Sir Felix, having somewhat rashly given his consent, in a cooler hour
+began to foresee difficulties, and drove into Troy to impart them to
+me.  I know not why, on occasions of doubt and embarrassment such as
+this, he ever throws himself (so to speak) on my bosom; but so it is.
+The Regatta, he explained, ought to take place in August, and we were
+already arrived at the middle of the month, Tuesday the 24th had been
+suggested--a very convenient date for him: it was, as I might
+remember, the day before Petty Sessions, immediately after which he
+had as good as promised to visit his second son in Devonshire and
+attend the christening of an infant grandchild.  But would ten days
+allow us time to organise the 'events,' hire a band, issue the
+necessary posters, etc.?
+
+I assured him that, hard as it might drive us, the thing could be
+done.  'I shall feel vastly more confident,' he was good enough to
+say, 'if you will consent to join our Committee.'  And I accepted, on
+the prospect of seeing some fun.  But ah! could I have foreseen
+_what_ fun!
+
+'You relieve my mind, indeed. . . . And--er--perhaps you might also
+help us by officiating as starter and--er--judge, or timekeeper?'
+
+'Willingly,' said I; 'in any capacity the Committee may wish.'
+
+'They will be more inclined to trust the decisions of one who--er--
+does not live among them.'
+
+'Is that so?' said I.  'In Kirris-vean, one would have thought--but,
+after all, I shall have to forgo whatever public confidence depends
+on the competitors being unacquainted with me, since two-thirds of
+them will come to you from Troy.'
+
+'You are sure?'
+
+'Quite.  Has it not struck you, Sir Felix, that Kirris-vean--ideal
+spot for a regatta--has in itself neither the boats nor the men for
+one?'
+
+'We might fill up with a launch of the lifeboat,' he hazarded.
+
+'If one could only be certain of the weather.'
+
+'And a public tea, and a procession of the school children.'
+
+'Admirable,' I agreed.  'Never fear, we will make up a programme.'
+
+'Oh, and--er--by the way, Bates of the Wheatsheaf came to me this
+morning for an Occasional Licence.  He proposes to erect a booth in
+his back garden.  You see no objection?'
+
+'None at all.'
+
+'A most trustworthy man. . . . He could not apply, you see, at our
+last Petty Sessions because he did not then know that a regatta was
+contemplated; and the 25th will, of course, be too late.  But the
+licence can be granted under these circumstances by any two
+magistrates sitting together; and I would suggest that you and I--'
+
+'Certainly,' said I, and accompanied Sir Felix to the small room that
+serves Troy for an occasional courthouse, where we solemnly granted
+Bates his licence.
+
+There is a something about Sir Felix that tempts to garrulity, and I
+could fill pages here with an account of our preparations for the
+Regatta; the daily visits he paid me--always in a fuss, and five
+times out of six over some trivial difficulty that had assailed him
+in the still watches of the night; the protracted meetings of
+Committee in the upper chamber of the lifeboat-house at Kirris-vean.
+But these meetings, and the suggestions Sir Felix made, and the votes
+we took upon them, are they not recorded in the minute-book of the
+First and Last Kirris-vean Regatta?  Yes, thus I have to write it,
+and with sorrow: there will never be another Regatta in that Arcadian
+village.
+
+Sir Felix, good man, started with a fixed idea that a regatta
+differed from a Primrose Fete, if at all, then only in being
+non-political.  He could not get it out of his head that public
+speeches were of the essence of the festivity; and when, with all the
+tact at my command, I insisted on aquatics, he countered me by
+proposing to invite down a lecturer from the Navy League!  As he put
+it in the heat of argument, 'Weren't eight _Dreadnoughts_ aquatic
+enough for anybody?'  But in the voting the three young footmen
+supported me nobly.  _They_ wanted fireworks, and were not wasting
+any money on lecturers: also there was a feeling in Kirris-vean that,
+while a regatta could scarcely be held without boat-racing, the
+prizes should be just sufficient to attract competitors and yet on a
+scale provoking no one to grumble at the amount of subscribed money
+lost to the village.  A free public tea was suggested.  I resisted
+this largesse; and we compromised on 'No Charge for Bona-fide
+Schoolchildren'--whatever that might mean--and 'Fourpence a head for
+Adults.'
+
+The weather prospects, as the moment drew near, filled us with
+anxious forebodings, for the anti-cyclonic spell showed signs of
+breaking, and the Sunday and Monday wore lowering faces.  But Tuesday
+dawned brilliantly; and when after a hasty breakfast I walked over to
+Kirris-vean, I found Sir Felix waiting for me at the top of the hill
+in his open landau, with a smile on his face, a rose in his
+button-hole, and a white waistcoat that put all misgivings to shame.
+'A perfect day!' he called out with a wave of the hand.
+
+'A foxy one,' I suggested, and pointed out that the wind sat in a
+doubtful quarter, that it was backing against the sun, that it was
+light and might at any time die away and cheat us of our sailing
+matches.
+
+'Always the boats with you!' he rallied me; 'my dear sir, it is going
+to be perfect.  As the song says, "We've got the ships, we've got the
+men, and we've got the money too."  An entire success, you may take
+my word for it!'
+
+We descended the hill to find the village gay with bunting, the
+competing boats lying ready off the pier, a sizeable crowd already
+gathered, and the Committee awaiting us at the beach-head.  Each
+committee-man wore a favour of blue-and-white ribbon, and upon our
+arrival every hat flew off to Sir Felix, while the band played
+'See the Conquering Hero Comes!'
+
+It was, not to put too fine a point on the description, an atrocious
+band.  It had come from afar, from one of the inland china-clay
+villages, and in hiring it the Committee had been constant to its
+principle that no more money than was necessary should be allowed to
+go out of Kirris-vean.  Report--malicious, I feel sure--reached me
+later, that, at the first note of it, an aloe in Sir Felix's gardens,
+a mile away--a plant noted for blossoming once only in a hundred
+years-burst into profuse and instantaneous bloom.  Sir Felix himself,
+who abounded all day in happy turns of speech, said the best thing of
+this band.  He said it was _sui generis_.
+
+He was magnificent throughout.  I am not going to describe the
+Regatta, for sterner events hurry my pen forward.  So let me only say
+that the weather completely justified his cheery optimism; that the
+breeze, though slight, held throughout the sailing events, and then
+dropped, leaving the bay glassy as a lake for the rowers; that sports
+ashore--three-legged races, egg-and-spoon races, sack races, races
+for young men, races for old women, donkey races, a tug-of-war, a
+greasy pole, a miller-and-sweep combat--filled the afternoon until
+tea-time; that at tea the tables groaned with piles of saffron cake
+and cream 'splitters'; and that when the company had, in Homeric
+phrase--the only fit one for such a tea--put aside from them the
+desire of meat and drink, Sir Felix stood up and made a speech.
+
+'It was an admirable speech too.  It began with 'My dear friends,'
+and the exordium struck at once that paternal note which makes him,
+with all his foibles, so lovable.  'They' must excuse him if he now
+took his departure; for he had arrived at an age to feel the length
+of a long day--even of a happy summer's day such as this had been.
+To be innocently happy--that had used to be the boast of England, of
+"Merry England "; and he had ever prized happy living faces in
+Kirris-vean above the ancestral portraits--not all happy, if one
+might judge from their expressions--hanging on his walls at home.'
+(Prolonged applause greeted this; and deservedly, for he spoke no
+more than he meant.)  He became reminiscential, and singling out a
+school-child here and there, discoursed of their grandparents, even
+of their great-grandparents; recalled himself to pay a series of
+graceful tributes to all who had contributed to make the day a
+success; and wound up by regretting that he could not stay for the
+fireworks.
+
+Dear honest Sir Felix!  I can see him now, bareheaded, his white
+hairs lightly fluttered by the evening breeze that fluttered also the
+flags above Mr Bates's booth immediately in his rear; the sunset
+light on his broad immaculate waistcoat; the long tea-tables, with
+their rows of faces all turned deferentially towards him; the shadows
+slanting from the trees; the still expanse of the bay, and far across
+the bay a bank of clouds softly, imperceptibly marshalling.
+
+We cheered him to the echo, of course.  At his invitation I walked
+some way up the hill with him, to meet his carriage.  He halted three
+or four times in the road, still talking of the day's success.
+He was even somewhat tremulous at parting.
+
+'I shall see you to-morrow, at Tregantick?'--Tregantick is the centre
+of the eight parishes included in our Petty Sessional Division, and
+the seat of such justice as I and seven others help Sir Felix to
+administer.
+
+'Oh, assuredly,' said I.
+
+I watched his carriage as it rounded the bend of the road, and so
+faced about to return to the village.  But I took second thought at
+sight of the clouds massing across the bay and coming up--as it
+seemed to me against the wind.  They spelt thunder.  In spite of my
+early forebodings I had brought no mackintosh; my duties as a
+Committee-man were over: and I have reached an age when fireworks
+give me no more pleasure than I can cheerfully forgo or take for
+granted.  I had, having coming thus far on my homeward way, already
+more than half a mind to pursue it, when the band started to render
+the 'Merry Duchess' waltz, with reed instruments a semitone below the
+brass.  This decided me, and I reached my door as the first raindrops
+fell.
+
+When I awoke next morning it was still raining, and raining hard.
+The thunderstorm had passed; but a westerly wind, following hard on
+it, had collected much water from the Atlantic, and the heavens were
+thick as a blanket.  A tramp in the rain, however, seldom comes amiss
+to me, and I trudged the three miles to the court-house in very
+cheerful mood, now smoking, now pocketing my pipe to inhale those
+first delicious scents of autumn, stored up by summer for a long day
+of downpour.
+
+Our Court meets at 11.15, and I timed myself (so well I know the road
+in all weathers) to reach the magistrates' door on the stroke of the
+quarter.  Now Sir Felix, as Chairman, makes a point of arriving ten
+or fifteen minutes ahead of time, for a preliminary chat with the
+Clerk over the charge-sheet and any small details of business.
+I was astonished, therefore, when, turning at the sound of wheels, I
+beheld Sir Felix's carriage and pair descending the street behind me.
+'Truly the Regatta must have unsettled his habits,' I murmured; and
+then, catching the eye of one of the pair of constables posted at the
+door, I gazed again and stood, as some of my fellow-novelists say,
+'transfixed.'  For the driver on the box was neither Sir Felix's
+coachman, nor his second coachman, nor yet again one of his
+stablemen; but a gardener, and a tenth-down under-gardener at that;
+in fact, you could scarcely call him even an under-gardener, though
+he did odd jobs about the gardens.  To be short, it was Tommy Collins
+a hydrocephalous youth generally supposed to be half-baked, or, as we
+put it in Cornwall, 'not exactly'; and on his immense head, crowning
+a livery suit which patently did not belong to him, Tommy Collins
+wore a dilapidated billycock hat.
+
+As the carriage drew up I noted with a lesser shock that the harness
+was wrongly crossed: and with that, as one constable stepped forward
+to open the carriage door, I saw the other wink and make a sign to
+Tommy, who--quick-witted for once--snatched off his billycock and
+held it low against his thigh on the off-side, pretending to shake
+off the rain, but in reality using this device to conceal the horrid
+thing.  At the same time the other constable, receiving an umbrella
+which Sir Felix thrust forth, opened it with remarkable dexterity,
+and held it low over my friend's venerable head, thus screening from
+sight the disreputable figure on the box.  As a piece of smuggling it
+was extremely neat; but as I turned to follow I heard Tommy Collins
+ask, and almost with a groan,--
+
+'Wot's the use?'
+
+Four of our fellow-magistrates were already gathered in the little
+room at the rear of the court-house: of whom the first to greet our
+Chairman was Lord Rattley.  Lord Rattley, a peer with very little
+money and a somewhat indecorous past, rarely honours the Tregantick
+bench by attending sessions; but for once he was here, and at once
+started to banter Sir Felix on his unpunctuality.
+
+'Very sorry, gentlemen; very sorry--most inexplicable,' stuttered Sir
+Felix, who suffers from a slight impediment of the speech when
+hurried.  'Servants at home seemed--conspired--detain me.  Jukes'--
+Jukes is Sir Felix's butler, an aged retainer of the best pattern--
+'Jukes would have it, weather too inclement.  Poof!  I am not too
+old, I hope, to stand a few drops of rain.  Next he brings word that
+Adamson'--Adamson is (or was) Sir Felix's trusted coachman--
+'is indisposed and unable to drive me.  "Then I'll have Walters,"
+said I, losing my temper, "or I'll drive myself."  Jukes must be
+failing: and so must Walters be, for that matter.  We might have
+arrived ten minutes ago, but he drove execrably.'
+
+'Reminds me--' began Lord Rattley, when Sir Felix--who is ever
+nervous of that nobleman's reminiscences, and had by this time
+divested himself of his Inverness cape, turned to the Clerk and
+demanded news of a lad discharged at the last Sessions on his own and
+parents' recognisances, to be given another chance under the eye of
+our new Probation Officer.
+
+'--Of a coachman I once had called Oke--William Oke,' continued Lord
+Rattley imperturably.  'Drunken little sot he was, but understood
+horses.  One night I had out the brougham and drove into Bodmin to
+mess with the Militia.  The old Royal Cornwall Rangers messed at the
+hotel in those days, in the long room they used for Assemblies.
+About eleven o'clock I sent for my carriage, and along it came in due
+course.  Well, I dare say at that hour I wasn't myself in a condition
+to be critical of Oke's--'
+
+Sir Felix pulled out his watch, and asked me what I made the time.
+
+'Off we drove,' pursued Lord Rattley, ignoring this hint, 'and I must
+have dropped asleep at once.  When I awoke the blessed vehicle had
+come to a standstill.  I called to Oke--no answer: so by-and-by I
+opened the carriage door and stepped out.  The horses had slewed
+themselves in towards the hedge and were cropping peaceably: but no
+Oke was on the box and still no Oke answered from anywhere when I
+shouted.  He had, as a fact, tumbled clean off the box half a mile
+astern, and was lying at that moment in the middle of the road.
+At that hour I had no mind to look for him, so I collected the reins
+somehow, climbed up in front, and drove myself home.  I had a butler
+then by the name of Ibbetson--a most respectable man, with the face
+of a Bible Christian minister; and, thought I, on my way up the
+drive, "I'll give Ibbetson a small scare."  So coming to the porch,
+when Ibbetson heard the wheels and cast the door open, I kept my seat
+like a rock.  Pretty well pitch dark it was where I sat behind the
+lamps.  Ibbetson comes down the steps, opens the carriage door and
+stands aside.  After a moment he begins to breathe hard, pops his
+head into the brougham, then his arm, feels about a bit, and comes
+forward for a lamp.  "My God, Bill!" says Ibbetson, looking up at me
+in the dark.  "What have you done with th' ould devil?"'
+
+'I really think,' suggested Sir Felix hurriedly, 'we ought not to
+keep the Court waiting.'
+
+So in we filed, and the Court rose respectfully to its feet and stood
+while we took our seats.  The Superintendent of Police--an officer
+new to our Division--gazed at me with a perfectly stolid face across
+the baize-covered table.  Yet somehow it struck me that the
+atmosphere in Court was not, as usual, merely stuffy, but electrical;
+that the faces of our old and tried constabulary twitched with some
+suppressed excitement; and that the Clerk was fidgeting with an
+attack of nerves.
+
+'Certain supplementary cases, your Worship,' said he, taking a small
+sheaf of papers from the hands of his underling, 'too late to be
+included on the charge-sheet issued.'
+
+'Eh?--Oh, certainly--certainly!'  Sir Felix drew his spectacle case
+from his waistcoat pocket and laid it on the table; took the paper
+handed to him, and slipped it methodically beneath the sheet of
+agenda; resumed the business of extracting his spectacles, adjusted
+them, and gravely opened business.
+
+He had it all to himself.  For me, as I, too, received the paper of
+supplementary cases, my first thought was of simple astonishment at
+the length of the list.  Then my gaze stiffened upon certain names,
+and by degrees as I recognised them, my whole body grew rigid in my
+chair.  Samuel Sleeman--this was the Superintendent's name--appellant
+against Isaac Adamson, drunk and disorderly; Ditto against Duncan
+McPhae, drunk and disorderly; Ditto against Henry James Walters,
+drunk and disorderly; Ditto against Selina Mary Wilkins, drunk on
+licensed premises; Ditto against Mary Curtis, drunk on licensed
+premises; Ditto against Solomon Tregaskis, drunk on highway. . . .
+There were no less than twenty-four names on the list; and each was
+the name of a retainer or pensioner of Sir Felix--those aged
+Arcadians of Kirris-vean.
+
+I glanced along the table and winced as I met Sir Felix's eyes.
+He was inclining towards me.  'Five shillings and costs will meet
+this case, eh?' he was asking.  I nodded, though without a notion of
+what case we were hearing.  (It turned out to be one of
+cattle-straying, so no great harm was done.)  Beyond him I saw Lord
+Rattley covering an infernally wicked grin with his arched palm;
+beyond Lord Rattley two estimable magistrates staring at that fatal
+supplementary paper as though they had dined and this was a bill they
+found themselves wholly unable to meet.
