THE MAYOR OF TROY. 

by

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch. 

1906This e-text prepared from a reprint of a version published in 1906. 

 TO MY FRIEND KENNETH GRAHAM AND THE REST OF THE CREW OF THE "RICHARD AND EMILY" AND WITH APOLOGIES TO THE MAYOR OF LOSTWITHIEL A BOROUGH FOR WHICH I HAVE (WITH CAUSE) MUCH AFFECTION AND A VERY HIGH ESTEEM. 

CONTENTS. 

Chapter. 

 PROLOGUE. 

I. OUR MAJOR. 

II. OUR MAYOR. 

III. THE MILLENNIUM. 

IV. HOW THE TROY GALLANTS CHALLENGED THE LOOE DIEHARDS. 

V. INTERFERENCE OF A GUERNSEY MERCHANT. 

VI. MALBROUCK S'EN VA. 

VII. THE BATTLE OF TALLAND COVE. 

VIII. "COME, MY CORINNA, COME!"

IX. BY LERRYN WATER. 

X. GUNNER SOBEY TURNS LOOSE THE MILLENNIUM. 

XI. THE MAJOR LEAVES US. 

XII. A COLD DOUCHE ON A HOT FIT. 

XIII. A VERY HOT PRESS. 

XIV. THE "VESUVIUS" BOMB. 

XV. UP-CHANNEL. 

XVI. FAREWELL TO ALBION!

XVII. MISSING!

XVIII. APOTHEOSIS. 

XIX. THE RETURN. 

XX. IN WHICH THE MAJOR LEARNS THAT NO MAN IS NECESSARY. 

XXI. FACES IN WATER. 

XXII. WINDS UP WITH A MERRY-GO-ROUND. 

THE MAYOR OF TROY. 

PROLOGUE. 

Good wine needs no bush; but this story has to begin with an apology. 

Years ago I promised myself to write a treatise on the lost Mayors ofCornwall--dignitaries whose pleasant fame is now night, recalled onlyby some neat byword or proverb current in the Delectable (or as apublic speaker pronounced it the other day, the Dialectable) Duchy. Thus you may hear of "the Mayor of Falmouth, who thanked God when thetown jail was enlarged"; "the Mayor of Market Jew, sitting in his ownlight"; "the Mayor of Tregoney, who could read print upside-down, butwasn't above being spoken to"; "the Mayor of Calenick, who walkedtwo miles to ride one"; "the Mayor of East Looe, who called the Kingof England 'Brother. '" Everyone remembers the stately prose in whichGibbon records when and how he determined on his great masterpiece, when and how he completed it. "It was at Rome: on the 15th ofOctober, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, whilethe bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the Decline and Fall of the City firststarted in my mind. " So I could tell with circumstance when, whereand how I first proposed my treatise; and shall, perhaps, when I haveconcluded it. But life is short; and for the while my readers may beamused with an instalment. 

Now of all the Mayors of Cornwall the one who most engaged myspeculation, yet for a long while baffled all research, was "theMayor of Troy, so popular that the town made him Ex-Mayor the yearfollowing. "

Of course, if you don't know Troy, you will miss half the reason ofmy eagerness. Simple, egregious, adorable town! Shall I go on hereto sing its praises? No; not yet. 

The reason why I could learn nothing concerning him is that, soonafter 1832, when the Reform Bill did away with Troy's Mayor andCorporation, as well as with its two Members of Parliament, someonemade a bonfire of all the Borough records. O Alexandria! And theman said at the time that he did it for fun!

This brings me to yet another Mayor--the Mayor of Lestiddle, who is ajolly good fellow. 

Nothing could be handsomer than my calling the Mayor of Lestiddle ajolly good fellow; for in fact we live at daggers drawn. You mustknow that Troy, a town of small population (two thousand or so) butof great character and importance, stands at the mouth of a riverwhere it widens into a harbour singularly beautiful and frequented byships of all nations; and that seven miles up this river, by a bridgewhere the salt tides cease, stands Lestiddle, a town of fewerinhabitants and of no character or importance at all. Now why theReform Bill, which sheared Troy of its ancient dignities, should haveleft Lestiddle's untouched, is a question no man can answer me; butthis I know, that its Mayor goes flourishing about with a silver maceshaped like an oar, as a symbol of jurisdiction over our river fromits mouth (forsooth) so far inland as a pair of oxen yoked togethercan be driven in its bed. 

He has, in fact, no such jurisdiction. Above bridge he may, an itplease him, drive his oxen up the riverbed, and welcome. I leave himto the anglers he will discommodate by it. But his jurisdictionbelow bridge was very properly taken from him by order of our lateQueen (whose memory be blessed!) in Council, and vested in the TroyHarbour Commission. Now _I_ am Chairman of that Commission, and yetthe fellow declines to yield up his silver oar! We in Troy feelstrongly about it. It is not for nothing (we hold) that when he orhis burgesses come down the river for a day's fishing the weatherinvariably turns dirty. We mislike them even worse than a Germanband--which brings us no worse, as a rule, than a spell of east wind. 

Nevertheless, the Mayor of Lestiddle is a jolly good fellow, and I amglad that his townsmen (such as they are) have re-elected him. One day this last summer he came down to fish for mackerel at theharbour's mouth, which can be done at anchor since our sardinefactory has taken to infringing the by-laws and discharging its offalon the wrong side of the prescribed limit. (We Harbour Commissionershave set our faces against this practice, but meanwhile it attractsthe fish. ) It was raining, of course. Rowing close up to me, theMayor of Lestiddle asked--for we observe the ordinary courtesies--what bait I was using. I answered, fresh pilchard bait; and offeredhim some, delicately forbearing to return the question, since it isan article of faith with us that the burgesses of Lestiddle bait withearthworms which they dig out of their back gardens. Well, heaccepted my pilchard bait, and pulled up two score of mackerel withinas many minutes, which doubtless gave him something to boast about onhis return. 

He was not ungrateful. Next week I received from him a parcel of MS. With a letter saying that he had come across it, "a fly in amber, " inturning over a pile of old Stannary records. How it had found itsway among them he could not guess. 

A fly in amber, quotha! A jewel in a midden, rather! How it cameamong his trumpery archives I know as little as he, but can guess. Some Lestiddle man must have stolen it, and chosen them as a safehiding-place. 

It gave me the clue, and more than the clue. I know now the historyof that Mayor of Troy who was so popular that the town made himEx-Mayor the year following. 

Listen! Stretch out both hands; open your mouth and shut your eyes!It is a draught of Troy's own vintage that I offer you; racy, fragrant of the soil, from a cask these hundred years sunk, so thatit carries a smack, too, of the submerging brine. You know the oldrecipe for Wine of Cos, that full-bodied, seignorial, superlative, translunary wine. 

Yet I know not how to begin. 

 "Fortunam Priami cantabo et nobile bellum. "

"I will sing you Troy and its Mayor and a war of high renown, " thatis how I want to begin; but Horace in his _Ars Poetica_--confoundhim!--has chosen this very example as a model to avoid, and thecritics would be down on me in a pack. 

Very well, then, let us try a more reputable way. 

CHAPTER I. 

OUR MAJOR. 

Arms and the Man I sing!

When, on the 16th of May, 1803, King George III. Told his faithfulsubjects that the Treaty of Amiens was no better than waste paper, Troy neither felt nor affected to feel surprise. King, Consul, Emperor--it knew these French rulers of old, under whatever titlethey might disguise themselves. More than four centuries ago anEnglish King had sent his pursuivants down to us with a message that"the Gallants of Troy must abstain from attacking, plundering, andsinking the ships of our brother of France, because we, Edward ofEngland, are at peace with our brother of France": and the Gallantsof Troy had returned an answer at once humble and firm: "Your Majestybest knows your Majesty's business, but _we_ are at war with yourbrother of France. " Yes, we knew these Frenchmen. Once before, in1456, they had thought to surprise us, choosing a night when ourSquire was away at market, and landing a force to burn and sack us:and our Squire's wife had met them with boiling lead. His Majesty'sMinisters might be taken at unawares, not we. We slept Bristolfashion, with one eye open. 

But when, as summer drew on, news came that the infamous usurper wascollecting troops at Boulogne, and flat-bottomed boats, to invade us;when the spirit of the British people armed for the support of theirancient glory and independence against the unprincipled ambition ofthe French Government; when, in the Duchy alone, no less than 8511men and boys enrolled themselves in twenty-nine companies of foot, horse and artillery, as well out of enthusiasm as to escape thegeneral levy threatened by Government (so mixed are all humanmotives); then, you may be sure, Troy did not lag behind. 

Ah! but we had some brave corps among the Duchy Volunteers!

There was the St. Germans Subscription Troop, for instance, whichconsisted of forty men and eleven uniforms, and hunted the fox thricea week during the winter months under Lord Eliot, Captain and M. F. H. There was the Royal Redruth Infantry, the famous "Royal Reds, " of 103men and five uniforms. These had heard, at second hand, ofBonaparte's vow to give them no quarter, and wore a conspicuous patchof red in the seat of their pantaloons that he might have no excusefor mistaking them. There was the even more famous MevagisseyBattery, of no men and 121 uniforms. In Mevagissey, as you may beaware, the bees fly tail-foremost; and therefore, to preventbickerings, it was wisely resolved at the first drill to make everyunit of this corps an officer. 

But the most famous of all (and sworn rivals) were two companies ofcoast artillery--the Looe Diehards and the Troy Gallants. 

The Looe Diehards (seventy men and two uniforms) wore dark blue coatsand pantaloons, with red facings, yellow wings and tassels, and whitewaistcoats. Would you know by what feat they earned their name?Listen. I quote the very words of their commander, Captain Bond, whosurvived to write a _History of Looe_--and a sound book it is. "The East and West Looe Volunteer Artillery was established in 1803, and kept in pay from Government for six years. Not a single man ofthe company died during the six years, which is certainly veryremarkable. "

But, when you come to think of it, what an even more remarkable boastfor a body of warriors!

We of Troy (180 men and two uniforms) laughed at this claim. Say what you will, there is no dash about longevity, or very little. For uniform we wore dark-blue coats and pantaloons, with white wingsand facings, edged and tasselled with gilt, and scarlet waistcoats, also braided with gilt. We wanted no new name, we! Ours was aninherited one, derived from days when, under Warwick the King-maker, Lord High Admiral of England, we had swept the Channel, summoned themen of Rye and Winchelsea to vail their bonnets--to take in sail, mark you: no trumpery dipping of a flag would satisfy us--and whenthey stiff-neckedly refused, had silenced the one town and carriedoff the other's chain to hang across our harbour from blockhouse toblockhouse. Also, was it not a gallant of Troy that assailed andcarried the great French pirate, Jean Doree, and clapped him underhis own hatches?

 "The roaring cannons then were plied, And dub-a-dub went the drum-a; The braying trumpets loud they cried To courage both all and some-a. "

 "The grappling-hooks were brought at length, The brown bill and the sword-a; John Dory at length, for all his strength, Was clapt fast under board-a. "

That was why we wore our uniforms embroidered with gold (_dores_). The Frenchmen, if they came, would understand the taunt. 

But most of all we were proud of Solomon Hymen, our Major and ourMayor of Troy. 

I can see him now as he addressed us on the evening of our firstdrill, standing beside the two long nineteen-pounders on the OldFort; erect, with a hand upon his ivory sword-hilt, his knops andepaulettes flashing against the level sun. I can see his verygesture as he enjoined silence on the band; for we had a band, and itwas playing "Come, Cheer Up, My Lads!" As though we weren't cheerfulenough already!

[But "Come, come!" the reader will object. "All this happened ahundred years ago. Yet here are you talking as if you had beenpresent. " Very true: it is a way we have in Troy. Call it afoible--but forgive it! The other day, for instance, happening onthe Town Quay, I found our gasman, Mr. Rabling, an earnest Methodist, discussing to a small crowd on the subject of the Golden Calf, and inthis fashion: "Well, friends, in the midst of all this pillaloo, hands-across and down-the-middle, with old Aaron as bad as any andflinging his legs about more boldacious with every caper, I happensto glance up the hill, and with that I gives a whistle; for what do Isee but a man aloft there picking his way down on his heels with aparcel under his arm! Every now and then he pulls up, shading hiseyes, so, like as if he'd a lost his bearin's. I glances across toAaron, and thinks I, 'Look out for squalls! Here's big brothercoming, and a nice credit _this'll_ be to the family!' . . . "The historic present, as my Latin grammar used to call it, is ourfavourite tense: and if you insist that, not being a hundred yearsold, I cannot speak as an eye-witness of this historic scene, myanswer must be Browning's, --"All I can say is--I saw it!"]

"Gentlemen!" began the Major. 

We might not all be officers, like the Mevagissey Artillery, but inthe Troy Gallants we were all gentlemen. 

"Gentlemen!"--the Major waved an arm seaward--"yonder lies yourenemy. Behind you"--he pointed up the harbour to the town--"England relies on your protection. Shall the Corsican tyrant layhis lascivious hands upon her ancient liberties, her reformed andProtestant religion, her respectable Sovereign and his Consort, hermansions, her humble cottages, and those members of the opposite sexwhose charms reward, and, in rewarding, refine us? Or shall we meethis flat-bottomed boats with a united front, a stern 'Thus far and nofarther, ' and send them home with their tails between their legs?That, gentlemen, is the alternative. Which will you choose?"

Here the Major paused, and finding that he expected an answer, weturned our eyes with one consent upon Gunner Sobey, the readiest manin the company. 

"The latter!" said Gunner Sobey, with precision; whereat we gavethree cheers. We dined, that afternoon, in the Long Room of the"Ship" Inn, and afterwards danced the night through in the Town Hall. 

The Major danced famously. Above all things, he prided himself onbeing a ladies' man, and the fair sex (as he always called them)admired him without disguise. His manner towards them was gallantyet deferential, tender yet manly. He conceded everything to theirweakness; yet no man in Troy could treat a woman with greaterplainness of speech. The confirmed spinsters (high and low, rich andpoor, we counted seventy-three of them in Troy) seemed to like himnone the less because he lost no occasion, public or private, ofcommending wedlock. For the doctrine of Mr. Malthus (recentlypromoted to a Professorship at the East India College) he had arobust contempt. He openly regretted that, owing to the negligenceof our forefathers, the outbreak of war found Great Britain with butfifteen million inhabitants to match against twenty-five millionFrenchmen. _They_ threatened to invade _us_, whereas _we_ shouldrather have been in a position to march on Paris! He asked nothingbetter. He quoted with sardonic emphasis the remark of a politicianthat "'twas hardly worth while to go to war merely to prove that wecould put ourselves in a good posture for defence. "

"If I had my way, " announced Major Hymen, "every woman in Englandshould have a dozen children at least. "

"What a man!" said Miss Pescod afterwards to Miss Sally Tregentil, who had dropped in for a cup of tea. 

And yet the Major was a bachelor. They could not help wondering alittle. 

"With two such names, too!" mused Miss Sally. "'Solomon' and'Hymen'; they certainly suggest--they would almost seem to givepromise of, at least, a _dual_ destiny. "

"You mark my words, " said Miss Pescod. "That man has been crossed inlove. "

"But _who_?" asked Miss Sally, her eyes widening in speculation. "_Who_ could have done such a thing?"

"My dear, I understand there are women in London capable ofanything. "

The Major, you must know, had spent the greater part of his life inthe capital as a silk-mercer and linen-draper--I believe, in theOld Jewry; at any rate, not far from Cheapside. He had left us atthe age of sixteen to repair the fortunes of his family, onceopulent and respected, but brought low by his great-grandfather'srash operations in South Sea stock. In London, thanks to aningratiating manner with the sex on which a linen-draper relies forpatronage, he had prospered, had amassed a competence, and had soldhis business to retire to his native town, as Shakespeare retired toStratford-on-Avon, and at about the same period of life. 

Had the Major in London been crossed in love? No; I incline tobelieve that Miss Pescod was mistaken. That hearts, up there, fluttered for a man of his presence is probable, nay certain. In port and even in features he bore a singular likeness to thePrince Regent. He himself could not but be aware of this, havingheard it so often remarked upon by persons acquainted with his RoyalHighness as well as by others who had never set eyes on him. Inshort, our excellent Major may have dallied in his time with thedarts of love; there is no evidence that he ever took a wound. 

Within a year after his return he bought back the ancestral home ofthe Hymens, a fine house dating from the reign of Queen Anne. (His great-grandfather had built it on the site of a humbler abode, on the eve of the South Sea collapse. ) It stood at the foot ofCustom House Hill and looked down the length of Fore Street--aperspective view of which the Major never wearied--no, not even onhot afternoons when the population took its siesta within doors and, in the words of Cai Tamblyn, "you might shot a cannon down thestreets of Troy, and no person would be shoot. " This Cai (or Caius)Tamblyn, an eccentric little man of uncertain age, with a blackservant Scipio, who wore a livery of green and scarlet and sleptunder the stairs, made up the Major's male retinue. Between themthey carried his sedan chair; and because Cai (who walked in front)measured but an inch above five feet, whereas Scipio stood six feetthree in his socks, the Major had a seat contrived with a sharpbackward slope, and two wooden buffers against which he thrust hisfeet when going down-hill. Besides these, whom he was wont to call, somewhat illogically, his two factotums, his household comprised MissMarty and a girl Lavinia who, as Miss Marty put it, did odds andends. Miss Marty was a poor relation, a third or fourth cousin onthe maternal side, whom the Major had discovered somewhere on theother side of the Duchy, and promoted. Socially she did not count. She asked no more than to be allowed to feed and array the Major, andgaze after him as he walked down the street. 

And what a progress it was!

Again I can see him as he made ready for it, standing in his doorwayat the head of a flight of steps, which led down from it to the smallwrought-iron gate opening on the street. The house has since beenconverted into bank premises and its threshold lowered for theconvenience of customers. Gone are the plants--the myrtle on theright of the porch, the jasmine on the left--with the balusters overwhich they rambled, and the steps which the balusters protected--ah, how eloquently the Major's sword clanked upon these as he descended!But the high-pitched roof remains, with its three dormer windowsstill leaning awry, and the plaster porch where a grotesque, half-human face grins at you from the middle of a fluted sea-shell. Standing before it with half-closed eyes, I behold the steps again, and our great man at the head of them receiving his hat from theobsequious Scipio, drawing on his gloves, looping his malacca cane tohis wrist by its tasselled cord of silk. The descent might bemilitary or might be civil: he was always Olympian. 

"The handsome he is!" Miss Marty would sigh, gazing after him. 

"A fine figure of a man, our Major!" commented Butcher Oke, followinghim from the shop-door with a long stare, after the day's joint hadbeen discussed and chosen. 

The children, to whom he was ever affable, stopped their play to takeand return his smile. Some even grinned and saluted. They reservedtheir awe for Scipio. Indeed, there is a legend that when Scipiomade his first appearance in Fore Street--he being so tall and theroadway so narrow--he left in his wake two rows of supine childrenwho, parting before him, had gradually tilted back as their gazeclimbed up his magnificent and liveried person until the sight of hisebon face toppled them over, flat. 

Miss Jex, the postmistress, would hand him his letters or his copy ofthe _Sherborne Mercury_ with a troubled blush. No exception surelycould be taken if she, a Government official, chose to hang acoloured engraving of the Prince Regent on the wall behind hercounter. And yet--the resemblance! She had heard of irregularalliances, Court scandals; she had even looked out "Morganatic" inthe dictionary, blushing for the deed while pretending to herself(fie, Miss Jex!) that "Moravian" was the word she sought. 

In Admirals' Row--its real name was Admiral's Row, and had been givento it in 1758, after the capture of Louisbourg and in honour ofAdmiral Boscawen; but we in Troy preferred to write the apostropheafter the 's'--Miss Sally Tregentil would overpeer her blind and drawback in a flutter lest the Major had observed her. 

"Georgiana Pescod is positive that he was wild in his youth. But how, " Miss Sally asked herself, "can Georgiana possibly know?And if he were--"

I leave you, my reader, as you know the female heart, to continueMiss Sally's broken musings. 

CHAPTER II. 

OUR MAYOR. 

_Cedant arma togae_. It is time we turned from the Major to theMayor, from the man of gallantry to the magistrate. 

You know, I dare say, the story of the King of England and the Kingof Portugal. The King of Portugal paid the King of England a visit. "My brother, " said the King of England, after some days, "I wish toask you a question. " "Say on, " said the King of Portugal. "I amcurious to know what in these realms of mine has most impressed you?"The King of Portugal considered a while. "Your roast beef isexcellent, " said he. "And after our roast beef, what next?"The King of Portugal considered a while longer. "Your boiled beefvery nearly approaches it. " So, if you had asked us on what first ofall we prided ourselves in Troy, we had pointed to our Major. If youhad asked "What next?" we had pointed to our Mayor. 

And these, our Dioscuri, were one and the same man! In truth, Isuppose we ought to have been proudest of him as Mayor; since asMayor he represented the King himself among us--nay, to all intentsand purposes _was_ the King. More than once in his public speecheshe reminded us of this: and we were glad to remember it when--assometimes happened--we ran a cargo from Roscoff or Guernsey and lefta cask or two privily behind the Mayor's quay door. We felt thenthat his Majesty had been paid duty, and could have no legitimategrievance against us. 

Was there any mental confusion in this? You would pardon it had youever been privileged to witness his Sunday procession to church, inscarlet robe trimmed with sable, in cocked-hat and chain of office;the mace-bearers marching before in scarlet with puce-coloured capes, the aldermen following after in tasselled gowns of black; the bandahead playing "The Girl I left behind Me" (for, although organisedfor home defence, our corps had chosen this to be its regimentaltune). "Some talk of Alexander and some of Hercules"--and some ofSolomon, who never saw _our_ Solomon on the bench of justice!

Let me tell you of his famous decision on Sabbath-breaking. One Sunday afternoon our Mayor's slumbers were interrupted by Jagothe constable, who haled before him a man, a horse, and twopannier-loads of vegetables, and charged the first-named with thisheinous offence. The fellow--a small tenant-farmer from theoutskirts of the parish--could not deny that he had driven his cartdown to the Town Quay, unharnessed, and started in a loud voice tocry his wares. There, almost on the instant, Jago had taken him_in flagrante delicto_, and, having an impediment in his speech, hadused no words but collared him. 

"What have you to say for yourself?" the Mayor demanded. 

"Darn me if I know what's amiss with the town to-day!" the culpritmade answer. "Be it a funeral?"

"You are charged with trading, or attempting to trade, on theSabbath; and sad hearing this will be for your old parents, JohnPolkinghorne. "

John Polkinghorne scratched his head. "You ben't going to tell methat this be Sunday!" (You see, the poor fellow, living so far inthe country, had somehow miscounted the week, and ridden in to marketa day late. )

"Sunday?" cried the Mayor. "Look at my Bible, there, 'pon the table!Look at my clean bandanna!"--this was his handkerchief, that he hadbeen wearing over his face while he dozed, to keep off the flies. 

"Good Lord! And me all this morning in the homefield scoading dung!"

"You go home this instant, and take every bit of that dung off againbefore sunset, " commanded the Mayor, "and if the Lord says no moreabout it, we'll overlook the case. "

Maybe you have never heard either of his famous examination of SarahMennear, of the "Three Pilchards" Inn (commonly known as the "Kettleof Fish "), who applied for a separation, alleging that her husbandhad kissed her by mistake for another woman. 

"What other woman?" demanded his Worship. 

"Sorra wan o' me knows, " answered Sarah, who came of Irishextraction. 

Her tale went that the previous evening, a little after twilight, shewas walking up the street and had gone by the door of the "Ship" Inn, when a man staggered out into the roadway and followed her. By thesound of his footsteps she took him for some drunken sailor, and washurrying on (but not fast, by reason of her clogs), when the manovertook her, flung an arm around her neck, and forcibly kissed her. Breaking away from him, she discovered it was her own husband. 

"Then where's the harm?" asked the Mayor. 

"But, please your Worship, he took me for another woman. "

"Then you must cite the other woman. "

"Arrah now, and how the divvle, saving your Worship's presence, willI cite the hussy, seein' I never clapt eyes on her?"

"No difficulty at all. To begin with, she was wearing clogs. "

"And so would nine women out of ten be wearin' clogs in last night'sweather. "

"And next, she was lifting the skirt of her gown high, to let thefolks admire her ankles. "

"Your Worship saw the woman, then? If I'd known your Worship to bewithin hail--"

"I think I know the woman. And so do you, Mrs. Mennear, if you canthink of one in this town that's vain as yourself of her foot andankle, and with as good a right. "

"There's not one, " said Mrs. Mennear positively. 

"Oh yes, there is. Go back home, like a sensible soul, and maybeyou'll find her there. "

"The villain! Ye'll not be tellin' me he's dared--" Mrs. Mennearcame near to choke. 

"And small blame to him, " said the Mayor with a twinkle. "Will yougo home, Sarah Mennear, and be humble, and ask her pardon?"

"Will I sclum her eyes out, ye mane!" cried Sarah, fairly dancing. 

"Go home, foolish wife!" The Mayor was not smiling now, and hisvoice took on a terrible sternness. "The woman I mean is the womanJohn Mennear married, or thought he married; the woman that aforetimehad kept her own counsel though he caught and kissed her in a dimmetycorner of the street; the woman that swore to love, honour and obeyhim, not she that tongue-drove him to the 'King of Prussia, ' with hisown good liquor to keep him easy at home. Drunk he must have been tomistake the one for t'other; and I'm willing to fine him fordrunkenness. But cite that other woman here before you ask me for aseparation order, and I'll grant it; and I'll warrant when John seesyou side by side, he won't oppose it. "

Here and there our Mayor had his detractors, no doubt. What publicman has not? He incurred the reproach of pride, for instance, whenhe appeared, one wet day, carrying an umbrella, the first ever seenin Troy. A Guernsey merchant had presented him with this novelty(I may whisper here that our Mayor did something more than connive atthe free trade) and patently it kept off the rain. But would it notattract the lightning? Many, even among his well-wishers, shooktheir heads. For their part they would have accepted the gift, butit should never have seen the light: they would have locked it awayin their chests. 

Oddly enough the Mayor nourished his severest censor in his ownhousehold. The rest of us might quote his wit, his wisdom, mightdefer to him as a being, if not superhuman, at least superlativeamong men; but Cai Tamblyn would have none of it. He had found oneformula to answer all our praises. 

"_Him_? Why, I knawed him when he was _so_ high!"

Nor would he hesitate, in the Mayor's presence, from translating itinto the second person. 

