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OORPORAL SAM
AND OTHER STORIES




BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Crown 8vo. 6s. each.
POISON ISLAND
Sncoxn Imumssrox
Times.—‘A brave, amusing, exciting story. . . . No
one but “ Q" could have given us Miss Plinlimmon.’
Daily Mafl.—‘ “ Poison Island " holds us like a vice, and
we read with eyes glued to the pages.’
SIR JOHN CONSTANTIN E
Snooun IMPnzssION
Spectator.—‘ We have nothing but praise for a story
which is not only “ Q’s " finest achievement, but one which
must stand very near the work of the greatest of the
romantics.‘
Daily Telegraph.—‘ Really a splendid book, for the
adventures are those of living people, full of humanity and
humour.‘
SHAKESPEARE’S CHRISTMAS
AND OTHER STORIES
Punch—4 The stories are delightful. They are full of
character and action, touched up here and there with flashes
of humour.’
Truth—‘ A collection of stories in which “ Q " is at his
best. This means that all of them are very good.‘
Spectator.—‘ Every one of the stories will give pleasure
and satisfaction.‘
London: SMITH, ELDER 41 00., 15 Waterloo Place, S.W.




C ORPORAL SAM
AND OTHER STORIES
BY
‘6 Q 9!
(A. T. QUILLER-COUCH)
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER & 00., 15, WATERLOO PLACE
All right: reserved
1910


PRINTED BY
WILLIAM OLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BECCLRI.


23125
- 4
'14) II,
I
1
.¢
_\"
Q.
' t
Or q C.
CONTENTS
CORPORAL SAM
THE COPERNICAN CONVOY
‘ RED VELVET .
\
v
R algcd (2 (7’ ‘
444, {-3
THE JEW ON THE MOOR
MY CHRISTMAS BURGLARY
THE MAYOR'S DovEOOT: A CAUTIONARY TALE
NEWS FROM TROYI.
COLONEL BAIGENT’s CHRISTMAS
DOCTOR Unomus
MUTUAL EXCHANGE, LIMITED.
PAGE
44
81
114
135
152
173
194
215
269





GORPORAL SAM
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 artillery-
men to drag an extra 24-pounder into battery. TthFZ"
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 twomiles’ offing. The sirToke 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
B
=73“.


2 CORPORAL SAM
sunshine. But although blue held the upper heavens
—cloudless blue of J uly—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
ndred 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 brag/e for the hornwork towering
formidably behind it. Only where it covered the


4 CORPORAL SAM
“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 poach-
ing 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! J ohnny-
raws of the Third Battalion, your kind attention,
pray, for Daddy Wilkes and the good old days when


CORPORAL SAM 5
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 hornwor .”
“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 gufl'aw.
“ 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 yet shook underfoot, the sergeant
was the first to recover himself.
“Another breach!” he shouted between the
,


6 CORPORAL SAM
explosions, putting up both hands like a pair of
spectacles and peering through the smoke. “ See
there—t0 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 hornwork. At Badajoz, now—— ”
But here he checked himself in time, and fortu-
nately 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


CORPORAL SAM 7
to him while the fatigue party trudged on. Major
Frazer followed, closing his field telescope as he
descended.
“ What do you say to it '1’ ” asked Captain Archim-
beau, 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 sub-
mission, 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 travel-
ling 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.


8 CORPORAL SAM
“ 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 slope 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 com 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


CORPORAL SAM 9
and me, sir ”—here he appealed to Captain Archim-
beau-“ 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 ;
5‘ and he salves my feelings with a testimonial.”
“As for that, sir ”—the sergeant conceded a grin


10 ‘ CORPORAL SAM
—“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 sand-
hills hid his retreating figure.
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 further to go.
Worst of all, they were set in motion an hour
before dawn, although Wellington had left orders


CORPOBAL SAM 1 I
that fair daylight should he waited for, and the
artillerymen 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 hom-
work—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 seawall, the receding tide had
left a strip of strand, foul with rock and rock pools
and patches of sea-weed, dark and slippery. N 0w and
again a shell burst and illuminated these patches, or
the still-dripping ooze twinkled under flashes of mus-
ketry 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


12 CORPORAL SAM
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 salt-
water 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, cheer-
fully. “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


CORPORAL SAM 1 3
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


14 . CORPORAL SAM
it up, screamed it again and again. In the dark-
ness, 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 use-
less. 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 fiew 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
0n 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


CORPORAL SAM 1 5
down almost at their feet. The Engineer oflicer,
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 fore-
shore, arrived at the foot of the breach in straggling
two’s and three’s; and here, while their ofiicers 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 inex-
tricably 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 sup-
porters 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.