+
+Sir Felix from time to time finds his awards of justice gently
+disputed.  No one disputed them to-day.  Lord Rattley, whose language
+is younger than his years, declared afterwards--between explosions of
+indecent mirth--that we left the floor to the old man, and he
+waltzed.  He fined three parents for not sending their children to
+school, made out an attendance order upon another, mulcted a youth in
+five shillings for riding a bicycle without a light, charged a navvy
+ten shillings and costs for use of indelicate language (total,
+seventeen and sixpence), and threatened, but did not punish, a farmer
+with imprisonment for working a horse 'when,' as the charge put it
+ambiguously, 'in an unfit state.'  He wound up by transferring an
+alehouse licence, still in his stride, beamed around and observed
+'That concludes our business, I think--eh, Mr Clerk?'
+
+'Supplementary cases, y'r Worship,' murmured the Clerk.  'If I may
+remind--paper handed to y'r Worship--'
+
+'Eh?  Yes, to be sure--'
+
+'Number of cases, drunk and disorderly: arising--as I understand--out
+of Regatta held yesterday at Kirris-vean.'
+
+The Superintendent arose.  He is an amazingly tall man, and it seemed
+to me that he took an amazingly long time in arising to his full
+height.
+
+'Impossible to accommodate them all in the cells, y'r Worship.
+If I may say so, the police were hard worked all night.
+Mercifully'--the Superintendent laid stress on the word, and I shall
+always, when I think of it, remember to thank him--'the most of 'em
+were _blind_.  We laid 'em out on the floor of the charge-room, and
+with scarcely an exception, as I am credibly informed, they've come
+to, more or less.'
+
+'Kirris-vean?'  I saw Sir Felix's hands grip the arms of his chair.
+Then he put them out and fumbled with his papers.  Lord Rattley
+obligingly pushed forward his copy of the list.
+
+'Shall I have the defendants brought into Court at once?' asked the
+Superintendent.  'The constables tell me that they are--er--mostly,
+by this time, in a condition to understand, for all practical
+purposes, the meaning of an oath.'
+
+Sir Felix has--as I have hinted--his foibles.  But he is an English
+gentleman and a man of courage.  He gasped, waved a hand, and sat up
+firmly.
+
+He must have needed courage indeed, as the sorry culprits filed into
+Court: for I verily believe he felt more shame than they, though
+their appearance might be held to prove this impossible.  The police
+at about eleven o'clock had raided the booth of that respectable
+landlord, Mr Bates ('Which,' observed the Superintendent, stonily,
+'we may 'ave somethink to say to 'im, as it were, by-and-by') and had
+culled some of them--even as one picks the unresisting primrose,
+others not without recourse to persuasion.  'Many of 'em,' the
+Superintendent explained, 'showed a liveliness you wouldn't believe.
+It was, in a manner of speaking, beyond anythink y'r Worships would
+expect.'  He paused a moment, cleared his throat, and achieved this
+really fine phrase: 'It was, for their united ages, in a manner of
+speaking, a knock-out.'
+
+I see them now as they filed into court--yellow in the gills, shaking
+between present fear and the ebb of excess.  But I see Sir Felix
+also, a trifle red in the face, gripping the arms of his chair,
+bending forward and confronting them.
+
+For a moment I imagined he meant to address them as a crowd.  But his
+fine sense of business prevailed, and he signed to the Clerk to read
+the first charge.
+
+He dealt with the charges, one by one, and in detail.  Alone he
+inflicted the fines, while we sat and listened with eyes glued upon
+the baize table.  And the fines were heavy--too heavy.  It was not
+for us to interfere.
+
+At the end I expected some few words of general rebuke.  I believe
+the culprits themselves would have been glad of a tongue-lashing.
+But he uttered none.  To the end he dealt out justice, none aiding
+him; and when the business was over, pushed back his chair.
+
+We filed out after him.  I believe that he has paid all the fines out
+of his own pocket.
+
+And Troy laughs.  But I believe it is safe to say that, while Sir
+Felix lives, Kirris-vean will not hold a second Regatta.
+
+
+
+COLONEL BAIGENT'S CHRISTMAS.
+
+
+Outside the railway station Colonel Baigent handed his carpet-bag to
+the conductor of the hotel omnibus, and stood for a moment peering
+about in the dusk, as if to take his bearings.
+
+'For The Dragon, sir?' asked the conductor.
+
+'The Dragon?'  Yes, certainly,' echoed Colonel Baigent, aroused by
+the name from the beginnings of a brown study.  'So The Dragon is
+still standing, eh?'
+
+''Twas standing all right when I left it, twenty minutes ago,' the
+man answered flippantly; for to-night was Christmas Eve, and English
+hotel servants do not welcome guests who stay over Christmas.
+
+But the colonel remarked nothing amiss in his tone.  In fact, he was
+not listening.  He stared out into the mirk beyond the flare of gas
+in the entrance-way, slowly bringing his mind to bear on the city at
+his feet, with its maze of dotted lights.  The afternoon had been
+cold and gusty, with now and then a squall of hail from the
+north-west.  The mass of the station buildings behind him blotted out
+whatever of daylight yet lingered.  Eastward a sullen retreating
+cloud backed the luminous haze thrown up from hundreds of
+street-lamps and shop-windows--a haze that faintly silhouetted the
+clustered roofs.  The roofs were wet.  The roadway, narrowing as it
+descended the hill, shone with recent rain.
+
+'You may carry down my bag,' said the colonel.  'I will walk.
+Somewhere to the right here should be a road leading to Westgate,
+eh?'
+
+'Tisn't the shortest way,' the conductor objected.
+
+'I have plenty of time,' said the colonel mildly.
+
+Indeed, a milder-looking man for a hero--he had earned and won his
+V.C.--or a gentler of address, could scarcely be conceived; or an
+older-fashioned.  His voice, to be sure, had a latent tone of
+command.  But the patient face, with its drooping moustache and long
+gray side-whiskers; the short yet attenuated figure, in a tweed suit
+of no particular cut; the round felt hat, cheap tie, and
+elastic-sided boots--all these failed very signally to impress the
+conductor, who flung the carpet-bag inside the omnibus with small
+ceremony, and banged the door.
+
+'Right, Bill!' he called.
+
+''Oo is it?' asked the driver, slewing round in the light of his
+near-side lamp.
+
+'Might be a commercial--if 'twasn't for his bag, and his way of
+speakin'.'
+
+The omnibus rattled off and down the hill.  Colonel Baigent gazed
+after it, alone beneath the gas-lamp; for the few passengers who had
+alighted from his train had jostled past him and gone their ways, and
+his porter had turned back wearily into the station, where express
+and excursion trains had all day been running the Christmas traffic
+down to its last lees.
+
+Colonel Baigent gazed after the omnibus, then back through the
+passage-way leading past the booking-office to the platform.
+All this was new to him.  There had been no such thing as railway or
+railway station thirty-five years ago, when, a boy of seventeen just
+emancipated from school, he had climbed to the box-seat of the then
+famous 'Highflyer' coach, and been driven homewards to a Christmas in
+which the old sense of holiday mingled and confused itself with a new
+and wonderful feeling that school was over and done with for ever.
+
+During his Indian exile he had nursed a long affection for the city;
+had collected and pored over books relating to it and its
+antiquities; and now, as he left the station and struck boldly into
+the footway on the right, he found himself surprisingly at home.
+The path led him over a footbridge, and along between high garden
+walls.  But it led him surely enough to Westgate, and the spot
+occupied in Norman times (as he recalled) by five bordels or
+shanties, where any belated traveller ('such as I to-night,' thought
+the colonel) arriving after the gates were shut, might find
+hospitality for the love of God.  The suburb here lay deserted.
+He halted, and listened to a footfall that died away into the
+darkness on his right.  He felt at home again--here, wrapped around
+by the ghostly centuries as by the folds of a mantle, and warm within
+the folds.
+
+Strange to say, the chill came on him as he passed under the arch of
+Westgate, and into view of the busy High Street, the lit shops, the
+passers-by jostling upon the pavements, the running newsboys, the
+hawkers with their barrows, the soldiers strolling five abreast down
+the middle of the roadway.  Here was the whole city coming and going.
+Here, precisely as he had left it thirty-five years ago, it sprang
+back into life again, like an illuminated clockwork.  No; he was
+wrong, of course.  It had been working all the while, and without
+intermission, absorbed in its own business--buying and selling,
+marrying and giving in marriage.  He had dropped out, that was all.
+
+The Christmas decorations, the jollity in the voices exchanging
+Christmas salutations, aggravated the poor colonel's sense of
+homelessness, and seemed to mock it.  One window displayed a huge
+boar's head, grinning, with a lemon in its mouth.  The proprietor of
+another had hung his seasonable wares on a small spruce fir, and lit
+it all over with coloured candles.  A poulterer, three doors away,
+had draped his house-front, from the third story down, with what at
+first glance appeared to be a single heavy curtain of furs and
+feathers--string upon string of hares, of pheasants, of turkeys, fat
+geese, wild ducks.
+
+This prevailing superabundant good cheer did not, however, extend to
+the visitor, as the colonel discovered, within the doorway of The
+Dragon.  Nor was that doorway the old hospitable entrance through
+which the stage-coaches had rattled into a paved court lined with
+red-windowed offices.  The new proprietor had blocked all this up
+with a flight of steps, and an arrangement of mahogany and
+plate-glass.  There remained but the arch under which, these years
+ago, the stout coachman, as he swung his leaders sharp round to the
+entry, had warned passengers to duck their heads.  The colonel was
+staring up at it when he became aware of a liveried boots holding the
+mahogany door open for him at the head of the steps, and with an
+expression that did not include 'Welcome!' among the many things that
+it said.
+
+The boots too plainly was sullen, the young lady in the office curt
+and off-hand, the second and only waiter as nearly as possible
+mutinous.  'All his blooming companions,' he explained (though not
+precisely in these words), had departed to spend Christmas in the
+bosom of their families.  He spoke cockney English, and, in reply to
+a question (for the colonel tried hard to draw him into conversation
+and dissipate his gloom), confessed that he came from Brixton.
+
+Further than this he would not go.  In a mortuary silence, the
+colonel, seated beneath a gasalier adorned (the mockery of it!) with
+a sprig of mistletoe, sipped his half-pint of sherry, and ate his way
+through three courses of a sufficiently good dinner.  But better,
+says Solomon, is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox
+and hatred therewith.
+
+Every time he raised his eyes they rested on the table at which he
+had dined with his father on the eve of being entered at school.
+The same table, the same heavy mahogany chairs--he recalled the
+scroll pattern on their backs.  He could see himself there in the
+corner--a small boy, white in the face and weary with travel, divided
+between surmise of the morrow and tears for the home left behind.
+He could see his father seated there in profile, the iron-gray hair,
+the remembered stoop.  Well, they were all gone now--all, missing
+whom that night he had come so near to breaking down and weeping.
+. . . Mother, sisters, brother, gone one by one during the years of
+his Indian exile, and himself now left the last of his race,
+unmarried, and never likely to marry.  Why had he come?  To revisit
+his old school?  But the school would be closed for the Christmas
+holidays, the children dispersed to their homes and happy.
+
+     Limen amabile
+     Matris et oscula . . .
+
+He had ordered claret--a bottle of Lafitte, the best the house could
+produce--and the waiter, impressed a little by the choice, now
+appeared noiselessly, almost deferentially, at his elbow, and poured
+out a first glassful of the wine.
+
+'Waiter!'
+
+'Yessir!'
+
+'Where does that music come from?'--for the sound of an antiquated
+piano had been thrumming for some minutes from a distant room.
+The music was not ambitious--an old set of quadrille tunes.
+The colonel did not recognise it.  He had no ear at all for music,
+and could just distinguish the quickstep of his regiment from
+'God save the Queen.'  In fact, when he paid any attention at all to
+music (and this was rare), it gave him no sensation beyond a vague
+discomfort.
+
+'It comes from the Assembly Room, sir, at the back of the Court.'
+
+'Ah! yes, I remember the old Assembly Room.  Some one is giving a
+ball to-night?'
+
+The waiter smiled indulgently.  'Oh no, sir!  It's Miss Wallas's
+dancing-class breaking up--that's all.'
+
+'Breaking up?' echoed the colonel, whose mind was sometimes a trifle
+slow in the uptake.
+
+'She rents the room alternate Fridays, sir, and usually gives 'em a
+little treat just before Christmas.  I don't know,' pursued the
+waiter, meditatively laying two fingers wide on his chin, 'as many
+people would call it a treat.  But the little 'uns likes dressing up
+in their evening frocks, and the buns and lemonade is well enough
+for their time of life.  There used to be a fiddle too, as well as
+the piano; but the class hev fallen off considerable of late.
+The management don't like it too well.  But there's a notion 'twould
+be unfeelin' to stop it.  She's been carrying it on all these years,
+and her aunt before her.  But if it annoys you, sir, I can say a word
+at the office and get it stopped.'
+
+'Heaven forbid!' said the colonel.  But the music made him
+uncomfortable, nevertheless.   It broke off, and started again upon a
+waltz tune.  After the waltz came a mazurka, and after the mazurka
+another set of quadrilles.  And still, as he sipped his claret, the
+successive tunes wove themselves into old memories haunting the
+coffee-room--ghostly memories!  Yet he had no will to escape them.
+Outside he could see the crowd jostling to and fro on the opposite
+pavement.  The lights within a chemist's shop, shining through
+bottles of coloured water in its window, threw splashes of colour--
+green, crimson, orange--on the eager faces as they went by.
+Colonel Baigent rose half impatiently, drew down the blind, and,
+returning to his chair, sat alone with the ghosts.
+
+The waiter brought dessert--a plateful of walnuts and dried figs.
+He cracked a walnut and peeled it slowly, still busy with his
+thoughts.  For a while these thoughts were all in a far past; but
+by-and-by a stray thread carried him down to the year 'fifty-seven--
+and snapped suddenly.  His thoughts always broke off suddenly at the
+year 'fifty-seven--the Mutiny year.  In that year he had won his
+Victoria Cross and, along with it, a curious tone in his voice, an
+inexpressible gentleness with all women and children, certain
+ineradicable lines in his face (hidden though they were by his
+drooping moustache and absurd old-fashioned whiskers); also a certain
+very grave simplicity when addressing the Almighty in his prayers.
+But he never thought of the year 'fifty-seven if he could help it.
+And as a spider, its thread snapping, drops upon the floor, so
+Colonel Baigent fell to earth out of his dreaming.
+
+With a sudden impulse of his hands against the table's edge, he
+thrust back the chair and stood erect.  His bottle of claret was all
+but empty, and he bethought him that he had left his cigar-case
+upstairs.  His bedroom lay on the farther side of the courtyard and
+on his way to it he passed the tall windows of the Assembly Room
+close enough to fling a glance inside.
+
+The dancers were all children--little girls of all ages from eight to
+fourteen, in pretty frocks of muslin--pink, blue, and white; with a
+sprinkling of awkward boys in various fashion of evening dress.
+On his way back, having lit his cigar, he paused for a longer look.
+The piano was tinkling energetically, the company dancing a polka,
+and with a will.  The boys were certainly an awkward lot, so the
+Colonel decided, and forthwith remembered his own first pair of white
+kid gloves and the horrible self-consciousness he had indued with
+them.  He went back to the room where the waiter had laid his coffee.
+
+The polka, as it proved, was the last dance on the programme; for the
+colonel had scarcely settled himself again before the piano strummed
+out 'God save the Queen'--which, as has been said, was one of the
+tunes he knew.  He stood erect, alone in the empty room, and so
+waited gravely for the last bar.  A rush of feet followed; a pause
+for robing; then childish voices in the courtyard wishing each other
+'Good-night!' and 'A merry Christmas!'  Then a very long pause, and
+the colonel supposed that all the young guests were gone.
+
+But they were not all gone; for as he resumed his seat, and reached
+out a hand for his case, to choose another cigar, he happened to
+throw a glance towards the doorway.  And there, in the shadow of a
+heavy curtain draping it, stood a little girl.
+
+She might have passed for a picture of Red Riding-Hood; for she wore
+a small scarlet cloak over her muslin frock, and the hood of it had
+been pulled forward and covered all but a margin of hair above the
+brows.  The colour of her hair was a bright auburn, that of her
+eyebrows so darkly brown as to seem wellnigh black; and altogether
+she made a remarkable little figure, standing there in the doorway,
+with a pair of white satin dancing-shoes clutched in her hand.
+
+'Oh!' said the colonel.  'Good-evening!'
+
+'O-o-oh!' answered the child, and with a catch, as it were, and a
+thrill in the voice that astonished him.  Her eyes, fixed on his,
+grew larger and rounder.  She came a pace or two towards him on
+tiptoe, halted, clasped both hands over her dancing-shoes, and
+exclaimed, with a deeper thrill than before:--
+
+'You are Colonel Baigent!'
+
+'Eh?' The colonel sat bolt upright.
+
+'Yes; and Aunt Louisa will be glad!'
+
+He put a hand up to the crown of his head.  'Good Lord!' he murmured,
+staring wildly around the room, and then slowly fastening his gaze
+upon the child--at most she could not be more than nine years old--
+confronting him.  'Good Lord!  Will she?'
+
+'Yes; and so am I!'  She nodded, and her eyes seemed to be devouring
+while they worshipped him.  'But wasn't it clever of me to know you
+at once?'
+
+'It's--it's about the cleverest thing I've come across in all my born
+days,' stammered Colonel Baigent, collapsing into his chair, and then
+suddenly clutching the arms of it and peering forward.
+
+'But, of course, I've known you for ever so long, really,' she went
+on, and nodded again as if to reassure him.
+
+'Oh!  "of course," is it?  I--I say, won't you sit down and have a
+nut or two--or a fig?'