"_You_? Why, I knawed you when you was _so_ high!"

Yet the Mayor retained him in his service, which sufficiently proveshis magnanimity. 

He could afford to be magnanimous, being adored. 

Who but he could have called a public meeting and persuaded theladies of the town to enroll themselves in a brigade and patrol thecliffs in red cloaks during harvest, that the French, if perchancethey approached our shores, might mistake them for soldiery? It waspretty, I tell you, to walk the coast-track on a warm afternoon andpass these sentinels two hundred yards apart, each busy with herknitting. 

Of all the marks left on our town by Major Hymen's genius, thePort Hospital, or the idea of it, proved (as it deserved) tobe the most enduring. The Looe Volunteers might pride themselveson their longevity--at the best a dodging of the common lot. We, characteristically, thought first of death and wounds. 

As the Major put it, at another public meeting: "There are risks evenin handling the explosives generously supplied to us by Government. But suppose--and the supposition is surely not extravagant--thathistory should repeat itself; that our ancient enemy should onceagain, as in 1456, thunder at _this_ gate of England. He willthunder in vain, gentlemen! (Loud applause. ) As a wave from thecliff he will draw back, hissing, from the iron mouths of our guns. But, gentlemen"--here the Mayor sank his voice impressively--"we cannot have omelets without the breaking of eggs, nor victorieswithout effusion of blood. He may leave prisoners in our hands: hewill assuredly leave us with dead to bury, with wounded to care for. As masters of the field, we shall discharge these offices of commonhumanity, not discriminating between friend and foe. But in whatposition are we to fulfil them?"

The fact was (when we came to consider it) our prevision had extendedno farther than the actual combat: for its most ordinary results wehad made no preparation at all. 

But in Troy we are nothing if not thorough. The meeting appointed anEmergency Committee then and there; and the Committee, having retiredto reassemble ten minutes later at the "General Wolfe, " within anhour sketched out the following proposals:

 1. --An Ambulance Corps to be formed of youths under sixteen (not being bandsmen) and adults variously unfit for military service. 

 2. --A Corps of Female Nurses. Miss Pescod to be asked to organise. 

 3. --The Town lock-up to be enlarged by taking down the partition between it and a chamber formerly used by the Constable as a potato store. It was also resolved to strengthen the door and provide it with two new bolts and padlocks. 

 4. --The question of enlarging the Churchyard was deferred to the next (Easter) vestry. 

 5. --Subscriptions to be invited for providing a War Hospital. The Mayor, with Lawyer Chinn (Town Clerk) and Alderman Hansombody, to seek for suitable premises, and report. 

Of Dr. Hansombody I shall have more to tell anon. For the presentlet it suffice that before entering public life he had earned ourconfidence as an apothecary, and especially by his skill and delicacyin maternity cases. 

These proposals were duly announced: and only if you know Troy canyou conceive with what spirit the town flung itself into the task ofmaking them effective. "Task, " did I say? When I tell you that atour next drill a parade of thirty-two stretchers followed us up tothe Old Fort (still to the tune of "Come, Cheer Up, My Lads!") youmay guess how far duty and pleasure had made accord. 

The project of a hospital went forward more slowly; but at length theMayor and his Committee were able to announce that premises had beentaken on a lease of seven years (by which time an end to the warmight reasonably be predicted) in Passage Street, as you go towardsthe ferry; the exterior whitewashed and fitted with green jalousieshutters; the interior also cleaned and whitewashed, and a wardopened with two beds. Though few enough to meet the contingencies ofinvasion, and a deal too few (especially while they remainedunoccupied) to satisfy the zeal of Miss Pescod's corps of nurses(which by the end of the second week numbered forty-three, withsixteen probationary members), these two beds exhausted oursubscriptions for the time. A Ladies' Thursday Evening Working Partysupplied them with sheets, pillows and pillow-cases, blankets andcoverlets (twenty-two coverlets). 

The Institution, as we have seen, was intended for a War Hospital;but pending invasion, and to get our nurses accustomed to the work, there seemed no harm in admitting as our first patient a sailor fromPlymouth Dock who, having paid a lengthy call at the "King ofPrussia" and drunk there exorbitantly, on the way to his ship hadwalked over the edge of the Town Quay. The tide being low, he hadescaped drowning, but at the price of three broken ribs. 

It is related of this man that early in his convalescence he sat upand demanded of the Visiting Committee (the Mayor and Miss Pescod) atranslation of two texts which hung framed on the wall facing hisbed. They had been illuminated by Miss Sally Tregentil at theinstance of the Vicar (a Master of Arts of the University of Oxford)--the one, "_Parcere Subjectis_, " the other, "_Dulce et Decorum estPro Patria Mori_"

"Ah, " said the Mayor, with a rallying glance at Miss Pescod, "that'smore than any of us know. That's Latin!"

"Excuse me, " put in Dr. Hansombody, who had been measuring out adraught at the little table by the window, "I don't pretend to be ascholar; but I have made out the gist of them; and I understand themto recommend a gentle aperient in cases which at first bafflediagnosis. "

"Ah!" was the Mayor's only comment. 

"I don't profess mine to be more than a free rendering, " went on thelittle apothecary. "The Latin, as you would suppose, puts it morepoetically. "

"Talking of texts, " said the patient, leaning back wearily on hispillow, "there was a woman somewhere in the Bible who put her headout of window and recommended for every man a damsel or two and aspecified amount of needlework. I ain't complainin', mind you; butthere's reason in all things. "

You have heard how our movement was launched. Where it would haveended none can tell, had not the Millennium interfered. 

CHAPTER III. 

THE MILLENNIUM. 

Aristotle has laid it down that the highest drama concerns itselfwith reversal of fortune befalling a man highly renowned andprosperous, of better character rather than worse; and brought aboutless by vice than by some great error or frailty. After all that hasbeen said, you will wonder how I can admit a frailty in Major Hymen. But he had one. 

You will wonder yet more when you hear it defined. To tell thetruth, he--our foremost citizen--yet missed being a perfect Trojan. We were far indeed from suspecting it; he was our fine flower, ourrepresentative man. Yet in the light of later events I can see now, and plainly enough, where he fell short. 

A University Extension Lecturer who descended upon us the other dayand, encouraged by the crowds that flocked to hear him discourse onEnglish Miracle Plays, advertised a second series of lectures, thistime on English Moralities, but only to find his audience diminishedto one young lady (whom he promptly married)--this lecturer, I say, whose text-books indeed indicated several points of differencebetween the Miracle Play and the Morality, but nothing to account forso marked a subsidence in the register, departed in a huff, usingtart language and likening us to a pack of children blowing bubbles. 

There is something in the fellow's simile. When an idea gets hold ofus in Troy, we puff at it, we blow it out and distend it to a globe, pausing and calling on one another to mark the prismatic tints, thefugitive images, symbols, meanings of the wide world glassed upon ourpretty toy. We launch it. We follow it with our eyes as it floatsfrom us--an irrecoverable delight. We watch until the microcosm goespop! Then we laugh and blow another. 

That is where the fellow's simile breaks down. While the game lastswe are profoundly in earnest, serious as children: but each bubble asit bursts releases a shower of innocent laughter, flinging it likespray upon the sky. There in a chime it hangs for a moment, and socomes dropping--dropping--back to us until:

 "Quite through our streets, with silver sound"

The flood of laughter flows, and for weeks the narrow roadways, thequays and alleys catch and hold its refluent echoes. Your trueTrojan, in short, will don and doff his folly as a garment. Do youmeet him, grave as a judge, with compressed lip and corrugated brow?Stand aside, I warn you: his fit is on him, and he may catch you upwith him to heights where the ridiculous and the sublime are one andall the Olympians as drunk as Chloe. Better, if you have no head forheights, wait and listen for the moment--it will surely come--whenthe bubble cracks, and with a laugh he is sane, hilariously sane. 

Just here it was that our Mayor fell out with our _genius loci_. He could smile--paternally, magisterially, benignantly, gallantly, with patronage, in deprecation, compassionately, disdainfully (aswhen he happened to mention Napoleon Bonaparte); subtly and withintention; or frankly, in mere _bonhomie_; as a Man, as a Major, as aMayor. But he was never known to laugh. 

Through this weakness he fell. But he was a great man, and it tookthe Millennium-nothing less--to undo him. 

Here let me say, once for all, that the Millennium was no inventionof ours. It started with the Vicar of Helleston, and we may wash ourhands of it. 

On the first Sunday of January 1800, the Vicar of Helleston(an unimportant town in the extreme southwest of Cornwall, near theLizard) preached a sermon which, at the request of a fewparishioners, he afterwards published under the title of _Reflectionson the New Century_. In delight, no doubt, at finding himself inprint, he sent complimentary copies to a number of his fellow-clergy, and, among others, to the Vicar of Troy. 

Our Vicar, being a scholar and a gentleman, but a determined foe toloose thinking (especially in Cambridge men), courteouslyacknowledged the gift, but took occasion to remind his brother ofHelleston that Reflection was a retrospective process; that Man, as afinite creature, could but anticipate events before they happened;and that if the parishioners of Helleston wished to reflect on theNew Century they would have to wait until January 1901, or somethingmore than a hundred years. 

The Vicar of Helleston replied, tacitly admitting his misuse oflanguage, but demanding to know if in the Vicar of Troy's opinion thenew century would begin on January 1st, 1801: for his own part he hadsupposed, and was prepared to maintain, that it had begun on January1st, 1800. 

To this the Vicar of Troy retorted that undoubtedly the new centurywould begin on the first day of January 1801, and that anyone whoheld another opinion must suffer from confusion of mind. 

The Vicar of Helleston stuck to his contention, and a terrificcorrespondence ensued. With the arguments exchanged--which tendedmore and more to appeal from common sense to metaphysics--we neednot concern ourselves. The most of them reappeared the other day(1900-1901) in the public press, and will doubtless reappear at thealleged beginning of every century to come. But in his sixth letterthe Vicar of Helleston opened what I may call a masked battery. 

He said--and I believe the fellow had been leading up to this fromthe start--that he desired to thresh the question out not only ongeneral grounds, but officially as Vicar of Helleston; since he hadreason to believe that a certain day in the opening year of the newcentury would bring a term to the Millennium; that the Millennium hadbegun in Helleston close on a thousand years ago; and that (as hecalculated, on the 8th of May next approaching) Satan mightreasonably be expected to regain his liberty (see Revelation xx. ). For evidence he adduced a local tradition that in his parish theArchangel Michael (whose Mount stands at no great distance) had metand defeated the Prince of Darkness, had cast him into a pit, and hadsealed the pit with a great stone; which stone might be seen by anyvisitor on application to the landlord of the "Angel" Inn and paymentof a trifling fee. Moreover, the stone was black as your hat (unlessyou were a free-thinking Radical and wore a white one; in which caseit was blacker). He pointed out that the name of Helleston--_i. Q. _, Hell's Stone--corroborated this tradition. He went on to say thatannually, on the 8th of May, from time immemorial his parishionershad met in the streets and engaged in a public dance which eithercommemorated mankind's deliverance from the Spirit of Evil, or had nomeaning at all. 

The Vicar of Troy, warming to this new contention, riposted inmasterly style. He answered Helleston's claim to a monopoly, or evena predominant interest, in the Devil by pelting his opponent withDevil's Quoits, Devil's Punch-bowls, Walking-sticks, Frying-pans, Pudding-dishes, Ploughshares; Devil's Strides, Jumps, Footprints, Fingerprints; Devil's Hedges, Ditches, Ridges, Furrows; Devil'sCairns, Cromlechs, Wells, Monoliths, Caves, Castles, Cliffs, Chasms;Devil's Heaths, Moors, Downs, Commons, Copses, Furzes, Marshes, Bogs, Streams, Sands, Quicksands, Estuaries; Devil's High-roads, By-roads, Lanes, Footpaths, Stiles, Gates, Smithies, Cross-roads; from everycorner of the Duchy. He matched Helleston's May-dance with at leasta score of similar May-day observances in different towns andvillages of Cornwall. He quoted the Padstow Hobby-horse, theTowednack Cuckoo-feast, the Madron Dipping Day, the Troy May-dragon, and proved that the custom of ushering in the summer with song anddance and some symbolical rite of purgation was well-nigh universalthroughout Cornwall. He followed the custom overseas, to Brittany, Hungary, the Black Forest, Moldavia, Lithuania, Poland, Finland, theCaucasus. . . . He wound up by sardonically congratulating the worthyfolk of Helleston: if the events of the past thousand years satisfiedtheir notion of a Millennium, they were easily pleased. 

And then--

Well, the next thing to happen was that the Vicar of Hellestonpublished a pamphlet of 76 pages 8vo, entitled _Considerations Properto the New Century, with some Reflections on the Millennium_. Note, pray, the artfulness of the title, and, having noted it, let us passon. Our Vicar did not trouble to reply, being off by this time on ascent of his own. 

The dispute had served its purpose. On the morning of March 25th, 1804, he knocked at the Major's door, and, pushing past Scipio, rushed into the breakfast-parlour unannounced. 

"My dear Vicar! What has happened? Surely the French--"The Major bounced up from his chair, napkin in hand. 

"The Millennium, Major! I have it, I tell you!"

Miss Marty sat down the tea-pot with a trembling hand. She wasalways timid of infectious disease. 

"O--oh!" The Major's tone expressed his relief. "I thought for themoment--and you not shaved this morning--"

"The fellow had hold of the stick all the while. I'll do him thatcredit. He had hold of the stick, but at the wrong end. I've beenworking it out, and 'tis plain (excuse me) as the nose on your face. The moment you see 'Napoleon' with the numbers under him--"

"Eh? Then it _is_ the French!" Again the Major bounced up from hischair. 

"The French? Yes, of course--but, excuse me--"

"_What_ numbers?" The Major's voice shook, though he bravely triedto control it. 

"Six hundred--"

"Good Lord! _Where_?"

"--And sixty and six. In Revelation thirteen, eighteen--I thoughtyou knew!" went on the Vicar reproachfully, as his friend droppedback upon his chair, and, resting an elbow on the table, shadedhis eyes and their emotion. "As I can now prove to you in tenminutes, the Corsican's name spells accurately the Number of theBeast. But that's only the beginning. Power, you remember, wasgiven to the Beast to continue forty and two months. Add forty andtwo months to the first day of the century, which I have shown to beJanuary 1st, 1801, and you come to May 1st, 1804: that is to say, next May-day. You perceive the significance of the date?"

"Not entirely, " confessed the Major, still a trifle pale. "Why, mydear sir, all these rites and customs over which the Vicar ofHelleston and I have been disputing--these May-day observances, inthemselves apparently so puerile but so obviously symbolical to onewho looks below the surface--turn out to be not retrospective, notreminiscent, not commemorative at all, but anticipatory. On every1st of May our small urchins form a dragon or devil out of old potsand saucepans, and flog it through the streets. _Ex ore infantum_--on the 1st of May next (mark my words) we shall see Satan laid holdupon and bound for a thousand years. "

"Good Lord!" exclaimed the Major once again. 

"In the middle of spring-cleaning, too!" quavered Miss Marty. 

"You'll find it as clear as daylight, " the Vicar assured them, pulling out a pocket Testament and tapping the open page. 

"Will it, " the Major began timorously, "will it make an appreciabledifference?"

"To what?"

"To--to our daily life--our routine? Call it humdrum, if you will--"

"My good friend, the Millennium!"

"I know, I know. Still, at my age a man has formed habits. Of course"--the Major pulled himself together--"if it's a question ofSatan's being bound for a thousand years, on general grounds one canonly approve. Yes, decidedly, on principle one welcomes it. Nevertheless, coming so suddenly--"

The Vicar tapped his Testament again. "It has been _here_ all thetime. "

"Yes, yes, " the Major sighed impatiently. "Still, it's upsetting, you'll admit. "

"The end of the world!" Miss Marty gripped her apron, as if to castit over her head. 

"The Millennium, Miss Marty, is not the end of the world. "

"Oh, isn't it?"

"It merely means that Satan will be bound for a thousand years tocome. "

"If that's all"--Miss Marty walked to the bell-rope--"there's no harmin ringing for Scipio to bring in the omelet. "

"I beg your pardon?" The Vicar, not for the first time, found itdifficult to follow Miss Marty's train of thought. 

"Scipio never repeats what he hears at table: I'll say that for him. And I believe in feeding people up. "

The Vicar turned to Major Hymen, who had pushed back his chair andwas staring at the tablecloth from under a puckered brow. 

"I fear this has come upon you somewhat suddenly: but my firstthought, as soon as I had convinced myself--"

"Thank you, Vicar. I appreciate that, of course. "

"And, after all--when you come to think of it--an event of thismagnitude, happening in your mayoralty--"

"Will they knight him, do you think?" asked Miss Marty. 

While the Vicar considered his answer, on top of this interruptioncame another--Scipio entering with the omelet. Now the entrance ofthe Major's omelet was a daily ritual. It came on a silver dish, heated by a small silver spirit-lamp, on a tray covered by a spotlesslinen cloth. Scipio, its cook and compounder, bore it withprofessional pride, supporting the dish on one palm bent backwards, and held accurately level with his shoulder; whence, by a curious andquite indescribable turn of the wrist (Scipio was double-jointed), during which for one fearful tenth of a second they seemed to hangupside down, he would bring tray, lamp, dish and omelet down with asweep, and deposit them accurately in front of the Major's plate, atthe same instant bringing his heels together and standing atattention for his master's approval. 

"Well done, Scipio!" the Major would say, nine days out of ten. 

But to-day he pushed the tray from him pettishly, ignoring Scipio. 

"You'll excuse me"--he turned to the Vicar--"but if what you say iscorrect (you may go, Scipio) it puts me in a position of someresponsibility. "

"I felt sure you would see it in that light. It's a responsibilityfor me, too. "

"To-day is the twenty-fifth. We have little more than a month. "

"What am I to say in church next Sunday?"

"Why, as for that, you must say nothing. Good Heavens! is this atime for adding to the disquietude of men's minds?"

"I had thought, " the Vicar confessed, "of memorialising theGovernment. "

"Addington!" The Major's tone whenever he had occasion to mention Mr. Addington was a study in scornful expression. He himself had oncememorialised the Prime Minister for a couple of nineteen-pounderswhich, with the two on the Old Fort, would have made our harbourimpregnable. "Addington! It's hard on you, I know, " he went onsympathetically, "to keep a discovery like this to yourself. But wemight tell Hansombody. "

"Why Hansombody?" For the second time a suspicion crossed theVicar's mind that his hearers were confusing the Millennium with someinfectious ailment. 

"It is bound to affect his practice, " suggested Miss Marty. 

"To be sure, " the Major chimed in. As a matter of fact, he attachedgreat importance to the apothecary's judgment, and was wont to leanon it, though not too ostentatiously. "It can hardly fail to affecthis practice. I think, in common justice, Hansombody ought to betold; that is, if you are quite sure of your ground. "

"Sure?" The Vicar opened his Testament afresh and plunged into anexplanation. "And forty-two months, " he wound up, "are forty-twomonths, unless you prefer to fly in the face of Revelation. "

His demonstration fairly staggered the Major. "My good sir, _where_did you say? Patmos? Now, if anyone had come to me a week ago andtold me--Martha, ring for Scipio, please, and tell him to fetch me myhat. "

Although the Major and the Vicar had as good as made solemn agreementto impart their discovery to no one but Mr. Hansombody; and, althoughMiss Marty admittedly (and because, as she explained, no one hadforbidden her) imparted it to Scipio and again to Cai Tamblyn in thecourse of the morning; yet, knowing Troy, I hesitate to blame herthat before noon the whole town was discussing the Millennium, noticeof which (it appeared) had come down to the Mayor by a private adviceand in Government cipher. 

"But what _is_ a Millennium?" asked someone of Gunner Sobey (ourreadiest man). 

"It means a thousand years, " answered Gunner Sobey; "and then, ifyou're lucky, you gets a pension accordin'. "

Miss Marty confessed later that she had confided the secret toScipio. Now Scipio, a sentimental soul, cherished a passion. In church every Sunday he sat behind his master and in full view of aboard on the wall of the south aisle whereon in scarlet letters on abuff ground were emblazoned certain bequests and charities left tothe parish by the pious dead. The churchwardens who had set up thislist, with the date, September 1757, and attested it with theirnames, had prudently left a fair blank space thereunder foradditions. Often, during the Vicar's sermons, poor Scipio's gaze haddwelt on this blank space. Maybe the scarlet lettering above itfascinated him. Negroes are notoriously fond of scarlet. But outupon me for so mean a guess at his motives! Scipio, regarding thisboard Sunday by Sunday, saw in imagination his own name added to thatglorious roll. He had a few pounds laid by. He owned neither wifenor child. Why should it not be? He was black: but a black man'smoney passed current as well as a white man's. Might not his name, Scipio Johnson, stand some day and be remembered as well as that ofJoshua Milliton, A. M. (whatever A. M. Might mean), who in 1714 hadbequeathed moneys to provide, every Whit-Sunday and Christmas, "twelve white loaves of half a peck to as many virtuous poor widows"?

So when Miss Marty confided the news to him in the pantry where, asalways at ten in the morning, he was engaged in cleaning the plate, Scipio's hand shook so violently that the silver sugar-basin slippedfrom his hold and, crashing down upon the breakfast-tray, broke twocups and the slop-basin into small fragments. 

"Oh, Scipio!" Miss Marty's two hands went up in horrified dismay. "How could you be so careless!"

"The Millennium, miss!"

"We can never replace it--never!"

Scipio gazed at the tray: but what he saw was a shattered dream--acracked board strewn with fragmentary scarlet letters and flourishes, "brief flourishes. "--"Ole man Satan is among us sho 'nuff, MissMarty: among us and kickin' up Saint's Delight, because his time isshort. I was jes' thinkin' of the widows, miss. "

"You have spoilt the set . . . Eh? _what_ widows? You don't mean totell me that Satan--?"

Miss Marty broke off and gazed at Scipio with dawning suspicion, distrust, apprehension. She had never completely reconciled herselfwith the poor fellow's colour. The Major, in moments of irritation, would address him as "You black limb of Satan. " He came from theGold Coast, and she had heard strange stories of that happilydistant, undesirable shore; stories of devil-worship, and--was itthere they practised suttee? What did he mean by that allusion towidows? And why had he turned pale--yes, pale--when she announcedthe Evil One's approaching overthrow?

Miss Marty left him to pick up the pieces, and withdrew in some hasteto the kitchen. Then, half an hour later, while rolling out thepaste for a pie-crust, she imparted the news to Lavinia. 

"It's to happen on May-day, Lavinia. The Major had word of it thismorning, and--only think!--Satan is to be bound for a thousandyears. "

"Law, miss!" said Lavinia. "Apprentice?"

Cai Tamblyn heard of it in the garden, which was really a smallflagged courtyard leading to the terrace, which again was really asmall, raised platform with a table and a couple of chairs, where theMajor sometimes smoked his pipe and overlooked the harbour and theshipping. Along each side of the courtyard ran a flower-bed, and inthese Cai Tamblyn grew tulips and verbenas, according to the season, and kept them scrupulously weeded. He was stooping over his tulipswhen Miss Marty told him of the Millennium. 

"What's that?" he asked, picking up a slug and jerking it across theharbour wall. 

"It's a totally different thing from the end of the world. To beginwith, Satan is to be taken and bound for a thousand years. "

"Oh!" said Cai Tamblyn with fine contempt. "_Him!_"

CHAPTER IV. 

HOW THE TROY GALLANTS CHALLENGED THE LOOE DIEHARDS. 

That it was the Major's idea goes without saying. At Looe they hadneither the originality for it nor the enterprise. 

I have already told you with what sardonic emphasis he quoted thesaying that 'twas hardly worth while for Great Britain to go to warmerely to prove that she could put herself in a good posture fordefence. The main secret of strategy, he would add, is to imposeyour idea of the campaign on your enemy; to take the initiative outof his hands; to throw him on the defensive and keep him nervouslyspeculating what move of yours may be a feint and what a real attack. If the Ministry had given the Major his head, so to speak, Agincourtat least might have been repeated. 

But since it enforced him to wait on the enemy's movements, at least(said he) let us be sure that our defence is secure. Concerning theTroy battery he had not a doubt; but over the defences of Looe hecould not but feel perturbed. To be sure, Looe's main battery stoodout of reach of harm, but with the compensating disadvantage of beingable to inflict none. This seemed to him a grave engineeringblunder: but to impart his misgivings to an officer so sensitive asCaptain Aeneas Pond of the East and West Looe Volunteer Artillery wasa delicate matter, and cost him much anxious thought. 

At length he hit on a plan at once tactful and so bold that itconcealed his tact. Between Looe and Troy, but much nearer to Looe, lies Talland Cove, a pretty recess of the coast much favoured inthose days by smugglers as being lonely and well sheltered, with anicely shelving beach on which, at almost any state of the tide, anordinary small boat could be run and her cargo discharged with thegreatest ease. A shelving ridge on the eastern side of the cove hadonly to be known to be avoided, and the run of sea upon the beachcould be disregarded in any but a strong southerly wind. 

Now, where the free-traders could so easily land a cargo, it stood toreason that Bonaparte (were he so minded) could land an invadingforce. Nay, once on a time the French had actually forced this veryspot. A short way up the valley behind the cove stood a mill; and ofthat mill this story was told. About the time of the Wars of theRoses, the miller there gave entertainment to a fellow-miller fromthe Breton coast opposite, who had crossed over--or so he pretended--to learn by what art the English ground finer corn than the French. Coming by hazard to this mill above Talland, he was well entertainedfor a month or more And dismissed with a blessing; but only to returnto his own country, collect a band of men and cross to Talland Cove, where on a Christmas Eve he surprised his late host at supper, boundhim, haled him down to the shore, carried him off to Brittany, andthere held him at ransom. The ransom was paid, and our Cornishmiller, returning, built himself a secret cupboard behind the chimneyfor a hiding-place against another such mishap. That hiding-placeyet existed, and formed (as the Major well knew) a capitalstore-chamber for the free-traders. 