1 6 CORPORAL SAM
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 Camp-
bell 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 halfway 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


CORPORAL SAM 17
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 halfway 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.
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
o


18 CORPORAL SAM
assault: a fortnight of idleness for the troops, em- I
bittered 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 through-
out 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 piece-meal 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 WVellington’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.
0“ 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


CORPORAL SAM 19
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, pufi‘ing
at his pipe, fell back philosophically on his old catch-
word. “It takes you hard, because you’re young;
and it takes you harder because you had fed yourself
up on dreams 0’ glory, and such-like.”
“Well?”
“Well, and you have to get ever 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 some-
thing in Sergeant Wilkes’s averted face, a sudden
compunction seized him. “ You feel it too ? "
“T 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


20 CORPOBAL SAM
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 RA.—
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.”
“ \Vhat 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, led, 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


COBPORAL SAM 2 l
captain he’ll die. That’s how the mills grind in this
here all-canuering 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 further,
be 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 happen-
ing; 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


22 CORPORAL SAM
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.
IV
CERTAINLY, just 0r unjust, the Marquis could make
himself infernally unpleasant. Having ridden over
from headquarters 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 Penin-
sula. 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


CORPORAL SAM 2 3
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 seamists 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 1 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, acompany of the Light Division took advantage
of the fire to force their way over the rampart on


24 CORPORAL SAM
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, breakingzthrough the traverse and swarm-
ing up to the curtain’s summit. Almost at the same
moment the Thirteenth and Twenty-fourth Portu-
guese, 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.


26 OORPORAL SAM
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 ofl'er five pounds for one.”
“ What’s this talk about a child?” asked Sergeant
\Vilkes, 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


GORPOBAL SAM 27
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 tender-hearted 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.


28 CORPORAL SAM
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.


CORPORAL SAM 29
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 battlefield, 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


30 CORPORAL SAM
meadowsweet at home there, as the hawthorn was at
home on the hills above.
He smelt them now, across the reek of San Sebas-
tian, and they wafted him back to England—t0 boy-
hood, dreamingof 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 confiagration.


' CORPORAL SAM 31
“ Hullo ! ” 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 regi-
ment?” '
“ 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


32 CORPORAL SAM
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.”
“ N 0w 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 0’ 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 some-
how 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 scuflie both
men swayed out upon the roadway. And with that,
qr 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
7’


CORPORAL SAM 3 3
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—back-
wards 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 fire-
place, 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
D


34 CORPORAL SAM
corporal’s voice emboldened him, for he drew near
and stood watching.
“ Who did this, little one?” asked Corporal Sam,
nodding toward the corpse, as he rubbed the charred
dust from his hands.
For a while the child stared at him, not com-
prehending; 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 recognized the badge on the pouch.
He was shaking where he stood; and this, perhaps,
was why the child stared at him so oddly. But, look-
ing 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,


CORPORAL SAM 35
he had crawled forward to his master to be shot. 0
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.
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


3 6 CORPORAL SAM
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 un-
welcome to General Leith and the whole Fifth Division.
The dead fist clutched its rifle; and the sergeant


CORPORAL SAM 37
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 English-
men 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
/


38 CORPORAL SAM
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 rifieman, his voice
shaking a little. “Looks like he don’t fire on red-
coats; 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 side-
ways 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


CORPORAL SAM . 39
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 overlook-
ing 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


40 CORPORAL SAM
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.
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 arm-
chair, 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.”


CORPORAL SAM 4 l
“ 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 t0 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 ’0. 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


4 2 CORPORAL SAM
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 0’ 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.”
“0’ 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


CORPORAL SAM _ 43
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 halfway
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.]
I
I DARE say that, since the world began and men
learned to fight, was never an army moderately pros-
perous 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 fond-
ness 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;
44


THE “OOPERNIOAN oouvov 45
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


4 6 THE COPERNICAN CON VOY
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—


THE COPERNICAN CON VOY 4 7
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 dispatching
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 took it, being eager and young
(in fact, scarce turned tw'enty). But almost it jumped


48 THE COPERNICAN CONVOY
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 horsehair
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 soot. 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


THE COPEBNICAN CONVOY 49
piquet 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 l ’ says the grey Night Owl—once, twice,
And three times ‘ Whoo l’ for the little shy mice,
The mice and the rats and the rabbits,
‘ Who-co ! ’ ”
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 out-
side 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
E


50 THE COPEBNIOAN GONVOY
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 along-
side the high-road. There I found the trumpet in
converse with our piquet, 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 be 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 dispatch of business.