+
+'Thank you.'  She gave him quite a grown-up bow, and seated herself.
+'I'll take a fig; nuts give you the indigestion at this time of
+night.'  She picked up a fig demurely, and laid it on a plate he
+pushed towards her.  'I hope I'm behaving nicely?' she said, looking
+up at him with the most engaging candour; 'because Aunt Louisa says
+you always had the most beautiful manners.  In fact, that's what made
+her take to you, long--oh! ever so long--before you became famous.
+And now you're the Bayard of India!'
+
+'But, excuse me--'
+
+She had begun to munch her fig, but interrupted him with another nod.
+
+'Yes, I know what you are going to say.  That's the name they give to
+another general out in India, don't they?  But Aunt Louisa declares
+he won't hold a candle to you--though I don't know why he should want
+to do anything of the sort.'
+
+'It's uncommonly kind of your Aunt Louisa--' he began again.
+
+'Do you know her?' the child asked, with disconcerting directness.
+
+'That's just the trouble with me' Colonel Baigent confessed.
+
+'She is my great-aunt, really.  She lives in Little Swithun, right
+at the back of Dean's Close; and her name is on a brass plate--a
+very hard name to pronounce, "Miss Lapenotiere, Dancing and
+Calisthenics"--that's another hard word, but it means things you do
+with an elastic band to improve your figure.  The plate doesn't
+azackly tell the truth, because she has been an invalid for years
+now, and Aunt Netta--that's my other aunt--had to carry on the
+business.  But everybody knows about it, so there really is no
+deceit.  Aunt Netta's name is Wallas, and so is mine.  Her mother was
+sister to Aunt Louisa, and she tells us we come of very good family.
+She never married.  I don't believe she ever wanted to marry anybody
+but you, and now it's too late.  But I call it splendid, your turning
+up like this.  And on Christmas Eve, to!'
+
+'It's beginning to be splendid,' owned the colonel, who had partly
+recovered himself.  'Unhappily--since you put it so--it is, I fear, a
+fact that I never met your Aunt Louisa.'
+
+'Oh! but you did--in the street, and once in the post office, when
+you were a boy at the college.'
+
+'Such impressions are fleeting, my dear, as you will live to prove.
+Your other aunt, Miss Netta--'
+
+'Oh! she will have been born after your time,' said the child, with
+calm, unconscious cruelty.  'But you will see her presently.  She has
+gone to the bar to pay the bill, and when she has finished disputing
+it she is bound to call for me.'
+
+As if it had been waiting to confirm the prophecy, a voice called,
+'Charis!  Charis!' almost on the instant.
+
+'That's my name,' said the child, helping herself to another fig, as
+a middle-aged face, wrinkled, with a complexion of parchment under a
+mass of tow-coloured hair, peered in at the doorway.
+
+The colonel rose.  'Your niece, madam,' he began, 'has been
+entertaining me for these ten minutes--'
+
+With that he stopped, perceiving that, after a second glance at him,
+the eyes of Aunt Netta, too, were growing round in her head.
+
+'Charis, you naughty child!  Sir, I do hope--but she has been
+troubling you, I am sure--' stammered Aunt Netta, and came to a full
+stop.
+
+Charis clapped her hands, with a triumphant little laugh.
+
+'But I knew him first!' she exclaimed, 'Yes, Aunt Netta, it's him!--
+it's him, _him_, HIM!  And isn't it just perfectly glorious?'
+
+'You must excuse my niece, sir--that is to say, if you are really
+Colonel--'
+
+'Baigent, ma'am.  I think you know my name; though how or why that
+should be, passes my comprehension.'
+
+She bowed to him, timidly, a trifle stiffly.  'It is an honour to
+have met you, sir.  I have an aunt at home, an invalid, who will be
+very proud when she hears of this.  She has followed your career with
+great interest--I believe I may say, ever since you were a boy at the
+college.  She has talked about you so often, you must forgive the
+child for being excited.  Come, Charis!  Thank Colonel Baigent, and
+say good-night.'
+
+'But isn't he coming with us?'  The child's face fell, and her voice
+was full of dismay.  'Oh! but you must!  Aunt Louisa will cry her
+eyes out if you don't.  And on Christmas Eve, too!'
+
+Colonel Baigent looked at Miss Netta.
+
+'I couldn't ask it--I really couldn't,' she murmured.
+
+He smiled.  'The hour is unconventional, to be sure.  But if your
+aunt will forgive a very brief call there is nothing would give me
+greater pleasure.'
+
+He meant it, too!
+
+He fetched his hat, and the three passed out together--down the High
+Street, through the passage by the Butter Cross, and along the railed
+pavement by the Minster Close.  On the colonel's ear their three
+footfalls sounded as though a dream.  The vast bulk of the minster,
+glimmering above the leafless elms, the solid Norman tower with its
+edges bathed in starlight, were transient things, born of faery,
+unsubstantial as the small figure that tripped ahead of him clutching
+a pair of dancing-shoes.
+
+They came to a little low house, hooded with dark tiles and deeply
+set in a narrow garden.  A dwarf wall and paling divided it from the
+Close, and from the gate, where a brass plate twinkled, a flagged,
+uneven pathway led up to the front door.  So remote it lay from all
+traffic, so well screened by the shadow of the minster, that the
+inmates had not troubled to draw blind or curtain.  Miss Netta,
+pausing while she fumbled for the latchkey, explained that her aunt
+had a fancy to keep the blinds up, so that when the minster was lit
+for evensong she might watch the warm, painted windows without moving
+from her couch.
+
+Colonel Baigent, glancing at the pane towards which she waved a hand,
+caught one glimpse of the room within, and stood still, with a catch
+of his breath.  On the wall facing him hung an Oxford frame, and in
+the frame was a cheap woodcut, clipped from an old illustrated paper
+of the Mutiny date, and fastened in that place of honour--his own
+portrait!
+
+After that, for a few minutes, his head swam.  He was dimly aware of
+what followed: of an open door; of the child running past him and
+into the room with cries of joy and explanation, a few only
+articulate; of the little old figure that half rose from the couch
+and sank back trembling; the flush on the waxen face, the violet
+ribbons in the cap, the hand that trembled as it reached out,
+incredulous in its humility, to his own.  He took it, and her other
+hand rested a moment on the back of his, as though it fluttered a
+blessing.
+
+Yes; and her hands, when he released them--and it seemed that he had
+been holding an imprisoned bird--yet trembled on the coverlet after
+her voice had found steadiness.
+
+'An honour--a great honour!' it was saying.  'You will forgive the
+liberty?'  She nodded towards the portrait.  'We are not quite
+strangers, you see.  I have always followed your career, sir.  I knew
+you would grow into a great and worthy man, ever since the day when I
+dropped a bandbox in the street--a muddy day it was!--and the box
+burst open just as you were passing with half a dozen young gentlemen
+from the college.  The rest laughed; and when I began to cry--for the
+ribbons were muddied--they laughed still more.  Do you remember?'
+
+Colonel Baigent had not the faintest recollection of it.
+
+'Ah! but it all happened.  And you--you were the only one that
+did not laugh.  You picked up the box and wiped it with your
+handkerchief.  You tried to wipe the ribbons, too; but that only made
+matters worse.  And then, when the others made fun of you, you put
+the box under your arm, and said you were going to carry it home for
+me.  And so you did, though it made you late for your books; and
+besides, our house was out of bounds, and you risked a thrashing for
+it.'
+
+'I wonder if I got it?' murmured Colonel Baigent.
+
+'I knew nothing about the school bounds at the time, or I should
+never have allowed you!  And on the way you asked me if I had hurt
+myself in falling.  I told you "No"; but that was a fib, for my hip
+was growing weak even then.  It's by reason of my hip that I have to
+lie here.  But in those days there was no one else to take the
+dancing classes, and it would never have done to confess.  And--and
+that was all.  I only met you once after that--it was in the post
+office at St Swithun's, and you ran in to get a stamp.  I was
+standing by the counter, weighing a letter; and you, being in a
+hurry, did not recognise me.  But I asked the old postmistress your
+name.  Do you remember her?'
+
+'She knew everybody's name,' said the colonel.  'And so that was
+all?'
+
+'That was all, except that my blessing has gone with you, sir, from
+that day.  Man and boy it has gone with you.'
+
+'Ma'am, if I had guessed it, some weary days in India might have been
+less weary.'
+
+So they sat talking for a while; but, by degrees, the invalid's eyes
+had grown pre-occupied.
+
+'Netta, dear,' she asked at length, 'do you think we might ask the
+colonel to honour us by sharing our Christmas dinner to-morrow?'
+
+In that luckless moment Colonel Baigent glanced up, caught sight of
+Miss Netta's face, and saw that in it which made his own colour to
+the roots of his hair.  Then he gave a gulp, and faced the situation
+like the brave man he was.
+
+'Ma'am,' he said gently, 'you have taken me for a friend, and God
+knows, my friends are few enough.  I am going to treat you as a very
+old friend, and to dismiss all tact.  You will eat your Christmas
+dinner with me to-morrow, here, in this house.'
+
+On his way back to the hotel Colonel Baigent halted to stare up at
+the minster tower.  So much of his life had been spent under the
+shadow of it!--and yet, of all his sowing, one small act alone, long
+forgotten, had taken root here and survived.
+
+In his dreams next morning he heard the minster bell ringing for
+early service.  In his dreams, for a stroke or two, the remembered
+note of it carried him back to boyhood.  Then he awoke with a start,
+and jumped out of bed.
+
+Far up the hill the bugles from the barracks challenged the note of
+the bell.  Over the muslin blind drawn half-way across his window the
+sun shone on a clear, frosty morning; and in the haze of it, as he
+dressed, his eyes rested, across the clustered roofs, on an angle of
+the minster tower, and beyond it on the hill with the quarry hewn in
+its side, and the clump of trees remembered of all who in boyhood
+have been sons of the city's famous school.
+
+He dressed rapidly.  The street below had not yet awakened to
+Christmas Day, and the colonel, with Christmas in his heart, felt
+eager as a messenger of good news.
+
+An hour later, as he returned, all refreshed in soul, from the
+minster, he ran against the second waiter, blinking in the sunlight
+on the door-step of the hotel, and looking as though he had slept in
+his evening suit.
+
+'I want breakfast at once,' said the colonel; 'and for luncheon you
+may put me up a basket.'
+
+'There was to have been a cold turkey,' said the waiter, 'it being
+Christmas Day.'
+
+'Put in the turkey, then--the whole turkey, please--and two bottles
+of champagne.  I'll take my luncheon out.'
+
+'Two bottles, sir, did I understand you to say?'
+
+'Certainly.  Two bottles.'
+
+'Which the amount for corkage is cruel,' said the waiter as he
+delivered his order at the office.  'My word, and what an appetite!
+But I done him an injustice in one respec'.  He do seem to be every
+inch a gentleman.'
+
+So the waiter's verdict, after all, sounded much the same as Miss
+Lapenotiere's.  And the conclusion seems to be that you can not only
+say the same thing in different ways, but quite different things in
+identical words.
+
+
+
+
+DOCTOR UNONIUS.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+'In all his life he never engaged in a law suit.  Reader, try if you
+can go so far and be so good a man.'
+
+Thus concludes the epitaph of Doctor Unonius, upon a modest stone in
+the churchyard of Polpeor, in Cornwall, of which parish he was,
+during his life, the general friend, as his scientific reputation now
+abides its boast.
+
+To those who knew him in life there is a gentle irony in the thought
+that while, during life, his scientific attainments earned him
+nothing but neglect, their recognition grows now proportionately as
+the man himself, his face and habit, the spruce black suit he wore,
+and the thousand small acts of kindness he did, fade out of memory.
+'Your late eminent fellow-parishioner, now these forty years with
+God,'--so the Bishop of the Diocese spoke the other day before
+unveiling a stained-glass window to that memory in Polpeor Church.
+The Bishop, you see, spoke of eternal life in terms of time--a habit
+with us all.  If anything could be more certain than that, in
+whatever bliss Doctor Unonius now inherits, forty years--or a
+thousand for that matter--count as one day, it is that throughout his
+life he detested stained-glass.  Through this very window, indeed,
+now obscured _ad majorem gloriam Dei et in memoriam Johannis Unonii
+medicinae doctoris_, he loved--for it faced his pew--to watch during
+sermon-time the blue sky, the clouds, the rooks at their business in
+the churchyard elms.  He has even recorded (in an essay on 'Visions'
+read before the Tregantick Literary and Scientific Society in the
+winter session of 1856) that once, awaking with a start in the middle
+of Parson Grylls's sermon, he distinctly saw suspended in these same
+elm-tops the image of an abnormally long pilot-fish (_naucretes
+ductor_) he had received from a fishing-boat overnight and left at
+home in his surgery mounted upon an apparatus of his own invention,
+ready to be sketched before dissection.  _Piscium et summa genus
+haesit ulmo_ . . . for twenty seconds, rubbing his eyes, he stared at
+the apparition as it very slowly faded.
+
+It is on his researches in ichthyology, his list (no short one) of
+discoveries, his patient classification of British Fishes, that his
+fame rests.  'Why "British"?' the reader may ask.  'Have fishes,
+then, our nationalities?'  The doctor liked to think so.  He was a
+lover of his country, and for three years, while Napoleon threatened
+us with invasion, he had served as a second-lieutenant in that famous
+company, the East and West Looe Volunteer Artillery, better known as
+the Looe Die-hards.  Now, in times of peace, with Britain supreme
+upon the seas, he boldly claimed for her every fish found off these
+shores.  A sturgeon, even, might not visit our coastal waters,
+however casual the occasion, without receiving the compliment of
+citizenship for himself and his tribe.  Yet Doctor Unonius patiently
+tracked these creatures in their most distant migrations--'_motus et
+migrationes diligentissime indagavit_,' says the mural tablet beneath
+the window.  The three lights of the window represent (1) Jonah
+vomited by the Whale, (2) the Miraculous Draught of Fishes, and (3)
+St Peter, John Dory and the stater.
+
+Polpeor, you must know, is a fishing-haven on the south coast of
+Cornwall, famous during the Napoleonic Wars for its privateering, and
+for its smuggling scarcely less notorious down to the middle of the
+last century.  The doctor's parents, though of small estate, had
+earned by these and more legitimate arts enough money to set them
+dreaming of eminence for their only child, and sent him up to London
+to Guy's Hospital, where he studied surgery under the renowned Mr
+Astley Cooper.  Having qualified himself in this and in medicine, he
+returned to his native home, which he never again left--save now and
+then for a holiday--until the day of his death.
+
+Assiduous in visiting the sick, he found the real happiness of his
+life (one might almost say its real business) in his scientific and
+literary recreations.  The range and diversity of these may be
+gathered from a list of his published writings: 'The Efficacy of
+Digitalis Applied to Scrofula,'  'On the Carpenter Bee (Apis
+Centuncularis),' 'Domestic Usage and Economy in the Reign of
+Elizabeth,' 'A Reply to a Query on Singular Fishes,' 'The Fabulous
+Foundation of the Popedom' (abridged from Bernard), 'Migratory Birds
+of the West of England,' 'God's Arrow against Atheism and
+Irreligion,' 'A Dissertation on the Mermaid,' 'Observations on the
+Natural History of the Chameleon,' 'Ditto on the Jewish and Christian
+Sabbath Days,' 'Ditto on Cider-making and the Cultivation of Apple
+Trees,' 'Contributions to a Classification of British Crustacea,'
+'On Man as the Image of the Deity,' '_Daulias Advena_; or, the
+Migrations of the Swallow Tribe.'  We select these from the output of
+one decade only.  A little later the activity grows less
+miscellaneous, and he is drifting upon his _magnum opus_, as the
+titles indicate, 'Some Particulars of Rare Fishes found in Cornwall,'
+'An Account of a Fish nearly allied to Hemiranphus,' 'On the
+Occurrence of the Crustacean Scyllurus Arctus.'
+
+He would announce these strange visitors--_sepia biserialis_, for an
+instance--with no less eagerness than a journalist hails the advent
+of a foreign potentate.  He had invented, as we have said, an
+apparatus on which he mounted them, with a jet of salt water that
+played over their scales and kept fresh, as he maintained, the
+delicate hues he copied from his water-colour box; with what success
+let anybody judge who has studied the four great volumes wherein
+these drawings survive, reproduced by lithography, and published by
+subscription.
+
+Immersed in these studies, Doctor Unonius found no leisure to think
+of matrimony; and his friends and neighbours often took occasion to
+deplore it, for he was an extremely personable man, fresh-coloured
+and hale, of clean and regular habits, and, moreover, kind-hearted to
+a fault.  All Polpeor agreed that he needed a wife to look after him,
+to protect him from being robbed; and Polpeor (to do it justice) did
+not say this without knowledge.  The good man could never be
+persuaded that Polpeor folk--_his_ folk--were capable of doing him a
+wrong; but certain it is that learnedly as he wrote 'On the
+Cultivation of Apple Trees,' the fruit of his carefully tended
+standards and espaliers seldom arrived at his own table.