The Major, then, having carefully studied Talland Cove, with itsapproaches, and the lie of the land to the east and west andimmediately behind it, sat down and indited the following letter:

 "Dear Pond, --I have been thinking over the military situation, and am of opinion that if the enemy once effected a lodgment in Looe, we in Troy might have difficulty in dislodging him. Have you considered the danger of Talland Cove and the accessibility of your town from that quarter? And would you and your corps entertain the idea of a descent of my corps upon Talland one of these nights as a friendly test?--Believe me, yours truly, " "Sol Hymen (_Major_). "

 "To Captain Aeneas Pond, Commanding the East and West Looe Volunteer Artillery. "

To this Captain Pond made answer:

 "Dear Hymen, --The military situation here is practically unchanged. We have had some bronchial trouble among the older members of the corps in consequence of the severe east winds which prevailed up to last week; but on the whole we have weathered the winter beyond expectation. A slight outbreak of whooping-cough towards the end of February was confined to the juveniles of the town, and left us unaffected. 

 "Seeing that I make a practice of walking over to Talland to bathe at least twice a week during the summer months, I ought to be acquainted with the dangers of the Cove, as well as its accessibility. The temperature of the water is of extraordinarily low range, and will compare in the mean (I am told) with the Bay of Naples. My informant was speaking of ordinary years. Vesuvius in eruption would no doubt send the figures up. 

 "By all means march your men over to Talland; and if the weather be tolerable we will await you there and have a dinner ready at the Sloop. Our Assurance Fund has a surplus this year, which, in my opinion, would be well expended in entertaining our brothers-in-arms. But do not make the hour too late, or I shall have trouble with the Doctor. What do you say to 3. 30 p. M. , any day after this week?--Yours truly, Aen. Pond. 

 "To the Worshipful the Mayor of Troy (Major S. Hymen), Commanding the Troy Volunteer Artillery. "

The Major replied:

 "Dear Pond, --In speaking of the enemy, I referred to the Corsican and his minions rather than to the whooping-cough or any similar epidemic. It struck me that the former (being flat-bottomed) might with great ease effect a landing in Talland Cove and fall on your flank in the small hours of the morning, creating a situation with which, single-handed, you might find it difficult to cope. My suggestion then would be that, as a test, we arranged a night together for a surprise attack, our corps here acting as a friendly foe. 

 "With so gallant an enemy I feel a diffidence in discussing the bare contingency of our success. But it may reassure the non-combatant portion of your population in East and West Looe if I add that 72 _per centum_ of my corps are married men, and that I accept no recruit without careful inquiry into character. 

 "By direct assault I know you to be impregnable. The reef off your harbour would infallibly wreck any ship that tried to approach within the range of your battery (270 point-blank, I believe); and my experience with a picnic party last summer convinced me that to discharge the complement of even half a dozen boats by daylight on your quay requires a degree of method which in a night attack would almost certainly be lacking. Our boats would not be flat bottomed, but only partially so: enough for practical purposes. 

 "I do not apprehend any casualties. With a little forethought we may surely avoid the confusion incident to a night surprise, while carrying it out in all essentials. But I may mention that we have a well-found hospital in Troy, that we should bring our own stretcher-party, and that our honorary surgeon, Mr. Hansombody, is a licentiate of the Apothecaries' Hall, in London. --I am, my dear Pond, yours truly, " "Sol. Hymen (_Major_). "

"Confound this fire-eater!" sighed Captain Pond. "I knew, when theytold me he had founded a hospital, he wouldn't be satisfied till he'dfilled it. " Yet he could scarcely decline the challenge. 

 "My dear Major, --In these critical times, when Great Britain calls upon her sons to consolidate their ranks in face of the Invader, I should have thought it wiser to keep as many as possible in health and fighting condition than to incur the uncertain risks of such a nocturnal adventure as you propose. I think it due to myself to make this clear, and you will credit me that I have, or had, no other reason for demurring. It does not become me, however, to argue with my superior in military rank; and again, the tone of your last communication makes it impossible for me to decline without bringing the spirit of my Corps under suspicion. I cannot do them this injustice. His Majesty, I dare to say, has no braver, no more gallant subjects, than the inhabitants of East and West Looe; and if, or when, you choose to invade us you may count on a determined resistance and, at its conclusion, on a hearty invitation to supper, or breakfast, as the length of the operations may dictate. --I am, yours truly, " "Aen. Pond (_Capt_. E. And W. L. V. A. ). "

 "P. S. --If you will accept a suggestion, it is that on the night of the 30th of April, or in the early hours of May morning, large numbers of our inhabitants fare out to the neighbouring farmhouses to eat cream and observe other unwholesome but primitive and interesting ceremonies before day-break. A similar custom, I hear, prevails at Troy. Now it occurs to me that if we agreed upon that date for our surprise attack, we should, so to speak, be killing two birds with one stone, and at a season when the night air in some degree loses its insalubrity. 

 "P. P. S. --You will, of course, take care--it is the essence of our agreement--that all ammunition shall be strictly blank. And pray bring your full band. Though superfluous before and during the surprise, their strains will greatly enhance the subsequent festivities. "

Thus did Captain Pond accept our challenge. The Major acknowledgedits acceptance in the following brief note:

 "My dear Pond, --Your letter has highly gratified me. Between this and April 30th I will make occasion to meet you and arrange details. Meanwhile, could you discover and send the correct words and tune of an old song I remember hearing sung, when I was a boy, in honour of your town? It was called, I think, 'The George of Looe'; and if between this and then our musicians learnt to play it, I daresay your men would appreciate the compliment from their (temporary) foes. --Yours truly, " "Sol. Hymen (_Major_). "

But this was before our Vicar's announcement of the Millennium. 

Captain Pond promised to obtain, if possible, the words and music ofthe old song. "Courtesies such as yours, " he wrote, "refine thespirit, while they mitigate the ferocity, of warfare. "

CHAPTER V. 

INTERFERENCE OF A GUERNSEY MERCHANT. 

A smaller man than Major Hymen--I allude to character rather than tostature--had undoubtedly postponed a military manoeuvre on finding itlikely to clash with the Millennium, an event so incalculable andconceivably so disconcerting to the best-laid plans: and, indeed, forsomething like forty-eight hours the Major was in two minds aboutwriting to Captain Pond and hinting at a postponement. 

But in the end he characteristically chose the stronger line. I believe the handsome language of Captain Pond's last letter decidedhim. His was no cheap imitation of the grand manner. Magnificently, spaciously--too spaciously, perhaps, considering the width of ourstreets--it enshrined a real conception of Man's proper dignity. Here was an obligation in which honour met and competed withpoliteness: and he must fulfil it though the heavens fell. Moreover, he could not but be aware, during the month of April, that the townhad its eye on him, hoping for a sign. He and the Vicar and Mr. Hansombody had bound each other to secrecy; nevertheless some inklingof the secret had leaked out. The daily current of gossip in thestreets no longer kept its cheerful, equable flow. Citizens avoidedeach other's eyes, and talked either in hushed voices or with analmost febrile vehemence on any subject but that which lay closest totheir thoughts. 

But never did our Mayor display such strength, such unmistakablegreatness, as during this, the last month--alas!--fate granted us topossess him. Men eyed him on his daily walk, but he for his parteyed the weather: and the weather continued remarkably fine for thetime of year. 

So warm, so still, indeed, were the evenings, that in the third weekof April he began to take his dessert, after dinner, out of doors onthe terrace overlooking the harbour; and would sit and smoke there, alone with a book, until the shadows gathered and it grew too dark toread print. 

"And you may tell Scipio to bring me out a bottle of the green-sealedMadeira, " he commanded, on the evening of the twentieth. 

"The green-sealed Madeira?" echoed Miss Marty. "You know, of course, that there is but a dozen or so left?"

"A dozen precisely; and to-day is the twentieth. That leaves"--theMajor drummed with his fingers on the mahogany--"a bottle a night andone over. That last one I reserve to drink on the evening of May-dayif all goes well. One must risk something. "

"Solomon!"

"Eh?" The Major looked up in surprise. Although a kinswoman, MissMarty had never before dared to address him by his Christian name. "One must risk something; or rather, I should say, one must leave amargin. If Hansombody calls, you may send out the brown sherry. "

"Forgive me, cousin. I see you going about your daily business, calmand collected, as though no shadow hung on us--"

"A man in my position has certain responsibilities, my dear Martha. "

"Yes, yes; I admire you for it. Do not think that for one moment Ihave failed in paying you that tribute. I often wish, " pursued MissMarty, somewhat incoherently, "that I had been born a man. I trustthe aspiration is not unwomanly. I see you going about as if nothingwere happening or likely to happen, and me all the while half dead inmy bed, and hearing the clock strike and expecting it every moment. As if the French weren't bad enough! And the Vicar may say what helikes, but when I hear you ordering up the green-sealed Madeira Iknow you're like me, and in your heart of hearts can't see muchdifference between it and the end of the world, for all the braveface you put on it. Oh, I dare say it's different when one happensto be a man, " wound up Miss Marty, "but what _I_ want to know is whycouldn't we be let alone and go on comfortably?"

The Major rose and flicked a crumb or two from the knees of hispantaloons. For the moment he seemed about to answer her, butthought better of it and left the room without speech, taking hisnapkin with him. 

To tell the truth, he had been near to giving way. In his heart heechoed Miss Marty's protest; and it touched him with an accent ofreproach--faint indeed; an accent and no more--which yet he haddetected and understood. Was he not in some sort responsible?Would the Millennium be imminent to-day--or, if imminent, would it bewearing so momentous an aspect?--if at the last Mayor-choosing he hadmodestly declined to be re-elected (for the fifth successive year), and had stood aside in favour of some worthy but less eminentcitizen? Hansombody, for instance? Hansombody admired him, idolisedhim, with a devotion almost canine. Yet Hansombody might be expectedto cherish hopes of the mayoral succession sooner or later, for onebrief year at any rate; and for a few moments after acceding for thesixth time to the unanimous request of the burgesses, the Major hadalmost fancied that Hansombody's feelings were hurt. Hansombodywould have made a competent mayor; provoking comparison, of course, but certainly not provoking the jealousy of the gods. It isnotoriously the mountain top, the monarch oak that attracts thelightning. Impossible to think of Hansombody attracting thelightning, with his bedside manner!

The Major seated himself in his favourite chair on the terrace, spread his napkin over his knees and mused, while Scipio set out thedecanters and glasses. 

His gaze, travelling over the low parapet of the quay-wall, rested onthe quiet harbour, the ships swinging slowly with the tide, thefarther shore touched with the sunset glory. Evensong, the close ofday, the end of deeds, the twilit passing of man--all these thescene, the hour suggested. And yet (the Major poured out a glass ofthe green-sealed Madeira) this life was good and desirable. 

The Major's garden (as I have said) was a narrow one, in width abouthalf the depth of his house, terminating in the "Terrace" and anarrow quay-door, whence a ladder led down to the water. Alongsidethis garden ran the rear wall of the Custom House, which abutted overthe water, also with a ladder reaching down to the foreshore, and notfive yards from the Mayor's. On the street side one window of theCustom House raked the Mayor's porch; in the rear another and smallerwindow overlooked his garden, and this might have been a nuisance hadthe Collector of Customs, Mr. Pennefather, been a less considerateneighbour. But no one minded Mr. Pennefather, a little, round, self-depreciating official who, before coming to Troy, had served asclerk in the Custom House at Penzance, and so, as you might say, hadlearnt his business in a capital school: for the good feeling betweenthe Customs officials and the free-traders of Mount's Bay, and theetiquette observed in their encounters, were a by-word throughout theDuchy. 

The Major, glancing up as he sipped his Madeira and catching sight ofMr. Pennefather at his window, nodded affably. 

"Ah! Good evening, Mr. Collector!"

"Good evening, Major! You'll excuse my seeming rudeness inoverlooking you. To tell the truth, I had just closed my books, andthe sight of your tulips--"

"A fair show this year--eh?" The Major took pride in his tulips. 

"Magnificent! I was wondering how you will manage when the bulbsdeteriorate; for, of course, there's no renewing them from Holland, nor any prospect of it while this war lasts. "

The Major sipped his wine. "Between ourselves, Mr. Collector, I haveheard that forbidden goods find their way into this country somehow. Eh?"

The Collector laughed. "But the price, Major? That is where it hitsus, even in the matter of tulips. War is a terrible business. "

"It has been called the sport of kings, " answered the Major, crossinghis legs with an air of careless greatness, and looking more like thePrince Regent than ever. 

"I have sometimes wondered, being of a reflective turn, on the--er--far-reaching consequences of events which, to the casual eye, mightappear insignificant. An infant is born in the remote island ofCorsica. Years roll on, and we find our gardens denuded of a bulb, the favourite habitat of which must lie at least eight hundred milesfrom Corsica as the crow flies. How unlikely was it, sir, that youor I, considering these tulips with what I may perhaps call ourfinite intelligence--"

"Step around, Mr. Collector, and have a look at them. You can unfoldyour argument over a glass of wine, if you will do me that pleasure. "The Major had a high opinion of Mr. Pennefather's conversation; hewas accustomed to say that it made you think. 

"If you are sure, sir, it will not incommode you?"

"Not in the least. I expect Hansombody will join us presently. Scipio, bring out the brown sherry. "

Now the Major had not invited Dr. Hansombody; yet that he expectedhim is no less certain than that, while he spoke, Dr. Hansombody wasactually lifting the knocker of the front door. 

How did this happen? The Major--so used was he to the phenomenon--accepted it as a matter of course. Hansombody (good soul!) had awonderful knack of turning up when wanted. But what attracted him?Was it perchance that magnetic force of will which our Major, and alltruly great men, unconsciously exert? No; the explanation was asimpler one, though the Major would have been inexpressibly shockedhad he suspected it. 

Miss Marty and Dr. Hansombody were mutually enamoured. 

They never told their love. To acknowledge it nakedly to oneanother--nay, even to themselves--had been treason. What?Could Miss Marty disturb the comfort, could her swain destroy theconfidence, could they together forfeit the esteem, of their commonhero? In converse they would hymn antiphonally his virtues, hisgraces of mind and person; even as certain heathen fanatics, woundingthemselves in honour of their idol, will drown the pain by loudclashings of cymbals. 

They never told their love, and yet, as the old song says:

 "But if ne'er so close ye wall him, Do the best that ye may, Blind Love, if so ye call him, He will find out his way. "

Miss Marty had found out a way. 

The Major's house, as you have been told, looked down the length ofFore Street; and on the left hand (the harbour side) of Fore Street, at some seventy yards' distance, Dr. Hansombody resided over hisdispensary, or, as he preferred to call it, his "Medical Hall. "The house stood aligned with its neighbours but overtopped them by anattic storey; and in the north side of this attic a single windowlooked up the street to the Major's windows--Miss Marty's among therest--and was visible from them. 

Behind this attic window the Doctor, when released from professionallabours, would sit and read, or busy himself in arranging his casesof butterflies, of which he had a famous collection; and somehow--Icannot tell you when or how, except that it began in merestinnocence--Miss Marty had learnt to signal with her window-blind andthe Doctor to reply with his. This evening, for instance, bylowering her blind to the foot of the second pane from the top, MissMarty had telegraphed, --

"The Major requests you to call and take wine with him. "

The Doctor drew his blind down rapidly and as rapidly raised itagain. This said, "I come at once, " and Miss Marty knew that itadded, "On the wings of love!"

A slight agitation of the lower left-hand corner of her blindsupplemented the message thus, --

"There will be brown sherry. "

"Then will I also call to-morrow, " said the Doctor's blind, roguishly, meaning that if the Major indulged in brown sherry (whichnever agreed with him) this convivial visit would almost certainly befollowed by a professional one. Miss Marty, having no signal for thegreen-sealed Madeira, postponed explanation, and drew her blindmidway down the window. The Doctor did the same with his. This signal and its answer invariably closed their correspondence;but what it meant, what tender message it conveyed, remained anuncommunicated secret. By it Miss Marty--but shall I reveal thearcana of that virgin breast? Let us be content to know thatwhatever it conveyed was, on her part, womanly; on his, gallant andeven dashing. 

The Doctor lost no time in fetching his hat and gold-topped cane. He knew the Major's brown sherry; it had twice made a voyage to theWest Indies. He hied him up the street with alacrity. 

The Collector, though he had the worse of the start, was not slow. He also had tasted the Major's brown sherry. He closed his ledgers, locked his desk, caught up his hat, and was closing the Custom Housedoor behind him when, from the top of the Custom House steps, he sawthe Major's door open to admit Dr. Hansombody. 

Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy and pursue inimagination the pleasures of hope, attend to the story of Dr. Hansombody, Mr. Pennefather, and the brown sherry!

"Dr. Hansombody?" With her own hand Miss Marty opened the door, andher start of surprise was admirably affected. (Ah, Miss Marty!Who was it rated Lavinia this morning for a verbal fib, until thepoor child dropped her head upon the kitchen table and with sobsconfessed herself the chief of sinners?) But even as she welcomedthe apothecary, her gaze fell past him upon the form of a strangerwho, sauntering up the street, had paused at the gate to scan theMajor's house-front. 

"I ask your pardon. " The stranger, a long, lean, lantern-jawed man, raised his hat and addressed her with a strong French accent. "But does Mr. Hymen inhabit here?"

"Yes, sir; Major Hymen--that is to say the Mayor--lives here. "

"Ah! he is also the Maire? So much the better. " He drew out a card. "Will it please you, mademoiselle, to convey this to him?"

Standing on the third step he held up the card. Miss Marty took itand read, "M. Cesar Dupin. "

"Of Guernsey, " added M. Dupin, rubbing his long unshaven chin whilehe stole a long look at the Doctor. "It is understood that I comeonly to lodge a complaint. "

"To be sure--to be sure, " agreed the Doctor, hurriedly. "A Guernseymerchant, " he whispered. . . . "You will convey my excuses to theMajor; an unexpected visitor--I quite understand. "

He made a motion to retire. At the same moment the Collector, afterscanning the stranger from the Custom House porch, himself unseen, unlocked his door again without noise, re-entered his office anddelicately drew down the blind of the little window overlooking theMajor's garden. 

"There is the parlour, " Miss Marty made answer in an undertone. "This gentleman may not detain the Major long. " She turned to thestranger. "Your business, sir, is doubtless private?"

"I should prefer. "

"Quite so. " She raised her voice and called, "Scipio! Scipio!Ah, there you are! Take this gentleman's card out to the terrace andinform the Major that he desires an interview. "

"Why, hallo!" exclaimed the Major, glancing up at the sound of ablind being drawn above, in the Custom House window. "What the deuceis delaying Pennefather?"

While he speculated, Scipio emerged from the house, bearing in onehand a decanter of brown sherry, and in the other a visitor's card. 

"Eh--what? M. Cesar Dupin?" The Major, holding the card almost atarm's length, conned it with a puzzled frown. 

"From Guernsey, Major. "

"Good Lord! And I've just invited Pennefather!" The Major rosehalf-way from his chair with a face of dismay. 

Scipio glanced up at the Custom House window. He, too, had caughtthe sound of the drawn blind. 

"Mas' Pennefather, Major, if you'll excuse me, he see a hole t'ro' aladder, but not t'ro' a brick wall. Shall I show the genelman in?"

"I fear, " began Miss Marty, as the Doctor took a seat in the parlour, "I greatly fear that Scipio has carried the brown sherry out to theterrace. "

Dr. Hansombody smiled as a lover but sighed as a connoisseur. 

"There is the Fra Angelico, however. " She stepped to a panelledcupboard on the right of the chimney-piece. "Made from my ownrecipe, " she added archly. 

The Doctor lifted a hand in faint protest; but already she had set aglass before him. He knew the Fra Angelico of old. It was aspecific against catarrh, and he had more than once prescribed it forScipio. 

"Wine is wine, " continued Miss Marty, reaching down the bottle. "And, after all, when one knows what it is made of, as in this case--that seems to me the great point. "

"You mustn't think--" began the Doctor. 

"I must plead guilty"--Miss Marty poured out a glassful--"if its namesuggests a foreign origin. You men, I know, profess a preference forforeign wines; and so, humorously, I hit on the name of Fra Angelico, from the herb angelica, which is its main ingredient. In reality, asI can attest, it is English to the core. "

The Doctor lifted his glass and set it down again. 

"You will join me?" he asked, pointing to the decanter andtemporising. 

"Pardon me. I indulge but occasionally: when I have a cold. "

"And the Major?"

"He pleads habit. He says he is wedded to the vintages of France andSpain. 'What?' I rally him, 'when those two nations are at war withus? And you call yourself a patriot?' He permits these railleries. "

"He is a man in a thousand!"

"There is no man like him!"

"If we exclude a certain resemblance--"

"You refer to the Prince Regent? But I was thinking only of _moral_grandeur. "

"True. All else, if one may say so without disloyalty, is butskin-deep. "

"Superficial. "

"Thank you, the expression is preferable, and I ask your leave tosubstitute it. "

"Solomon, my kinsman, is the noblest of men. "

"And you, Miss Marty, the best of women!" cried the Doctor, takingfire and a sip of the Fra Angelico together, and gulping the latterdown heroically. "I drink to you; nay, if I dared, I would go evenfarther--

"No, no, I beg of you!" Her eyes, downcast before this suddenassault, let fall two happy tears, but a feeble gesture of the handbesought his mercy. "Let us talk of _him_, " she went onbreathlessly. "His elevation of character--"

"If he were to marry, now?" the Doctor suggested. "Have you thoughtof that?"

"Sometimes, " she admitted, with a flutter of the breath, whichsounded almost like a sigh. 

"It would serve to perpetuate--"

"But where to find one worthy of him? She must be capable of risingto his level; rather, of continuing there. "

"You are sure that is necessary? Now, in my experience, " the Doctorinclined his head to one side and rubbed his chin softly betweenthumb and forefinger--a favourite trick of his when diagnosing acase--"in my observation, rather, some disparity of temper, taste, character, may almost be postulated of a completely happy alliance;as in chemistry you bring together an acid and an alkali, and, alwaysprovided they don't explode--"

"_He_ would never be satisfied with that. Believe me, the woman hecondescends upon must, in return for that happy privilege, surrenderher whole fate into his hands. Beneath his deference to our sex hecarries an imperious will, and would demand no less. "

"There _is_ a little bit of that about him, now you mention it, "assented the Doctor. 

"But let us not cheat--" Miss Marty checked herself suddenly. "Let us not vex ourselves with any such apprehensions. He will nevermarry, I am convinced. I cannot imagine him in the light of aparent--with offspring, for instance. Rather, when I see him in hisregimentals, or, again, in his mayoral robe and chain--you havenoticed how they become him?--"

The Doctor admitted, with a faint sigh, that he had. 

"Well, then, he puts me in mind of that--what d'you call it, whichthe poets tell us is reproduced but once in several hundred years?"

"The blossoming aloe?" suggested the Doctor. 

Miss Marty shook her head. "It's not a plant--it's a kind of bird. It begins with 'P, h, '--and you think of Dublin. "

"Let me see--Phelim? No, I have it! Phoenix. "

"That's it--Phoenix. And when it's going to die it lights a fire andsits down upon it and another springs up from the ashes. "

"But I don't see how that applies to the Major. "

"No-o?" queried Miss Marty, dubiously. "Well, not in everyparticular; but the point is, there's only one at a time. "

"The same might be said, " urged the Doctor, delicately, "of otherindividual members of the Town Council; with qualifications, ofcourse. "

"And somehow I feel--I can't help a foreboding--that if ever we losehim it will be in some such way. "

"Miss Marty!" The Doctor stood up, with horror-stricken face. 

"There, now! You may call me fanciful, but I can't help it. And you've spilled the Fra Angelico! Let me pour you out anotherglassful. "

"We must all die, " answered the Doctor inconsequently, not yet masterof himself. 

"Except a few Bible characters, " said Miss Marty, filling his glass. "But what the town would do without _him_ I can't think. In a sensehe _is_ the town. "

A moment before the Doctor had all but denied it; but now, overcomeby the thought of a world without the Major, he hid his face. For amoment, if but in thought, he had been disloyal to his friend, hishero!

Miss Marty said afterwards that, although not accustomed to prophesyand humbly aware that it was out of her line, she must have spokenunder inspiration. She was wont also, when she recalled herforebodings and the events that followed and so signally fulfilledthem, to regret that when the Guernsey merchant took his leave, anhour later, she omitted to take note of his boots; it being anarticle of faith with her that, in his traffic with mortals, thePrince of Darkness could not help betraying himself by his clovenhoof. 

In the garden meanwhile the Major and his guest were making very goodweather of it, as we say in Troy; the one with his Madeira, the otherwith the brown sherry. I leave the reader to discern the gist oftheir talk from its technicalities. 

"Three gross of ankers, you say?" queried the Major. 

"At four gallons the anker, and six francs the gallon. "

"It is a large venture. "

"And, for that reason, dirt cheap. To my knowledge there is not afirm in Guernsey at this moment doing trade at less than seven francsthe gallon in parcels under five hundred gallons. "

"Yes, yes. " The Major lit his pipe and puffed meditatively. "I amnot denying that. Only, you see, on our side these large operationsrather heighten the expense than diminish it, while they heighten therisk enormously. "

"I do not see. " M. Dupin crossed his legs and awaited an explanation. 

"It is simple. So many more tubs, so many more carriers; so manymore carriers, so much the more risk of including an informer. One hundred carriers, say, I can lay hands on, knowing them all fortried men. Beyond that number I rely on recommendations, oftencarelessly given. The risk is more than trebled. And then, the factof my being Mayor--"

"I should have thought it lessened the risk. "

"In a way, yes. But in case of miscarriage, the consequences must bemore severe. I will own that you tempt me. The tubs, you say, wouldbe ready slung. "

"Ready slung for carriage, man or horse, whichever you prefer, withropes, stones and six anchors for sinking in case of emergency. We will allow for these if they are returned. "

"To tell the truth, since becoming chief magistrate of this borough, I have rather set my face against these operations. It has seemed tome more consonant. . . . And an operation on the scale you proposecould not be conducted without some degree of--er--audacity. "

"It means a forced run, " assented M. Dupin. 

"If, on reflection--" the Major hesitated. 

"Excuse me, but there is no time. For reasons of our own, my firmmust clear the stuff before the end of April; that is why we offer itat the price. Three gross, with six ankers of the colouring stuffgratis--and the tubs ready slung. It must be 'yes' or 'no'; if youdecline, then I have another customer on the string. "

"The end of April, you say?" The Major refilled his glass and mused, holding it up against the last gleam of daylight. 

"We could ship it on the 27th or 28th. The moon serves then. Say that you run it on the night of the 30th?"