THE COPERNIGAN CONVOY 51
“He made pretty quick dispatch of it at Lans-
downe,” 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 I ”
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 guard-room of the Castle, where, as we dis-
mounted, 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 mid-
night, 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
UBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF mums


52 THE COPERNICAN CONVOY
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 0x 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 ! ”


THE COPERNIOAN CONVOY 53
“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. “ Quarter-
master,” 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 rofll 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


54 THE COPERNICAN GONVOY
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
wme.”
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,


56 THE COPERNICAN CONVOY
- 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 hesi-
tating 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


THE COPERNICAN couvor 57
be the road because of a light that shone straight
ahead of us, which I took to be the direction of Holi-
bourne 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


58 THE COPERNICAN convor
chase, to round him up. The almost total darkness
made this hunting mighty unpleasant; but I knew
that, hating 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


THE COPERNICAN CONVOY 59
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 scuflle 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 Provi-
dence !) But some two or three of the enemy must
have raced ahead and cut off that retreat; for when


60 THE COPERNICAN CONVOY
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.
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 recognized 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,


THE COPERNIOAN GONVOY 61
I remembered the poor pack-beast ; and as I re-
membered 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 staunch 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


62 THE COPERNICAN CONVOY
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 cir-
cuit. 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 storeys,
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 storey was roofed, but the roof
had a hole in it, from which poured a stray ray of


THE COPERNICAN CON VOY 63
light. Light shone too, but through a blind, from
a small window close under the eaves. The lower
storey 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. Muflied footsteps came down the passage,
and with much creaking the bolts were undrawn.
“Who knocks?” demanded a man’s voice, some-
what shrill and querulous. “Cannot a poor scholar
rest in peace, and at this time 0’ 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 skull-cap, 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 '1’ ”
I answered that I was alone, and would have
added a word on my plight; but this, beneath the
lanlplight, he could not miss perceiving, for my face


64 THE OOPERNIOAN CONVOY
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


THE COPERNICAN CON VOY 65
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, com-
passes, 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
F


66 THE COPERNICAN CON VOY
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 fiy-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 pile 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


THE COPERNIGAN GONVOY 67
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.” I
“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


68 THE COPERNICAN CON VOY
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 l—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.
I-Ie 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.


THE COPERNICAN CONVOY 69
“Ah! You improve, soldier. It hath significa-
tion, 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 accelerat-
ing, 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,


70 THE COPERNIOAN convor
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 with-
out intermission) mingled and interwove itself with
the drone of the music from the table. He was recit-
ing 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


THE COPERNIGAN couvor 71
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 re-
peated, 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 .l—and, nearing so, broke intochorus—

“ Waller and Hazelrigg, Staplcton, Scroop—
Wayl 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-rowl "


72 THE COPERNICAN convor
“ 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 l ”
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 entersahalf-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 i—
’tis the music of the spheres, sir.”
“I believe you are right,” said my host, with a
chuckle. “ O, Copernicus ! ”


THE COPERNIGAN couvor 73
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 chorussing—were winding
downhill by a sunken way within ten yards of me.
A gravel path lay between me and the hedge over-
looking 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


74 THE OOPERNICAN GONVOY
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—t0 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 l ”
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.


THE COPERNICAN CON VOY 75
“ 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 dark-
ness, 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
piquet, 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.


76 THE COPERNIOAN convor
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 l”
“ There’s my orders, to begin with,” said I; “ and
—bless the man l—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.


THE GOPERNICAN oonvor 77
I found him seated with his secretary and with a
grave, handsome man, Colonel John Bolle, that com-
manded 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 P ”
“ 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

a.” *3:


78 THE COPERNIGAN CONVOY
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 COPERNICAN CONVOY 79
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


RED VELVET
August, 1644. The Story is told by Ralph Medhope, Captain
of the Twenty-second (or Grey-coal) Troop of Horse in
the Parliament Army, then serving in Cornwall.
WE were eight men in the piquet. 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 Fdwey 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
81 G


82 RED VELVET
carry; and rode in plain grey jerkins—bareheaded
too, since on mounting the rise above the valley-fog
we had done of? 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 be 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


RED VELVET ‘8 3
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 iset. 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,


RED VELVET 85
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 with-
out 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 there-
abouts. 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 ifrom the valley but from
ahead of us, across the road and some way up the


86 nun VELVET
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 piqueters 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


RED VELVET 87
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 waggon.
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;


88 RED VELVET
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‘fiapping 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 himv 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


RED VELVET 89
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
barbaroust 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 missle, 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
Y 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


RED VELVET I 91
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 appari-
tion 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.”