+They burgeoned, they bloomed; the blossom 'pitched,' as we say in the
+West; the fruit swelled, ripened, and then--
+
+Garden shows were rarities in those days: but Tregarrick (Polpeor's
+nearest market town) boasted a Horticultural Society and an annual
+Exhibition.  Whether from indolence or modesty Doctor Unonius never
+competed, but he seldom missed to visit the show and to con the
+exhibits.  The date was then, and is to this day, the Feast of St
+Matthew, which falls on the twenty-first of September: and one year,
+on the morrow of St Matthew's Feast, the doctor, gazing pensively
+over his orchard gate at a noble tree of fruit, remarked to his
+friend and next-door neighbour, Captain Minards, late of the merchant
+service--
+
+'Do you know, Minards, I was at Tregarrick yesterday; and I think--
+yes, without vaunting, I really think that the best of my pearmains
+yonder would have stood a fair chance of the prize for Table
+Varieties.'
+
+'The prize?' grunted Captain Minards.  'Don't you fret about that:
+you won it all right.'
+
+'Eh?' queried Doctor Unonius, wiping his spectacles.
+
+'Ay,' said Captain Minards, filling a pipe; 'you won it, right
+enough.'
+
+'But--'
+
+'There's no "but" about it.  And what vexes me,' pursued Captain
+Minards, 'is that the rascals don't even trouble to rob you neatly.
+See that branch broken, yonder.'
+
+'That's with the weight of the crop.'
+
+'Weight o' my fiddlestick! And the ground all strewed with short
+twigs!'
+
+'The wind's doing.'
+
+'When you know the weather has been flat calm for a week past!'
+
+'There's an extraordinary eddy just here, at the turn of the valley;
+I have often observed a puff of wind--you might almost call it a
+gust--spring up with no apparent reason.'
+
+'Well, you're a man of science,' Captain Minards replied doggedly,
+'and if you tell me this puff o' wind carried your pearmains all the
+way to Tregarrick and entered 'em at the show under some other body's
+name, I'm bound to believe you.  But I wonder you don't put it into a
+book.  It's interestin' enough.'
+
+With this Parthian shot he departed.  But two nights later he was
+awakened in his bedroom, which overlooked the doctor's orchard, by a
+strange rustling among the apple trees.  _Thud--thud!_--there as he
+lay he listened for half a minute to the sounds of the dropping
+fruit.
+
+The night was calm. . . . On the wall facing the bed's foot there
+hung an old gun.  Captain Minards arose, reached it down, loaded it
+with a charge of powder, and, stepping to the window, let bang at the
+trees. . . . After listening awhile he replaced the gun and retired
+to rest.
+
+Next morning Doctor Unonius was called away from his breakfast to
+visit Sarah Puckey, an aged market woman or 'regrater,' whom he found
+in a state of prostration following (it was alleged) upon a severe
+nervous shock.  He attended the old woman for the remainder of her
+days, which were few; and while they lasted she remained--in the
+language of Polpeor--a 'bedrider.'  She never confided to him the
+nature of the shock which had laid her low; but at the last,
+satisfied of her own salvation, she worried herself sadly over the
+doctor and his defenceless life.
+
+'I'm a saved woman,' she declared, 'and a dyin' old woman, and these
+things be clear to my eyes.  A wife--that's what you want.  Your
+laudanums and your doldadums and your nummy-dummies[1] may be all
+very well--'
+
+'What are they?' asked the doctor.
+
+'Latin,' she answered promptly.  'I be a dyin' woman, I tell 'ee, an'
+got the gift o' tongues. . . . And your 'natomies and fishes' innards
+may be all very well, but you want a wife to look after the money an'
+tell the men to wipe their sea-boots 'pon the front mat.  When it
+comes to their unpickin' a trawl in your very drawin'-room, an' fish
+scales all over the best Brussels, as I've a-see'd 'em before now--'
+Mrs Puckey paused for breath.
+
+'Have 'ee ever had a mind to the widow Tresize?' she asked.
+
+'Certainly not,' the doctor answered.
+
+'That's a pity, too: for Landeweddy Farm's her own freehold, an' I've
+heard her say more'n once how sorry she feels for you, livin' alone
+as you do.  I don't everyways like Missus Tresize, but she's a
+bowerly woman an' nimble for her age--which can't be forty, not by a
+year or two.  Old Tresize married her for her looks.  I mind goin' to
+the weddin', an' she brought en no more'n her clothes an' herself
+inside of 'em: an' now she've a-buried th' old doter, an' sits up at
+Landeweddy in her own parlour a-playin' the pianner with both hands.
+What d'ee reckon a woman does _that_ for?'
+
+'Maybe because she is fond of music,' said Doctor Unonius dryly.
+
+The invalid chuckled, until her old head in its white mob-cap nodded
+against the white pillow propping it.
+
+'I married three men mysel' in my time, as you d' know; an' if either
+wan had been rich enough to leave me a pianner, I'd ha' married three
+more. . . . What tickles me is you men with your talk o' spoort.
+Catchin' fish for a business I can understand: you got to do that for
+money, which is the first thing in life; an' when you're married, the
+woman sees that you don't shirk it.  But you make me laugh, puttin'
+on airs an' pretendin' to do it for spoort--"Wimmen ha'n't got no
+sense o' spoort," says you, all solemn as owls.  Soon as a boy turns
+fourteen he takes up the trick.  "Wimmen ha'n't got no sense o'
+spoort," says he, sticking his hands in his breeches pockets; an' off
+he goes to hook fish, an' comes swaggerin' back to be taken, catch
+an' all, by a young 'ooman that has been sayin' naught but markin'
+him down all the time.  Spoort?  This world, doctor, is made up of
+hooks an' eyes: an' you reckon--do 'ee--the best spoort goes to the
+hooks?  Ask the eyes and the maidens that make 'em.'
+
+The doctor, who had risen and picked up his hat when Mrs Puckey
+linked his name with the widow Tresize's, came back and re-seated
+himself by the bedside.  The old woman enjoyed her chat--it did her
+more good than medicine, she said--and so long as she steered it
+clear of himself and his private affairs he was willing enough to
+indulge her.  Nay, he too--being no prude--enjoyed her general
+disquisitions on matrimony and the sexes.  _Homo sum, etc_.,
+ . . . He was a great reader of Montaigne, and like Montaigne he
+loved listening to folks, however humble, who (as he put it) knew
+their subject.  Mrs Puckey certainly knew her subject, and if in
+experience she fell a little short of Chaucer's 'Wife of Bath,' she
+handled it with something of that lady's freedom, and, in detail,
+with a plainness of speech worthy of Panurge.
+
+She knew very well that by further reference to Mrs Tresize she
+risked cutting short the doctor's visit.  Yet, woman-like, she could
+not forbear from just one more word.
+
+'She keeps it under the bed.'
+
+'Keeps what?' asked Doctor Unonius.
+
+The old woman chuckled again.  'Why, her money, to be sure--hundreds
+an' hundreds o' pounds--in a great iron chest.  I wonder she can
+sleep o' nights with it, up in that g'e'rt lonely house, an' not a
+man within call--Aw, doctor, dear, don't tell me you're _goin'!_'
+
+[1] _Quaere_.  Was this some faint inherited memory of 'the old
+profession'?--_In nomine domini, etc._
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+A year passed; a year and three months.  Old Mrs Puckey was dead and
+laid in churchyard, and the doctor remained a bachelor.  Christmas
+found him busy upon two papers written almost concurrently: the one
+'A Description of a Kind of Trigla vulgarly confounded with Trigla
+Blochii,' intended for Loudon's 'Magazine of Natural History,' the
+other, 'On Savagery in Dogs and Methods of Meeting their Attacks,'
+for the _Journal_ of the Royal Institution of Cornwall.
+
+On the morning of St Stephen's (or Boxing) Day, his professional
+visits over, he devoted an hour to the second of these treatises.
+He had reached this striking passage,--
+
+     'Homer informs us that the fury of a dog in attacking an
+      approaching stranger is appeased by the man's sitting down:--
+
+       '"Soon as Ulysses near th' enclosure drew,
+         With open mouths the furious mastiffs flew:
+         Down sat the sage and, cautious to withstand,
+         Let fall th' offensive truncheon from his hand."
+                                            Pope.
+
+     'Even at the present day this is a well-understood mode of
+      defence, as will be seen from the following:--
+
+     'At Argos one evening, at the table of General Gordon, then
+      commander-in-chief in the Morea, the conversation happened to
+      turn on the number and fierceness of Greek dogs, when one of
+      the company remarked that he knew a very simple expedient for
+      appeasing their fury.  Happening on a journey to miss his road,
+      and being overtaken with darkness, he sought refuge for the
+      night at a pastoral settlement by the wayside.  As he
+      approached, the dogs rushed out upon him, and the consequences
+      might have been serious had he not been rescued by an old
+      shepherd, the Eumaeus of the fold, who sallied forth and,
+      finding that the intruder was but a frightened traveller, after
+      pelting off his assailants, gave him a hospitable reception in
+      his hut.  His guest made some remark on the watchfulness and
+      zeal of his dogs, and on the danger to which he had been
+      exposed in their attack.  The old man replied that it was his
+      own fault for not taking the customary precaution in such an
+      emergency, that he ought to have stopped _and sat down_, until
+      some person whom the animals knew came to protect him.
+
+     'As this expedient was new to the traveller he made some further
+      inquiries, and was assured that if any person in such a
+      predicament will simply seat himself on the ground, laying
+      aside his weapons of defence, the dogs will also squat around
+      in a circle; that as long as he remains quiet they will follow
+      his example, but as soon as he rises and moves forward they
+      will renew the attack.'
+
+
+At this point the doctor laid down his pen, arose, and went to the
+book-case for his Homer, with purpose to copy the original lines into
+a footnote--for, to tell the truth, he had never quite mastered the
+methods of the Greek accents.  He found the passage in Odyssey 14.
+Yes, it was all right--
+
+                                    autar Odysseus
+     Ezeto kerdosune, skeptrou de oi ekpese cheiros . . .
+
+But--hallo!  what was this next line?--
+
+     Eutha kev o para stathmo aeikelion pathen algos . . .
+
+--'There by his own steading,' the poet went on, 'would Odysseus have
+suffered foul hurt, had not the swineherd hurried out and scolded the
+dogs and pelted them off with stones.'  It would seem then, according
+to Homer, that this device of squatting upon the ground could not be
+trusted save as a diversion, a temporary check.  Doctor Unonius bit
+his nether lip.  Strange that he had overlooked this. . . .
+
+He had a scholar's conscience.  He could not endure to garble a
+quotation or suppress a material point for the sake of illustrating
+an argument more vividly. . . . Besides, it might delude some
+unfortunate person into sitting down where self-preservation demanded
+a more alert posture.  Somebody--dreadful thought!--might get himself
+severely bitten, mauled, mangled perhaps to death, merely by obeying
+a piece of pseudo-scientific advice.  That he, Doctor Unonius, might
+never be reproached with the disaster, might never even hear of it,
+in no degree mitigated his responsibility.
+
+While he stood by the bookcase, balancing his spectacles on his
+forefinger and Homer's words in his mind, Jenifer, his one small
+maid-servant, entered with word that Roger Olver was at the door with
+a message from Penalune.
+
+'Show him in,' said Doctor Unonius.
+
+So Roger Olver, huntsman and handy-man to Sir John Penalune of
+Penalune, squire of Polpeor, hitched his horse's bridle on the staple
+by the doctor's front door--it would be hard to compute how many
+farmers, husbands, riding down at dead of night with news of wives in
+labour, had tethered their horses to that well-worn staple--and was
+conducted by Jenifer to the doctor's study.
+
+'Ah!  Good morning, Roger!'
+
+'Mornin', y'r honour.  Sir John bade me ride down an' ask 'ee--'
+
+'To be sure--to be sure.  As it happens, no man could have come at a
+happier moment.  Accustomed, as you are, to dogs--'
+
+'Hounds,' corrected Roger.
+
+'It makes no difference.'  The doctor translated the passage, and
+explained his difficulty.
+
+'I reckon,' said Roger, after scratching his head, 'the gentleman
+acted right in settin' down--though I've never had occasion to try
+it, dogs bein' fond o' me by natur'.  I've heard, too, that a very
+good way, when a dog goes for you, is to squatty 'pon your heels with
+your coat-tails breshin' the ground an' bust out laffin' in his face.
+I tell that for what 'tis worth.'
+
+'Thank you,' said the doctor.  'I will make a note of it.'
+
+'It wants nerve, seemin' to me.' Roger Olver rubbed his chin.
+
+'That is understood.'
+
+'For my part, if it happened I had a stick, I'd slash out at the
+beggar's forelegs--so--an' keep slashin' same as if I was mowin'
+grass.  Or, if I hadn' a stick, I'd kick straight for his forelegs
+an' chest; he's easy to cripple there, an' he knows it.  Settin' down
+may be all right for the time, only the difficulty is you've got to
+get up again sooner or later--onless help arrives.'
+
+'Eureka!' exclaimed Doctor Unonius, rushing to his notes.
+
+'I beg y'r honour's pardon?'
+
+'The modern instance says that the dogs would remain seated in a
+circle round the man; that so long as he remained seated they would
+do the same; but that, if he attempted to rise, they would renew the
+attack.  That vindicates me, and explains Homer.'
+
+'Do it?' said Roger Olver.  'But, beggin' your pardon, sir, if it's
+about dogs you want to know, why not have a look in at the kennels--
+ay, an' follow the hounds now an' then?  I've often wondered, makin'
+so bold, how a gentleman like yourself, an' knowin' what's good for
+health, can go wastin' time on dead fishes, with a pack o' hounds, so
+to speak, at your door.'
+
+'There's no sport more healthful, I verily believe,' agreed the
+doctor.
+
+'And as for nat'ral history, what can a man want that he can't larn
+off a fox?  Five-an'-twenty years I've been at it, an' the varmints
+be teachin' me yet.  But I'm forgettin' my message, sir, which is
+that Sir John sends his compliments and would be happy to see you at
+dinner this evenin', he havin' a few friends.'
+
+Doctor Unonius sighed.  He had designed to spend the evening on his
+treatise.  But he cherished a real regard for Sir John, whom all the
+countryside esteemed for a sportsman and an upright English
+gentleman; and Sir John, who, without learning of his own, held
+learning in exaggerated respect, cherished an equal regard for the
+doctor.
+
+'My compliments to your master.  I will come with pleasure,' said
+Doctor Unonius, thrusting Homer back in his shelf.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+'Wunnerful brandy, Sir John!' said old Squire Morshead.
+
+He said this regularly as he dined at Penalune when, after dinner and
+wine and songs, the hour came for the 'brandy-mixing' before the
+guests dispersed.  Sir John was a widower and confined his
+hospitality to men.  He had adored his wife and lost her young; and
+thereafter, though exquisitely courteous to ladies when he met them--
+on the hunting-field, for example--he could not endure one within the
+walls of Penalune.  As he put it to himself, quoting an old by-word,
+'What the eye don't see the heart don't grieve.'  It scarcely needs
+to be added that the heart _did_ grieve; but this was his way, albeit a
+strange one, of worshipping what he had lost.
+
+For the rest, he was a hale, cheerful, even jovial gentleman, now
+well past fifty; clear of eye, sound of wind and limb, standing six
+feet two in his stockings; fearing no man, on good terms with all,
+but liking his neighbours best, and no more eccentric than a country
+squire has the right, if not even the obligation to be.  Unless it
+were in the saddle, you could scarcely see him to better advantage
+than at this ceremony of brandy-mixing--for a ceremony it was; no
+pushing of a decanter, but a slow solemn ladling by the host himself
+from an ample bowl.  Moreover, the Penalune brandy was famous.
+
+'It has lain,' said he--'let me see--thirty-five years in cellar, to
+my own knowledge.  My father never told me how or when he came by it.
+Smuggled, you may be sure.'
+
+The talk ran on smuggling and its decline.  A Mr St Aubyn, of
+Clowance, lamented this decline as symptomatic--'the national fibre's
+deteriorating, mark my words.'  A Mr Trelawny was disposed to agree
+with him.  'And, after all,' he said, 'the game was a venial one; a
+kind of sport.  Hang it, a Briton must be allowed his sporting
+instincts!'  'By the same argument, no doubt, you would justify
+poaching?' put in Sir John, with a twinkle.  Mr Trelawny would by no
+means allow this.  'It would interest me, sir, to hear you define the
+moral difference between smuggling and poaching,' said Doctor
+Unonius.  'I don't go in for definitions, sir,' Mr Trelawny answered.
+'I'm a practical man and judge things by their results.  Look at your
+Polpeor folk--smugglers all, or the sons of smugglers--a fine
+upstanding, independent lot as you would wish to see; whereas your
+poacher nine times out of ten is a sneak, and looks it.'  'Because,'
+retorted the doctor, but gently, 'your smuggler lives in his own
+cottage, serves no master, and has public opinion--by which I mean
+the only public opinion he knows, that of his neighbours--to back
+him;  whereas your poacher lives by day in affected subservience to
+the landowner he robs by night, and because you take good care that
+public opinion is against him.'  'To be sure I do,' affirmed Mr
+Trelawny, and would have continued the argument, but here old Squire
+Morshead struck in and damned the Government for its new coastguard
+service.  'I don't deny,' he said, 'it's an improvement on anything
+we've seen yet under the Customs, or would be, if there was any real
+smuggling left to grapple with.  But the "trade" has been dwindling
+now for these thirty years, and to invent this fire-new service to
+suppress what's dying of its own accord is an infernal waste of
+public money.'  'I doubt,' Sir John demurred, 'if smuggling be quite
+so near death's door as you fancy.  Hey, doctor--in Polpeor now?'