"Of the 30th?" echoed the Major. "But on that night, of all others, my hands are full. To begin with, we are half-expecting theMillennium. "

"The Millennium, _hein_?" echoed M. Dupin in his turn. "I do notknow her. "

"It's not a boat, " the Major explained. "It's a--well, in fact, weare not altogether sure what it may turn out to be. But, settingthis aside, I am engaged to conduct a military operation on the nightof the 30th. "

"_Hein_?" M. Dupin eyed his host with interest. "A counter-stroketo the First Consul--is that so?"

"Well, not exactly a downright counter-stroke; although, if I had myway . . . But in fact (and I mention it in confidence, of course) ourArtillery here is planning a surprise upon our neighbours of Looe, the descent to be made upon Talland Cove. "

M. Dupin set down his glass. "But I am in luck to-night!" said he. "You--I--we are all in luck!"

"Forgive me, I do not see--"

"Oh, decidedly, I am in very great luck! If only your neighbours ofLooe--they, too, have a corps of Artillery, I suppose?" M. Dupinfelt in his breast pocket and drew out a paper. "Quick! theirofficer's name?"

"A Captain Pond commands them: Captain Aeneas Pond. "

"Pond? Pond? See now, and I have an introduction to him! And youhave arranged to surprise him on the night of April 30th--and atTalland Cove--when there will be no moon! Oh, damgood!"

"But even yet I do not see, " the Major protested. 

"Not quite. For the moment you do not see, quite; but in a littlewhile. " M. Dupin leaned forward and tapped the Major's knee. "Your Artillery? You can count on them?"

"To the death. "

"How many?"

"Nine score, without reckoning uniforms or stretcher-bearers. "

"Stretcher-bearers?"

"For the wounded. And, of course--during the operation you propose--we expect our corps to be depleted. "

"By the crews? But they will be _there_! It is of the essence ofyour surprise that they, too, will return from Guernsey and join youin time. Next, of the Looe Artillery, how many?"

"You may put them down at seventy, all told. "

"One hundred and eighty, and seventy--that makes two hundred andfifty; and the cognac at six francs a gallon; and this Captain Pondcommended to me for the deepest man in Looe! It is you--it is he--itis I--it is all of us together that are in luck's way!" M. Dupinleapt up, snapped his bony fingers triumphantly; then, thrusting hishands beneath his coat-tails and clasping them, strode to and fro infront of the Major, for all the world like a long-legged chanticleer. 

Ah, but wait a moment! Vainglorious bird of Gaul, or of the islandcontiguous, wait a moment ere you crow before the Mayor of Troy!

For a moment the Major lay back in his chair, to all appearancestupefied, confounded. Then he too rose, his lips working, his handshaking for one instant only as with his pipe-stem he traced amagnificent curve upon the evening sky. 

"Sit down!" he commanded. "Your plan is clever enough; but I haveanother worth ten of it. "

And, laying down his pipe, this extraordinary man lifted the decanterand refilled his glass to the brim without spilling a drop. 

What was the Major's plan? Wait again, and you shall see it evolvedin operation. 

CHAPTER VI. 

MALBROUCK S'EN VA. 

"There is mischief of some sort brewing, " said Mr. Smellie, theRiding Officer. 

"You think so?" queried Mr. Pennefather, trimming a quill. 

"I'd stake my last shilling on it, " said Mr. Smellie, slapping hisright boot with his riding-whip. "You, a family man, now--"

"Eleven. "

"Quite so. Then you must know how it is with children; when theylook at you as though there was no such thing as original sin, it'stime to keep your eye lifting. Ten to one they're getting round youwith some new devilry. Well, that's the way with your Cornish. "

Mr. Smellie came from Glasgow--he and his colleague, Mr. Lomax, theRiding Officer of the Mevagissey district which lay next to ours. The Government, it was understood, had chosen and sent them down tous on the strength of their sense of humour--so different from any tobe found in the Duchy. 

It certainly was different. To Mr. Smellie, we of Troy had been atfirst but as children at play by the sea; in earnest over games soinfantile as to excite his wondering disdain. He wondered yet; butinsensibly--as might happen to a man astray in fairyland--his disdainhad taken a tinge of fear. Behind "the children sporting on theshore, " his ear had begun to catch the voice of unknown watersrolling. They came, so to speak, along the sands, these children;innocent seeming, hilariously intent on their make-believe; and then, on a sudden, not once but a dozen times, he had found himselftricked, duped, tripped up and cast on his back; to rise unhurt, indeed, but clutching at impalpable air while the empty beach rangwith teasing laughter. 

It baffled him the more because, of his own sort, he had a strongsense of humour. It was told of Mr. Pennefather, for instance, thatduring his clerkship at Penzance the Custom House there had beenopenly defied by John Carter, the famous smuggler of Prussia Cove;that once, when Carter was absent on an expedition, the Exciseofficers had plucked up heart, ransacked the Cove, carried off acargo of illicit goods and locked it up in the Custom House; thatJohn Carter on his return, furious at the news of his loss, hadmarched over to Penzance under cover of darkness, broken in theCustom House and carried off his goods again; and that Mr. Pennefather next morning, examining the rifled stores, had declaredthe nocturnal visitor to be John Carter beyond a doubt, becauseCarter was an honest man and wouldn't take anything that didn'tbelong to him. The Riding Officer thought this a highly amusingstory, and would often twit Mr. Pennefather with it. But Mr. Pennefather could never see the joke, and would plead, --

"Well, but he _was_ an honest man, wasn't he?"

"That's the way with you Cornish, " repeated Mr. Smellie; "and after atime one learns to feel it in the air, so to speak. "

The little Collector looked up from his ledger, pushing hisspectacles high on his brow, and glanced vaguely around the office. 

"Now, for my part, I detect nothing unusual, " said he. 

"Furthermore, " the Riding Officer went on, still tapping his boot, "I met a suspicious-looking fellow yesterday on the Falmouth Road; adeucedly suspicious-looking fellow; a fellow that answered me with astrong French accent when I spoke to him, as I made it my business todo. He had Guernsey merchant written all over him. "

"Tattooed?" asked Mr. Pennefather, without looking up from the ledgerin which he had buried himself anew. "I had no idea they went tosuch lengths . . . In Guernsey . . . And fourteen is twenty-seven, and five is thirty-two, and thirty-two is two-and-eight. . . . I begyour pardon? You identified him, then?"

Mr. Smellie frowned. "I shall send up a private note to theBarracks; and meanwhile, I advise you to keep an eye lifting. "

"And ten is three-and-six. . . . An eye lifting, certainly, " assentedMr. Pennefather, without, however, immediately acting on this advice. 

"There's that fellow Hymen, now, next door. He's not altogether theass he looks, or my name's not Smellie. "

"But it is, surely?" Mr. Pennefather looked up in innocent surprise. "And you really think it justifies calling in the Dragoons?"

"On the face of it, no; I've no evidence. And yet, I repeat, there'ssome mischief afoot. This new game of Hymen's, for instance--Beforecoming down to these parts"--Mr. Smellie threw a fine condescensioninto this phrase--"I should have thought it impossible that anyone inthe shape of a man, let alone of a Major of Artillery, could solemnlypropose to test a neighbouring corps by a night attack, and then assolemnly give warning on what night he meant to deliver it. "

Mr. Pennefather took off his spectacles and polished them with hissilk handkerchief. "But without that precaution he would find nobodyto attack. "

"I tell you, it's absurd! And yet, " the Riding Officer went onirritably, "if one could count on its being absurd, I wouldn't mind. But there's just a chance that, with all this foolery, Hymen and Pondare covering up a little game. Why have they chosen Talland Cove, now?"

"I suppose because, for a night attack on Looe, there's no betterspot. "

"Nor for running a cargo. I tell you, I shall keep the Dragoons onthe alert. "

"You don't suggest that you suspect--"

"Suspect? I suspect everybody. It's the rule of the service; and byfollowing it I've reached the position I hold to-day. "

"True. " The Collector readjusted his spectacles and returned to hisfigures. There may have been just a hint of condolence in hisaccent, for the Riding Officer looked up sharply. 

"If you lived in the north, Pennefather, do you know what we shouldsay about you? We should say that you were no very gleg in theuptake. "

"I once, " answered the Collector, gently, without lifting his headfrom the ledger, "began to read Burns, but had to give him up onaccount of the dialect. "

Meanwhile, all unaware of these dark suspicions, the Major and hisGallants were perfecting their preparations for the great surprise. 

And what preparations! In the heat of them we had almost forgottenthe Millennium itself!

For weeks the band had been practising a selection of tunesappropriate (1) to invasions in general and (2) to this particularinvasion. There was "Britons, Strike Home!" for instance, and"The Padstow Hobby-horse, " and "The Rout it is out for the Blues, "slightly amended for the occasion:

 "As I was a-walking on Downderry sands, Some dainty fine sport for to view, The maidens were wailing and wringing their hands-- Oh, the Rout it is out for the Looes, For the Looes, Oh, the Rout it is out for the Looes. "

The very urchins whistled and sang it about the streets. On theother hand, the Major's chivalrous proposal to hymn _The George ofLooe_ came to nothing, since Captain Pond could supply him withneither the words nor the air. 

"Notwithstanding all my researches, " he wrote, "the utmost I candiscover is the following stanza which Gunner Israel Spettigew--vulgarly termed Uncle Issy--one of my halest veterans, remembers tohave heard sung in his youth:

 "'Oh, the _George of Looe_ sank Number One; She then sank Number Two; She finished up with Number Three: And hooray for the _George of Looe_'!"

"Dammy!" said the Major, "and I dare say that passes for inventionover at Looe. "

We in Troy were no paupers of invention, at any rate. Take, forexample, the Major's plan of campaign. First of all you must figureto yourself a _terrain_ shaped like a triangle--almost an equilateraltriangle--with its base resting on the sea. At the western extremityof this base stands Troy; at the eastern, Looe, with Talland Cove alittle to this side of it. For western side of the triangle we havethe Troy River; and for apex the peaceful village of Lerryn, set inapple-orchards, where the tidal waters end by a narrow bridge. For the eastern side we take, not the Looe River (which doesn'tcount), but an ancient earthwork, known as the Devil's Hedge, whichstretches across country from Looe up to Lerryn. Who built thisearthwork, or when he did it, or for what purpose, no one can tell;but the Looe folk will quote you the following distich, --

 "One day the Devil, having nothing to do, Built a great hedge from Lerryn to Looe. "

(Invention again!)

Of these things, then (as Herodotus puts it), let so much be said. But thus we get our triangle: the sea coast (base), the Troy Riverand the Devil's Hedge (sides), meeting at the village of Lerryn(apex) among the orchards. 

Now these orchards, you must know, on May mornings when the tideserved, were the favourite rendezvous for the lads and maidens ofTroy, and even for the middle-aged and married; who would companythither by water, to wash their faces in the dew, and eat cream, and see the sun rise, and afterwards return chorussing, their boatsdraped with green boughs. 

This year the tide, indeed, served for Lerryn: but this year themaidens of Troy, if they would fare thither to pay their vows, mustfare alone. Their swains would be bent upon a sterner errand. 

So their Commander by secret orders had dictated, and all the townknew of it; also that the landing was to be effected in Talland Cove, and that, if success waited on their arms, supper would be providedat the Sloop Inn, Looe. One hundred and fifty fighting men would goto the assault, in fourteen row-boats, with muffled oars. Thisnumber included the band. The residue of thirty men, making up thefull strength of the corps, had disappeared from Troy some ten daysbefore, on an errand which will appear hereafter. 

But the fair were inconsolable. Almost, for some forty-eight hours--that is to say, after the news leaked out--our Major was the mostunpopular man in Troy with them who had ever been his warmestsupporters. War was war, no doubt; and women must mourn at homewhile men imbrued themselves in the gallant strife. But May-day, too, was May-day; and the tides served; and, further, there was thistalk about a Millennium, and whatever the Millennium might be (andnobody but the Mayor and the Vicar, unless it were Dr. Hansombody, seemed to know), it was certainly not an occasion on which womenought to be left without their natural protectors. Even theAmbulance Corps was bound for Looe, in eight additional boats. There would be scarce a row-boat left in the harbour, or the ladiesmight have pulled up to Lerryn on their own account. 

The Major suspected these murmurings, yet he kept an unruffled brow:yes, even though harassed with vexations which these ladies could notguess--the possible defection of Hansombody, for instance. 

It was not Hansombody's fault: but Sir Felix Felix-Williams, whoowned the estate as well as the village of Lerryn, had reason toexpect an addition to his family. Dr. Hansombody could not guaranteethat he might not be summoned to Pentethy, Sir Felix's mansion, atany moment. 

Now, for excellent reasons--which, again, will appear--the Majorcould not afford to make Sir Felix an enemy at this moment. Besides, these domestic events were the little apothecary's bread andbutter. 

On the other hand, the absence of a professional man must seriouslydiscredit the role assigned to the Ambulance Corps in any engagement, however bloodless. 

"You might, " the Major suggested, "nominate half a dozen as deputy orassistant surgeons. You could easily pick out those who have shownmost intelligence at your lectures. "

"True, " agreed the Doctor; "but as yet we have not, in my lectures, advanced so far as flesh-wounds. They would know what to do, I hope, if confronted with frost-bite, snake-bite, sunstroke or incipientcroup--from all of which our little expedition will be (underProvidence) immune, and I have as yet confined myself to directingthem, in all cases which apparently differ from these, to run to thenearest medical man. "

"Well, well!" sighed the Major. "Then, if the worst come to theworst and you cannot accompany us, we must rely on the good officesof the enemy. They have no qualified surgeon, I believe: but thesecond lieutenant, young Couch of Polperro, is almost out of hisarticles and ready to proceed to Guy's. A clever fellow, too, theytell me. "

"You understand that if I fail you, it will be through no want ofzeal?"

"My friend"--the Major turned on him with a smile at once magnanimousand tender--"I believe you ask nothing better than to accompany me. "

"To the death!" said the Doctor, in a low voice and fervently. Then, after a pause full of emotion, "Your dispositions are alltaken?"

"All, I believe. Chinn has drawn up a new will for me, which I havesigned, and it lies at this moment in my deed-box. I took theliberty to appoint you an executor. "

"You would not ask me to survive you!" (O Friendship! O exemplarsof a sterner age! O Rome! O Cato!) "Not to mention, " went on theDoctor, "that I must be by five or six years your senior, and in theordinary course of events--"

Major Hymen dismissed the ordinary course of events with a wave ofthe hand. 

"I ask it as a personal favour. "

"It is an honour then, and I accede. "

"For the rest, I am keeping that fellow Smellie on the _qui vive_. For three days past he has been promenading the cliffs with hisspy-glass. I would not lightly depreciate any man, but Smellie hasone serious fault--he is ambitious. "

"Such men are to be found in every walk of life. "

"I fear so. Ambition is like to be Smellie's bane. He is jealous ofsharing any credit with the Preventive crews, and is keeping themwithout information. On the other hand he delights in ordering abouta military force; which, in a civilian, is preposterous. "

"Quite preposterous. "

"The Dragoons, of course, hate working under his orders: but I shallbe surprised if he resist the temptation to call them in and dresshimself in a little brief authority. Further, I have word fromPolperro that he is getting together a company of the Sea Fencibles. In short, he is playing into our hands. "

"But the boats?"

"They are here. "

"Here?" The Doctor's eyes grew round with wonder. 

The Major swept a hand towards the horizon. 

"For two days we have been enjoying a steady southerly breeze. They are yonder, you may be sure--the three of them: and that iswhere Smellie makes a mistake in not employing the cutter. "

"And the long-boats?"

"The long-boats are lying, as they have lain for three weeks past, inRunnells' yard, awaiting repairs. Runnells is a dilatory fellow andhas gone no farther than to fill them with water up to the thwarts, to test their stanchness. " Here the Major allowed himself to smile. "But Runnells, though dilatory, will launch them after dusk, whilethe tide suits. "

"The tide makes until five o'clock. "

"Until five-twenty, to be correct. Before seven o'clock they will belaunched. "

"You play a bold game, dear friend. Suppose, now, that Smellie _had_kept the cutter cruising off the coast?"

The Major smiled again, this time with _finesse_. "The man isambitious, I tell you. By employing the cutter he might indeed haveintercepted the cargo. But he flies at higher game. " Here the Majorlightly tapped his chest to indicate the quarry. "In generalship, mydear doctor, to achieve anything like the highest success, you mustfight with two heads--your own and your adversary's. By puttingmyself in Smellie's place; by descending (if I may so say) into thedepths of his animal intelligence, by interpreting his hopes, hisambitions . . . Well, in short, I believe we have weathered the risk. The Mevagissey fleet puts out to the grounds to-night, to anchor anddrop nets as usual. With them our friends from Guernsey--shall wesay?--will mingle as soon as night is fallen, hang out _their_riding-lights, lower _their_ nets, and generally behave in a fashionindistinguishable from that of other harvesters of the sea, until thehour when, with lightened hulls and, I trust, in full regimentals(for they carry their uniforms on board) they join us for the GrandAssault. "

"But--excuse me--how much does the town know of this programme?"

The Major shrugged his shoulders. "As little as I could manage. I have incurred some brief unpopularity, no doubt, among the fairerportion of our community, who deem that I am denying them theirannual May-day jaunt. But never fear. I will explain all to-night, before embarkation. "

"They may murmur, " answered Dr. Hansombody, "but in their hearts theytrust you. "

The Major's eyes filled with tears. 

"The path of duty is strewn with more than roses at times. I thankyou for that assurance, my friend. "

They grasped hands in silence. 

Troy remembered later--it had reason to remember--through whathalcyon weather April passed, that year, into May. For three days agentle breeze had blown from the south; for three more days itcontinued, dying down at nightfall and waking again at dawn. Stolen days they seemed: cloudless, gradual, golden; a theft ofSpring from Harvest-tide. Unnatural weather, many called it: for theair held the warmth of full summer before the first swallow appeared, and while as yet the cuckoo, across the harbour, had been heard byfew. 

The after-glow of sunset had lingered, but had faded at length, taking the new moon with it, leaving a night so pale, so clear, sovisibly domed overhead, that almost the eye might trace its curve andassign to each separate star its degree of magnitude. Beyond theharbour's mouth the riding-lights of the Mevagissey fishing fleet ranlike a carcanet of faint jewels, marking the unseen horizon of theChannel. The full spring tide, soundless or scarcely lapping alongshore, fell back on its ebb, not rapidly as yet, but imperceptiblygathering speed. Below the Town Quay in the dark shadow lay theboats--themselves a shadowy crowd, ghostly, with a glimmer of whitepaint here and there on gunwales, thwarts, stern-sheets. Theirthole-pins had been wrapped with oakum and their crews satwhispering, ready, with muffled oars. On the Quay, lantern in hand, the Major moved up and down between his silent ranks, watched by ashadowy crowd. 

In that crowd, as I am credibly informed, were gathered--but nonecould distinguish them--gentle and simple, maiden ladies with theirservants or housekeepers, side by side with longshoremen, hovellers, giglet maids, and urchins; all alike magnetised and drawn thither bythe Man and the Hour. But the Major recognised none of them. His dispositions had been made and perfected a full week before; howthoroughly they had been perfected might be read in the mute alacritywith which man after man, squad after squad, without spoken commandyet in unbroken order, dissolved out of the ranks and passed down tothe boats. You could not see that Gunner Tippet, being anasthmatical man, wore a comforter and a respirating shield; nor thatSergeant Sullivan, as notoriously susceptible to the night air, carried a case-bottle and a small basket of boiled sausages. Yetthese and a hundred other separate and characteristic necessities hadbeen foreseen and provided for. 

Van, mainguard, rearguard, band, ambulance, forlorn hope, all wereembarked at length. Lieutenant Chinn saluted, reported the entireflotilla ready, saluted again, and descended the steps with theDoctor (Sir Felix had sent no word, after all). Only the Majorremained on the Quay's edge. Overhead rode the stars; around him inthe penumbra of the lantern's rays the crowd pressed forward timidly. He turned. 

"Fellow-citizens, " he said, and his voice trembled on the words, butin an instant was steady again, "you surmise, no doubt, the purposeof this expedition. An invader menaces these shores, the defence ofwhich has been committed to us. Of the ultimate invincibility ofthat defence I have no doubt whatever; nevertheless, it may exposehere and there a vulnerable point. It is to test the alertness ofour neighbours of Looe that we abstract ourselves for a few hoursfrom the comforts of home, the society of the fair, in some instancesthe embraces of our loved ones, and embark upon an element which, to-night propitious, might in other moods have engulfed, if it didnot actually force us to postpone, our temerity--" (Here a voicesaid, "Well done, Major; give 'em Troy!")

"Methinks, " continued the Major, elevating his lantern and turning tothat part of the crowd whence the interruption had proceeded, "methinks I hear some fair one sigh, 'But why to-night? Why on theeve of May-day, when we are wont to seek one or other of those ruralspots, vales, hamlets, remote among our river's lovelier reaches, where annually the tides have mirrored at sunrise our gala companiesand the green woods responded to our innocent mirth? Why on thisconsecrated eve distract our hitherto faithful swains and lead theirsteps divergent at an angle of something like thirty degrees?'I have reason to believe that some such tender complaints have madethemselves audible, and it is painful to me to suffer the imputationof lack of feeling, even from an Aeolian harp. Yet I have sufferedit, awaiting the moment to reassure you. 

"Yes, ladies, be reassured! We depart indeed for Looe; but we hope, ere dawn, to meet you at Lerryn and be rewarded with your approvingsmiles. At nine-thirty precisely the three long-boats, _Naiad_, _Nautilus_, and _Corona_, which have lain for some weeks under repairin Mr. Runnells' yard, will pass this Quay and proceed seaward, eachmanned by an able, if veteran, crew. After a brief trip outside theharbour--to test their stanchness--they will return to the Quay toembark passengers, and start at 2 a. M. On the excursion up the riverto our rendezvous at Lerryn. Nay!" the Major turned at the head ofthe steps and lifted a hand--"I will accept of you no thanks butthis, that during the few arduous hours ahead of us we carry yourwishes, ladies, as a prosperous breeze behind our banners!"

"Now isn't he a perfect duck?" demanded Miss Sally Tregentil, turningin the darkness and addressing Miss Pescod, whose strongly marked andaquiline features she had recognised in the last far-flung ray of theMajor's lantern. 

"My good Sarah! _You_ here?" answered Miss Pescod, divided betweensurprise, disapproval and embarrassment. 

"At such a period--a crisis, one might almost say--when the fate ofEurope . . . And after all, if it comes to that, so are you. "

"For my part--" began Miss Pescod, and ended with a sigh. 

"For my part, " declared Miss Sally, hardily, "I shall go to Lerryn. "

"Sally!"

"It used to be great fun. In later years mamma disapproved, butthere is (may I confess it?) this to be said for war, that beneathits awful frown--under cover of what I may venture to call theshaking of its gory locks--you can do a heap of things you wouldn'tdream of under ordinary circumstances. Life, though more precarious, becomes distinctly less artificial. Two years ago, for instance, lulled in a false security by the so-called Peace of Amiens, I shouldas soon have thought of flying through the air. "

"Has it occurred to you, " Miss Pescod suggested, "what might happenif the Corsican, taking advantage to-night of our dear Major'stemporary absence--"

"Don't!" Miss Sally interrupted with a shiver. "Oh, decidedly Ishall go to Lerryn to-night! On second thoughts it would be onlyproper. "

On the dark waters below them, beyond the Quay, a hoarse militaryvoice gave the command to "Give way!" One by one on thefast-dropping tide the boats, keeping good order, headed for theharbour's mouth. The Major led. _O navis, referent_ . . . 

Think, I pray you, of Wolfe dropping down the dark St. Lawrence; ofWolfe and, ahead of him, the Heights of Abraham!

CHAPTER VII. 

THE BATTLE OF TALLAND COVE. 

 "Now entertain conjecture of a time When creeping murmur and the poring dark Fills the wide vessel of the universe. . . . "

The _avant-garde_ of the Looe Diehards occupied, and had beenoccupying for two dark hours--in a sitting posture--the ridge of rockwhich, on its eastern side, sheltered Talland Cove. One may say, considering the heavy dew and the nature of the ridge--of slateformation and sharply serrated--they had clung to it obstinately. Above them the clear and constellated dome of night turned almostperceptibly around its pole. At their feet the tide lapped thebeach, phosphorescent, at the last draught of ebb. 

Somewhere in the darkness at the head of the beach--either by thefootbridge where the stream ran down, or in the meadow behind it--laythe main body. A few outposts had been flung wide to the westward, and Captain Pond for the second time had walked off to test theiralertness and give and receive the password--"_Death to theInvader_. "

"And a more cold-running act of defiance I don't remember to haveheard--no, not in all my years of service, " said Gunner IsraelSpettigew, a cheerful sexagenarian, commonly known as Uncle Issy, discussing it with his comrades on the ridge. "There's a terribledownrightness about that word 'death. ' Speaking for myself, andexcept in the way of business, I wouldn' fling it at a cat. "

"'Tis what we must all come to, " said Gunner Oke, a young marriedman, gloomily shifting his seat. 

"True, lad, true. Then why cast it up against any man in particular, be he French or English? Folks in glass houses, simmin' to me, shouldn' throw stones. "

"I reckon you fellows might find something more cheerful to talkabout. " Gunner Oke shifted his seat again, and threw a nervousglance seaward. 

"William Oke, William Oke, you'll never make a sojer! Now I mindback in 'seventy-nine when the fleets of France an' Spain assembledand come together agen us--sixty-six sail of the line, my billies, besides frigates an' corvettes an' such-like small trade; an' thefolks at Plymouth blowing off their alarm-guns, an' the signalsflying from Maker Tower--a bloody flag at the masthead an' two blueuns at the outriggers. Four days they laid to, in sight of theassembled multitude of Looe, an' Squire Buller rode down to form usup to oppose 'em. 'Hallo!' says the Squire, catching sight of me. 'Where's your gun? Don't begin for to tell me that a han'some, well-set-up, intelligent chap like Israel Spettigew is for hangin'back at his country's call!' 'Squire, ' says I, 'you've a-pictered meto a hair. But there's one thing you've left out. I've been turnin'it over, an' I don't see that I'm fit to die. ' 'Why not?' says he. 'I'm not a saved man like them other chaps, ' says I. 'I've had a fewconvictions of sin, but that's as far as it's gone. ' 'Tut, ' says he, 'have you ever broken the Commandments?' 'What's that?' I asks. 'Why, the things up at the end of the church, inside the rails. ''I never married my gran'mother, if that's what you mean, ' I says. 'That's the Affini-ety Table, ' says he, 'but have 'ee ever made toyourself a graven image?' 'Lord, no, ' I says, 'I leaves thatnigglin' work to the I-talians. ' 'Have 'ee honoured your father an'your mother?' 'They took damgood care about that, ' says I. 'Well, then, have 'ee ever coveted your neighbour's wife?' 'No, ' Isays, 'I never could abide the woman. ' 'Come, come, ' says he, 'did'ee ever commit murder upon a man?' 'That's a leadin' question froma magistrate, ' I says; 'but I don't mind ownin', as man to man, thatI never did. ' 'Then, ' says he, 'the sooner you pitch-to and larn thebetter. '"

"The bloodthirsty old termigant!"