92 RED VELVET
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


RED VELVET 93
\
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 them-
selves 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 on 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.
I


94 RED VELVET
“ Your name?” she asked.
“Medhope.”
“ It is singular that I should have found a gentle-
man,” said she, in a musing, half-doubtful voice, as
I leaned from my saddle, stifling the pain, and un-
hasped the gate for her.
Said I drily, “The Parliament army, madam, in-
cludes 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


RED VELVET 95
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 extra-
ordinarily 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


96 RED VELVET
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.”
\Vith 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. I


98 RED VELVET
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
grey-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


RED VELVET 9 9
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 hearing, 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 insen-
sible 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


. 100 BED VELVET
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 well-nigh 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


102 BED VELVET
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 plaguey 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.


RED VELVET 103
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 argu-
ment’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 hear 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, 9. 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


RED VELVET 1 O5
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


l 0 6 RED VELVET
about her neck and pufl'ed 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 "—thrust-
ing 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 con-
trived 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.”


RED VELVET 107
“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 con-
tinued talk. Poor lady !—I had almost said, poor
child l—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


108 BED VELVET
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 hard-
ships 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


1 1 0 RED VELVET
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 dis-
armed 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 0x,
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


RED VELVET 11 1
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. \Vhile
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,


1 12 RED VELVET
“ 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 under-
stand.”
“And I thank you for understanding. Yes, you
have behaved well.”
“Good night, then, and God bless you 1 ”
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


RED VELVET 113
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 povetry. 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 farmhouse above the
Walkham River, on the western edge of Dartmoor. The
walls, originally of rough granite, have had their as-
perities 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 planch-
ing 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
114


THE JEW ON THE MOOR 115
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.
“ I'r 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.


THE JEW ON THE MOOR 117
grandmother, after reaching home with her little
cart, unharnessing and bedding up the donkey in his
stable, walked out to the orchard,’ where my grand-
father was looking over his cider apples, and says she
to him—-
“ ‘ William, I’ve a-done a dreadful deed.’
“My grandfather took ofi' 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 grand-
father. ‘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, dis-
mally. ‘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


118 THE JEW ON THE moon
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 0’ 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.
“‘Hullo!’ 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 ex-
plained, ‘and, bein’ bred to the sea, I didn’t think
it would matter.’


THE JEW ON THE MOOR 119
“‘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


120 THE JEW ON THE MOOR
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 0’ 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-pateh this long time past. There’s alway
a plenty goin’ and comin’ ’pon the read, an’ maybe
by keepin’ an eye open I’ll learn what line the chase
is takin’.’
“So my grandfather shouldered his biddiek 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 peas 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 searecrow’s a scarecrow; but my grand-
father 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


122 THE JEW ON THE MOOR
“ 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-
ofi' 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 grand-
father couldn’t call to mind that he’d ever seen this
particular Jew before. i
“What is more, it was plain enough in a minute
that the Jew didn’t recognize 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, andilast 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
I


THE JEW ON THE moon 123
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. I 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


124 THE JEW ON THE MOOR
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 con-
cerned, 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 them-
selves 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


THE JEW ON THE MOOR 125
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 grand-
father 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 recognizing
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


126 THE JEW ON THE MOOR
chance of a cart—when he came full tilt upon a light
waggon 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 grand-
father 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.
“ ‘ Hullo l ' says the sentry at the gate.


THE JEW ON THE moon 127
“‘You’ll say something more than Hullo! when
you sad 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.
“‘ Hullo,’ says Captain Sharpland, halting and
putting up his eye-glass. ‘ 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 eye-glass into his
eye. He disliked Jews, upon principle.
“ ‘Tho pleathe you, noble captain, my name ’th
Nathan Nathaniel, of Thouththide Thtreet, Plymouth:


128 THE JEW ON THE noon
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


130 THE JEW ON THE moon
there he turned out his pocket in front of my grand-
mother, 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. ‘Oouldn’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. ‘Gome 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


THE JEW ON THE MOOR 131
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 grand-
father 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


132 THE JEW ON THE moon
grandfather could scarcely make head or tail of it,
even after listening to the J ew’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 further 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—0r 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 ever-
took him a good half-mile from the house; and
through the grey of it he caught sight of a man
standing about fifty yards away, and right in his


THE JEW ON THE MOOR 133
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


134 THE JEW ON THE MOOR
of business get the better of his fright; then be
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—Europe 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.
135 '


136 MY CHRISTMAS BURGLARY
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 snuff-boxes bearing royal cyphers, 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 apart-
ment, fiddles were busy with a waltz tune, and a
Violoncello kept the beat with a low thudding pizzi-
cato. 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.


MY CHRISTMAS BURGLARY 137
“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 mantel-shelf, 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 over-
hung the fireplace. There were five candles, and be
lit them all.