+The doctor opined that very little smuggling survived nowadays; the
+profits were not worth the risk.  'Though, to be sure,' he added,
+'public opinion in Polpeor is still with the trade.  For an
+illustration, not a soul in the town will let the new coast-guardsmen
+a house to live in, and I hear the Government intends to send down a
+hulk from Plymouth Dock and moor it alongside the quay.'  He paused.
+'But,' he went on, with a glance over his spectacles at Sir John,
+'our host, who owns two-thirds of the cottages in Polpeor, may
+correct me and say that Government never offered a fair rent?'
+Sir John threw back his head and laughed.  'My heir, when he succeeds
+me,' he said, 'may start new industries in Polpeor; but I'll not
+build new houses to worry my sitting tenants.'
+
+It was now eleven o'clock, and by-and-by the company dispersed--which
+they did almost simultaneously and from the stable-yard, amid a
+tremendous clattering of hoofs, rumbling of wheels, calls of
+stablemen, 'gee's' and 'woa's,' buttoning of overcoats, wrapping of
+throats in comforters, 'good-nights,' and invitations to meet again.
+Sir John himself moved up and down in the throng, speeding his
+parting guests, criticising their horseflesh, offering an extra wrap
+to one, assuring himself that another had his pocket-flask charged
+for a long night ride.
+
+In the press Doctor Unonius--whether because he never stinted a vail
+to the grooms, or because they felt a natural kindness for one who
+had brought their wives through confinement and ushered their
+children into the world; and anyway there was sense in standing well
+with a man who might at any time in this transitory world have to
+decide the important question of your living or dying--managed to get
+old Dapple harnessed in the gig, and the lamps lit, and to jog off
+with the earliest.  The drive of Penalune extends for a mile, and
+along it, ahead of him and behind him, the voices of his
+fellow-guests challenged one another in song, rising clear on the
+frosty air,--
+
+     'In the month of November, in the year 'fifty-two,
+      Three jolly fox-hunters, all sons of the Blue,
+               Sing fol-de-rol, lol-de-rol--'
+
+Beyond the lodge gates came the high-road, and here half a dozen of
+the chorusers shouted goodnight, and rode away northward and by east
+in the teeth of the wind; but the greater number bowled along with
+the doctor south-west to the cross-roads under Barrow Down.
+There the Polpeor road struck off to the left, and, swinging into it,
+he found himself alone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+The night was moonless but strewn with stars.  A tonic north-east
+wind hummed over the high moors, and seemed to prick old Dapple,
+prescient of his own straw and rack, to his very best trot.  It was a
+penetrating wind, too; but Doctor Unonius, wrapped in his frieze
+coat, with the famous Penalune brandy playing about the cockles of
+his heart, defied its chill.  At this rate half an hour would bring
+him to the gate of Landeweddy Farm, under the lee of Four Barrows;
+and beyond Landeweddy, where the road plunged straight to Polpeor and
+the coast, he would reach complete shelter.  Let the wind blow from
+this quarter never so fiercely, in the steep lanes under the seaward
+edge of the moor a man could hear it screaming overhead and laugh at
+it, lighting his pipe.
+
+The sound of hoofs and wheels died away down the westward road.
+Doctor Unonius, with face set for home, pursed his mouth and
+inaudibly whistled a tune,--
+
+     'In the month of November, in the year 'fifty-two.'
+
+'Whoa there, Dapple!  Steady!  Why, what ails the horse?'
+For Dapple, as the gig turned a corner of road, on a sudden had shied
+violently, half reared, and come to a halt with a jerk that set the
+gig quivering, and had almost broken its shafts.
+
+'Why, hallo!' exclaimed the doctor, peering forward.
+
+To the right of the road, a little ahead of him, stood a woman.
+She had drawn aside, close to the hedge, doubtless to let them pass.
+The rays of the gig lamp fell full on her--a broad-shouldered woman
+of more than ordinary height.  Over her head was flung a dark shawl,
+and her left hand held its edges tightly together at the throat.
+In her right she carried a leathern bag.  This was as much as the
+doctor could see, for the shawl concealed her features.  He could not
+recognise her at all, though he knew, or believed that he knew,
+everybody--man, woman, or child--within a radius of ten miles.
+But Doctor Unonius was ever polite.
+
+'Hey?  Good-evening, ma'am!' he sang out.  'You startled the old
+horse a bit.  I hope he has not frightened you?'
+
+There was no answer.
+
+'Can I offer you a lift, ma'am, if you're going my way?  The hour is
+late, and the weather none too pleasant for tramping these high
+moors.'
+
+Still there was no answer.
+
+'You needn't be afraid of Dapple,' he assured her.  'He'll stand
+still as a rock now, if you'll climb up.'
+
+'Thank you,' she answered at last, with a hesitating step forward,
+and the voice was hoarse and constrained.
+
+'Come round to the other side then.  Here, give me your bag.'
+
+The woman crossed in front of Dapple--who backed a foot or so
+uneasily--came around to the step, and handed up her bag.  It was a
+two-handled bag, of japanned leather, and Doctor Unonius, as he took
+it from her and rested it against the splashboard, noted also that it
+was exceedingly heavy.  He held out his hand.  The woman grasped it,
+and clambered up beside him.
+
+He gave a sharp look at her and called to Dapple.  The horse pulled
+himself together and broke into a brisk trot, which continued for
+hard upon half a mile before either occupant of the gig broke
+silence.
+
+For Doctor Unonius was considering.  Though a student he was a man of
+considerable courage and cool-headed in emergency, as he was now not
+a little pleased to prove, for hitherto life had provided few
+emergencies to test him.  But here was an emergency, and--at this
+time of night, and in this place--it looked to be an ugly one.
+He had to deal with a discovery, and the discovery was this.
+
+The hand he had just gripped was no woman's at all, but the hand of a
+man.
+
+He stole another glance at his companion.  She, or he, was leaning
+forward in a huddled attitude to meet the wind which now, as they
+rounded an edge of the down, blew crosswise athwart the gig and a
+little ahead.  Nothing of face could be seen, only--and this dimly by
+the starshine--the hand that grasped the shawl.  But it was enough; a
+man's hand, the doctor could almost swear.  He recognised this with a
+slight thrill.  He was not afraid, but he was undeniably excited.
+
+What on earth should a man be doing in woman's clothes, on this road
+and at this hour?  The road led no whither but to Polpeor and the
+coast, and passed on its way no human habitation but Landeweddy Farm
+and a couple of cottages half a mile beyond it, close under the dip
+of the hill. . . .
+
+'You are shivering,' said Doctor Unonius, after a pause.
+
+The crouching figure nodded, but did not speak.
+
+'Are you cold? Here, take some more of the rug.'
+
+For a moment there was no answer, then a shake of the head.
+
+'Ill, then?  Feverish?  I am a doctor: let me feel your pulse.'
+
+His companion made a quick gesture as if to hide the hand grasping
+the gig-rail: but after another pause, and as if reluctantly, it was
+reached across.  The other still clutched the shawl.
+
+Doctor Unonius, drawing off his right-hand glove with his teeth,
+reached across also and laid his fingers in professional fashion on
+the wrist.  Yes; he was right.  The wrist was a man's wrist, large
+and bony.  He screwed up his eyes and peered down as well as he might
+at the upturned hand.  He could see that the finger-tips were square,
+and the palm, if he mistook not, showed a row of callosities at the
+base of the fingers.  Something in the pulse's beat caught his
+attention, and almost at the same moment his nostrils expanded
+suspiciously.  Doctor Unonius had a delicate sense of smell.
+
+'This man,' he thought, 'is in a blue fright; and moreover, and
+although he smokes a deal of rank tobacco, I am open to bet he is a
+butcher by trade.'
+
+He relaxed the pressure of his fingers very slightly, and the hand
+was sharply withdrawn.
+
+Almost at the same moment the doctor's own hand went swiftly to his
+head.  There was a tug at the reins, and it fetched old Dapple up
+with a sprawl.
+
+'My hat is gone!' exclaimed the doctor.
+
+Sure enough it was: and as he leaned and peered after it, he could
+just discern it for a moment before it dropped like a sable bird
+against a dark furze bush a few yards away to the left.
+
+'My hat is gone,' he repeated.
+
+His companion did not budge, hardly so much as turned a glance, but
+sat as before, shivering and dumb.
+
+'I am very sorry to trouble you, ma'am,' ventured the doctor
+politely.  'But would it inconvenience you very much to climb down
+and recover my hat?  It lies yonder, against the furze.  With one of
+the lamps you will find it easily.'
+
+'Can't you climb down yourself and fetch it?  I'll hold the reins.'
+The voice was husky, the tone ungracious.
+
+'No, ma'am.  Dapple is restive to-night, and I prefer--if you'll
+forgive me--not to trust him to a lady and a stranger.  If you
+refuse, my hat must e'en remain where it lies.'
+
+The figure rose, as if upon a sudden resolve, and set one foot on the
+step.
+
+'I'll fetch it for you.  But being driven to-night is cold work, and
+I won't trouble you any further.  Hand me down my bag, please.'
+
+The stranger climbed out and stood beside the step, with one hand
+holding on to the edge of the footboard.
+
+'Come, hand me down my bag.'
+
+For answer Doctor Unonius lifted his foot and brought it down
+suddenly on the hand, grinding his heel into the fingers.  At the
+same moment the whiplash fell over Dapple's haunches.  There was a
+yell of pain, a wild curse, a scuttering of hoofs, and the old horse,
+unaccustomed to the whip and well-nigh scared out of his senses,
+plunged forward into the night.
+
+For a minute or so Doctor Unonius, as he called to Dapple and plied
+the whip, fancied that in the intervals of these encouragements he
+caught the sound of footsteps pursuing him down the hard road.
+But the chase, if chase were given, was vain from the first: for
+Dapple tore along as though the devil himself sat behind the
+splashboard.
+
+But while the gig swayed and rocked, and while the wind sung past his
+ears, Doctor Unonius thrust a foot out, and steadying it against the
+hard bag, enjoyed some crowded moments of glorious life.  After all
+these sedentary years adventure had swooped on him out of the night
+and was wafting him along in a sort of ecstasy.  If the hand were,
+after all, a woman's, he could never forgive himself. . . . But it
+was not: of that he felt sure.  Complete success had crowned his
+simple manoeuvre.  He felt all the exhilaration of a born student who
+suddenly discovers he can be practical--the sort of exhilaration
+Cicero felt, to his surprise, in dealing with the conspiracy of
+Catiline, and never during the rest of his life forgot.
+
+It was hard on Dapple, but the doctor urged him for a mile before his
+natural kind-heartedness reasserted itself and he reined up the good
+old horse, to breathe him.
+
+Now was his time to have a look at the bag.  He reached down and
+lifted it to his knees, and again its weight surprised him.  'It will
+be locked, no doubt,' said the doctor to himself, as he drew the off
+gig-lamp from its socket to light his inspection.
+
+But no: the bag was fastened by an ordinary spring-catch, and, when
+he pressed this, fell open easily.  He listened for a second or two,
+with a glance over his shoulder into the darkness behind.  But
+nothing could be heard--nothing but the night-call of a curlew
+somewhere on the moor, far to his right.  Holding the lamp a little
+higher in his left, he thrust his right hand into the bag, groped,
+and drew out--
+
+     First of all, a pistol, and whether loaded or not he deferred
+     for the moment to examine.
+
+     Next, four small but heavy canvas bags, each tied about the neck
+     with a leathern thong.  By the weight and the look, and also by
+     the sound of them when shaken, they contained money.
+
+     Next, a pair of rubber-soled Blucher boots.
+
+     Next, a small square case, which he opened and found to contain
+     a pocket-compass.
+
+     Next, a pair of night-glasses.
+
+     Next, a neck-comforter of knitted gray worsted
+
+     And, lastly, a folded map.
+
+While he made this inventory, Doctor Unonius kept Dapple at a
+standstill; for thus only was he secure of hearing the smallest sound
+on the road behind.  But now he judged it prudent to put another half
+a mile at least between him and pursuit, and so, replacing the lamp
+and hastily repacking the bag--with all but the pistol, which he kept
+handy on the seat beside him, and the map, which he thrust into the
+breast of his greatcoat--he urged the old horse into a fresh trot,
+nor pulled up again until he came to the glimmering white gate of
+Landeweddy Farm.
+
+The courtlege of Landeweddy was hedged with tamarisks, now leafless,
+and through these, above the wall's coping, the upper part of the
+house loomed an indistinct mass against the indigo-gray night.
+No light showed anywhere--as why should the widow Tresize or her maid
+Tryphena be awake at such an hour?  The doctor would have required
+sharp eyes indeed to note, as he drew rein, that the blind of an
+upper window at the south-east corner had been drawn aside an inch or
+so out of the perpendicular.  Had he detected this, indeed, it would
+have meant no more than that the widow, awakened from her slumbers by
+the sound of wheels, had arisen to satisfy the curiosity natural to
+women.
+
+But Doctor Unonius, noting it not, drew forth the map from the breast
+of his greatcoat, unfolded it, and was proceeding to study it, again
+by help of the lamp.  He recognised it at first glance for a map of
+the coast and country about Polpeor, and for this he was prepared;
+but the same glance showed him a slip of paper pinned to the map's
+left upper corner.  The paper bore a scrawl in pencil, ill-written,
+but decipherable--
+
+     'Mrs Tresize at Landeweddy.  48.  White gate, entrance back.
+      By Celler.  Mem.  I large chest.  To be handled quick and hidn
+      in orchd if necessry.  Reported good money, but near.  No help
+      here but 1 servt maid.'
+
+Doctor Unonius stared at the paper, and from the paper lifted his
+eyes to stare at the black bulk of the farm-house buildings, the
+stretch of roof, the tall chimneys looming above the tamarisks.
+But the close rays of the lamp dazzled his eyes, and he saw nothing--
+nothing but the white gate glimmering at the end of the courtlege
+wall.  While he peered and blinked, memory recalled to him old Mrs
+Puckey's tale of the money-chest kept by the widow Tresize beneath
+her bed.
+
+Mischief was brewing, beyond a doubt.  Precisely what that mischief
+might be he could not determine.  But somewhere behind him was a
+man--a stranger, dressed in woman's clothes--making at dead of night
+for a house occupied by two women only; for a house that held money.
+And this man had been carrying a bag which contained among other
+things a pistol, probably loaded, a pair of boots with rubber soles,
+a map, and a memorandum which said (and almost certainly with truth)
+that the house was unprotected save by one servant maid.
+
+It was clear that he must call at once and give warning; that he must
+awaken the widow, at whatever cost to her nerves, and offer his
+protection.  It might be that he had checkmated the ruffian and
+thrown him off his game.  Very likely he had.  A man with this
+evidence against him, and minus the pistol with which he had intended
+to do his infernal work, would--ten to one--be heading away from
+justice, and for dear life.  Still, where so much was mystery, the
+doctor decided to take no risks.  Whatever the event, his course of
+action--his only possible course--lay plain before him.  Here of a
+sudden it occurred to Doctor Unonius that the man, though travelling
+alone, might be travelling to meet accomplices; and these accomplices
+might be hiding around and waiting, even at this moment.
+
+He remembered that beyond the white gate a short farm-road led around
+to the back entrance of the building.  With this new suspicion of a
+conspiracy in his mind, it cost him no small effort of courage to
+dismount, pistol in hand, from the gig and push the white gate open.
+
+It fell back, as he remembered later, on a well-oiled hinge, and he
+stood aside while old Dapple, doubtless greatly wondering, obeyed his
+call and dragged the gig through.  This was a nervous moment, for now
+the doctor could not rid himself of the apprehension that eyes might
+be watching him from behind the hedge.  He remembered, too, that the
+widow Tresize kept a couple of sheep dogs, notoriously savage ones.
+It was strange that they did not awake and give tongue.
+
+On the thought of this, as Dapple drew the gig through the gateway,
+Doctor Unonius edged up close to the step. . . . It might be all very
+well for Odysseus to squat on the ground when attacked by the hounds
+of Eumaeus, but Odysseus had not the resource (perhaps better) of
+springing into a gig.
+
+Idle precaution!  The widow Tresize's dogs were peradventure caught
+napping.  At all events, neither one nor the other uttered a sound.
+Doctor Unonius, wrenching a lamp from its socket, walked boldly
+forward at Dapple's bit and, coming to the back entrance by the
+midden-yard, knocked boldly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+To his surprise, within a few seconds a faint light shone through the
+chink by the door-jamb, and he heard a footstep coming down the
+passage.  A bolt was withdrawn, very softly--the door opened--and Mrs
+Tresize herself confronted him.
+
+She stood just within the threshold, holding a lamp high: and its
+rays, while they fell full on the doctor, causing him to blink,
+crossed the rays of his gig-lamp which showed him that, late though
+the hour was, she had as yet made no preparations for going to bed,
+even to the extent of taking off her jewellery.  The base of the
+lamp, as its flames flickered in the draught, cast a waving shadow
+over the widow's cap perched on her neatly coiled black tresses, and
+the same shadow danced across her jet-black eyes and left them
+staring at him, very bright and inquisitive.  She wore a dress of
+stiff black silk with a somewhat coquettish apron; and about her neck
+a solid gold chain, thrice coiled, with a massive locket pendant at
+her bosom.  Above the locket was fastened a large memorial brooch
+with a framework of gold, a face of crystal and, behind the crystal,
+a weeping willow designed in somebody's hair.  Altogether the widow's
+attire and array suggested that she had recently dismissed, or was
+even now expecting, company.