"'Twas the way of us all in the year 'seventy-nine, " the old manadmitted modestly. "A few throats up or down--Lord bless 'ee!--wetalked of it as calm as William Oke might talk of killin' a pig!And, after all, what's our trade here to-night but battery andmurder?"

"But 'tisn' the French we'm expectin', " urged Oke, whose mind movedslowly. 

"'Tis the same argyment with these billies from Troy. Troy an' Looe. What's between the two in an ordinary way? A few miles; which to athoughtful mind is but mud and stones, with two-three churches and aturnpike to keep us in mind of Adam's fall. Why, my own brothermarried a maid from there!"

"'Tis the Almighty's doin', " said Sergeant Pengelly; "He'shand-in-glove with King George, and, while that lasts, us poorsubject fellows have got to hate Bonyparty with all our heart andwith all our mind and with all our soul and with all our strength, for richer for poorer, till death us do part, and not to be afraidwith any amazement. To my mind, that's half the fun of being asojer; the pay's small and the life's hard, and you keep ungodlyhours; but 'tis a consolation to sit out here 'pon a rock and knowyou'm a man of blood and breaking every mother's son of the TenCommandments wi' the Lord's leave. "

"What's _that_!" Gunner Oke gripped the Sergeant's arm of a suddenand leaned forward, straining his ears. 

Someone was crossing the track towards them with wary footsteps, picking his way upon the light shingle by the water's edge. Presently a voice, hoarse and low, spoke up to them out of thedarkness. 

"Hist, there! Silence in the ranks!" The speaker was Captain Pondhimself. "A man can hear that old fool Spettigew's cackle half-wayacross the Cove. They're coming, I tell you!"

"Where, Cap'n? Where?"

"Bare half-a-mile t'other side of Downend Point. Is the first rocketready?"

"Ay, ay, Cap'n. "

"And the flint and steel?"

"Here, between my knees: and Oke beside me, ready with the fuse. Got the fuse, Oke?"

"If--if you p-please, sir--"

"What's wrong?"

"If you p-please, sir, I've chewed up the fuse by mistake!"

"_What_'s he saying?"

"I got it m-mixed up, sir, here in the d-dead darkness with my quido' baccy--and I th-think I'm goin' to be sick. "

"'Tis the very right hand o' Providence, then, that I brought a spareone, " spoke up Pengelly. "Here, Un' Issy--_you_ take hold--"

"Everything must follow in order, mind, " Captain Pond commanded. "As soon as the first boat takes ground, you challenge: then countfive, and up goes the rocket. Eh?" The Captain swung round at thesound of another footstep on the shingle. "Is that you, Clogg?Man, but you made me jump!"

"Captain Pond! Oh, Captain Pond!" stammered the new-comer, who wasindeed no other than Mr. Clogg, senior lieutenant of the Diehards. 

"Why have you left your post, sir? Don't stand there clinky-clankingyour sword on the pebbles--catch it up under your arm, sir: you'remaking noise enough to scare the dead! Now, then, what have you toreport? Nothing wrong with the main body, I hope?"

"A man might call it ghosts"--Mr. Clogg in the darkness passed asleeve across his clammy brow--"A man might call it ghosts, CaptainPond, and another might set it down to drink. But you know myhabits. "

"Be quick, man! You've seen something? What is it?"

"Ah, what indeed? You may well ask it, sir: though not if you was toput the Book into my hands at this moment and ask me to kiss it--"

"Clogg, " interrupted the Captain, stepping close and gripping him bythe upper arm, "will you swear to me you have not been drinking?"

"Yes and no, Captain. That is, it began with my stepping up thevalley to the farm for a dollop of hot water--I'd a thimbleful ofschnapps in my flask here--and the night turning chilly, and meremembering that Mrs. Nankivel up to the farm was keeping the kettleon the boil, because she promised as much only last night, knowing mystomach to be susceptible. Well, sir, not meaning to be away more'na moment--as I was going up the meadow, but keeping along thewithy-bed, you understand?--and if I hadn't taken that road, more byinstinct than anything else--"

"Oh, for Heaven's sake, if you've anything important to say, say it!In another five minutes the boats will be here!"

"I don't know what you'd call 'important, '" answered the Lieutenant, in an aggrieved tone. "As I was telling, I got to where thewithy-bed ends at the foot of the orchard below the house. The orchard, as you know, runs down on one side of the stream, and'tother side there's the grass meadow they call Little Parc. Just atthat moment, if you'll believe me, I heard a man sneeze, and 'pon topof that a noise like a horse's bit shaken--a sort of jingly sound, not ten paces off, t'other side of the withies. 'Tis a curious habitof mine--and you may or may not have noticed it--but I never can hearanother person sneeze without wanting to sneeze too. Hows'ever, there's a way of stopping it by putting your thumb on your top lipand pressing hard, and that's what I did, and managed to make verylittle noise; so that it surprised me when somebody said, 'Be quiet, you fool there!' But he must have meant it for the other man. Well, ducking down behind the withies and peeking athurt thedarkness, by degrees I made out a picter that raised the very hairson the back of my neck. Yonder, on the turf under the knap of LittleParc, what do I see but a troop of horsemen drawn up, all ghostly tobehold! And yet not ghostly neither; for now and then, plain tothese fleshly ears, one o' the horses would paw the ground or anotherjingle his curb-chain on the bit. I tell you, Captain, I crope awayfrom that sight a good fifty yards 'pon my belly before making abreak for the Cove; and when I got back close to the mainguard Iducked my head and skirted round to the track here in search of you:for I wouldn' be one to raise false alarms, not I! But, if you askmy private opinion, 'tis either Old Boney hisself or the Devil, andwe'm lost to a man. "

"Good Lord!" muttered Captain Pond, half to himself. "Horsemen, yousay?"

"Horsemen, Captain--great horsemen as tall as statues. But statues, as I told myself, at this time o' night! 'Tis out of the question, an' we may put it aside once for all. "

"Horsemen?" repeated Captain Pond. "There's only one explanation, and Hymen must be warned. But I _do_ think he might have trustedme!"

He turned for a swift glance seaward, and at the same instant one ortwo voices on the ridge above called alarm. Under the western cliffhis eye detected a line of dark shadows stealing towards the shore. 

 "_Until gaining the entrance of the Cove_"--so ran the Major's order--"_the boats will preserve single file. At Downend Point the leading boat will halt and lie on her oars, dose inshore, while each successor pivots and spreads in echelon to starboard, keeping, as nearly as may be, two fathoms' distance from her consort to port; all gradually, as the shore is approached, rounding up for a simultaneous attack in line. The crews, on leaping ashore, will spread and find touch with one another in two lines, to sweep the beach. A bugle-call will announce the arrival of each boat_. "

The Major, erect in the bows of the leading boat, glanced over hisright shoulder and beheld his line of followers, all in perfectorder, extend themselves and close the mouth of the Cove. Ahead ofhim--ahead but a few yards only--he heard the slack tide run faintlyon the shingle. From the dark beach came no sound. Overheadquivered the expectant stars. He lifted his sword-arm, and frompoint to hilt ran a swift steely glitter. 

"Give way, lads! And Saint Fimbar for Troy!"

A stroke of the oars, defiant now, muffled no longer! Two--threestrokes, and with a jolt the boat's nose took the beach. The shockflung the Major forward over the bows; and on all fours, with asplash--like Julius Caesar--he saluted the soil he came to conquer. But in an instant he stood erect again, waving his blade. 

"Forward! Forward, Troy!"

"I beg your pardon, Hymen, " interrupted Captain Pond, quietly butseriously, stepping forth from the darkness. "Yes, yes; that'sunderstood--but see here now--"

"Back, or you are my prisoner!" The Major had scrambled to his feet, and stood waving his sword. 

"Hymen!" Captain Pond ran past the Major's guard and caught him bythe elbow. 

"Hands off, I say! Forward, Troy!" The Major struggled to disengagehis sword-arm. 

"Hymen, don't be a fool! As a friend now--though you _might_ havetaken me into your confidence--"

"Unhand me, Pond! Though you are doing your best to spoil the wholebusiness--"

"Listen to me, I say. The Dragoons--"

But Captain Pond shouted in vain. Bugle after bugle drowned hisvoice, rending the darkness. From the rocks to the eastward voicesanswered them, challenging wildly. 

"Death to the invader!"

With a _whoo-sh_ a rocket leapt into the air and burst, flooding thebeach with light, showing up every furze bush, every stone wall, every sheep-track, on the surrounding cliffs. As if they had caughtfire from it, a score of torches broke into flame on the eastwardrocks, and in the sudden blaze, under the detonating fire ofmusketry, the men of Troy could be seen tumbling out of their boatsand splashing ankle-deep to the shore. 

It was a splendid, a gallant sight. Each man, as he reached _terrafirma_, dropped on one knee, fired deliberately, reloaded, andadvanced a dozen paces. Still from the boats behind freshreinforcements splashed ashore and crowded into the firing-line:while from the eastward rock the vanguard of the Diehards kept up itsdeadly flanking fire, heedless of the torches that exposed them eachand all at plain target-shot to the oncoming host. 

Still, amid the pealing notes of the bugles, the Major waved his menforward. Captain Pond, breaking loose from him and facing swiftlytowards the Cove-head, with a flourish of his blade called upon hismainguard. 

Under the volley that thereupon swept the beach, the invaders didindeed waver for a moment--so closely it resembled the real thing. As the smoke lifted, however, by the murky glare of the torches theywere seen to be less demoralised than infuriated. And now, upon thevolley's echo, a drum banged thrice, and from a boat just beyond thewater's edge the Troy bandsmen crashed out with:

 "The Rout it is out for the Looes, For the Looes; Oh, the Rout it is out for the Looes!"

"Forward! Forward, Troy!"

"Steady, the Two Looes! Steady, the Diehards!"

"Form up--form up, there, to the left! Hurray, boys! give 'em thebagginet!"

"Death to Invader! Reload, men! Oh, for your lives, reload! Makeready, all! Prepare! Fire!"

"Mr. Spettigew! Mr. Spettigew!"

"Eh?" Uncle Issy turned as William Oke plucked him by the sleeve. "What's the matter now? Reload, I tell'ee!"

"I--I can't, Mr. Spettigew. I've a-fired off my ramrod!"

"Then you'm a lost man. "

"Will it--will it have killed any person, d'ee think?" Oke's teethrattled like a box of dice as he peered out over the dark andagitated crowd of boats. 

"Shouldn' wonder at all. "

"I didn' mean to kill any person, Mr. Spettigew!"

"'Tis the sort of accident, Oke, that might happen to anyone in war. At the worst they'll recommend 'ee to mercy. The mistake was yourtellin' me. "

"You won't inform upon me, Mr. Spettigew? Don't say you'll informupon me!"

"No, I won't; not if I can help it. But dang it! first of all youswaller the fuse, and next you fire off your ramrod. "

"E-everything must have a beginning, Mr. Spettigew. "

Uncle Issy shook his head. "I doubt you'll never make a sojer, William Oke. You'm too frolicsome wi' the materials. Listen, there's Pengelly shoutin' for another volley! Right you be, sergeant! Make ready--prepare--Eh? Hallo!"

Why was it that suddenly, at the height of the hubbub, a panic fellupon the bandsmen of Troy? Why did the "Rout for the Looes" ceasemidway in a bar? What was it that hushed on an instant the shouts, the rallying cries upon the beach, the bugle-calls and challenges, the furious uproar of musketry?

Why, within twenty yards of the Cove-head, in the act of chargingupon the serried ranks of Looe's main guard, did Major Hymen faceabout and with sword still uplifted stare behind him, and continue tostare as one petrified?

What meant that strange light, out yonder by the Cove's mouth, in therear of his boats?

The light grew and spread until it illuminated every pebble on thebeach. The men of Troy, dazzled by the glare of it, blinked in thefaces of the men of Looe. 

THE FRENCH!

"A trap! A trap!" yelled someone far to the right, and the cry wasechoed on the instant by a sound in the rear of the Diehards--a soundyet more terrible--the pounding of hoofs upon hard turf. 

Again Captain Pond rushed forward and caught the Major by the elbow. 

"The Dragoons!" he whispered. "Run for your life, man!"

But already the ranks of the Diehards had begun to waver; and now, asthe oncoming hoofs thundered louder, close upon their rear, theybroke. Trojans and men of Looe turned tail and were swept in onecommingled crowd down the beach. 

"To the water, there! Down to the water, every man of you!"

A voice loud as a bull's roared out the command from the darkness. The Major, still waving his sword, was lifted by the crowd's pressureand swept along like a chip in a tideway. His feet fought for solidearth. Glancing back as he struggled, he saw, high above hisshoulder, lit up by the flares from seaward, a line of flashingswords, helmets, cuirasses. 

"To the boats!" yelled the crowd. 

"To the water! Drive 'em to the water!" answered the stentorianvoice, now recognisable as Mr. Smellie's. 

The Dragoons, using the flat of their sabres, drove the fugitivesdown to the tide's edge, nor drew rein until their chargers stoodfetlock-deep in water, still pressing the huddled throng around theboats. 

"Bring a lantern, there!" shouted the Riding Officer. "And callHymen! Where is Hymen!"

"I am here!"

The Major had picked himself up out of two feet of water, into whichhe had been flung on all fours. He was dripping wet, but he stillclutched his naked blade, and advancing into the light of thelantern's rays, brought it up to salute with a fine cold dignity. 

"I am here, " he repeated quietly. 

"Well, then, I'm sorry for you, Hymen; but the game's up, " said Mr. Smellie. 

The Major glanced at him, for a moment only. 

"Will someone inform me who commands this troop?" he asked, lookingfirst to right, then to left, along the line of the Dragoons. 

"At your service, sir, " answered a young officer, pressing his horseforward alongside Mr. Smellie's. 

The Major reached out a hand for the lantern. Someone passed it tohim obediently; and holding it he scanned the officer up and downamid the dead silence of the crowd. 

"Your name, sir?"

"Arbuthnot, sir--Captain Arbuthnot, of the 5th Dragoons. "

"Then allow me to ask, Captain Arbuthnot, by what right have you andyour troopers assaulted my men?"

"Excuse me, " the Captain answered. "I am acting on trustworthyinformation. The Riding Officer here, Mr. Smellie--"

But here Mr. Smellie himself interposed brusquely. 

"You can stow this bluster, Hymen. I've cornered you, and you knowit. The flares in the offing yonder came from two preventive boats. Back-door and front I have you, as neat as a rat in a drain; so youmay just turn that lantern of yours on the cargo, own up, and singsmall. "

"To resume our conversation, Captain Arbuthnot, " the Major went on. "Upon what information are you and your men taking a part, uninvited, in this evening's--er--proceedings? You must understand, sir, that Iput this question as a magistrate. "

"To be frank, sir, I am warned that under cover of a feigned attackbetween your two corps an illicit cargo was to be run here to-night. The Riding Officer's information is precise, and he tells me he isacquainted with the three boats in which the goods have been broughtover. "

"And more by token, there they are!" exclaimed Mr. Smellie, pointingto three small lugger-rigged craft that lay moored some six or eightfathoms outside the long-boats, with mainmasts unstepped, sails leftto lie loose about deck with an artful show of carelessness, andhulls suspiciously deep in the water. He dismounted, caught up alantern, and scanned them, chuckling in his glee. "See here, Captain, the rogues had their gang-planks out and ready. Now, waittill I've whistled in the preventive crews, and inside of ten minutesyou shall see what game these pretty innocents were playing. "

He blew his whistle, and a whistle answered from the offing, wherethe flares continued to blaze. 

"Excuse me again, " said the Major, ignoring the interruption andstill addressing himself to Captain Arbuthnot, "but this is a veryserious accusation, sir. If, as you surmise--or rather as yourinformant surmises--these boats should prove to be laden withcontraband goods, the men undoubtedly deserve punishment; and I amthe less likely to deprecate it since they have compromised me bytheir folly. For me, holding as I do the King's commission of thepeace, to be involved, however innocently, however unconsciously--"

"Ay, " struck in Mr. Smellie again, "it's a devilish awkward businessfor you, Hymen. But you won't improve it by turning cat-in-the-panat the last moment, and so I warn you. Come along, lads!" he calledto the preventive crews. "We have 'em right and tight this trip. See the three luggers, there, to port of ye?"

"Ay, ay, sir!"

"Tumble aboard, then, and fetch us out a sample of their cargo. "

There was a pause. Save for the jingling of the chargers' bits andnow and again the clink of scabbard on boot, silence--dead silence--held the beach. Aboard the boats the preventive men could be heardrummaging. 

"Found anything?" called out Mr. Smellie. 

"Ay, ay, sir!"

"What is it?"

"Casks!"

"What did I promise you?" Mr. Smellie turned to Captain Arbuthnot intriumph. "Luxmore!" he called aloud. 

"Ay, ay, sir!" came the Chief Boatman's voice in answer. 

"There's a plank handy. Roll us a sample or two ashore here, andfetch along chisel and auger. "

"If you think it necessary, sir--"

"Do as you're told, man! . . . Ah, here we are!"--as a couple ofpreventive men splashed ashore, trundling a cask along the plankbetween them, and up-ended it close by the water's edge. 

Captain Arbuthnot had dismounted and, advancing with his arm throughhis charger's bridle, bent over the cask. 

"Devilish queer-smelling brandy!" he observed, drawing back a paceand sniffing. 

"It has been standing in the bilge. These fellows never clean outtheir boats from one year's end to another, " said Mr. Smellie, positively. Yet he, too, eyed the cask with momentary suspicion. In shape, in colour, it resembled the tubs in which Guernseyordinarily exported its _eau-de-vie_. It was slung, too, ready forcarriage, and with French left-handed rope, and yet. . . . It seemedunusually large for a Guernsey tub . . . And unusually light inscantling. . . . 

"Shall I spile en, maister?" asked one of the preventive men, producing a large auger. 

"No, stave its head in. And fetch a pannikin, somebody. There'sgood water at the beach-head; and I dare say your men, Captain, won'tdespise a tot of French liquor after their ride. "

The preventive man set his chisel against the inner rim of the cask, and dealt it a short sharp blow with his hammer, a sort of trial tap, to guide his aim. "French liquor?" He sniffed. "Furrin fruit, morelike. Phew! Keep back there, and stand by for lavender!"

Crash! . . . 

"Pf--f!"

"Ar-r-r-ugh! Oh, merciful Heaven!" Captain Arbuthnot staggeredback, clapping thumb and forefinger to his nose. 

"PILCHARDS!"

"SALT PILCHARDS!"

"ROTTEN PILCHARDS!"

Mr. Smellie opened his mouth, but collapsed in a fit of retching, asfrom right and left, and from the darkness all around him, a roar ofHomeric laughter woke the echoes of the Cove. Men rolled aboutlaughing. Men leaned against one another to laugh. 

Already the preventive men on board the luggers--having been rashenough to prise open some half a dozen casks--had dropped overboardand were wading ashore, coughing and spitting as they came. Amid theuproar Major Hymen kept a perfectly grave face. 

"You see, sir, " he explained to Captain Arbuthnot, "Mr. Smellie isfond of hunting where there is no fox. So some of my youngsters hiton the idea of providing him with a drag. They have spent a week atleast in painting these casks to look like the real thing. . . . I amsorry, sir, that you and your gallant fellows should have been misledby an officious civilian; but if I might suggest your marching on toLooe, where a good supper awaits us, to take this taste out of ourmouths--and good liquor too, not contraband, to drown resentment--"

The Captain may surely be pardoned if for the moment even this gentlespeech failed to placate him. He turned in dudgeon amid the grinningcrowd and was in the act of remounting, but missed the stirrup as hischarger reared and backed before the noise of yet another diversion. No one knows who dipped into the cask and flung the first handfulover unhappy Mr. Smellie. No one knows who led the charge down uponthe boats, or gave the cry to stave in the barrels on board. But ina trice the preventive men were driven overboard and, as they leaptinto the shallow water, were caught and held and drenched in thenoisome mess; while the Riding Officer, plastered ere he could gainhis saddle, ducked his head and galloped up the beach under atorrential shower of deliquescent pilchards. 

The Dragoons did not interfere. 

"Shall it be for Looe, Captain?" challenged Major Hymen, waving hisblade and calling on the Gallants to re-form. And as he challenged, by the happiest of inspirations the band, catching up theirinstruments, crashed out with:

 "Oh, the De'il's awa'-- The De'il's awa'-- The De'il's awa' wi' th' exciseman!"

CHAPTER VIII. 

"COME, MY CORINNA, COME!"

Miss Marty drew aside her window curtain to watch the rising moon. She could not sleep. Knowing that she would not be able to sleep, she had not undressed. 

She gazed out upon the street, dark now and deserted. No lightsignalled to her from the attic window behind which Dr. Hansombody sooften sat late over his books and butterfly cases. He had gone withthe others. 

She listened. The house was silent save for the muffled snoring ofScipio in his cupboard-bedroom under the stairs. She raised thewindow-sash gently, leaned out upon the soft spring night, andlistened again. 

Far down the street, from the purlieus of the Town Quay, her earcaught a murmur of voices--of voices and happy subdued laughter. The maidens of Troy were embarking; and to-morrow would be Maymorning. 

Miss Marty sighed. How long was it since she had observed Maymorning and its rites? The morrow, too, if the Vicar and the Majorwere right in their calculations, would usher in the Millennium. But again, what was the Millennium to her? Could it bring back heryouth?

She heard the boats draw near and go by. The houses to the left hidthem from her: but she leaned out, hearkening to the soft plash ofoars, the creak of thole-pins, the girls' voices in hushed choruspractising the simple native harmonies they would lift aloud as theyreturned after sunrise. She recognised the tune, too; the old tuneof "The Padstow Hobby-horse, "--

 "Unite and unite, and let us all unite, For summer is a-come in to-day-- And whither we are going we will all go in white In the merry merry morning of May. 

 "Rise up, Master--, and joy you betide, For summer is a-come in to-day-- And blithe is the bride lays her down by your side In the merry merry morning of May. "

Hushed though the voices were, each word fell distinct on her ear asthe boats drew near and passed up the tideway. 

 "Rise up, Mistress--, all in your smock of silk, For summer is a-come in to-day-- And all your body under as white as any milk In the merry merry morning of May. "

The voices faded away up the river. Only the lilt of the song cameback to her now, but memory supplied the words. Had they not beensung under her window years ago?

 "Rise up, Mistress Marty, all out of your bed, For summer is a-come in to-day-- Your chamber shall be spread with the white rose and red In the merry merry morning of May. 

 "O where be the maidens that here now should sing? For summer is a-come in to-day-- They be all in the meadows the flowers gathering, In the merry merry morning of May. "

What magic was there in this artless ditty that kept MissMarty lingering awhile with moist eyes ere she closed thewindow-sash?

"Wh'st! Miss Mar-ty!"

Heavens! Whose voice was that, calling up hoarsely from the shadows?She peered out, but could see nobody. Suddenly her maiden modestytook alarm. What possessed her to be standing here exposed, andexposing the interior of her lighted bed-chamber to view from thestreet? She ran back in a flurry and blew out the candles; then, returning, put up a hand to draw down the window-sash. 

"Wh'st! Miss Mar-ty!"

"Gracious goodness!" After a moment's hesitation she craned outtimorously. "Cai Tamblyn . . . ?"

"Miss Marty!"

"What on earth are you doing there at this time of night?"

"Sentry-go. "

"Nonsense. What do I want of a sentry?"

"You never can tell. "

"Are you here by the Major's order?"

"Ch't!" answered Cai Tamblyn. "_Him!_"

"Then go away, please, and let me beg you to speak more respectfullyof your master. "

"I reckon, " said Cai, slowly, "you don't know that, barrin' thenigger under the stairs, this here town's as empty as my hat. Well, a man can but die once, and if the French come, let 'em; that'sall I say. Good night, miss. "

"The town empty?"

"Males, females and otherwise, down to Miss Jex at the post-office. "(Cai Tamblyn nursed an inveterate antipathy for the post-mistress. He alleged no reason for it, save that she wore moustaches, which wasno reason at all, and a monstrous exaggeration. ) "There's Miss Pescodgone, and Miss Tregentil with her maid. "

"But where? Why?"

"Up the river. Gallivantin'. That's what I spoke ye for, just now. Mind you, I don't propose no gallivantin'; but there's safety innumbers, and if you've a mind for it, I've the boat ready by theBroad Slip. "

"But what foolishness!"

"Ay, " Mr. Tamblyn assented. "That's what I said to the Doctor whenhe first mentioned it. 'What foolishness, ' I said, 'at _her_ time o'life!' But then we never reckoned on the whole town goin' crazed. "

"The Doctor?" queried Miss Marty, with a glance down the dark street. "He thinks of everything, " she murmured. 

There was a pause, during which Mr. Tamblyn somewhat ostentatiouslytested the lock of his musket. 

"You are not going to frighten me, Cai. "

"No, miss. "

"I--I think an expedition up the river would be very pleasant. If, as you say, Miss Pescod has gone--"

"Yes, miss. "

"I must bring Scipio. "

"Very well, miss. If the French come, they _might_ think o' lookingunder the stairs. "

Twenty minutes later Miss Marty--escorted by Scipio, who bore alantern--tiptoed down the street to the Broad Slip, fearful even ofher own light footstep on the cobbles. 

The Broad Slip--it has since been filled in--was in those days a sortof dock, inset between the waterside houses and running up so closeto the street that the vessels it berthed were forced to take intheir bowsprits to allow the pack-horse traffic to pass. On itssouth side a flight of granite steps led down to the water: and atthe foot of these (the tide being low) Cai Tamblyn waited with hisboat. 

"I declare my heart's in my mouth, " Miss Marty panted, as she tookher seat. Cai directed Scipio to sit amidships, pushed off insilence, and taking the forward thwart, began to pull. 