138 MY CHRISTMAS BURGLARY
They revealed him a clean-shaven, white-haired
man, meticulously dressed in black—black swallow-
tail coat, open waistcoat, and frilled shirt-front, on
which his laundress must have spent hours of labour;
closely fitting black knee-breeches, black silk stock-
ings, 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 counter-
balance 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 t0 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 emphasized 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
'


MY CHRISTMAS BURGLARY 139
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 I ” 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 Pergolesi’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


140 MY CHRISTMAS BURGLARY
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,” be corrected himself, “the money
was paid for a pinch of the snufl' 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 Vergil ? ‘ Hi motus
animorum atque heac certa/mina tanta Pal'ueris ewigui
iacta’—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 Vergil’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.”


MY CHRISTMAS BURGLARY 141
“ 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. Sufiice 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 con-
tinuity. 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 oil, 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 011' 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


142 MY CHRISTMAS BURGLARY
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 judical 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 (lived into
the armoire, and produced a pair of Bliichers, 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


MY CHRISTMAS BURGLARY 143
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 10! 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


144 MY CHRISTMAS BURGLARY
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 perspec-
tive 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


146 MY CHRISTMAS BURGLARY
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 under-
ground. “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


148 MY CHRISTMAS BURGLARY
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
-~ ~14...


MY cnms'rmas BURGLARY 149
the Constables: but the fishmonger, issuing last in
chase, ran into the Clown, who caught up a barrel of
red herrings and bonnetted 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 harle-
quinade, 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,


150 MY CHRISTMAS BURGLARY
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


MY CHRISTMAS BURGLARY 151
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 halfway 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,
afi'ably. “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 Pin-
sent, 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-grey hair over
152


THE MAYOR’S DOVECOT 153
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 _s_tivvery 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 path-
way, 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.


154 THE MAYOR’S DOVECOT
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 busi-
ness, 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 peas
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 ofi’ the bedclothes 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 pro-
jecting platform on which it rested, and a yard or
more of the mast, from its summit down—or, to be


THE MAYOR’S DOVECOT 1 55
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 l ” 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


156 THE MAYOR‘S DOVECOT
were discernible in almost pitchy darkness), they
saw him strut back from the window to slip down-
stairs 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 ruflians have been stealing and killing
my pigeons. I caught ’em in the act, and a serious


THE MAYOR’S DOVEGOT 157
-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 bed-
room 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 afl’ronts and pains them.


158 THE MAYOR‘S DOVECOT
They do not understand it, and Mr. Pinsent under-
stood nothing else. Could he have been told that
for close upon twenty years he had been afliicting
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. “\Vhich I’ve always said that you was
wonderful, the way you saw the bright side of every-
thing and could pass it off with a laugh.”
“Good Lord!” said Mr. Pinsent, testily. “Did
I ever call midnight robbery a laughing matter '1’"
“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
_ _JP"_1


THE MAYOR’S DOVECOT 159
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 appren-
tices 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 securing of doorsteps.
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 con-
versation 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


160 THE MAYOR’S DOVEOOT
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 1” Butcher Trengrove com-
posed 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 \Vorship, 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
”
l


THE MAYOR’S DOVECOT 161
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 \Vorship 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 day-
dreams, 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
at


162 THE MAYOR’S DOVECOT
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 MAYOR’S DOVECOT 163
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, 0’ course.” Pretty
Tommy appeared to hesitate.


164 THE MAYOR’S DOVECOT
“ 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 I” 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 cooked 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—
“0 YES! 0 YES! 0 YES!
“ Take you all notice : that whereas some evil-disposed
boys did last night break into the premises of Samuel
Pinsent, Worshipfnl Mayor of this Borough, and did
rob His Worship of several valuable pigeons; His
Worship hereby ofi'ers 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!”


THE MAYOR’S DOVECOT 165
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
cots, 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.


166 THE MAYOR’S DOVECOT
“ 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 curtsey-
ing, with tears of recent weeping upon her homely
and extremely dirty face. Behind her shuliled 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 kind-
ness 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 admis-
sion. “You must try to overlook the boy’s manner,
sir. He’s case-hardened, I fear, and it goes sore to


THE MAYOR’S novnoo'r 167
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 efl'ect,’ 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, 1—1 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 Hal-
loran, 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,


170 THE MAYOR'S DOVECOT
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.”
“\Vhich,” 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.”


run MAYOR’S DOVECOT 171
“ There’s Maria Bunny,” persisted Mrs. Salt, begin-
ning 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 for-
gotten 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 school-
master, that—all unconsciously—had the last word.