+
+'Doctor Unonius?'
+
+'You may well be surprised, madam--at this hour--'
+
+'I did not send for you.'
+
+'No, madam; and you will be surprised when you learn the reason of
+this call--surprised but not (I beg) alarmed.  To begin with, I have
+a pistol here and can, at the worst, protect you.'
+
+'Protect me?'
+
+'I had best tell you my story, which is a sufficiently extraordinary
+one.  I have been dining at Penalune--nay, madam, do not
+misunderstand me: I am as sober as a judge.  On my homeward road I
+overtook a suspicious character, and certain evidence I managed to
+wrest from him leaves little doubt that robbery is intended here
+to-night, as it has actually been achieved elsewhere.  The man, I
+should tell you--a powerful fellow--was dressed in woman's apparel.'
+
+'Oh!' said Mrs Tresize shortly, and called down the passage behind
+her--'Tryphena, come here!'
+
+Without delay a middle-aged maid-servant appeared from a doorway that
+(as the doctor knew) led out of an inner kitchen.  Two sheep dogs
+followed her growling, but at her command grew tractable and made no
+demonstration beyond running around the doctor and sniffing at his
+legs.
+
+Tryphena, too--who, like her mistress, was fully dressed--betrayed no
+surprise.  She had, in fact, been sent upstairs at the sound of
+wheels, and from behind a curtain had recognised Doctor Unonius as he
+examined the paper by the light of his gig-lamp.
+
+'Tryphena, here's Doctor Unonius, and he brings word we're to be
+robbed and murdered in our beds.'
+
+'The Lord preserve us!' said Tryphena.
+
+'Amen,' said Mrs Tresize; 'and meanwhile you'd best go and stable the
+horse while I hear particulars.'
+
+Tryphena slipped out into the yard, the sheep dogs following.
+The doctor would have helped her, but she took the lamp from his
+hand, replaced it in its socket and set about unharnessing without
+further to-do, coaxing Dapple the while to stand steady.
+
+'Tryphena understands horses,' said Mrs Tresize.  'Come indoors,
+please, and tell me all about it.'
+
+Doctor Unonius lifted out the incriminating bag and followed her
+along the passage.  She paused at the door of the best kitchen and
+pushed it wide.  He looked in upon a bare but not uncheerful room,
+where a clean wood fire blazed on an open hearth and over the fire a
+kettle sang cosily.  Gun-racks lined the walls, and dressers laden
+with valuable china, and these were seasonably adorned with sprigs of
+holly, ivy, and fir.  A kissing-bush, even, hung from the bacon-rack
+that crossed the ceiling, with many hams wrapped in bracken, a brace
+of pheasants, and a 'neck' of harvest corn elaborately plaited: and
+almost directly beneath it stood a circular table with a lamp and a
+set of dominoes, the half of them laid out in an unfinished game.
+The floor was of slate but strewn with rugs, some of rag-work others
+of badgers' skins.  A tall clock ticked sedately in a corner.  On one
+side of the chimney a weather-glass depended, on the other a
+warming-pan--symbols, as it were, of conjugal interests, male and
+female, drawing together by the hearth.
+
+Doctor Unonius felt an unwonted glow at the sight of this interior.
+He could not but admire, too, the widow's self-possession.
+Instead of trembling and demanding explanations she suggested that a
+glass of hot brandy and water would do him no possible harm after his
+drive, and stepped to the corner cupboard without waiting for an
+answer.  It was a piece of furniture of some value, lacquered over
+with Chinese figures in dusky gold.  But the doctor's gaze travelled
+rather to the gun-racks.  He counted a dozen firearms, antique but
+serviceable, and suggested that, with powder and shot, Landeweddy was
+capable of standing a pretty stiff siege.
+
+'I keep but two of them loaded,' said the widow, and indicated them--
+a large blunderbuss and a fowling-piece with an immensely long
+barrel; 'but there's powder and three sizes of shot in the right-hand
+drawer, there, below the dresser.  You can charge the others, if
+you've a mind.'
+
+'My warning would hardly seem to have impressed you, madam.'
+
+'Oh yes, it has,' answered Mrs Tresize, measuring out the brandy.
+'But you see, doctor, one gets accustomed to fears, living in this
+lonely place; and with a man as protector one feels as safe as with a
+regiment.'
+
+'You flatter my ability, I fear,' said the doctor.  'I will do my
+best, of course: but I ought to warn you that I am no expert with
+firearms.'
+
+'I can help you with the loading,' said Mrs Tresize.  'But tell me
+the worst of the danger, please.'
+
+Doctor Unonius set the bag on the table, and unloaded its contents
+one by one while he told his story.  The sight of the money-bags did
+not produce quite the thrill he had looked for, but she evinced a
+lively interest in the paper pinned to the map.
+
+'_Mrs Tresize at Landeweddy, 48_,' she read, holding it under the
+lamp, and slightly puckering her handsome brows.
+
+'That doesn't flatter you, ma'am.'
+
+'Hey?' Mrs Tresize looked up sharply.  'You don't suppose that means
+my _age_?'
+
+'I--er--fancied it might.  It would be a guess, of course.'
+
+'Nonsense,' said Mrs Tresize.
+
+'It _is_ nonsense,' the doctor agreed.  'The man was obviously
+misinformed.'
+
+'It doesn't refer to my age at all,' said Mrs Tresize, positively.
+'It--it alludes to something quite different.  I was barely nineteen
+when I married.'
+
+'If you can guess to what it alludes--'
+
+'_Reported good money, but near--_' read the widow, paused, and
+uttered a liquid laugh.  'Oh, I am glad you showed me this.
+We'll punish him for that, doctor, if he dares to turn up.'
+
+'If,' echoed the doctor, with a glance at the gun-racks.
+
+'I ought to go and warn Tryphena.'
+
+'Every moment may be precious,' he agreed again, while she went to
+the chimney-place and fetched the now boiling kettle.
+
+She mixed the drink and set it close before him, where he leaned
+pondering a pile of gold he had poured upon the table from one of the
+canvas bags.  The steam mounting from the glass bedimmed his
+spectacles.  He took them off to wipe them, and perceived that she
+was smiling.  She bit her lip at being thus caught.
+
+'I was thinking,' she made haste to explain, 'what a funny situation
+'twould be if by any chance the man was innocent, and you'd driven
+off with money that honestly belonged to him.'
+
+'Honest men don't put on women's clothes to tramp the moors at
+night,' Doctor Unonius objected.
+
+'Well, I don't see that it mightn't happen.  A man having this money
+to carry, and afraid of being robbed, might put it to himself that
+rough characters--specially gipsies--often let a woman pass where
+they'd attack a man.  Or suppose, now, the man _was_ a gipsy?--he'd
+sold three horses, we'll say, at Tregarrick Christmas Fair, and was
+trudging it back to his camp somewhere on the moors.  A gipsy would
+be the very man to hit on that kind of disguise, it being against his
+own principles to hurt any woman but his wife.'
+
+'This man was a butcher, ma'am, and no gipsy.'
+
+'O--oh!' cried the widow, with a little gasp.  'How do you know?'
+
+'Never mind how I know, ma'am.  He was a butcher, right enough; and,
+on your hypothesis that I've committed highway robbery upon an
+innocent man, I'd like you to explain how he comes to be carrying
+about this paper.  "One large chest" he credits you with possessing;
+it is to be handled quickly and hidden in the orchard, if necessary--
+that is, I suppose, if he should be surprised; and to resist him you
+have nobody on the premises but your servant maid Tryphena.  For what
+innocent purpose, pray, does he carry about this memorandum?'
+
+''Myes, I suppose you are right,' Mrs Tresize assented with a little
+sigh, and forthwith shifted the conversation.  'But taste your
+brandy, please, and tell me how you like it--though, to be sure, it
+won't compare with Squire Peneluna's.'
+
+It was, nevertheless, good sound brandy, genuine juice of the grape,
+soft and well-matured.  The doctor after a sip nodded his approval.
+
+'I dare say, now,' she went on, 'you're accustomed to this sort of
+thing?  I mean, you must pass a good many nights, year's end to
+year's end, in other folk's parlours. . . .'  She broke off, and this
+time with a genuine sigh.  'I used to wonder in days gone by, if ever
+you'd be sitting here.  I used to picture you . . . and now it's for
+a robber you're waiting!'  She ended with a laugh, yet turned her
+face away.
+
+But either the doctor was nettled or his mind refused to be diverted
+by small talk from the business in hand.  He somewhat curtly
+commanded Mrs Tresize to indicate on the gun-rack the weapons her
+late husband had commonly used, and to find him powder and shot.
+For a moment she pouted her lips mutinously, but ended by obeying
+him, with a shrug of her handsome shoulders.
+
+She stood watching him while he carefully loaded the weapons and
+rammed home the wads.  It is possible that she had a mind to relent,
+and suggest his whiling the time away with a game of dominoes.
+At any rate she went so far as to hazard--with a glance at the ivory
+tablets, and another at the hearth and the elbow-chairs--that he
+would find the waiting tedious.
+
+'Not if you can supply me with a book, ma'am,' he answered, laying
+the two guns on the table, after sweeping the dominoes aside to make
+room for them.
+
+Mrs Tresize left the room and returned bearing a volume--Blair's
+_Grave_.  She understood (she said) that the doctor preferred serious
+reading.
+
+'Among all the poets that ever wrote,' said Doctor Unonius blandly,
+'with the possible exception of Young, I have the greatest contempt
+for Blair.  He has the one unpardonable fault  (not the one mentioned
+by Horace, though he has that, too): he is dishonest.  The finest
+passage in the _Grave_ is impudently stolen from Dryden, and marred
+in the stealing.  But I thank Heaven, ma'am, that I can read any
+printed matter; and when Blair disgusts me I can always take a
+satisfactory revenge by turning him into Latin Elegiacs; by turning
+him, so to speak, in his Grave,' concluded the doctor grimly.
+
+This routed the lady, but she managed to get in the last word.
+'Well, I can't pretend to understand you and your learning,' she
+answered tartly; 'but since we seem to be thanking Heaven, I'll thank
+it that I have a fire lit in my bedroom.  It's the room just
+overhead, and I'm going to ask Tryphena to sleep with me when she has
+put up the bolts.  Or, maybe, we shall sit up there for a while and
+talk.  But anyhow, we are light sleepers, the both of us, and if
+there's any trouble you have only to call.  Good-night.'
+
+'Good-night, ma'am!' said Doctor Unonius, and opened the door for
+her.  Left alone, he went back to the table and began to turn the
+pages of Blair.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Doctor Unonius had drawn the table close beside an elbow-chair to the
+right of the fireplace.  The excuse he made to himself was that, with
+a bright fire burning, he could the better see to read by blending
+its blaze with the light of the lamp.  But it may be conjectured
+that, having disposed himself thus comfortably, he indulged in a nap.
+A strange sound fetched him out of it with a bounce.  He leapt to his
+feet, and stood for a moment stupidly rubbing his eyes.  The fire had
+burnt itself low.  Blair's _Grave_ lay face-downward on the
+hearth-rug, whither it had slipped from his knee.  The clock in the
+corner ticked at its same deliberate pace, but its hands pointed to
+twenty minutes past two.
+
+What was the sound?  Or, rather--since it no longer continued--what
+had it been?  As it seemed to him, it had resembled the beat of
+horses' hoofs at a gallop; a stampede almost.  It could not have gone
+past on the high-road, for the noise had never been loud: yet it
+seemed to come from the high-road for a while, and then to drop
+suddenly and be drawn out in a series of faint thudded echoes.
+
+Doctor Unonius went to the window, drew the curtains, unbarred a
+shutter, and stared out into the night.  A newly risen moon hung low
+in the south-east, just above the coping of the courtlage wall, but
+the wall with its shrubs and clumps of ivy, massed in blackest
+shadow, excluded all view of the terrestrial world.  The sound,
+whatever it had been, was not repeated.
+
+Doctor Unonius stood for half a minute or so and gazed out with his
+forehead pressed to the pane.  Then he closed the shutter again, let
+fall the curtain, and with a slight shiver went back to the
+fireplace.
+
+He had picked up a pair of tongs and was stooping to pick up the
+charred ends of wood and pile them to revive the blaze, when another
+sound fetched him upright again.  This also was the sound of a horse
+at a gallop, but now it drew nearer and nearer up the road.
+It clattered past the courtlage wall, and with that came to a sudden
+sprawling halt.  A man's voice, the rider's, shouted some two or
+three words the doctor could not catch; but a moment later he heard
+the latch of the yard gate clink and horse and man lunge through, and
+had scarcely time to arm himself with one of the guns before three
+sharp strokes rattled on the back door.
+
+Doctor Unonius hurried out to the passage.  There he all but ran into
+Mrs Tresize, who came downstairs, lamp in hand and fully dressed as
+before.  As before, too, she was entirely composed in manner.
+
+'I will open,' she said.  'Go back and put the other gun away
+quickly, the pistol too.  Keep the one in your hand if you will, and
+come back to me while I pretend to draw the bolts.  No, please don't
+argue.  It will be all right if you do as I say.'
+
+She appeared so very sure of herself that, against his will, the
+doctor obeyed.
+
+'_Pretend_ to draw the bolts?' he kept muttering.  Had the door been
+unbarred, then, all this while?
+
+She was opening it, at any rate, when he returned to the passage.
+But before lifting the latch she demanded, as if upon second
+thought,--
+
+'Who is there?  And what is your business?'
+
+'Mr Rattenbury,' answered a loud voice.  'You shall know my business
+fast enough if you will kindly open.'
+
+Without more ado she flung the door wide, and the ray of her lamp
+fell upon Mr Rattenbury, the young riding-officer, cloaked,
+high-booted, and spurred.
+
+'A strange business it must be, sir,' said the widow, 'that brings
+you hammering up sick folk at this time of night!'
+
+'Sick folk, eh?' said the riding-master, with a brusque laugh.
+'Sick folk don't usually sit up till past two in the morning ready
+dressed.  Hadn't we better stow that kind of talk, ma'am?'
+
+'You had better,' Mrs Tresize answered composedly, 'hitch your
+horse's bridle to the staple you'll find on the left, and step
+inside--that is, if you are not in too great a hurry.'  Here she
+turned for a look behind her.  'My goodness!' she cried with a
+well-feigned start, 'if you haven't scared the doctor into fetching a
+gun!'
+
+Mr Rattenbury stared past her into the passage.  'Doctor Unonius?' he
+exclaimed, catching his breath in surprise.
+
+'At your good service, Mr Rattenbury, though you have given us a
+shock, sir.  May I ask what keeps you afoot to-night?  Not a run of
+goods, I hope?'
+
+Mr Rattenbury stared at him.  If any one man in the whole countryside
+bore a reputation of simple probity, it was Doctor Unonius.
+Impossible to connect him with tricks to defraud the Revenue!
+And yet had not the young riding-officer distinctly seen Landaveddy
+show and anon eclipse a light, and in such a fashion that it could
+only be interpreted as a signal.
+
+'There has been a run, and an infernally daring one,' said Mr
+Rattenbury; 'in Lealand Cove, not half an hour ago.  And the deuce of
+it is we had warning of it all along.'
+
+'Warning?' echoed Mrs Tresize, with a touch of anxiety in her voice.
+
+'Yes, ma'am.  It was known to us--though I'll not tell you how--that
+Truman, the Grampound butcher, was acting freighter for a pretty
+large run, and for a week now two of my fellows have been at
+Grampound keeping an eye on him.  I sent over a relief this very
+afternoon, and the relieved men brought back the report that Truman
+had scarcely quitted his house for a week.  They left at four
+o'clock.  It was dusk, and he'd lit a couple of candles in his shop,
+and was seated there reading a newspaper.  Another thing put us off.
+The boat chartered was the _Bold Venture_, with Cornelius Roose on
+board.  Cornelius--as I dare say you have heard, doctor--is the
+cleverest spotsman on this coast; but he was never yet known to risk
+a run unless he had his brother John to help ashore.  So we kept a
+sharp eye on John Roose, and unbeknown to him, as we thought.
+Well, to-night he attends a prayer-meeting at Polruan, that's five
+miles east of home, and starts back at ten o'clock, our men shadowing
+him all the way.  Goes quietly to bed he does, and just as I'm
+thinking to do the same, be shot if Cornelius hasn't beaten up with a
+foul wind, dodged the cutter, and nipped into Lealand Cove, where
+somebody has two score of pack horses waiting--'
+
+'Pack horses?'
+
+'Yes, the old game.  It hasn't been played before in my time, and my
+men had almost forgotten the trick of it.  The horses need training,
+you see, and we reckoned the trained ones had all died out.'
+
+'Horses?' repeated Doctor Unonius.  'Then that accounts for the noise
+I heard--'
+
+'Eh?' queried Mr Rattenbury sharply.
+
+'A sound of galloping, as it were.  I opened the window to look, but
+could see nothing.
+
+Mrs Tresize caught her breath.  'Yes, yes,' she put in, 'Doctor
+Unonius opened the window.  You wouldn't charge _him_ with making
+signals, I hope?'
+
+'But--' began Doctor Unonius and Mr Rattenbury together.  The doctor
+was about to say that, the road being hidden from this downstairs
+window, it followed that the window could not be seen from the road.
+But the riding-officer had the louder voice and bore him down.
+
+'But,' he objected, 'the light was shown from an _upstairs_ window,
+ma'am.'