"Now there's a thing, " he said after a few strokes with a jerk of hishead towards the dark longshore houses, "you don't often see nor hearabout outside o' the Bible; a deserted city. Fine pickings for Boneyif he only knew. "

Miss Marty's thoughts flew back at once to a corner cupboard in theparlour, inlaid with tulips in Dutch marqueterie, and containing theMajor's priceless eggshell china. To be sure, if the French landed, she--weak woman that she was--could not defend this treasure. But might not the Major blame her for having abandoned it?

"I--I trust, " she hazarded, "that our brave fellows have succeeded intheir enterprise. It seemed to me that I heard the sound of distantfiring just now. "

"If they hadn't, miss, they'd ha' been back afore now. I had my owndoubts about 'em, for they're a hair-triggered lot, the TroyGallants. No fear of their goin' off; but 'tis a matter o' doubt inwhat direction. "

"Your master, " said Miss Marty, severely, addressing Cai acrossScipio (who for some reason seldom or never spoke in Cai's company)--"your master has the heart of a lion. He would die rather thanacknowledge defeat. "

"A heart of a lion, miss, if you'll excuse my saying it, is anuncomfortable thing in a man's stomach; an' more especially when 'tisfed up on the wind o' vanity. I've a-read my Bible plumb down to theforbidden books thereof, and there's a story in it called Bel and theDragon, which I mind keeping to the last, thinkin' 'twas the name ofa public-house. 'Tis a terrible warnin' against swollen vittles. "

"You are a dreadful cynic, Cai. "

"Nothin' of the sort, miss, " said Cai, stoutly. "I thinks badly o'most men--that's all. "

His talk was always cross-grained, but its volume betrayed a quiteunwonted geniality to-night. And half a mile farther, where the darkriver bent around Wiseman's Stone, he so far relaxed as to rest onhis oars and challenge the famous echo from the wooded cliffs. Somewhat to Miss Marty's astonishment it responded. 

"And by night, too! I had no idea!"

"Night?" repeated Mr. Tamblyn, after rowing on for another fiftystrokes. He paused as if he had that moment heard, and glancedupward. "'Tis much as ever. The sky's palin' already, and we'll notreach Lerryn by sunrise. I think, miss, if you'll step ashore, thishere's as good a place as any. Scipio and me'll keep the boat andturn our backs. "

Miss Marty understood. The boat's nose having been brought alongsidea ridge of rock, she landed in silence, climbed the foreshore, up bya hazel-choked path to a meadow above, and there, solemnly thrustingher hands into the lush grass, turned to the east and bathed her facein the dew. It is a rite which must be performed alone, in silence;and the morning sun must not surprise it. 

"You've been terrible quick, " remarked Cai, as she stepped down tothe foreshore again in the ghostly light. "You can't have stayed todabble your feet. Didn't think it wise, I s'pose? And I dare sayyou're right. "

From far ahead of them as they started again, the voices of thesingers came borne down the river; and again Miss Marty's memorysupplied the words of the song:

 "The young men of our town, they might if they wo'ld-- For summer is a-comin' in to-day-- They might have built a ship and have gilded her with gold In the merry merry morning of May. "

"The young men . . . The young men . . . They might if they wo'ld. "Ah, Miss Marty, was it only the edge of the morning that heightenedthe rose on your cheek by a little--a very little--as the sky paled?And now the kingfishers were awake, and the woodlands nigh, and thetide began to gather force as it neared the narrower winding channel. To enter this they skirted a mud-flat, where the day, breaking overthe tree-tops and through the river mists, shone on scores uponscores of birds gathered to await it--curlews, sandpipers, gulls inrows like strings of jewels, here and there a heron standing sentry. The assembly paid no heed to the passing boat. 

Miss Marty gazed up at the last star fading in the blue. How clearthe morning was! How freshly scented beneath the shadow of thewoods! Her gaze descended upon the incongruous top-hat andgold-laced livery of Scipio, touched with the morning sunshine. She glanced around her and motioned to Cai Tamblyn to bring the boatto shore by a grassy spit whence (as she knew) a cart-track ledalongshore through the young oak coppices to the village. 

"And Scipio, " she said, turning as she stepped out on the turf, "willlike a run in the woods. "

She had walked on, maybe a hundred paces, before the absurdity of itstruck her. She had been thinking of Mr. Pope's line:

 "When wild in woods the noble savage ran. "

And at the notion of Scipio, in gilt-laced hat and livery, tearingwildly through the undergrowth in the joy of liberty, she halted andlaughed aloud. 

She was smiling yet when, at a turning of the leafy lane, she cameupon the prettiest innocent sight. On a cushion of moss beside thepath, two small children--a boy and a girl--lay fast asleep. The boy's arm was flung around his sister's shoulders, and across histhighs rested a wand or thin pole topped with a May-garland of wildhyacinths, red-robin and painted birds' eggs. A tin cup, brought tocollect pence for the garland, glittered in the cart-rut at theirfeet. It had rolled down the mossy bank as the girl's fingersrelaxed in sleep. 

They were two little ones of Troy, strayed hither from themerrymaking; and at first Miss Marty had a mind to wake them, seeinghow near they lay to the river's brink. But noting that a fallen logsafeguarded them from this peril, she fumbled for the pocket beneathher skirt, dropped a sixpence with as little noise as might be intothe tin cup, and tiptoed upon her way. 

About three hundred yards from the village she met another pair ofchildren; and, soon after, a score or so in a cluster, who took tollof her in pence; for almost everyone carried a garland. And then thetrees opened, and she saw before her the village with its cottages, grey and whitewashed, its gardens and orchards, mirrored in thebrimming tide, all trembling in the morning light and yet exquisitelystill. Far up the river, beyond the village and the bridge, a levelgreen meadow ran out, narrowing the channel; and here beneath theapple-trees--for the meadow was half an orchard--had been set outmany lines of white-covered tables, at which the Mayers madeinnocently merry. 

Innocently, did I say? Well, I have known up-country folk beforenow to be scandalised by some things which we in the Duchy thinkinnocent enough. So let me admit that the three long-boats conveyedsomething more than the youth and beauty of Troy to that morning'sMaying; that when launched from Mr. Runnells' yard they were notentirely what they seemed: that from their trial spin across the baythey returned some inches deeper in the water, and yet they did notleak. Had you perchance been standing by the shore in the half-lightas they came up over the shallows, you might have wondered at thenumber of times they took ground, and at the slowness of the tide tolift and float them. You might have wondered again why, after theyemerged from the deep shadow of Sir Felix Felix-Williams' woods uponthe southern shore, albeit in shallow water, they seemed to feeltheir hindrances no longer. 

Have you ever, my reader, caught hold of a lizard and been left withhis tail in your hands?

Even so easily did these three long-boats shed their false keels, which half an hour later were but harmless-looking stacks of timberamong Sir Felix's undergrowth. Half an hour later, had your unwaryfeet led you to a certain corner of Sir Felix's well-timbereddemesne, you might have scratched your head and wondered what magiccarpet had transported you into the heart of the Cognac District. And all this was the work of the men of Troy (not being volunteers)who had come either in the long-boats or in the many boats escortingthese. 

But the women of Troy, being deft with the oar one and all, took theplaces of the men left behind in the woods, and, singing yet, broughtboth the long-boats and these other boats safely to Lerryn on thefull flood of the tide, and disembarking upon the meadow there, gathered around the tables under the apple-trees to eat bread andcream in honour of May-day, looking all the while as if butter wouldnot melt in their mouths. Between their feasting they laughed agreat deal; but either they laughed demurely, being constrained bythe unwonted presence of Miss Pescod and other ladies of Troy'sacknowledged _elite_, or Miss Marty as yet stood too far off to heartheir voices. 

Let us return to Scipio, who, on receiving Miss Marty's permission towander, had made his way up through the woods in search of theDevil's Hedge, along which, as he knew, his master would be leadingback the triumphant Gallants. 

Fidelity was ever the first spring of Scipio's conduct. He adoredthe Major with a canine devotion, and by an instinct almost canine hefound his way up to the earthwork and chose a position whichcommanded the farthest prospect in the direction of Looe. From wherehe sat the broad hedge dipped to a narrow valley, climbed the steepslope opposite, and vanished, to reappear upon a second and fartherridge two miles away. As yet he could discern no sign of thereturning heroes; but his ear caught the throb of a drum beaten afarto the eastward. 

Of the Major's two body-servants it might be said that the one spokeseldom and the other never; and again that Cai, who spoke seldom, was taciturn, while Scipio, who spoke never, was almost affable. In truth, the negro's was the habitual silence of one who, loving hisfellows, spends all his unoccupied time in an inward brooding, acontinual haze of day-dreams. 

Scipio's day-dreams were of a piece with his loyalty, a reflection insome sort of his master's glory. He could never--he with his blackskin--be such a man; but he passionately desired to be honoured, respected, though but posthumously. And the emblazoned board in thechurch, appealing as it did to his negro sense of colour, hadsuggested a way. It is not too much to say that a great part ofScipio's time was lived by him in a future when, released from thispresent livery, his spirit should take on a more gorgeous one, as"Scipio Johnson, Esquire, late of this Parish, " in scarlet twiddleson a buff ground. 

He seated himself on the earthwork, and the better to commune withthis vision, tilted his gold-laced hat forward over his eyes, shutting out the dazzle of the morning sun. Once or twice he shookhimself, being heavy with broken sleep, and gazed across the ridges, then drew up his knees, clasped them, and let his heavy, woolly headdrop forward, nodding. 

Let us not pursue those stages of conviviality through which the LooeDiehards, having been seen home by the Troy Gallants, arrived at anobligation to return the compliment. Suffice it to say that MajorHymen and Captain Pond, within five minutes of bidding one another apublic tearful farewell, found themselves climbing the first hilltowards Lerryn with linked arms. But the Devil's Hedge is a wide oneand luckily could not be mistaken, even in the uncertain light ofdawn. 

And, to pass over the minor incidents of that march, I will maintainin fairness (though the men of Troy choose to laugh) that the suddenapparition of a black man seated in the morning light upon theDevil's Hedge was enough to daunt even the tried valour of the LooeDiehards. 

 "The De'il's awa', the De'il's awa', The De'il's awa' wi' th' exciseman. "

The eye notoriously magnifies an object seen upon a high ridgeagainst the skyline; and when Scipio stood erect in all his giganticproportions and waved both arms to welcome his beloved master, theDiehards turned with a yell and fled. Vainly their comrades of Troycalled after them. Back and down the hill they streamed pell-mell, one on another's heels; down to the marshy bottom known as TrebantWater, nor paused to catch breath until they had placed a runningbrook between them and the Power of Darkness. 

For the second time that night the Gallants rolled about and clungone to another in throes of Homeric laughter; laughter which, reverberating, shout on shout, along the ridge and down among thetree-tops, reached even to the meadow far below, where in the suddenhush of the lark's singing the merrymakers paused and looked up tolisten. 

But wait awhile! They laugh best who laugh last. 

CHAPTER IX. 

BY LERRYN WATER. 

 "O will you accept of the mus-e-lin so blue, To wear in the morning and to dabble in the dew?" _Old Song_. 

Miss Marty had duly visited the meadow and eaten and paid for herbreakfast of bread and cream. But she had eaten it in someconstraint, sitting alone. She had never asserted her position asthe Major's kinswoman in the eyes of Miss Pescod and the ladies ofMiss Pescod's clan, who were inclined to regard her as a poorrelation, a mere housekeeper, and to treat her as a person of nogreat account. On the other hand, the majority of the merrymakersdeemed her, no doubt, a stiff stuck-up thing; whereas she would infact have given much to break through her shyness and accost them. For these reasons, the meal over, she was glad to pay her sixpenceand escape from the throng back to the woodland paths and solitude. 

The children by this time had grown tired of straying, and weretrooping back to the village. Fewer and fewer met her as shefollowed the shore; the two slumberers were gone from the mossy bank;by and by the procession dried up, so to speak, altogether. She understood the reason when a drum began to bang overhead behindthe woods and passed along the ridge, still banging. The Gallantswere returning; and apparently flushed with victory, since betweenthe strokes she could hear their distant shouts of laughter. 

At one moment she fancied they must be descending through the woods:for a crackling of the undergrowth, some way up the slope, startledand brought her to a halt. But no; the noise passed along the ridgetowards the village. The crackling sound must have come from somewoodland beast disturbed in his night's lair. 

She retraced her way slowly to the spot where she had disembarked;but when she reached it, Cai and the boat had vanished. No matter;Cai was a trustworthy fellow, and doubtless would be back ere long. Likely enough he had pulled across to the farther shore to bear ahand in what Troy euphemistically called the "salvage" of thelong-boats' cargoes. Happy in her solitude, rejoicing in herextended liberty, Miss Marty strolled on, now gazing up into thegreen dappled shadows, now pausing on the brink to watch the water asit swirled by her feet, smooth and deep and flawed in its depths witharrow-lights of sunshine. 

She came by and by to a point where the cart-track turned inland toclimb the woods and a foot-path branched off from it, skirting asmall recess in the shore. A streamlet of clear water, hurrying downfrom the upland by the Devil's Hedge, here leapt the low cliff andfell on a pebbly beach, driving the pebbles before it and by theirattrition wearing out for itself a natural basin. Encountering a lowridge of rock on the edge of the tideway, the stones heapedthemselves along it and formed a bar, with one tiny outlet throughwhich the pool trickled continually, except at high spring tides whenthe river overflowed it. 

Now Miss Marty, fetching a compass around this miniature creek, camein due course to the stream and seated herself on a fallen log, toconsider. For the ground on the farther side appeared green andplashy, and she disliked wetting her shoes. 

Overhead a finch piped. Below her, hidden by a screen of hazel, chattered the fall. Why should she wend farther? She must be greedyof solitude indeed if this sylvan corner did not content her. 

And yet. . . . High on the opposite bank there grew a cluster ofcolumbine, purple and rosy pink, blown thither and seeded perhapsfrom some near garden, though she had heard that the flower grew wildin these woods. Miss Marty gazed at the flowers, which seem to nodand beckon; then at the stream; then at the plashy shore; lastly ather shoes. Her hand went down to her right foot. 

She drew off her shoes. Then she drew off her stockings. 

By this time she was in a nervous flurry. Almost you may say thatshe raced across the stream and clutched at a handful of thecolumbines. In less than a minute she was back again, gazingtimorously about her. 

No one had seen; nobody, that is to say, except the finch, and hepiped on cavalierly. Miss Marty glanced up at him, then at aclearing of green turf underneath his bough, a little to her left. Why not? Why should she omit any of May morning's rites?

Miss Marty picked up her skirts again, stepped on to the green turf, and began to dabble her feet in the dew. 

 "The morn that May began, I dabbled in the dew; And I wished for me a proper young man In coat-tails of the blue. . . . "

"_Whoop! Whoo-oop!_"

The cry came from afar; indeed, from the woods across the river. Yet as the hare pricks up her ears at the sound of a distant horn anddarts away to the covert, so did Miss Marty pause, and, afterlistening for a second or two, hurry back to the log to resume hershoes and stockings. 

Her shoes she found where she had left them, and one stocking on therank grass close beside them. _But where was the other?_

She looked to right, to left, and all around her in a panic. Could she have dropped it into the stream in her hurry? And had thestream carried it down the fall?

She drew on one stocking and shoe, and catching up the other shoe inher hand, crept down to explore. The stream leapt out of sightthrough a screen of hazels. Parting these, she peered through them, to judge the distance between her and the pool and see if any trackled down to it. A something flashed in her eyes, and she drew back. Then, peering forward again, she let a faint cry escape her. 

On the pebbly bank beside the pool stood a man--Dr. Hansombody--inregimentals. In one hand he held a razor (this it was that hadflashed so brightly in the sunlight), in the other her lost stocking. Apparently he had been shaving, kneeling beside the pool and using itfor a mirror; for one half of his face was yet lathered, and hishaversack lay open on the stones by the water's edge beside his shakoand a tin cup under which he had lit a small spirit-lamp; anddoubtless, while he knelt, the stream had swept Miss Marty's stockingdown to him. He was studying it in bewilderment; which changed toglad surprise as he caught sight of her, aloft between the hazels. 

"Hallo!" he challenged. "A happy month to you!"

"Oh, please!" Miss Marty covered her face. 

"I'll spread it out to dry on the stones here. "

"Please give it back to me. Yes, please, I beg of you!"

"I don't see the sense of that, " answered the Doctor. "You can'tpossibly wear it until it's dry, you know. "

"But I'd _rather_. "

"Are you anchored up there? Very well; then I'll bring it up to youin a minute or so. But just wait a little; for you wouldn't ask meto come with half my face unshaven, would you?"

"I can go back. . . . No, I can't. The bank is too slippery. . . . But I can look the other way, " added Miss Marty, heroically. 

"I really don't see why you should, " answered the Doctor, as heresumed his kneeling posture. "Now, to my mind, " he went on in theintervals of finishing his toilet, "there's no harm in it, and, speaking as a man, it gives one a pleasant sociable feeling. "

"I--have often wondered how it was done, " confessed Miss Marty. "It looks horribly dangerous. "

"The fact is, " said the Doctor, wiping his blade, "I cannot endure tofeel unshaven, even when campaigning. "

He restored the razor to his haversack, blew out the spirit-lamp, emptied the tin cup on the stones, packed up, resumed his shako, andstood erect. 

"My stocking, please!" Miss Marty pleaded. 

"It is by no means dry yet, " he answered, stooping and examining it. "Let me help you down, that you may see for yourself. "

"Oh, I _couldn't_!"

"Meaning your foot and ankle? Believe me you have no cause to beashamed of _them_, Miss Marty, " the Doctor assured her gallantly, climbing the slope and extending an arm for her to lean upon. 

"Those people--across the water, " she protested, with a slight blushand a nod in the direction of the shouting, which for some minuteshad been growing louder. 

"Our brave fellows--if, as I imagine, the uproar proceeds from them--are pardonably flushed with their victory. They are certainlyincapable, at this distance, of the nice observation with which yourmodesty credits them. Good Lord!--now you mention it--what a racket!I sincerely trust they will not arouse Sir Felix, whose temper--_experto crede_--is seldom at its best in the small hours. There, ifyou will lean your weight on me and advance your foot--the uncoveredone--to this ledge--Nay, now!"

"But it hurts, " said Miss Marty, wincing, with a catch of her breath. "I fear I must have run a thorn into it. "

"A thorn?" The Doctor seized the professional opportunity, liftedher bodily off the slope, and lowered her to the beach. "There, now, if you will sit absolutely still . . . For one minute. I commandyou! Yes, as I suspected--a gorse-prickle!"

He ran to his haversack, and, returning with a pair of tweezers, tookthe hurt foot between both hands. 

"Pray remain still . . . For one moment. There--it is out!"He held up the prickle triumphantly between the tweezers. "You haveheard, Miss Marty, of the slave Andrew Something-or-other and thelion? Though it couldn't have been Andrew really, because there areno lions in Scotland--except, I believe, on their shield. He washiding for some reason in a cave, and a lion came along, and--well, it doesn't seem complimentary even if you turn a lion into a lioness, but it came into my head and seemed all right to start with. "

"When I was a governess, " said Miss Marty, "I used often to set itfor dictation. I had, I remember, the same difficulty you experiencewith the name of the hero. "

"Did you?" the Doctor exclaimed, delightedly. "That _is_ acoincidence, isn't it? I sometimes think that when two minds are, asone might say, attuned--"

"They are making a most dreadful noise, " said Miss Marty, with aglance across the river. "Did I hear you say that you werevictorious to-night?"

"Completely. "

"The Major is a wonderful man. "

"Wonderful! As I was saying, when two minds are, as one might say, attuned--"

"He succeeds in everything he touches. "

"It is a rare talent. "

"I sometimes wonder how, with his greatness--for he cannot but beconscious of it--he endures the restrictions of our narrow sphere. I mean, " Miss Marty went on, as the Doctor lifted his eyebrows insome surprise, "the petty business of a country town such as ours. "

"Oh, " said the Doctor. "Ah, to be sure! . . . I supposed for amoment that you were referring to the--er--terrestrial globe. "

He sighed. Miss Marty sighed likewise. Across in the covert of thewoods someone had begun to beat a tattoo on the drum. Presently acornet joined in, shattering the echoes with wild ululations. 

"Those fellows will be sorry if Sir Felix catches them, " observed theDoctor, anxiously. "I can't think what Hymen's about, to allow it. The noise comes from right under the home-park, too. "

"You depreciate the Major!" Miss Marty tapped her bare footimpatiently on the pebbles; but, recollecting herself, drew it backwith a blush. 

"I do not, " answered the Doctor, hotly. "I merely say that he isallowing his men yonder to get out of hand. "

"Perhaps _you_ had better go, and, as the poet puts it, 'ride on thewhirlwind and direct the storm, '" she suggested, with gentle sarcasm. 

The Doctor rose stiffly. "Perhaps, on the whole, I had. Your stocking"--he lifted and felt it carefully--"will be dry in fiveminutes or so. Shall I direct Cai Tamblyn to bring the boat hitherif I pass him on my way?"

She glanced up with a quivering lip. 

"Isn't--isn't that a Sulphur Yellow?" she asked, pointing to abutterfly which wavered past them and poised itself for an instant ona pebble by the brink of the pool. 

"Eh? By George! so it is. " The Doctor caught up his shako and racedoff in pursuit. "Steady now! . . . Is he gone? . . . Yes. . . . No, I have him!" he called, as with a swift wave of his arm he broughtthe shako down smartly on the pebbles and, kneeling, held it downwith both hands. 

"Where?" panted Miss Marty. 

"Here . . . If you will stoop while I lift the brim. . . . Carefully, please. Now!"

Miss Marty stooped, but could not reach low enough to peer under theshako. She dropped on her knees. The Doctor was kneeling already. He showed her how to look, and this brought their cheeks closetogether. . . . 

"Oh!" cried Miss Marty, suddenly. 

"I couldn't help it, " said the Doctor. 

"And--and you have let him escape!" She buried her face in bothhands, and broke into a fit of weeping. 

"I don't care. . . . Yes, I do!" He caught her hands away from herface and, their hiding being denied her, she leant her brow againsthis shoulder. With that, his arm crept around her waist. 

For a while he let her sob out her emotion. Then, taking her firmlyby both wrists, he looked once into her eyes, led her to a seat uponthe pebble ridge, and sat himself down beside her. 

For a long while they rested there in silence, hand clasped in hand. The uproar across the river had ceased. They heard only the splashof the small waterfall and, in its pauses, the call of bird to bird, mating amid the hazels and the oaks. 

They drew apart suddenly, warned by the sound of dipping oars, thecreak of thole-pins; and in a few seconds the rower hove into view, pulling up-stream as if for dear life. It was Cai Tamblyn. Catchingsight of them, with a sharp exclamation he ceased rowing, held water, and bringing the boat's nose round, headed in for shore. 

"You're wanted, quick!" he called to the Doctor. "They sent me offin search of you. "

"Hey? What? Has there been an accident?"

Cai brought his boat alongside, glanced at Miss Marty, and loweredhis voice. 

"'Tis Lady Felix-Williams. These here conquerin' 'eroes of theMajor's have swarmed down through the woods an' ran foul of theliquor. The Band in partikler's as drunk as Chloe, an' what withhorning and banging under her ladyship's window, they've a-scared herbefore her time. She's crying out at this moment, and old Sir Felixaround in his dressing-gown like Satan let loose. Talk aboutMillenniums!"

"Good Lord!" Dr. Hansombody caught up his haversack. "The Millennium? I'd clean forgot about it!"

Miss Marty gazed at him with innocent inquiring eyes. 

"But--but isn't this the Millennium?" she asked. 

CHAPTER X. 

GUNNER SOBEY TURNS LOOSE THE MILLENNIUM. 

Let us return for a while to Talland Cove, and to the moment whenCaptain Arbuthnot's Dragoons broke ambush and charged down upon theGallants. 

Of all our company you will remember that Gunner Sobey passed for thereadiest man. This reputation he now and instantly vindicated. For happening to be posted on the extreme left in the shadow of thewestern cliff, and hearing a sudden cry, "The French! The French!"he neither fell back with the rest of the crowd nor foolhardilyresisted an enemy whose strength could not yet be measured: butleaping aside, and by great good luck finding foothold on the rocksto his left, he wriggled over the low ledge of the cliff and thence--now clutching at the grass bents or clusters of the sea-pink, nowdigging his fingers into the turf, but always flat, or nearly flat, on his belly--he wormed his way at incredible speed up the slope, found covert behind a tall furze-bush, and surveyed for a few secondsthe scene below him. 

The outcries which yet continued, the splashing as of men indesperate struggle at the water's edge, the hoarse words of command, the scurrying lanterns, the gleam of a hundred tossing sabres--allthese told their own tale to Gunner Sobey. He arose and ran again;nor drew breath until he had gained the top of the rough brake andflung himself over a stone wall into the dry ditch of a vast pasturefield that domed itself far above him against the starry heavens. 

Now let it be understood that what lent wings to Gunner Sobey's heelswas not cowardice, but an overmastering desire to reach home with allspeed. Let no reader mistake for panic what was in truth exceptionalpresence of mind. 

The Major, you must know, had drawn up, some months before, andissued in a General Order, certain _Instructions in Case ofInvasion_--in case, that is to say, the enemy should momentarilybreak through our coast defence and effect an actual footing. The main body of the Gallants would then, converting itself into arearguard, cover the town and keep the foe in check, while separatedetachments fell back swiftly, each to execute its assigned duty. For example:

Detachments A and B would round up and drive off the cattle. 

Detachment C would assist the escape of the women and children. 

Detachment D would collect and carry off provisions, and destroy whatwas left. 

Detachment E would set fire to the corn and the hayricks. 

Detachment F would horse themselves and ride inland to warn the townsand villages, and make all possible preparations for blowing up thebridges and otherwise impeding the enemy's advance after therearguard's passage. And so on. 

Gunner Sobey, though but a volunteer, possessed that simplicity ofintellect which we have come to prize as the first essential in aBritish soldier. It was not his to reason why; not his to ask howthe French had gained a footing in Talland Cove, or how, havinggained it, they were to be dislodged. Once satisfied of theirarrival, he left them, as his soldierly training enjoined, severelyalone. Deplorable as he might deem the occurrence, it had happened;and _ipso facto_, it consigned him, in accordance with generalorders, to Detachment D, with the duties and responsibilities of thatdetachment. On these then--and at first on these, and these only--hebent his practical, resolute mind. It will be seen if he stoppedshort with them. 