NEWS FROM TROY !
TROY—not for the first time in its history—is con-
sumed 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.”
173


NEWS FROM TROY! 175
gardens; cabbages and runner beans climb the hill-
side 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 “Encum-
brances ”). 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


176 NEWS FROM TROY!
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 pen-
sions 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


NEWS FROM TROY! 177
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 con-
sented 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 con-
sent, 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 i
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. ?
N


NEWS FROM TROY a 179
“Admirable,” I agreed. “Never fear, we will
make up a programme.”
“Oh, and—er—by the way, Bates of the ‘Wheat-
sheaf’ 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 court-
house, 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, '
Wl~ _-- WW_~___--


180 NEWS FROM TROY!
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 Dreadnouyhts aquatic enough for any-
body ? ” 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 School-
children ”-—whatever that might mean—and “Four-
pence 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


NEWS FROM TROY! 181
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 1”
It was, not to put too fine a point on the descrip-
tion, 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,
“A; ~-


NEWS FROM TROY! 183
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-grand-
parents; 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, bare-
headed, his white hairs lightly fluttered by the even-
ing 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 defer-
entially 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.


l 84 NEWS FROM TROY !
“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 forego 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


NEWS FROM TROY! 185
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 coach-
man, 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.


186 NEWS FROM TROY!
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 billy-
cock 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 in-
explicable,” stuttered Sir Felix, who suffers from
a slight impediment of the speech when hurried.
“ Servants at home seemed—conspired—detain me.


NEWS FROM TROY! 187
J ukes "—Jukes 1s Sir Felix’s butler, an aged retainer
of the best pattern—“ J ukes 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—— ”


188 NEWS FROM TROY!
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 some-
how, 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?’ ”


NEWS FROM TROY! 189
“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 olficer 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 sup-
pressed 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 stifl'ened upon certain names, and by
degrees as I recognized them, my whole body grew
rigid in my chair. Samuel Sleeman—this was the


190 NEWS FROM TROY!
Superintendent’s name—appellant against Isaac Adam-
son, 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 supple-
mentary 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


NEWS FROM TROY ! l 91
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 W0rship——— ”
“ 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,


192 NEWS FROM TROY!
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 con-
stables 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 (“ \Vhich,” observed the Superin-
tendent, 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 liveli-
ness 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


NEWS FROM TROY! 193
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 pre-
vailed, 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 SirFelix 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 stand-
ing, 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 after-
noon 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
194


196 COLONEL BAIGENT’S CHRISTMAS
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 train 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 book-
ing-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


COLONEL BAIGENT’S CHRISTMAS 197
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. N 0;
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 storey down, with what at first glance


l 9 8 COLONEL BAIGENT’S CHRISTMAS
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 dis-
covered, within the doorway of the “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 entryghad .warned pas-
sengers to duck their heads. The c lonel 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


COLONEL BAIGENT’S CHRISTMAS 199
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 gaselier 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-grey
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 .


COLONEL BAIGENT’S CHRISTMAS 201
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 cofl‘ee-room—ghostly memories! Yet
he had no will to escape them. Outside he could see
the crowd jostling to and fro on the opposite pave-
ment. 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


202 COLONEL BAIGENT’S CHRISTMAS
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 be-
thought 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.


COLONEL BAIGENT’S CHRISTMAS 203
On his way back, having lit his cigar, he paused
for a longer look. The piano was tinkling energeti-
cally, 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


204 COLONEL BAIGENT’S CHRISTMAS
the brows. The colour of her hair was a bright
auburn, that of her eyebrows so darkly brown as to
seem well-nigh black; and altogether she made a
remarkable little figure, standing there in the door-
way, with a pair of white satin dancing-shoes clutched
in her hand.
. “ Oh I ” said the colonel. “ Good evening I ”
“ 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 ex-
claimed, 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


COLONEL BAIGENT’S CHRISTMAS 205
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.
)’


206 COLONEL BAIGENT’S CHRISTMAS
“ Do you know her?” the child asked, with dis-
concerting 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 pro-
nounce, ‘ 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, too ! ”
“ 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 N etta——- ”


COLONEL BAIGENT’S CHRISTMAS 207
“ 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 N etta, 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;


208 COLONEL BAIGENT’S CHRISTMAS
though how or why that should be, passes my
comprehension.”
She bowed to him, timidly, a trifle stiflly. “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 ex-
cited. 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 mur-
mured.
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 pas-
sage 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.


210 COLONEL BAIGENT’S CHRISTMAS
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 wasl—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


COLONEL BAIGENT’S CHRISTMAS 211
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
goingito 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 thrash-
ing 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 ‘ N o ’ ; 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-
oflice 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 recognize me. But
I asked the old postmistress your name. Do you
remember her? ”
“ She knew everybody’s name,’
“ 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.”
said the colonel.