+
+'To be sure,' the widow squared her chin and glanced at Doctor
+Unonius defiantly--'and what should the doctor be doing here except
+attending on the sick?  And where should my poor maid Tryphena be
+lying at this moment but upstairs and in bed with the colic?'
+
+The doctor, on a sudden confronted with this amazing lie, cast up his
+hands a little way, and so, averting his eyes, turned slowly round to
+the fireplace.  His brain swam.  For the moment he could scarcely
+have been more helpless had some one dealt him a blow in the wind.
+His nature so abhorred falsehood that he blushed even to suspect it.
+To have it flung at him thus brazenly--
+
+As he recovered his wits a little he heard the widow say,--
+
+'And as for the horses, they never came this way.'
+
+'Is that so?'  Mr Rattenbury swung round upon the doctor.
+
+'They--they certainly did not pass along the road outside,' said
+Doctor Unonius, speaking as in a dream.  'The noise of galloping
+turned off at some distance below the house, and seemed to die away
+to the northward.'
+
+'Then I've made a cursed mess of this,' said the riding-officer,
+snatching up his hat.  'Your pardon, ma'am! and if you won't forgive
+me to-night, I'll call and apologise to-morrow.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+He was gone.  They heard the clatter of his horse's hoofs down the
+road, and listened as it died away.
+
+Neither spoke.  Mrs Tresize stood by the table, and so that, glancing
+sideways across her left shoulder, her eyes studied the doctor's
+back, which he kept obstinately turned upon her.  He had put up a
+hand to the chimney-shelf and leaned forward with his gaze bent on
+the embers.
+
+'Doctor?'
+
+'Ma'am?' after a long pause.
+
+'Do you really reckon smuggling so very sinful?'
+
+'It is not a question of smuggling, ma'am.'
+
+'Oh, yes, it is!' she insisted.  'Once you get mixed up in that
+business you have to deceive at times--if 'tis only to protect
+others.'
+
+'I can understand, ma'am,' said the doctor, after another pause,
+'that to dabble in smuggling is to court many awkward situations.
+You need not remind _me_ of that, who am fresh from misleading that
+young man.  It was--if you will pardon my saying so--by reason of his
+trust in my good faith that you escaped cross-questioning.'
+
+'I'll grant that, and with all my heart.  But, since deceiving him
+goes so hard against the grain with you, he shall know the truth
+to-morrow, when he comes to apologise.  Will that content you?'
+
+'It will be some atonement, ma'am.  As for contenting me--'
+
+'You mean that I have given you a shock?  And that to recover your
+esteem will not be easy?'
+
+She asked it with a small, pathetic sigh, and took a step towards the
+fireplace, as if to entreat his pardon.  But before he could be aware
+of this his attention was claimed by a sound without.  The latch of
+the back door was lifted with a click, and, almost before he could
+face about, steps were heard in the passage.  The door of the best
+kitchen opened a foot or so, and through the aperture was thrust the
+head of Tryphena--of Tryphena, who by rights should be lying
+upstairs, victim of a colic.
+
+'Missus!' announced Tryphena, in a hoarse whisper.  'The kegs be
+stowed all right in the orchet--all the four dozen.  But here's
+Butcher Truman, teasy as fire.  Says he's been robbed o' fifty pounds
+on the way an' can't pay the carriers!  An' the carriers be tappin'
+the stuff an' drinkin' what's left, an' neither to hold nor to bind
+but threat'nin' to cut the inside of en out--an' he's here, if you
+plaze, to know if so be you could lend a few pounds to satisfy 'em.
+I told en--'
+
+'Show him in,' commanded Mrs Tresize, with a creditable hold on her
+voice; for, to tell the truth, she was half hysterical.
+
+Tryphena withdrew, and pushed the strangest of figures through the
+doorway.  Butcher Truman had discarded the shawl from his head and
+shoulders, or perchance it had been snatched away by the infuriated
+carriers.  For expedition, too, he had caught up his feminine skirt
+and petticoat and twisted them and caught them about his waist with a
+leathern belt, over which they hung in careless indecorous festoons,
+draping a pair of corduroy breeches.  But he still wore a woman's
+bodice, though half the buttons were burst; and a sun-bonnet, with
+strings still knotted about his throat, dangled at the back of his
+shoulders like a hood.  He was a full-blooded man, slightly obese,
+with a villainous pair of eyes that blinked in the sudden lamp-light.
+He was dangerous, too, between anger and terror.  But Mrs Tresize
+gave him no time.
+
+'Ah, good-evening, Mr Truman!  There has been some mistake, I hear;
+but it's by the greatest good luck you came to me.  Here is your
+missing property, eh?'  She smiled and held out the bag.
+
+Butcher Truman stared at it.  'Send I may never--' he began; and with
+that his gaze, travelling past the bag, fell on Doctor Unonius.
+'_You?_' he stuttered, clenching his thick fists.  '_You?_ . . .
+Oh, by--, let me get at 'im!'
+
+But Mrs Tresize very deftly stepped in front of him as he came on
+menacing.
+
+'If you are not a fool,' she said sharply, 'you will waste
+no time, but hurry along and pay the carriers.  They, for their part,
+won't waste any time with neat brandy.  In ten minutes or so
+they'll be wanting your blood in a bottle--and, if it's all the same
+to you, Mr Truman, I'd rather they didn't start hunting you through
+these premises.  What's more,' she added, as he hesitated,
+'the riding-officer was close on your track just now.  You owe it to
+Doctor Unonius here, that he has overrun it.'
+
+The butcher clutched at his bag, and made as if to open it.
+
+'You needn't trouble,' Mrs Tresize assured him sweetly.
+'Your money's good--and so will be mine when it comes to settling,
+for all that I'm reported "near."  Good-night!'
+
+'Good-night!' growled Butcher Truman, and lurched forth with his bag.
+The widow, staring after him, broke into a laugh.
+
+'Tryphena,' she said, 'fetch the doctor's horse and harness him
+quick!  We must get him out of this, good man.  Are the tubs stowed?'
+
+'All of 'em, missus.  I counted the four dozen.'
+
+'Four dozen is forty-eight; and that doctor'--she turned to him--
+'is not my age, by a very long way.'
+
+But when Dapple had been harnessed, and the doctor drove off (after
+looking at his watch and finding that it indicated ten minutes to
+four), Mrs Tresize lingered at the back door a moment before ordering
+Tryphena to shut and bolt it.
+
+'There was nothing else to do but lie,' she said to herself,
+meditatively.  'But, all the same, it's lost him for me.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+So indeed it had.  Doctor Unonius could not overlook a falsehood, and
+from that hour his thoughts never rested upon the widow Tresize as a
+desirable woman to wed.
+
+But he had grave searchings of conscience on the part he had been
+made to play.  Undoubtedly he had misled Mr Rattenbury, and--all
+question of public honesty apart--had perhaps injured that young
+officer's chances of promotion.
+
+The thought of it disturbed his sleep for weeks.  In the end he
+decided to make a clean breast to Mr Rattenbury, as between man and
+man; and encountering him one afternoon on the Lealand road, drew up
+old Dapple and made sign that he wished to speak.
+
+It's about Mrs Tresize--' he began.
+
+'You've heard, then?' said Mr Rattenbury.
+
+'Heard what?'
+
+'Why, that I'm going to marry her.'
+
+'Oh!' said the doctor; and added after a pause, 'My dear sir, I wish
+you joy.'
+
+'I don't feel that I deserve her,' said Mr Rattenbury, somewhat
+fatuously.
+
+'Oh!' said the doctor again.  'As for that--'
+
+He did not conclude the sentence, but drove on in meditation.
+
+It is to be supposed that with marriage the widow mended her ways.
+Certainly she can have dabbled no more in smuggling, and as certainly
+she had told the truth about her age.  Thrice in the years that
+followed Doctor Unonius spent some hours of the night, waiting, in
+the best kitchen at Landeweddy; and Mrs Rattenbury on neither of
+these occasions--so critical for herself--forgot to have him provided
+with a decanter of excellent brandy.
+
+The doctor sipping at it and gazing over the rim of the glass at Mr
+Rattenbury--nervous and distraught, as a good husband should be--on
+each occasion wondered how much he knew.
+
+
+
+
+MUTUAL EXCHANGE, LIMITED.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Millionaire though he was, Mr Markham (_nee_ Markheim) never let a
+small opportunity slip.  To be sure the enforced idleness of Atlantic
+crossing bored him and kept him restless; it affected him with
+_malaise_ to think that for these five days, while the solitude of
+ocean swallowed him, men on either shore, with cables at their
+command, were using them to get rich on their own account--it might
+even be at his expense.  The first day out from New York he had spent
+in his cabin, immersed in correspondence.  Having dealt with this and
+exhausted it, on the second, third, and fourth days he found nothing
+to do.  He never played cards; he eschewed all acquaintance with his
+fellow men except in the way of business; he had no vanity, and to be
+stared at on the promenade deck because of the fame of his wealth
+merely annoyed him.  On the other hand, he had not the smallest
+excuse to lock himself up in his stuffy state-room.  He enjoyed fresh
+air, and had never been sea-sick in his life.
+
+It was just habit--the habit of never letting a chance go, or the
+detail of a chance--that on the fourth morning carried him the length
+of the liner, to engage in talk with the fresh-coloured young third
+officer busy on the high deck forward.
+
+'A young man, exposed as you are, ought to insure himself,' said Mr
+Markham.
+
+The third officer--by name Dick Rendal--knew something of the
+inquisitiveness and idle ways of passengers.  This was his fifth trip
+in the _Carnatic_.  He took no truck in passengers beyond showing
+them the patient politeness enjoined by the Company's rules.  He knew
+nothing of Mr Markham, who dispensed with the services of a valet and
+dressed with a shabbiness only pardonable in the extremely rich.
+Mr Markham, 'the Insurance King,' had arrayed himself this morning in
+gray flannel, with a reach-me-down overcoat, cloth cap, and carpet
+slippers that betrayed his flat, Jewish instep.  Dick Rendal sized
+him up for an insurance tout; but behaved precisely as he would have
+behaved on better information.  He refrained from ordering the
+intruder aft; but eyed him less than amiably--being young, keen on
+his ship, and just now keen on his job.
+
+'I saw you yesterday,' said Mr Markham.  (It had blown more than half
+a gale, and late in the afternoon three heavy seas had come aboard.
+The third officer at this moment was employed with half a dozen
+seamen in repairing damages.) 'I was watching.  As I judged, it was
+the nicest miss you weren't overboard.  Over and above employers'
+liability you should insure.  The Hands Across Mutual Exchange--
+that's your office.'
+
+Mr Markham leaned back, and put a hand up to his inner
+breast-pocket--it is uncertain whether for his cigar-case, or for
+some leaflet relating to the Hands Across.
+
+'Take care, sir!' said the third officer sharply.  'That stanchion--'
+
+He called too late.  The hand as it touched the breast-pocket, shot
+up and clawed at the air.  With a voice that was less a cry than a
+startled grunt, Mr Markham pitched backwards off the fore-deck into
+the sea.
+
+The third officer stared for just a fraction of a second; ran, seized
+a life-belt as the liner's length went shooting past; and hurled it--
+with pretty good aim, too--almost before a man of his working party
+had time to raise the cry of 'Man overboard!'  Before the alarm
+reached the bridge, he had kicked off his shoes; and the last sound
+in his ears as he dived was the ping of the bell ringing down to the
+engine-room--a thin note, infinitely distant, speaking out of an
+immense silence.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+It was a beautifully clean dive; but in the flurry of the plunge the
+third officer forgot for an instant the right upward slant of the
+palms, and went a great way deeper than he had intended.  By the time
+he rose to the surface the liner had slid by, and for a moment or two
+he saw nothing; for instinctively he came up facing aft, towards the
+spot where Mr Markham had fallen, and the long sea running after
+yesterday's gale threw up a ridge that seemed to take minutes--though
+in fact it took but a few seconds--to sink and heave up the trough
+beyond.  By-and-by a life-belt swam up into sight; then another--at
+least a dozen had been flung; and beyond these at length, on the
+climbing crest of the swell two hundred yards away, the head and
+shoulders of Mr Markham.  By great good luck the first life-belt had
+fallen within a few feet of him, and Mr Markham had somehow managed
+to get within reach and clutch it--a highly creditable feat when it
+is considered that he was at best a poor swimmer, that the fall had
+knocked more than half the breath out of his body, that he had
+swallowed close on a pint of salt water, and that a heavy overcoat
+impeded his movements.  But after this fair first effort Mr Markham,
+as his clothes weighed him down, began--as the phrase is--to make
+very bad weather of it.  He made worse and worse weather of it as
+Dick Rendal covered the distance between them with a superlatively
+fine side-stroke, once or twice singing out to him to hold on, and
+keep a good heart.  Mr Markham, whether he heard or no, held on with
+great courage, and even coolness--up to a point.  Then of a sudden
+his nerve deserted him.  He loosed his hold of the life-belt, and
+struck out for his Rescuer.  Worse, as he sank in the effort and Dick
+gripped him, he closed and struggled.  For half a minute Dick,
+shaking free of the embrace--and this only by striking him on the jaw
+and half stunning him as they rose on the crest of a swell--was able
+to grip him by the collar and drag him within reach of the life-belt.
+But here the demented man managed to wreathe his legs and arms in
+another and more terrible hold.  The pair of them were now cursing
+horribly, cursing whenever a wave left choking them, and allowed them
+to cough and sputter for breath.  They fought as two men whose lives
+had pent up an unmitigable hate for this moment.  They fought,
+neither losing his hold, as their strength ebbed, and the weight of
+their clothes dragged them lower.  Dick Rendal's hand still clutched
+the cord of the life-belt, but both bodies were under water, fast
+locked, when the liner's boat at length reached the spot.  They were
+hauled on board, as on a long line you haul a fish with a crab
+fastened upon him; and were laid in the stern-sheets, where their
+grip was with some difficulty loosened.
+
+It may have happened in the struggle.  Or again it may have happened
+when they were hoisted aboard and lay, for a minute or so, side by
+side on the deck.  Both men were insensible; so far gone indeed that
+the doctor looked serious as he and his helpers began to induce
+artificial respiration.
+
+The young third officer 'came round' after five minutes of this;
+but, strangely enough, in the end he was found to be suffering from a
+severer shock than Mr Markham, on whom the doctor operated for a full
+twenty minutes before a flutter of the eyelids rewarded him.
+They were carried away--the third officer, in a state of collapse, to
+his modest berth; Mr Markham to his white-and-gold deck-cabin.
+On his way thither Mr Markham protested cheerily that he saw no
+reason for all this fuss; he was as right now, or nearly as right, as
+the Bank.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+How's Rendal getting on?'
+
+Captain Holditch, skipper of the _Carnatic_, put this question next
+morning to the doctor, and was somewhat surprised by the answer.
+
+'Oh, Rendal's all right.  That is to say, he will be all right.
+Just now he's suffering from shock.  My advice--supposing, of course,
+you can spare him--is to pack him straightaway off to his people on a
+week's leave.  In a week he'll be fit as a fiddle.'  The doctor
+paused and added, ''Wish I could feel as easy about the millionaire.'
+
+'Why, what's the matter with him?  'Struck me he pulled round
+wonderfully, once you'd brought him to.  He talked as cheery as a
+grig.
+
+'H'm--yes,' said the doctor; 'he has been talking like that ever
+since, only he hasn't been talking sense.  Calls me names for keeping
+him in bed, and wants to get out and repair that stanchion.  I told
+him it was mended.  "Nothing on earth is the matter with me," he
+insisted, till I had to quiet him down with bromide.  By the way, did
+you send off any account of the accident?'
+
+'By wireless?  No; I took rather particular pains to stop that--gets
+into the papers, only frightens the family and friends, who conclude
+things to be ten times worse than they are.  Plenty of time at
+Southampton.  Boat-express'll take him home ahead of the scare?'
+
+'Lives in Park Lane, doesn't he?--that big corner house like a
+game-pie? . . . Ye-es, you were thoughtful, as usual. . . . Only some
+one might have been down to the docks to meet him.  'Wish I knew his
+doctor's address.  Well, never mind--I'll fix him up so that he
+reaches Park Lane, anyway.'
+
+'He ought to do something for Rendal,' mused Captain Holditch.
+
+'He will, you bet, when his head is right--that's if a millionaire's
+head is ever right,' added the doctor, who held radical opinions on
+the distribution of wealth.
+
+The captain ignored this.  He never talked politics even when ashore.
+
+'As plucky a rescue as ever I witnessed,' he answered the doctor.
+'Yes, of course, I'll spare the lad.  Slip a few clothes into his
+bag, and tell him he can get off by the first train.  Oh, and by the
+way, you might ask him if he's all right for money; say he can draw
+on me if he wants any.'
+
+The doctor took his message down to Dick Rendal; 'We're this moment
+passing Hurst Castle,' he announced cheerfully, 'and you may tumble
+out if you like.  But first I'm to pack a few clothes for you; if you
+let me, I'll do it better than the steward.  Shore-going clothes, my
+boy--where do you keep your cabin trunk?  Eh?  Suit-case, is it?--
+best leather, nickel locks--no, silver, as I'm a sinner!  Hallo, my
+young friend!'--here the doctor looked up, mischief in his eye--
+'You never struck me as that sort of dude; and fathers and mothers
+don't fit their offspring out with silver locks to their suit-cases--
+or they've altered since my time.  Well, you'll enjoy your leave all
+the better; and give her my congratulations.  The Old Man says you
+may get off as soon as we're docked, and stay home till you've
+recovered. I dare say it won't be long before you feel better,' he
+wound up, with a glance at the suit-case.