Picking himself up from the dry ditch, intent only on heading forhome, he was aware of a dark object on the brink above him; which atfirst he took for a bramble bush, and next, seeing it move, for aman. 

It is no discredit to Gunner Sobey that, taken suddenly in thedarkness, and at so hopeless a disadvantage, he felt his knees shakeunder him for a moment. 

"Parley-voo?" he ventured. 

The proverb says that a Polperro jackass is surprised at nothing, andthis one, which had been browsing on the edge of the ditch, merelygazed. 

"I--I ax your pardon, " went on Gunner Sobey, still slightly unhinged. "The fact is, I mistook you for another person. "

The jackass drew back a little. It seemed to Gunner Sobey to bebreathing hard, but otherwise it betrayed no emotion. 

"Soh, then! Soh, my beauty!" said Gunner Sobey, and having clamberedthe ditch, reached out a caressing hand. 

The donkey retreated, backing, step by step: and as Gunner Sobeystared a white blaze on the animal's face grew more and more distinctto him. 

"Eh? Why, surely--soh, then!--you're Jowter Puckey's naggur? And ifso--and I'll be sworn to you, seein' you close--what's become of th'old mare I sold him last Marti'mas?"

The beast still retreated. But Gunner Sobey's wits were now workingrapidly. If Jowter Puckey pastured his jackass here, why here then(it was reasonable to surmise) he also pastured the old mare, Pleasant: and if Pleasant browsed anywhere within earshot, why thechances were she would remember and respond to her former master'scall. 

I repeat that Gunner Sobey was a ready man and a brave. Withoutpausing to reflect that the French might hear him, he put two fingersin his mouth and whistled into the night. 

For a while there came no reply. He had his two fingers in his mouthto repeat the call when, happening to glance at the jackass, heperceived the beast's ears go up and its head slew round towards theridge. Doubtless it had caught the distant echo of hoofs; for half aminute later a low whinny sounded from the summit of the dark slope, and a grey form came lumbering down at a trot, halted, and thrustforward its muzzle to be caressed. 

"Pleasant! Oh, my dear Pleasant!" stammered Gunner Sobey, reachingout a hand and fondling first her nose, then her ears. He could havethrown both arms around her ewe neck and hugged her. "How did I cometo sell 'ee?"

To be sure, if he had not, this good fortune had never befallen him. 

Neither Gunner Sobey nor the mare--nor, for that matter, thejackass--had ever read the eighteenth book of Homer's Iliad; and thismust be their excuse for letting pass the encounter with lesseloquence than I, its narrator, might have made a fortune byreporting. For once Gunner Sobey's readiness failed him, underemotion too deep for words. He laid a hand on the mare's withers andheaved himself astride, choosing a seat well back towards thehaunches, and so avoiding the more pronounced angles in herframework. Then leaning forward and patting her neck he called toher. 

"Home, my beauty! I'll stick on, my dear, if you'll but do the rest. Cl'k!"

She gathered up her infirm limbs and headed for home at a canter. 

For a while the jackass trotted beside them; but coming to thegate and dismounting to open it, Gunner Sobey turned him back. Possibly the mare had a notion she was being stolen, for no soonerhad her rider remounted than she struck off into a lane on the righthand, avoiding the road to Polperro where her present owner dwelt;and so, fetching a circuit by a second lane--this time to the left--clattered downhill past the sleeping hamlet of Crumplehorn, andbreasted the steep coombe and the road that winds up beside it pastthe two Kellows to Mabel Burrow. Here on the upland she pulledherself together, and reaching out into a gallant stride, started onthe long descent towards Troy at a pace that sent the night airwhizzing by Gunner Sobey's ears. Past Carneggan she thundered, pastTredudwell; and thence, swinging off into the road for the LittleFerry, still down hill by Lanteglos Vicarage, by Ring of Bells, tothe ford of Watergate in the valley bottom, where now a bridgestands; but in those days the foot-passengers crossed by a plank anda hand-rail. Splashing through the ford and choosing unguided theroad which bore away to the right from the silent smithy, and steeplyuphill to Whiddycross Common, she took it gamely though with fastfailing breath. She had been foaled in Troy parish, and marvellouslyshe was proving, after thirty years (her age was no less), the mettleof her ancient pasture. While he owned her, Gunner Sobey--who inextra-military hours traded as a carrier and haulier between Troy andthe market-towns to the westward--had worked her late and fed herlean; but the most of us behold our receding youth through a mist ofromance, and it may be that old worn-out Pleasant conceived herselfto be cantering back to fields where the grass grew perennially sweetand old age was unknown. At any rate, she earned her place thisnight among the great steeds of romance--Xanthus, Bucephalus, Harpagus, Black Auster, Sleipnir and Ilderim, Bayardo andBrigliadoro, the Cid's Babieca, Dick Turpin's Black Bess; not tomention the two chargers, Copenhagen and Marengo, whom Waterloo wasyet to make famous. As she mounted the last rise by WhiddycrossGreen her ribs were heaving sorely, her breath came in short quickcoughs, her head lagged almost between her bony knees; but none theless she held on down the steep hill, all strewn with loose stones, to the ferry slip; and there, dropping her haunches, slid, checkedherself almost at the water's edge, and stood quivering. 

Billy Bates, the ferryman at Little Ferry, had heard the clatter ofhoofs, and tumbled out to unchain his boat; a trifling matter forhim, since he habitually slept in his clothes. 

"Hallo!" said he, holding his lantern high and taking stock of thegunner's regimentals. "I allowed you'd be a messenger from SirFelix. They tell me her leddyship is expectin'. "

"I pity her then, " gasped Gunner Sobey, and waved an arm. "Man, theFrench be landed, an' the country's ablaze!"

Billy Bates set down his lantern on the slip and ran two tremblinghands through his scanty locks. 

"If that's so, " he answered, "you don't get no boat of mine. There'sHosken's blue boat; you'll find her moored off by a shoreline. Take _she_ if you will; he's a single man. "

"Darn your old carcass!" swore Gunner Sobey. "I wish now I'd waitedto cross over before tellin' 'ee!"

"I dare say you do. Well, good night, soce. I'm off to tell the oldwoman. "

Man is a selfish animal. As Gunner Sobey hauled Hosken's blue boatto shore, poor Pleasant came down the slip-way and rubbed her muzzleagainst his sleeve, dumbly beseeching him to fetch the horse-boatthat she too might cross. He struck her sharply across the nose, and, jumping aboard, thrust off from the shore. 

In telling Miss Marty that the town was deserted, Cai Tamblyn hadforgotten the Vicar. 

That good man, it is perhaps superfluous to say, had not sought hisbed. He was a widower, and had no one to dissuade him from keepingvigil until daybreak. At ten o'clock, therefore, having seen to thetrimming of his lamp and dismissed the servants to rest, he lit hisstudy fire, set the kettle upon it, and having mixed himself a bowlof brandy-punch (in the concoction of which all Troy acknowledged himto be an expert), drew his arm-chair close to the genial blaze, andsat alternately sipping his brew and conning for the thousandth timethe annotated pamphlet in which he had demonstrated exhaustively, redundantly, irrefutably, beyond possibility of disbelief or doubt, that with the morrow the world's great age must be renewed and theMillennium dawn upon earth. 

For an hour and a half, or maybe three-quarters, he sat reading andreassuring himself that the armour of his proof was indeedproof-armour and exposed no chink to assault; and then--

The Vicar was a man of clean conscience and regular habits. He closed his eyes to review the argument. By and by his chindropped forward on his chest. He slept. He dreamt. His dreams wereformless, uneasy; such as one might expect who deserts his bed andhis course of habit to sleep upright in an arm-chair. A vaguetrouble haunted them; or, rather, a presentiment of trouble. It grewand grew; and almost as it became intolerable, a bell seemed to clangin his ears, and he started up, awake, gripping his chair, his browclammy with a sudden sweat. He glanced around him. The fire wascold, his lamp burned low, his book had fallen to the floor. Was itthis that had aroused him? No; surely a bell had clanged in hisears. His brain kept the echo of it yet. 

He listened. The clang was not repeated; but gradually his earsbecame aware of a low murmuring, irregular yet continuous; a sound, it seemed, of voices, yet not of human voices; a moaning, and yet notquite a moaning, but rather what the French would call a_mugissement_. Yes, it resembled rather the confused lowing ofcattle than any other sound known to him. But that wasinconceivable. . . . 

He stepped to the window-curtains through which the pale dawnfiltered; pulled them aside and started back with a cry of somethingmore than dismay. The Vicarage faced upon the churchyard; and thechurchyard was filled--packed--with cattle! Oxen and cows, steers, heifers, and young calves; at least thirty score were gathered there, a few hardier phlegmatic beasts cropping the herbage on the graves;but the mass huddled together, rubbing flanks, swaying this way andthat in the pressure of panic as corn is swayed by flukes of summerwind. 

The Vicar was no coward. Recovering himself, he ran to the passage, caught his hat down from the peg, and flung wide the front door. 

A little beyond his gate a lime-tree walk led down through thechurchyard to the town. But gazing over the chines of the herdbeyond his garden railing, he saw that through this avenue he couldnot hope to force a passage; it was crowded so densely that dozenupon dozen of the poor brutes stood with horns interlocked, unable tolift or lower their heads. 

To the right a line of cottages bounded the churchyard and overlookedit; and between them and the churchyard wall there ran a narrowcobbled lane known as Pease Alley (_i. E. , pis aller_, the Vicar waswont to explain humorously). Through this he might hope to reachthe Lower Town and discover some interpretation of the portent. He opened the gate boldly. 

It was obvious, whatever might be the reason, that terror possessedthe cattle. At the creaking of the gate the nearest brutesretreated, pressing back against their fellows, lowering their heads;and yet not viciously, but as though to meet an unknown danger. 

"Soh!" called the Vicar. "Soh, then! . . . Upon my word, " he went onwhimsically, answering the appeal in their frightened, liquid eyes, "it's no use your asking me. You can't possibly be worse puzzledthan I am!"

He thrust a passage between them and hurried down Pease Alley. Twice he paused, each time beneath the windows of a sleeping cottage, and hailed its occupants by name. No one answered. Only, on theother side of the alley, a few of the beasts ceased their lowing fora while, and, thrusting their faces over the wall, gazed at him withpatient wonder. 

At the lower end of the alley, where it makes an abrupt bend aroundthe hinder premises of the "Ship" Inn before giving egress upon thestreet, the Vicar lifted his head and sniffed the morning air. Surely his nose detected a trace of smoke in it--not the reek ofchimneys, but a smoke at once more fragrant and more pungent. . . . 

Yes, smoke was drifting high among the elms above the church. The rooks, too, up there, were cawing loudly and wheeling in circles. 

He dropped his gaze to his feet, and once more started back in alarm. A gutter crossed the alley here, and along it rushed and foamed adark copper-coloured flood which, in an instant, his eye had tracedup to the back doorstep of the "Ship, " over which it poured in acascade. 

Beer? Yes; patently, to sight and smell alike, it was beer. With acry, the Vicar ran towards the doorway, wading ankle-deep in beer ashe crossed the threshold and broke in to the kitchen. The wholehouse swam with beer, but not with beer only; for when, no inmateanswering his call, he followed the torrent up through yet anotherdoorway and found himself in the inn cellar, in the dim light of itsiron-barred window he halted to gaze before one, two, three, a dozencasks of ale, port, sherry, brandy, all pouring their contents in ageneral flood upon the brick-paved floor. 

Here, as he afterwards confessed, his presence of mind failed him;and small blame to him, I say! Without a thought of turning off thetaps, he waded back to the doorway and leaned there awhile to recoverhis wits with his breath. 

While he leaned, gasping, with a hand against the door-jamb, theclock in the church tower above him chimed and struck the hour offive. He gazed up at it stupidly, saw the smoke drifting through theelm-tops beyond, heard the rooks cawing over them, and then suddenlybethought himself of the bell which had clanged amid his dreams. 

Yes, it had been the clang of a real bell, and from his own belfry. But how could anyone have gained entrance into the church, of whichhe alone kept the keys? How? Why, by the little door at the eastend of the south aisle, which stood ajar. Across the alley he couldsee it, and that it stood ajar; and more by token a heifer hadplanted her forefoot on the step and was nosing it wider. Someonehad forced the lock. Someone was at this moment within the church!

The Vicar collected his wits and ran for it; thrust his way once morethrough the crowd of cattle, and through the doorway into the aisle, shouting a challenge. A groan from the belfry answered him, andthere, in the dim light, he almost stumbled over a man seated on thecold flags of the pavement and feebly rubbing the lower part of hisspine. 

It is notoriously dangerous to ring a church bell without knowing thetrick of it. Gunner Sobey, having broken into the belfry and laidhands on the first bell-rope (which happened to be that of thetenor), had pulled it vigorously, let go too late, and dropped a goodten feet plumb in a sitting posture. 

"Good Lord!" The Vicar peered at him, stooping. "Is that Sobey?"

"It _was_, " groaned Sobey. "I'll never be the same man again. "

"But what has happened?"

"Happened? Why, I tumbled off the bell-rope. You might ha' guessed_that_. "

"Yes, yes; but why?"

"Because I didn' know how it worked. " Gunner Sobey turned his faceaway wearily and continued to rub his hurt. "I didn't know till now, either, that a man could be stunned at this end, " he added. 

"Man, I see you're suffering, but answer me for goodness' sake!What's the meaning of all these cattle outside, and the taps running, and the smoke up yonder on the hill? And why--?"

"I done my best, " murmured Gunner Sobey drowsily. "Single-handed Idone it, but I done my best. "

"Are you telling me that all this has been _your_ doing?"

"A man can't very well be ten detachments at once, can he?" demandedthe Gunner, sitting erect of a sudden and speaking with an air ofgreat lucidity. "At least not in the Artillery. The liquor, now--I've run it out of every public-house in the town; that wasDetachment D's work. And the hayricks; properly speakin', _they_belonged to Detachment E, and I hadn' time to fire more than FarmerCoad's on my way down wi' the cattle. _And_ the alarm bell, you mayargue, wasn' any business of mine; an' I wish with all my heart I'dnever touched the dam thing! But with the French at your doors, soto speak--"

"The French?"

"Didn' I tell you? Then I must have overlooked it. Iss, iss, theFrench be landed at Talland Cove, and murderin' as they come!And the Troy lads be cut down like a swathe o' grass; and I, only I, escaped to carry the news. And you call this a Millenyum, Isuppose?" he wound up with sudden inconsequent bitterness. 

But the Vicar apparently did not hear. "The French? The French?" hekept repeating. "Oh, Heaven, what's to be done?"

"If you was something more than a pulpit Christian, " suggested GunnerSobey, "you'd hoist me pickaback an' carry me over to hospital; for Ican't walk with any degree of comfort, an' that's a fact. And nextyou'd turn to an' drive off the cattle inland, an' give warning asyou go. 'Tis a question if I live out this night, an' 'tis anotherquestion if I want to; but, dead or alive, it sha'n't be said of methat I hadn' presence of mind. "

CHAPTER XI. 

THE MAJOR LEAVES US. 

Two minutes later the Vicar, staggering up to the hospital door withGunner Sobey on his back, came to a terrified halt as his ears caughtthe _tramp, tramp_ of a body of men approaching from the direction ofPassage Slip, which is the landing-place of the Little Ferry. He hadscarce time to lower his burden upon the doorstep before the head ofthe company swung into view around the street corner. With a gasp herecognised them. 

They were the Troy Gallants, and Major Hymen marched beside them. But they came with no banners waving, without tuck of drum--a sadlydepleted corps, and by their countenances a sadly dejected one. 

For the moment, however, in the revulsion of his feelings, the Vicarfailed to observe this. He ran forward with both arms extended togreet the Major. 

"My friend!" he cried tremulously. "You are alive!"

"Certainly, " the Major answered. "Why not?" He was dishevelled, unshaven, travel-stained, haggard, and at the same time flushed offace. Also he appeared a trifle sulky. 

"What has happened?"

"Well"--the Major turned on him almost viciously--"_you_ may call itthe Millennium!"

"But the French--?"

"Eh? Excuse me--I don't take your meaning. _What_ French?"

"I was given to understand--we have been taking certain precautions, "stammered the Vicar, and gazed around, seeking Gunner Sobey (butGunner Sobey had dived into the hospital and was putting himself tobed). "You don't tell me the alarm was false!"

"My good Vicar, I haven't a notion at what you're driving; and excuseme again if in this hour of disgrace I find myself in no humour tohalt here and bandy explanations. "

"Disgrace?"

"Disgrace, " repeated the Major, gazing sternly back on his abashedranks. His breast swelled; he seemed on the point to say more; but, indignation mastering him, mutely with a wave of the hand he bade theGallants resume their march. Mutely, contritely, with bowed heads, they obeyed and followed him down the street, leaving the Vicar atgaze. 

What had happened? Why, this. --

After the fiasco in Talland Cove Captain Arbuthnot had formed up hisDragoons and given the word to ride back to Bodmin Barracks, theirtemporary quarters, whence Mr. Smellie had summoned them. 

He was in the devil of a rage. From the Barracks to Talland Cove isa good fourteen miles as the crow flies, and you may allow anothertwo miles for the windings of the road (which, by the way, was apestilently bad one). To ride sixteen miles by night, chafing allthe while under the orders of a civilian, and to return anothersixteen, smarting, from a fool's errand, is (one must admit)excusably trying to the military temper. Smellie, to be sure, andSmellie alone, had been discomfited. Smellie's discomfiture had beenso signally personal as to divert all ridicule from the Dragoons. Smellie, moreover, had made himself confoundedly obnoxious. 

Smellie had given himself airs during the ride from Bodmin; andCaptain Arbuthnot had with an ill grace submitted to them, becausethe fellow knew the country. They were quit of him now; but how tofind the way home Captain Arbuthnot did not very well know. He rodeforward boldly, however, keeping his eyes upon the stars, andsteering, so far as the circuitous lanes would allow him, north bywest. 

Bearing away too far to the right, as men are apt to do in thedarkness, he missed the cross-ways by Ashen-cross, whence his trueline ran straight through Pelynt; and after an hour or so ofblind-man's-buff in a maze of cornfields, the gates of which seemedto hide in the unlikeliest corners, emerged upon a fairly good highroad, which at first deceived him by running west-by-north and thenappeared to change its mind and, receding through west, took adetermined southerly curve back towards the coast. In short, CaptainArbuthnot had entirely lost his bearings. 

Deciding once more to trust the stars, he left the high road, struckdue north across country again and by and by found himself entangledin a valley bottom beside the upper waters of the same stream whichGunner Sobey had forded two hours before and some miles below. The ground hereabouts was marshy, and above the swamp an almostimpenetrable furze-brake clothed both sides of the valley. The Dragoons fought their way through, however, and were rewarded, alittle before dawn, by reaching a good turf slope and, at the head ofit, a lane which led them to the small village of Lanreath. 

The inhabitants of Lanreath, aroused from their beds by the tramp ofhoofs and with difficulty persuaded that their visitors were not theFrench, at length directed Captain Arbuthnot to the village inn, the"Punchbowl, " where he wisely determined to bait and rest his horses, which by this time were nearly foundered. Being heavy brutes, theyhad fared ill in the morass, and the most of them were plastered withmud to their girths. 

The troopers, having refreshed themselves with beer, flung themselvesdown to rest, some on the settles of the inn-kitchen, others on thebenches about the door, and others again in the churchyard across theroad, where they snored until high day under the curious gaze of thevillagers. 

So they slept for two hours and more; and then, being summoned bytrumpet, mounted and took the road again, the most of them yet heavywith slumber and not a few yawning in their saddles and only keptfrom nodding off by the discomfort of their tall leathern stocks. 

In this condition they had proceeded for maybe two miles, when from aby-lane on their left a horseman dashed out upon the road ahead, reined up, and, wheeling his horse in face of them, stood high in hisstirrups and waved an arm towards the lane by which he had come. 

It took Captain Arbuthnot some seconds to recognise this apparitionfor Mr. Smellie. But it was indeed that unfortunate man. 

He had lost both hat and wig; his coat he had discarded, no doubt tobe rid of its noisome odour: and altogether he cut the strangestfigure as he gesticulated there in the early sunshine. But the manwas in earnest--so much in earnest that he either failed to note, ornoting, disregarded, the wrathful frown with which Captain Arbuthnot, having halted his troop, rode forward at a walk to meet him. 

"Back, Captain, back!" shouted Mr. Smellie, pointing down the lane. 

"I beg your pardon, sir"--the Captain reined up and addressed himwith cold, incisive politeness--"but may I suggest that you haveplayed the fool with us sufficiently for one night, and that my men'stempers are short?"

"Havers!" exclaimed the indomitable Smellie, rising yet higher in hisstirrups and lifting a hand for silence. "I ask ye to listen to theracket down yonder. The drum, now!" (Sure enough Captain Arbuthnot, pricking his ears, heard the tunding of a drum far away in the woodsto the southward. ) "Man, they've diddled us! While they put thattrick on us at Talland Cove, their haill womankind was rafting thetrue cargo up the river. I've ridden down, I tell you, and the clueof their game I hold in my two hands here from start to finish. The brandy's yonder in Sir Felix's woods, and the men are lyingaround it fou-drunk as the Israelites among the pots. Man, if yewould turn to-night's laugh, turn your troop and follow, and ye shallcull them like gowans!"

"It is throwing the haft after the hatchet, " hesitated CaptainArbuthnot, impressed against his will by the earnestness of theappeal. "You have misled us once to-night, I must remind you; and Igive you fair warning that my troopers will not bear fooling twice. "

With all his faults the Riding Officer did not lack courage. Disdaining the threat, he waved his hand to the Dragoons to followand put his horse at a canter down the leafy lane. 

It is recorded in the High History of the Grail, of Sir Lohot, son ofKing Arthur, that he had a marvellous weakness; which was, that nosooner had he slain a man than he fell across his body. So ithappened this night to the valiant men of Troy. 

The Dragoons, emerging from the woods of Pentethy into close view ofthe house and its terrace and slope that falls from the terrace tothe river, found themselves intruders upon the queerest of domesticdramas. 

On the terrace among the leaden gods danced a little man, wigless, inan orange-coloured dressing-gown and a fury of choler. At the headof the green slope immediately under the balustrade Major Hymen, surrounded by a moderately sober staff, faced the storm in anattitude at once dignified and patient. 

"An idea has occurred to me, " he put in at length with statelydeliberation as Sir Felix paused panting for fresh words ofopprobrium. "It is, sir, that overlooking the few minutes by whichour salvoes were--er--antedated, you allow us to acclaim yourlatest-born as Honorary-Colonel of our corps. "

"But, " almost shrieked Sir Felix, "damn your eyes, it's _twins_--andboth _girls_!"

The Major winced. A rosy flush of indignation mantled his cheeks, and only his habitual respect for the landed gentry (whom he wasaccustomed to call the backbone of England) checked him on the vergeof a severe retort. As it was, he answered with fine suavity. 

"There is no true patriot, Sir Felix, but desires an acceleratedincrease in our population just now, whether male or female. I trustyour good lady's zeal may be rewarded by a speedy recovery. "

Sir Felix fairly capered. "Accelerated! Acc--" he began, and, choking over the word, turned and caught sight of the Dragoons asthey emerged from the woods, the sunlight flashing on theircuirasses. 

He fell back against the pedestal of a leaden effigy of Julius Caesarand plucked his dressing-gown about him with fumbling bewilderedhands. Was the whole British Army pouring into his peaceful park?What had he done to bring down on his head the sportive mockery ofheaven, and at such a moment?

But in the act of collapsing he looked across the balustrade and sawthe Major's face suddenly lose its colour. Then in an instant heunderstood and pulled himself together. 

"Hey? A hunt breakfast, is it?" he inquired sardonically, and turnedto welcome the approaching troop. "Good morning, gentlemen! Youhave come to draw my covers? Then let me suggest your beginning withthe plantation yonder to the right, where I can promise you goodsport. "

It was unneighbourly; an action remembered against Sir Felix to theclose of his life, as it deserved to be. He himself admitted laterthat he had given way to momentary choler, and made what amends hecould by largess to the victims and their families. But it was longbefore he recovered his place in our esteem. Indeed, he never whollyrecovered it: since of many dire consequences there was one, unforeseen at the time, which proved to be irreparable. Over theimmediate consequences let me drop the curtain. _Male, male feriatiTroes!_ . . . As a man at daybreak takes a bag and, going into thewoods, gathers mushrooms, so the Dragoons gathered the men of Troy. . . . Mercifully the most of them were unconscious. 

Even less heart have I to dwell on the return of the merrymakers:

 "But now, ye shepherd lasses, who shall lead Your wandering troops, or sing your virelays?"

Sure no forlorner procession ever passed down Troy river than this, awhile so jocund, mute now, irresponsive to the morning's smile, thecuckoo's blithe challenge from the cliff. To the Major, seated inthe stern sheets of the leading boat, no one dared to speak. They supposed his pecuniary loss to be heavier than it actually was--since the Dragoons had after all surprised but a portion of thecargo, and the leafy woods of Pentethy yet concealed many scores oftubs of _eau-de-vie_; but they knew that he brooded over no pecuniaryloss. He had been outraged, betrayed as a neighbour, as a militarycommander, and again as a father of his people; wounded in the houseof his friends; scourged with ridicule in the very seat of hisdignity. Maidens, inconsolable for lovers snatched from them and nowbound for Bodmin Gaol, hushed their sorrow and wiped their tears bystealth, abashed before those tragic eyes which, fixed on the riverreach ahead, travelled beyond all petty private woe to meet the endof all things with a tearless stare. 

So they returned, drew to the quays, and disembarked, unwitting yetof worse discoveries awaiting them. 

In the hospital Gunner Sobey, having dived into bed, with greatpresence of mind fell asleep. The Vicar had fled the town by theNorth, or Passage, Gate, and was by this time devouring a countrywalk in long strides, heedless whither they led him, vainlyendeavouring to compose his thoughts and readjust his prophecies inthe light of the morning's events--a process which from time to timecompelled him to halt and hold his head between both hands. 

The Major had slammed his front door, locked himself in his room, andwould give audience to no one. 

It was in vain that the inhabitants besieged his porch, demanding toknow if the town were bewitched. Who had gutted their shops?Why the causeways swam with strong liquor? How the churchyard cameto be full of cattle? What hand had fired Farmer Elford's ricks?In short, what in the world had happened, and what was to be done?They came contritely, conscious of their undeserving; but to each andall Scipio, from the head of the steps, returned the same answer. His master was indisposed. 