212 COLONEL BAIGENT’S CHRISTMAS
“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.
“ N etta, 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


21 4 COLONEL BAIGEN '1"S CHRISTMAS
“ 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 ofiice. “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.


21 6 DOCTOR UNONIUS
bliss Doctor Unonius now inherits, forty years—0r 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
glorz'am Dei at in memoriam Johanm's Unom'i medicine:
doctor-is, he loved—for it faced his pew—t0 watch during
sermon-time the blue sky, the clouds, the rocks 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 ducto'r) 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 dis-
section. Pisaz'um at summa genus haesz't 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 nation-
alities? ” 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


2 l 8 DOCTOR UN ONIUS
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 drift-
ing upon his magnum opus, as the titles indicate,
“Some Particulars of Rare Fishes found in Com-
wall,” “ An Account of a Fish nearly allied to Hemi-
ranphus,” “On the Occurrence of the Crustacean
Scyllurus Arctus.”
He would announce these strange visitors—sepia
biserz'ah's, 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


DOCTOR UN ON IUS 2 1 9
which he mounted them, with a jet of salt water that
played over their scales and kept fresh, as he main-
tained, the delicate hues be 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.
\Vhether from indolence 0r modesty Doctor Unonius
never competed, but he seldom missed to visit the


2 2 2 DOCTOR UN ONIUS
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 " 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 0’ 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

* Quaere. Was this some faint inherited memory of “the old
profession " ?——In no'mine dorm'ni, etc.


2 2 4 DOCTOR UNONIUS
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—d0 ’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
'l‘resize’s, came back and re-seated himself by the bed-
side. 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 afi‘airs he was willing
enough to indulge her. Nay, he too—being no prude
—enjoyed her general disquisitions on matrimony and
the sexes. Homo su/m, eta, . . . 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.


DOCTOR UNONIUS 2 2 5
“ She keeps it under the bed.”
“ Keeps what?” asked Doctor Unonius.
The old woman chuckled again. “ Why, her
money, to be sure—hunderds an’ hunderds 0’ pounds
-—in a great iron chest. I wonder she can sleep 0’
nights with it, up in that g’e’rt lonely house, an’ not
Aw, doctor dear, don’t tell me

a man within call
you’re gain
I,”
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 London’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
Q


226 DOCTOR UNONIUS
an approaching stranger is appeased by the man’s sitting
down :
“' Soon as Ulysses near th’ cucloauZe drew,
With open months the furious m“ titfs flew :
Down sat the sage and, cautious to withstand,
Let fall th' offensive truncheon from his hand.’
Porn.
“ 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 settle
ment 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 per-
son 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


2 2 8 DOCTOR UNONIUS
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,
9’
as you are, to dogs——
“ Hounds,” corrected Roger.


DOCTOR unornus 229
“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 0’
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 laflin’ 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 fore legs—so—an’ keep
slashin’ same as if I was mowin’ grass. Or, if I hadn’
a stick, I’d kick straight for his fore legs an’ chest;
he’s easy to cripple there, an’ he knows it. Settin’
down may be all right for the time, only the diflicnlty
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


232 nooroa UNONIUS
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 poach-
ing ? ” 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 up-
standing, 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


nooron UNONIUS 233
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,”
aflirmed 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 coastguards-
men 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


2 3 4 DOCTOR UNONIUS
John, “our host, who owns two-thirds of the cottages
in Polpeor, may correct me and say that Govern-
ment 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 simul-
taneously and from the stable-yard, amid a tremendous
clattering of hoofs, rumbling of wheels, calls of stable-
men, “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 stand-
ing 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


DOCTOR UNONIUS 2 3 5
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 chorussers shouted good
night, 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
ofi‘ to the left, and, swinging into it, he found himself
alone.
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 pene-
trating 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


236 DOCTOR UNONIUS
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 over-
head 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 I 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 quiver-
ing, and had almost broken its shafts.
“Why, halloa!” 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 recognize her at all, though he knew, or
believed that he knew, everybody—man, woman, or


2 4 O DOCTOR UN ONIUS
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.
“ N o, 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. ”


242 DOCTOR UNONIUS
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


244 DOCTOR UN ONIUS
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 woman.
But Doctor Unonius, noting it not, drew forth the
map from the breast of his great coat, unfolded it, and
was proceeding to study it, again by help of the lamp.
He recognized it at first glance for a map of the coast
and country about Polpeor, and for this he was pre-
pared ; 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 Landewedclg. 4.8. White gate,
entrance back. By Geller. Mem. 1 large chest. To be
handled quick and hidn in orch" if necess'”. Reported
good money, but near. No help here but 1 serv‘ maid.”
Doctor Unonius stared at the paper, and from the
paper lifted his eyes to stare at the black bulk of
the farmhouse 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


DOCTOR UN ONIUS 24 5
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 3 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


246 DOCTOR UNONIUS
building. With this new suspicion of a conspiracy in
his mind, it cost him no small efl'ort 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 Enmaeus, 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.