+
+'The Old Man?  Yes--yes--Captain Holditch, of course,' muttered Dick
+from his berth.
+
+The doctor looked at him narrowly for a moment; but, when he spoke
+again, kept by intention the same easy rattling tone.
+
+'Decent of him, eh?--Yes, and by the way, he asked me to tell you
+that, if you shouldn't happen to be flush of money just now, that
+needn't hinder you five minutes.  He'll be your banker, and make it
+right with the Board.'
+
+Dick lay still for half a dozen seconds, as though the words took
+that time in reaching him.  Then he let out a short laugh from
+somewhere high on his nose.
+
+'My banker?  Will he?  Good Lord!'
+
+'May be,' said the doctor, dryly; laying out a suit of mufti at the
+foot of the bed, 'the Old Man and I belong to the same date.
+I've heard that youngsters save money nowadays.  But when I was your
+age that sort of offer would have hit the mark nine times out of
+ten.'
+
+He delivered this as a parting shot. Dick, lying on his back and
+staring up at a knot in the woodwork over his bunk, received it
+placidly.  Probably he did not hear.  His brow was corrugated in a
+frown, as though he were working out a sum or puzzling over some
+problem.  The doctor closed the door softly, and some minutes later
+paid a visit to Mr Markham, whom he found stretched on the couch of
+the white-and-gold deck-cabin, attired in a gray flannel
+sleeping-suit, and wrapped around the legs with a travelling rug of
+dubious hue.
+
+'That's a good deal better,' he said cheerfully, after an
+examination, in which, while seeming to be occupied with pulses and
+temperature, he paid particular attention to the pupils of Mr
+Markham's eyes.  'We are nosing up the Solent fast--did you know it?
+Ten minutes ought to see us in Southampton Water; and I suppose
+you'll be wanting to catch the first train.'
+
+'I wonder,' said Mr Markham vaguely, 'if the Old Man will mind.'
+
+The doctor stared for a moment.  'I think we may risk it,' he said,
+after a pause; 'though I confess that, last night, I was doubtful.
+Of course, if you're going to be met, it's right enough.'
+
+'Why should I be met?'
+
+'Well, you see--I couldn't know, could I?  Anyway, you ought to see
+your own doctor as soon as you get home.  Perhaps, if you gave me his
+name, I might scribble a note to him, just to say what has happened.
+Even big-wigs, you know, don't resent being helped with a little
+information.'
+
+Mr Markham stared.  'Lord!' said he, 'you're talking as if I kept a
+tame doctor!  Why, man, I've never been sick nor sorry since I went
+to school.'
+
+'That's not hard to believe.  I've ausculted you--sound as a bell,
+you are: constitution strong as a horse's.  Still, a shock is a
+shock.  You've a family doctor, I expect--some one you ring up
+when your liver goes wrong, and you want to be advised to go to
+Marienbad or some such place--I'd feel easier if I could shift the
+responsibility on to him.'
+
+Still Mr Markham stared.  'I've heard about enough of this shock to
+my system,' said he at length.  'But have it your own way.  If you
+want me to recommend a doctor, my mother swears by an old boy in
+Craven Street, Strand.  I don't know the number, but his name's
+Leadbetter, and he's death on croup.'
+
+'Craven Street?  That's a trifle off Park Lane, isn't it?--Still,
+Leadbetter, you say?  I'll get hold of the directory, look up his
+address, and drop him a note or two on the case by this evening's
+post.
+
+
+A couple of hours later Mr Markham and Dick Rendal almost rubbed
+shoulders in the crowd of passengers shaking hands with the ever
+polite Captain Holditch, and bidding the _Carnatic_ good-bye with the
+usual parting compliments; but in the hurry and bustle no one noted
+that the pair exchanged neither word nor look of recognition.
+The skipper gave Dick an honest clap on the shoulder.  'Doctor's
+fixed you up, then?  That's right.  Make the best of your holiday,
+and I'll see that the Board does you justice,' and with that, turned
+away for more hand-shaking.  One small thing he did remark.  When it
+came to Mr Markham's turn, that gentleman, before extending a hand,
+lifted it to his forehead and gravely saluted.  But great men--as
+Captain Holditch knew--have their eccentric ways.
+
+Nor was it remarked, when the luggage came to be sorted out and put
+on board the boat express, that Dick's porter under his direction
+collected and wheeled off Mr Markham's; while Mr Markham picked up
+Dick's suit-case, walked away with it unchallenged to a third-class
+smoking compartment and deposited it on the rack.  There were three
+other passengers in the compartment.  'Good Lord!' ejaculated one, as
+the millionaire stepped out to purchase an evening paper.
+'Isn't that Markham?  Well!--and travelling third!' 'Saving habit--
+second nature,' said another.  'That's the way to get rich, my boy.'
+
+Meanwhile Dick, having paid for four places, and thereby secured a
+first-class solitude, visited the telegraph office, and shrank the
+few pounds in his pocket by sending a number of cablegrams.
+
+On the journey up Mr Markham took some annoyance from the glances of
+his fellow-passengers.  They were furtive, almost reverential, and
+this could only be set down to his exploit of yesterday.  He thanked
+Heaven they forbore to talk of it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+In the back-parlour of a bookseller's shop, between the Strand and
+the Embankment, three persons sat at tea; the proprietor of the shop,
+a gray little man with round spectacles and bushy eyebrows, his wife,
+and a pretty girl of twenty or twenty-one.  The girl apparently was a
+visitor, for she wore her hat, and her jacket lay across the arm of
+an old horsehair sofa that stood against the wall in the lamp's half
+shadow; and yet the gray little bookseller and his little
+Dresden-china wife very evidently made no stranger of her.
+They talked, all three, as members of a family talk, when contented
+and affectionate; at haphazard, taking one another for granted, not
+raising their voices.
+
+The table was laid for a fourth; and by-and-by they heard him coming
+through the shop--in a hurry too.  The old lady, always sensitive to
+the sound of her boy's footsteps, looked up almost in alarm, but the
+girl half rose from her chair, her eyes eager.
+
+'I know,' she said breathlessly.  'Jim has heard--'
+
+'Chrissy here?  That's right.'  A young man broke into the room, and
+stood waving a newspaper.  'The _Carnatic's_ arrived--here it is
+under "Stop Press"--I bought the paper as I came by Somerset House--
+"_Carnatic_ arrived at Southampton 3.45 this afternoon.  Her time
+from Sandy Hook, 5 days, 6 hours, 45 minutes."
+
+'Then she hasn't broken the record this time, though Dick was
+positive she would,' put in the old lady.  During the last six months
+she had developed a craze for Atlantic records, and knew the
+performances of all the great liners by heart.
+
+'You bad little mother!'--Jim wagged a forefinger at her.  'You don't
+deserve to hear another word.'
+
+'Is there any more?'
+
+'More?  Just you listen to this--"Reports heroic rescue.  Yesterday
+afternoon Mr Markham, the famous Insurance King, accidentally fell
+overboard from fore deck, and was gallantly rescued by a young
+officer named Kendal"--you bet that's a misprint for Rendal--error in
+the wire, perhaps--we'll get a later edition after tea--"who leapt
+into the sea and swam to the sinking millionaire, supporting him
+until assistance arrived.  Mr Markham had by this afternoon recovered
+sufficiently to travel home by the Boat Express."  There, see for
+yourselves!'
+
+Jim spread the newspaper on the table.
+
+'But don't they say anything about Dick?' quavered the mother,
+fumbling with her glasses, while Miss Chrissy stared at the print
+with shining eyes.
+
+'Dick's not a millionaire, mother--though it seems he has been
+supporting one--for a few minutes anyway.  Well, Chrissy, how does
+that make you feel?'
+
+'You see, my dear,' said the little bookseller softly, addressing his
+wife, 'if any harm had come to the boy, they would have reported it
+for certain.'
+
+They talked over the news while Jim ate his tea, and now and again
+interrupted with his mouth full; talked over it and speculated upon
+it in low, excited tones, which grew calmer by degrees.  But still a
+warm flush showed on the cheeks of both the women, and the little
+bookseller found it necessary to take out his handkerchief at
+intervals and wipe his round spectacles.
+
+He was wiping them perhaps for the twentieth time, and announcing
+that he must go and relieve his assistant in the shop, when the
+assistant's voice was heard uplifted close outside--as it seemed, in
+remonstrance with a customer.
+
+'Hallo!' said the little bookseller, and was rising from his chair,
+when the door opened.  A middle-aged, Jewish-looking man, wrapped to
+the chin in a shabby ulster and carrying a suit-case, stood on the
+threshold, and regarded the little party.
+
+'Mother!' cried Mr Markham.  'Chrissy!'
+
+He set down the suit-case and took two eager strides.  Old Mrs.
+Rendal, the one immediately menaced, shrank back into Jim's arms as
+he started up with his throat working to bolt a mouthful of cake.
+Chrissy caught her breath.
+
+'Who in thunder are you, sir?' demanded Jim.
+
+'Get out of this, unless you want to be thrown out!'
+
+'Chrissy!' again appealed Mr Markham, but in a fainter voice.  He had
+come to a standstill, and his hand went slowly up to his forehead.
+
+Chrissy pointed to the suit-case.  'It's--it's Dick's!' she gasped.
+Jim did not hear.
+
+'Mr Wenham,' he said to the white-faced assistant in the doorway;
+'will you step out, please, and fetch a policeman?'
+
+'Excuse me.' Mr Markham took his hand slowly from his face, and
+spread it behind him, groping as he stepped backwards to the door.
+'I--I am not well, I think'--he spoke precisely, as though each word
+as it came had to be held and gripped.  'The address'--here he turned
+on Chrissy with a vague, apologetic smile--'faces--clear in my head.
+Mistake--I really beg your pardon.'
+
+'Get him some brandy, Jim,' said the little bookseller.
+'The gentleman is ill, whoever he is.'
+
+But Mr Markham turned without another word, and lurched past the
+assistant, who flattened himself against a bookshelf to give him
+room.  Jim followed him through the shop; saw him cross the doorstep
+and turn away down the pavement to the left; stared in his wake until
+the darkness and the traffic swallowed him; and returned, softly
+whistling, to the little parlour.
+
+'Drunk's the simplest explanation,' he announced.
+
+'But how did he know my name?' demanded Chrissy.  'And the
+suit-case!'
+
+'Eh?'  He's left it--well, if this doesn't beat the band!--Here,
+Wenham nip after the man and tell him he left his luggage behind!'
+Jim stooped to lift the case by the handle.
+
+'But it's Dick's!'
+
+'Dick's?'
+
+'It's the suit-case I gave him--my birthday present last April.
+See, there are his initials!'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Dick Rendal, alighting at Waterloo, collected his luggage--or rather,
+Mr Markham's--methodically; saw it hoisted on a four-wheeler; and,
+handing the cabby two shillings, told him to deliver it at an address
+in Park Lane, where the butler would pay him his exact fare.  This
+done, he sought the telegraph office and sent three more cablegrams,
+the concise wording of which he had carefully evolved on the way up
+from Southampton.  These do not come into the story,--which may
+digress, however, so far as to tell that on receipt of one of them,
+the Vice-President of the Hands Across Central New York Office
+remarked to his secretary 'that the old warrior was losing no time.
+Leisure and ozone would appear to have bucked him up.'  To which the
+secretary answered that it was lucky for civilisation if Mr Markham
+missed suspecting, or he'd infallibly make a corner in both.
+
+Having despatched his orders, Dick Rendal felt in his pockets for a
+cigar-case; was annoyed and amused (in a sub-conscious sort of way)
+to find only a briar pipe and a pocketful of coarse-cut tobacco;
+filled and lit his pipe, and started to walk.
+
+His way led him across Westminster Bridge, up through Whitehall, and
+brought him to the steps of that building which, among all the great
+London clubs, most exorbitantly resembles a palace.  He mounted its
+perron with the springy confident step of youth; and that same spring
+and confidence of gait carried him past the usually vigilant porter.
+A marble staircase led him to the lordliest smoking-room in London.
+He frowned, perceiving that his favourite arm-chair was occupied by a
+somnolent Judge of the High Court, and catching up the _Revue des
+Deux Mondes_, settled himself in a window-bay commanding the great
+twilit square of the Horse Guards and the lamp-lit Mall.
+
+He had entered the smoking-room lightly, almost jauntily; but--not a
+doubt of it--he was tired--so tired that he shuffled his body twice
+and thrice in the arm-chair before discovering the precise angle that
+gave superlative comfort. . . .
+
+'I beg your pardon, sir.'
+
+Dick opened his eyes.  A liveried footman stood over his chair, and
+was addressing him.
+
+'Eh?  Did I ring? Yes, you may bring me a glass of liqueur brandy.
+As quickly as possible, if you please; to tell the truth, George, I'm
+not feeling very well.'
+
+The man started at hearing his name, but made no motion to obey the
+order.
+
+'I beg your pardon, sir, but the secretary wishes to see you in his
+room.'
+
+'The secretary?  Mr Hood?  Yes, certainly.'  Dick rose.  'I--I am
+afraid you must give me your arm, please.  A giddiness--the ship's
+motion, I suppose.'
+
+The secretary was standing at his door in the great vestibule as Dick
+came down the staircase on the man's arm.
+
+'I beg your pardon,' he said, 'but may I have your name?  The porter
+does not recognise you, and I fear that I am equally at fault.'
+
+'My name?'--with the same gesture that Mr Markham had used in the
+little back parlour, Dick passed a hand over his eyes.  He laughed,
+and even to his own ears the laugh sounded vacant, foolish.
+
+'Are you a member of the club, sir?'
+
+'I--I thought I was.'  The marble pillars of the atrium were swaying
+about him like painted cloths, the tesselated pavement heaving and
+rocking at his feet.  'Abominably stupid of me,' he muttered,
+'unpardonable, you must think.'
+
+The secretary looked at him narrowly, and decided that he was really
+ill; that there was nothing in his face to suggest the impostor.
+
+'Come into my room for a moment,' he said, and sent the footman
+upstairs to make sure that no small property of the Club was missing.
+'Here, drink down the brandy. . . . Feeling better?  You are aware,
+no doubt, that I might call in the police and have you searched?'
+
+For a moment Dick did not answer, but stood staring with rigid eyes.
+At length,--
+
+'They--won't--find--what--I--want,' he said slowly, dropping out the
+words one by one.  The secretary now felt certain that here was a
+genuine case of mental derangement.  With such he had no desire to be
+troubled; and so, the footman bringing word that nothing had been
+stolen, he dismissed Dick to the street.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+The brandy steadying him, Dick went down the steps with a fairly firm
+tread.  But he went down into a world that for him was all darkness--
+darkness of chaos--carrying an entity that was not his, but belonged
+Heaven knew to whom.
+
+The streets, the traffic, meant nothing to him.  Their roar was
+within his head; and on his ears, nostrils, chest, lay a pressure as
+of mighty waters.  Rapidly as he walked, he felt himself all the
+while to be lying fathoms deep in those waters, face downwards, with
+drooped head, held motionless there while something within him
+struggled impotently to rise to the surface.  The weight that held
+him down, almost to bursting, was as the weight of tons.
+
+The houses, the shop-fronts, the street-lamps, the throng of dark
+figures, passed him in unmeaning procession.  Yet all the time his
+feet, by some instinct, were leading him towards the water; and
+by-and-by he found himself staring--still face downwards--into a
+black inverted heaven wherein the lights had become stars and swayed
+only a little.
+
+He had, in fact, halted, and was leaning over the parapet of the
+Embankment, a few yards from Cleopatra's Needle; and as he passed the
+plinth some impression of it must have bitten itself on the retina;
+for coiled among the stars lay two motionless sphinxes green-eyed,
+with sheathed claws, watching lazily while the pressure bore him down
+to them, and down--and still down. . . .
+
+Upon this dome of night there broke the echo of a footfall.
+A thousand footsteps had passed him, and he had heard none of them.
+But this one, springing out of nowhere, sang and repeated itself and
+re-echoed across the dome, and from edge to edge.  Dick's fingers
+drew themselves up like the claws of the sphinx.  The footsteps drew
+nearer while he crouched: they were close to him.  Dick leapt at
+them, with murder in his spring.
+
+Where the two men grappled, the parapet of the Embankment opens on a
+flight of river-stairs.  Mr Markham had uttered no cry; nor did a
+sound escape either man as, locked in that wrestle, they swayed over
+the brink.
+
+They were hauled up, unconscious, still locked in each other's arms.
+
+'Queer business,' said one of the rescuers as he helped to loosen
+their clasp, and lift the bodies on board the Royal Humane Society's
+float.  Looks like murderous assault.  But which of 'em done it by
+the looks, now?'
+
+Five minutes later Dick's eyelids fluttered.  For a moment he stared
+up at the dingy lamp swinging overhead; then his lips parted in a
+cry, faint, yet sharp--
+
+'Take care, sir!  That stanchion--'
+
+But Mr Markham's first words were, 'Plucky! devilish plucky!--owe you
+my life, my lad.'
+
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+     
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+In "My Christmas Burglary" I corrected the following apparent
+typographical errors:
+
+   "Europe and the Bull" to "Europa and the Bull".
+
+   "we most lose no time " to "we must lose no time"
+
+   "Exuse me sir" to Excuse me sir".
+
+
+
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+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #16194 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16194)