DOCTOR UNONIUS 247
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 ? ”


2 4 8 DOCTOR UNONIUS
“ You may well be surprised, madam—at this
hour——”
“I did not send for you.”
“ N o, 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 '1’”
“ 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 sus-
picious character, and certain evidence I managed to
wrest from him leaves little doubt that robbery is in-
tended 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 growl-
ing, but at her command grew tractable and made no
demonstration beyond running around the doctor and
snifling 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


DOCTOR UN ON IUS 249
a curtain had recognized 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 l” 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


2 5 O DOCTOR UNONIUS
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 sedater in a corner. On
one side of the chimney a weather- glass depended, on
the other a warming-pan—symbols, as it were, of con-
jugal 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 de-
manding 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.”


DOCTOR UNONIUS 2 5 l
“ 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, hold-
ing 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.


DOCTOR UNONIUS 2 5 3
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 Tre-
garrick 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 hid-
den 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 Try-
phena. 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.”


DOCTOR UN ON IUS ' 259
“ You had better,” Mrs. Tresize answered com-
posedly, “ 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 con-
nect him with tricks to defraud the Revenue! And
yet had not the young riding-officer distinctly seen
Laudaveddy 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 w'e"had
warning of it all along.”
“ Warning? ” echoed Mrs. Tresize, with a touch of
anxiety in her voice.


260 DOCTOR unonms
“ 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’ve 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


DOCTOR UN ONIUS 2 6 1
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. Batten-
bury 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 fire-
place. His brain swam. For the moment he could


DOCTOR UN ONIUS 263
_ 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 apologize. Will that content you?”
“It will be some atonement, ma’am. As for con-
tenting 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.


264 DOCTOR UNONIUS
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 0’ 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,


DOCTOR UNONIUS 265

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 sunbonnet, 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 lamplight. 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 1”
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


DOCTOR uuomus 267
VIII
S0 indeed it had. Doctor Unonius could not over-
look 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 encounter-
ing 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’re 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. Ratten-
bury, somewhat fatuously.
“ Oh ! ” said the doctor again. “ As for that——- ”
He did not conclude the sentence, but drove on in
meditation.


26 8 DOCTOR UN ONIUS
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, wait-
ing, 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
0f the glass at Mr. Battenbury—nervous and distraught,
as a good husband should be—on each occasion
wondered how much he knew.


MUTUAL EXCHANGE, LIMITED 271
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,linfinitely distant, speaking
out of an immense silence.


274 MUTUAL EXCHANGE, LIMITED
a fish with a crab fastened upon him; and were laid
in the stem-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 oflicer “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 eye-
lids 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.
III
“ How’s Rendal getting on? ”
Captain Holditch, skipper of the Carnatic, put this
question next morning to the doctor, and was some-
what surprised by the answer.


276 MUTUAL EXCHANGE, LIMITED
doctor’s address. Well, never mind—I’ll fix him up
so that he reaches Park Lane, anyway.”
“He ought to do something for Bendal,” 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!
Hullo, 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


278 MUTUAL EXCHANGE, LIMITED
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 grey 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 par-
ticular 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 will 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 con-
fess 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 knew, could I? Any-
way, 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


280 MUTUAL EXCHANGE, LIMITED
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 un-
challenged 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
,‘J—‘u-km


MUTUAL EXCHANGE, LIMITED 281
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.
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 grey 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 were 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 grey 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.


282 MUTUAL EXCHANGE, LIMITED
“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 perform-
ances of all the great liners by heart.
“You had 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 after-
noon recovered sufliciently to travel home by the
Boat Express.’ There, see for yourselves!”


MUTUAL EXCHANGE, LIMITED 283
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.
“Hullo!” said the little bookseller, and was
rising from his chair, when the door opened. A
middle-aged, Jewish-looking man, wrapped to the


290 I MUTUAL EXCHANGE, LIMITED

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.
* I Q * *
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?”
D I I It ill-


MUTUAL EXCHANGE, LIMITED 291
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.”
THE END

PRINT” BY WILLIAM CLOWN AND SONS, LIMITED, WDON AND 3mm.





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