Troy, ordinarily a busy town, did no business at all that day. Tradesmen and workmen in small groups at every street-cornerdiscussed a mystery--or rather a series of mysteries--with which, asthey well knew, one man alone was competent to grapple. To his goodoffices they had forfeited all right. Nevertheless, a crowd hungabout all day in front of the Mayor's house, nor dispersed until longafter nightfall. At eight o'clock next morning they reassembled, word having flown through the town that Dr. Hansombody and LawyerChinn had been summoned soon after daybreak to a private conference. At eight-thirty the Vicar arrived and entered the house, Scipioadmitting him with ceremony and at once shutting the door behind himwith an elaborate show of caution. 

But at a quarter to ten precisely the door opened again and the greatman himself stood on the threshold. He wore civilian dress, andcarried a three-caped travelling cloak on his left arm. His righthand grasped a valise. The sight of the crowd for a moment seemed todiscompose him. He drew back a pace and then, advancing, cleared histhroat. 

"My friends, " said he, "I am bound on a journey. Your conscienceswill tell you if I deserved yesterday's indignity, and how far youmight have obviated it. But I have communed with myself and decidedto overlook all personal offence. It is enough that certain of ourfellow-townsmen are in durance, and I go to release them. In short, I travel to-day to Plymouth to seek the best legal advice for theirdefence. In my absence I commit the good behaviour of Troy to yourkeeping, one and all. "

You, who have read how, when Nelson left Portsmouth for death andvictory, the throng pressed after him down the beach in tears, andran into the water for a last grasp of his hand, conceive with whatemotion we lined up and escorted our hero to the ferry; through whattears we watched him from the Passage Slip as he waved back from theboat tiding him over to the farther shore, where at length Boutigo'sVan--"The Eclipse, " Troy to Torpoint, No Smoking Inside--received andbore him from our straining eyes. 

CHAPTER XII. 

A COLD DOUCHE ON A HOT FIT. 

There lived at Plymouth, in a neat house at the back of the Hoe, andnot far from the Citadel, a certain Mr. Basket, a retired haberdasherof Cheapside, upon whom the Major could count for a hospitablewelcome. The two had been friends--cronies almost--in their Londondays; dining together daily at the same cook-shop, and as regularlysharing after dinner a bottle of port to the health of King Georgeand Mr. Pitt. Nor, since their almost simultaneous retreat from thecapital, had they allowed distance to diminish their mutual regard. They frequently corresponded, and their letters included many aplayful challenge to test one another's West Country hospitality. 

Now while the Major had (to put it mildly) but exchanged one sphereof activity for another, Mr. Basket, a married man, embraced therepose of a contemplative life; cultivating a small garden and takinghis wife twice a week to the theatre, of which he was a devotee. These punctual jaunts, very sensibly practised as a purge againstdullness, together with the stir and hubbub of a garrison town inwhich his walled garden stood isolated, as it were, all day long, amid marchings, countermarchings, bugle-calls, and the rumble ofwagons filled with material of war, gave him a sense of being in theswim--of close participation in the world's affairs; failing which agreat many folk seem to miss half the enjoyment of doing nothing inparticular. 

Mr. Basket welcomed the Major cordially, with a dozen rallyingcomments on his healthy rural complexion, and carried him off toadmire the garden while Mrs. Basket enlarged her preparations fordinner at five o'clock. 

The garden was indeed calculated to excite admiration, less for itsflowers--for Mr. Basket confessed ruefully that very few flowerswould grow with him--than for a hundred ingenuities by which thisdefect was concealed. 

"And the beauty of it is, " announced Mr. Basket, with a wave of hishand towards a black-and-white edging compound of marrow bones andthe inverted bases of wine bottles, disposed alternately, "itharbours no slugs. It saves labour, too; you would be surprised atthe sum it used to cost me weekly in labour alone. But, " he wenton, "I pin my faith to oyster shells. They are, if in a nauticaltown one may be permitted to speak breezily, my sheet anchor. "He indicated a grotto at the end of the walk. "Maria and me did thewhole of that. "

"Mrs. Basket is fond of gardening?" hazarded the Major. 

"She's extraordinary partial to oysters, " Mr. Basket corrected him. "We made it a principle from the first to use nothing but what weconsumed in the house. That don't apply to the statuary, of course, which I have purchased at one time and another from an Italian dealerwho frequents the Hoe. The material is less durable than one mightwish; but I could not afford marble. The originals of these objects, so the dealer informs me, are sold for very considerable sums ofmoney; in addition to which, " went on Mr. Basket, lucidly, "hecarries them in a tray on his head, which, in the case of marble, would be out of the question; and, as it is, how he contrives to keep'em balanced passes my understanding. But he is an intelligentfellow, and becomes very communicative as soon as he finds out youhave leanings for Art. Here's a group, for instance--Cupid andFisky--in the nude. "

"But, excuse me--" The Major stepped back and rubbed his chindubiously, for some careful hand had adorned the lovers with kilts ofpink wool in crochet work, and Psyche, in addition, wore a neat pinkturnover. 

"The artist _designed_ 'em in the nude, but Maria worked thepetticoats, having very decided views, for which I don't blame her. It keeps off the birds, too: not that the birds could do the samedamage here as in an ordinary garden. "

"I can well believe that. "

"But we were talking of oyster shells. They are, as I say, ourstand-by. To be sure, you can't procure 'em all the year round, likemarrow bones for instance; but, as I tell Maria, from a gardeningpoint of view that's almost a convenience. You can work at your bedswhenever there's an 'r' in the month, and then, during the summer, take a spell, look about, and enjoy the results. Besides, it leavesyou free to plan out new improvements. Now, here"--Mr. Basket caughthis friend's arm, and leading him past a bust of Socrates ("anAthenian, " he explained in passing; "considered one of the wisest menof antiquity, though not good-looking in _our_ sense of the word "), paused on the brink of a small basin, cunningly sunk in centre of around, pebble-paved area guarded by statuary--"I consider this mymasterpiece. "

"A fish-pond!"

"Yes, and containing real fish; goldfish, you perceive. I keep itsupplied from a rain-water cistern at the top of the house, and feed'em on bread-crumbs. Never tell _me_, " said Mr. Basket, "thatanimals don't reason!"

"You certainly have made yourself a charming retreat, " the Majoradmitted, gazing about him. 

Mr. Basket beamed. "You remember the lines I was wont to declaim toyou, my friend, over our bottle in Cheapside?--

 "'May I govern my passion with an absolute sway, And grow wiser and better as my strength wears away, Without gout or stone, by a gentle decay. . . . '"

"For the last, it must be as Heaven pleases; but to some extent, yousee, I have come to enjoy my modest aspirations. Only until to-dayone thing was lacking. As poor Bannister used to quote it in theplay--you remember him?--

 "'I've often wished that I had clear For life six hundred pounds a year A something-or-other house to lodge a friend. . . . '

"Ay, my dear Hymen, " Mr. Basket wrung the Major's hand with genuinefeeling, "you have been a long time putting off this visit; but, nowwe have you, I promise we don't let you go in a hurry. We will toastold days; we will go visit the play together as of old--yes, thisvery night. For, as luck will have it, the stock company at theTheatre Royal makes way to-night--for whom think you? No less a manthan Orlando B. Sturge, and in his great part of Tom Taffrail in_Love Between Decks; or, The Triumph of Constancy_; a week's specialengagement with his own London company in honour of the Duke ofClarence, who is paying us a visit just now at Admiralty House. "

"Sturge?" echoed the Major, doubtfully. 

"Good heavens, my dear fellow, don't tell me you haven't heard ofhim! Really, now, really, you bury yourself--believe me, you do. Why, for nautical parts, the stage hasn't his equal; and a voice, they tell me, like Incledon's in his prime! Mrs. Basket and I havereserved seats, and, now I come to think of it, we had best step downto the theatre before dining, book yours, and arrange it so that wesit in a row. The house will be crowded, if 'tis only for a view ofhis Royal Highness, who will certainly attend if--hem!--equal to theeffort. "

"I had not heard of his being indisposed. "

"Nor is he, at this hour. But now and then . . . After his fourthbottle . . . However, as I say, the house will certainly be crowded. "

"You'll excuse me, my friend, if I beg that you and your good wifewill trot off to the theatre to-night without troubling about me. The--er--fact is, I have come up to Plymouth primarily to consult alawyer on a somewhat delicate business, and shall be glad of a fewhours' solitude this evening to prepare my case. Do you happen, bythe way, to know of a good lawyer? I wish for the very best adviceprocurable. "

"Eh--eh? Delicate business, you say? My dear fellow, noentanglement, I hope? You always _were_, you know. . . . But I'vesaid it a thousand times--you ought to get married; and Maria agreeswith me . . . A man of your presence, carrying his years as you do. Eh? You're blushing, man. Then maybe 'tis the real thing, andyou've come up to talk over settlements?"

"Tut-tut!" interposed the Major, who indeed had coloured up, andapparently not with annoyance. "There's no woman at all in the caseI'm referring to. " But here he checked himself. "Nay, I forgot; I'mwrong there, " he admitted; "and if she hadn't had twins, I don'tbelieve 'twould have happened. "

"Curious circumstance to forget, " murmured Mr. Basket; but, perceiving that the Major was indisposed to be communicative, pressedhim no further. 

At dinner Mrs. Basket, whose welcome had at first been qualified bythe prospect of having to give to the unexpected guest her seat at_Love Between Decks_ (on which, good soul, she had set her heart), showed herself in her most amiable light. She was full of apologiesfor deserting him. "If he had only given them warning. Not but thatshe was delighted; and even now, if the Major would make use of herticket . . . And to leave him alone in the house--for the 'maid'lived two streets away, and slept at home--it sounded soinhospitable, did it not? But she hoped the Major would find hisroom comfortable; there was a table for writing; and supper would belaid in the parlour, if he should feel tired after his journey andwish to retire to bed before their return. Would he be good enoughto forbear standing upon ceremony, and remember the case-bottles inthe cellaret on the right-hand of the sideboard? Also, by the way, he must take temporary possession of the duplicate latchkey; andthen, " added Mrs. Basket, "we shall feel you are quite one of _us_. "

The Major, on his part, could only trust that his unexpected visitwould not be allowed to mar for one moment Mrs. Basket's enjoyment of_Love Between Decks_. On that condition only could he feel that hehad not unwarrantably intruded; on those terms only that he was beingtreated in sincerity as an old friend. "I am an old campaigner, madam. Permit me, using an old friend's liberty, to congratulate youon the flavour of this boiled mutton. "

In short, the Major showed himself the most complaisant of guests. At dessert, observing that Mr. Basket's eye began to wander towardsthe clock on the mantelpiece, he leapt up, protesting that he shouldnever forgive himself if, through him, his friends missed a singleline of _Love Between Decks_. 

Mr. Basket rose to his feet, with a half-regretful glance at theundepleted decanter. 

"To-morrow night, " said he, "we will treat old friendship morepiously. Believe me, Hymen, if it weren't for the seats beingreserved--"

"My dear fellow, " the Major assured him, with a challenging smile forMrs. Basket, "if you don't come back and tell me you've forgotten forthree hours my very existence, I shall pack my valise and tramp offto an inn. "

Having dismissed the worthy couple to the theatre--but a couple ofstreets distant--the Major retired with glass and decanter to hisroom, drank his quantum, smoked two pipes of tobacco very leisurably, and then, with a long sigh, drew up his chair to the table (whichMrs. Basket had set out with writing materials) and penned, with manypauses for consideration, the following letter; which, when thereader has perused it, will sufficiently explain why our hero hadblushed a while ago under Mr. Basket's interrogatory. 

 "My dear Martha, --'Sweet, ' says our premier poet, 'are the uses of adversity. ' The indignity (I will call it no less) to which my fellow-townsmen by their folly, and Sir Felix by his perfidy, have recently subjected me, is not without its compensations. On the one hand it has disillusioned me; on the other it has removed the scales from my eyes. It has, indeed, inspired me with a disgust of public life; it has taught me to think more meanly of mankind as a whole. But while weaning my ambitions-- perhaps too abruptly--from a wider sphere, it has directed me upon a happiness which has--dare I say it?--awaited me all the while beside the hearth. 

 "Let me avow, dear cousin, that when first this happy inspiration seized me, I had much ado--you know my promptitude of old--to refrain from seeking you at once and pressing my suit with that ardour which the warmth of my purpose dictated. On second thoughts, however, I decided to spare your emotions that sudden assault, and to make my demand in writing--in military phrase, to summon the garrison in form. 

 "Your tender consideration of my comfort over a period of years induces me to believe that a stronger claim on that consideration for the future may not be a matter of indifference to you. In short, I have the honour to offer you my hand, with every assurance of a lifelong fidelity and esteem. The station I ask you to adorn will be a private one. I am here to consult a lawyer how best I may release from the consequences of their folly the unfortunate men who betrayed me. This done, I lay down my chain of office and resign my commission. I will not deny that there are wounds; I look to domestic felicity to provide a balm for them. Hansombody, no doubt, will succeed me; and on the whole I am satisfied that he will passably fill an office which, between ourselves, he has for some time expected. I hope to return the day after to-morrow, and to receive the blushing answer on which I have set my heart. --Believe me, dear Coz, your affectionate

 "Sol. Hymen. "

Cynics tell us that one-half of the proposals of marriage made by menare the direct result of pique. How closely this proposal of theMajor's coincided with the recoil of his public humiliation I do notpretend to determine. Certain it is that he had no sooner writtenand sealed his letter than the shadow of a doubt began to creep overhis hot fit. 

He started up, lit his long pipe, and fell to pacing the room withagitated strides. Was he doing wisely? Matrimony, he had sometimestold his friends, is like a dip in the sea; the wise man takes it ata plunge, head first. Yes, yes; but had he given it quite sufficientreflection? Could he promise himself he would never regret? He wasnot doubting that Miss Marty would make him an excellent wife. Admirable creature, she bore every test he could apply. She wasgentle, companionable, intelligent in converse, yet never forward ingiving an opinion; too studious, rather, to efface herself; inhousehold management economical without being penurious; a notablecook and needlewoman; in person by no means uncomely, and in mind aswell as person so scrupulously neat that her unobtrusive presence, her noiseless circumspect flittings from room to room, exhaled anatmosphere of daintiness in which it was good to dwell. No, he hadno anxiety about Miss Marty. But could he be sure of himself?Had he really and truly and for ever put the ambitions of public lifebehind him? Might they not some day re-awaken as this present woundhealed and ceased to smart?

If he sent this letter, he had burnt his boats. He halted before thetable and stood for a while considering; stood there so long that hispipe went out unheeded. Ought he not to re-write his proposal andword it so as to leave himself a loophole? As he conned the name onthe address, by some trick of memory he found himself repeating MissMarty's own protest against the Millennium: "Why couldn't we be letalone, to go on comfortably?"

Confound the Millennium! Was it at the bottom of this too?The plaguy thing had a knack of intruding itself, just now, into allhe undertook, and always mischievously. It was unsettling--MissMarty's word again--infernally unsettling. He had begun to loseconfidence in himself. 

The room was hot. He stepped to the window, flung it open, and drankin the cool air of the summer night. Below him lay the garden, wherein Mr. Basket's statuary showed here and there a glimmer in thevelvet darkness. The Major turned back to the room and began toundress slowly; removing his wig, his coat, his waistcoat, and layingthem on a chair. Next he turned out his breeches pockets and tossedhis purse, with a handful of loose silver, upon the bed. With itthere jingled the spare latchkey with which Mrs. Basket had entrustedhim. 

He picked it up. . . . Yes, why should he not take a turn in thegarden to compose his mind? In his present agitation he was notlikely to woo slumber with success. . . . He slipped on his coatagain and descended the stairs, latchkey in hand. A lamp burned inthe hall, and by the light of it he read the hour on the dial of agrandfather's clock that stood sentry beside the dining-room door--five-and-twenty minutes past ten. The Baskets would not be returningfor another hour at least. He unlatched the front door, stepped out, and closed it softly behind him. 

Now mark how simply--how, with a short laugh--by the crook of alittle finger, as it were--the envious gods topple down the tallesthuman pride. 

The Major descended the front steps, halted for a moment to peer at astatuette of Hercules resting on his club, and passed on down thecentral path of the garden with a smile for his worthy friend'sfoible. A dozen paces, and his toe encountered the rim of Mr. Basket's fish-pond. . . . 

The Major went into Mr. Basket's fish-pond souse!--on all fours, precipitately, with hands wildly clawing the water amid theastonished goldfish. 

The echo of the splash had hardly lost itself in the darkgarden-alleys before he scrambled up, coughing and sputtering, andstruggling to shore rubbed the water from his eyes. Now the basinhad not been cleaned out for some months, and beneath the water, which did not exceed a foot and a half in depth, there lay a good twoinches of slime and weed, some portion of which his knuckles wereeffectively transferring to his face. He had lost a shoe. Worse than this, as he stood up, shook the water out of his breechesand turned to escape back to the house, it dawned on him that he hadlost the latchkey!

He had been carrying it in his hand at the moment of the catastrophe. . . . He sat down on the pebbled path beside the basin, flunghimself upon his stomach and, leaning over the brink as far as hedared, began to grope in the mud. After some minutes he recoveredhis shoe, but by and by was forced to abandon the search for the keyas hopeless. He had no lantern. . . . 

He cast an appealing glance up at the light in his bedroom window. His gaze travelled down to the fanlight over the front door. Andwith that the dreadful truth broke on him. Without the latchkey hecould not possibly re-enter the house. 

He unlaced and drew on his sodden shoe, and sat for a whileconsidering. Should he wait here in this dreadful plight until hishosts returned? Or might he not run down to the theatre (which laybut two short streets away), explain the accident to a doorkeeper, and get a message conveyed to Mr. Basket? Yes, this was clearly thewiser course. The streets--thank Heaven!--were dark. 

He crept to the front gate and peered forth. The roadway wasdeserted. Taking his courage in both hands, he stepped out upon thepavement and walked briskly downhill to the theatre. The distancewas a matter of five or six hundred yards only, and he met nobody. Coming in sight of the brightly-lit portico, he made a dash for itand up the steps, where he blundered full tilt into the arms of atall doorkeeper at the gallery entrance. 

"Hallo!" exclaimed the man, falling back. "Get out of this!"

"One moment, my friend--"

"Damme!" The doorkeeper, blocking the entrance, surveyed him andwhistled. "Hi, Charley!" he called; "come and take a look at this!"

A scrag-necked youth thrust his face forward from the aperture of theticket-office. 

"Well, I'm jiggered, " was his comment. "Drunk, eh? Throw him out!"

"If you'll listen for a moment, " pleaded the Major, with dignity, andbegan to search in the pockets of his sodden breeches. "I wish amessage taken . . . But dear me, now I remember, I left my moneyupstairs!"

"_On_ the gilded dressing-table beside the diamond tiyara, " suggestedthe doorkeeper. "Or maybe you cast it down, careless, on the moonlitshore afore taking your dip!"

"My good man, I assure you that I am the victim of an accident. It so happens that, by a singular chain of mischance, I have not atthis moment a penny about me. But if you will go to the reserved rowof the pit and fetch out my friend Mr. Basket--"

At this point the Major felt a hand clapped on his shoulder, andturning, was aware of two sailors, belted and wearing cutlasses, who, having lurched up the steps arm-in-arm, stood to gaze, surveying himwith a frank interest. 

"What's wrong, eh?" demanded the one who had saluted him, and turnedto his comrade, a sallow-faced man with a Newgate fringe of a beard. "Good Lord, Bill, what is it like?"

"It _looks_ like a wreck ashore, " answered the sallow-faced sailorafter a slow inspection. 

"Talk about bein' fond of the theayter! He must have _swum_ for it, "said the other, and stared at the Major round-eyed. "You'll excuseme; Ben Jope, my name is, bos'n of the _Vesuvius_ bomb; and thishere's my friend Bill Adams, bos'n's mate. _As_ I was sayin', you'llexcuse me, but you must be fond of it--a man of your age--by thelittle you make of appearances. "

"I was just explaining, " stammered the Major, "that although, mostunfortunately, I have left my purse at home--"

But here he paused as Mr. Jope looked at Mr. Adams, and Mr. Adamsanswered with a slow and thoughtful wink. 

"Go where you will, " said Mr. Jope cheerfully, stepping to theticket-office; "go where you will, and sail the high seas over, 'tiswonderful how you run across that excuse. Three tickets for thegallery, please; and you, Bill, fall alongside!" He linked an arm inthe Major's, who feebly resisted. 

"Lord love ye!" said Mr. Jope, "the lie's an old one; but a man thatplayed up to it better in appearances I never see'd nor smelt!"

CHAPTER XIII. 

A VERY HOT PRESS. 

The performance of _Love Between Decks_ had reached its famous fourthact, in which Tom Taffrail, to protect his sweetheart (who hasfollowed him to sea in man's attire), strikes the infamous FirstLieutenant and is marched off between two marines for punishment. This scene, as everyone knows, is laid on the upper deck of hisMajesty's ship _Poseidon_ (of seventy-four guns), and the management, as a condition of engaging Mr. Orlando B. Sturge (who was exacting indetails), had mounted it, at great expense, with a couple of lifelikeguns, R. And L. , and for background the overhang of the quarter-deck, with rails and a mizzen-mast of real timber against a painted clothrepresenting the rise of the poop. 

At the moment when our Major entered the gallery, the heatedatmosphere of which well nigh robbed him of breath, Tom Taffrail hadtaken up his position on the prompt side, close down by thefootlights, and thrown himself into attitude to deliver the speech ofmanly defiance which provokes the Wicked Lieutenant to descend intothe waist of the ship and receive the well-merited weight of thehero's fist. The hero, with one foot planted on a coil of real ropeand one arm supporting the half-inanimate form of his Susan, indeference to stage convention faced the audience, while with hisother arm uplifted he invoked vengeance upon the oppressor, whoscowled down from the quarterdeck rail. 

"Hear me, kyind Heaven!" declaimed Tom Taffrail, "for Heaven at leastis my witness, that beneath the tar-stained shirt of a British sailorthere may beat the heart of a _Man_!"--

As a matter of fact, Mr. Sturge was clothed in a clean blue and whitestriped shirt, with socks to match, white duck trousers no lessimmaculate, with a huge glittering brass buckle on the front of hisbelt, two buckles of smaller size but similar pattern on his polisheddancing shoes, and wore his hair in a natty pigtail tied withcherry-coloured ribbon. 

--"Hear and judge betwixt me and yonder tyrant! Let the storm offPernambuco declare who first sprang to the foretop and thence aloftto strike t'gallant yards while the good ship _Poseidon_ careenedbefore its hurricane rage! Ay, and when the main topm'st wentsmack-smooth by the board, who was it slid like lightning to the deckand, with hands yet glowing from the halliards, plucked forth axe andhewed the wreckage clear? But a truce to these reminders! 'Twas myduty, and, as a seaman, I did it!"

Here, having laid his tender burden so that her back rested againstthe coil of real rope, Mr. Sturge executed the opening steps of ahornpipe, and advancing to the footlights, stood swaying with crossedarms while the orchestra performed the prelude to his most celebratedsong. 

At this point Mr. Jope, who for some seconds had been breathing hardat the back of the Major's neck, clutched his comrade by the arm. 

"You 'eard that, Bill?" he asked in a hoarse whisper. 

"Ay, " answered Bill Adams. "He slipped down from the t'gallant yardsby the halliards. "

"Would ye mind pinchin' me?"

"Where?"

"Anywhere; in the fleshy part of the ham for choice; not toovigorous, but just to make sure. He come down by the halliards. _Which_ halliards?"

"Signal halliards, belike. Damme, why not? Aboard a vessel with thedecks laid ath'artships--"

"An' the maintopm'st went smack-smooth--you _'eard_ him? What sorto' spar--"

"Dunno"--Bill paused and audibly shifted his quid--"unless 'twas aparsnip. The mizz'n-m'st seems to have stood it, though her stays_do_ lead to a brass-headed nail in the scuppers. "

"In a gale off Pernambuco . . . 'twas his duty, and as a seaman hedid it, " quoted Mr. Jope in a low voice thrilled with awe. "Bill, wemust 'ave him. If he did but 'alf of it, we must 'ave him. In themtogs, aboard the _Vesuvius_ now . . . Lord love me, he's dancin'!"

"Ay, and he's going to sing. "

"_Sing!_"

"Mark my word, he's going to sing, " repeated Bill Adams withconfidence; and, sure enough, Mr. Sturge stepped forward and with areproachful glance at the empty Royal box uplifted his voice:

 "When honest Jack across the foam Puts forth to meet the Gallic foe, His tributary tear for home He wipes away with a Yow-heave-ho! Man the braces, Take your places, Fill the tot and push the can; He's a lubber That would blubber When Britannia needs a _Man_!"

"S'help us, Bill, what are they doing _now_?" gasped Ben Jope, as twogroups of seamen, one at either wing, took up the chorus; tailing onto a cable and heaving while they sang. 

"Fishin' the anchor, " said Bill pensively; "_that's_ what they'redoin'. She carries her catheads amidships. The ship's all right, once you get the hang of her. "

"Bill, we _must_ 'ave him!"

"Hush it, you swab! He's beginning again. "

 "But when among the heaving clouds, Aloft, alone, with folded arms, He hangs _her_ portrait in the shrouds And feeds on Susan's glowing charms, To th' horizon Soft his sighs on Angel wings the zephyrs fan, While his feelings, Deep revealings, Prove that Jack remains a _Man_!"

"'Ear that, Bill?"

"O' course I 'ears it. Why not? I _knew_ there was something funnywi' them shrouds. They carries the family portraits on 'em--it's allright, I tell you. "

"But 'feeds, ' he said. "

"Meanin' the picter; though maybe they sling the meat-safe there aswell. They _ought_ to. "

"They _couldn't_!"

"Why not? Well, then, p'raps they strikes it now and then _in_ agale--off Pernambuco--along wi' the t'gallant yards. Stow yer talk, Ben Jope, and let a man listen. "

The audience encored Mr. Sturge's song vociferously; and twice he hadto repeat it before they would suffer him to turn again and defy thestill scowling Lieutenant. 

"Ay, sir; the British seaman, before whose collective valour thecrowned tyrants of Yurope shrink with diminished heads, dares toproclaim himself a _Man_, and in despite of any petty tyrant of thequarter-deck. Humble his lot, his station, may be. Callous hehimself may be to the thund'ring of the elements or the guns of hiscountry's foemen; but never will he be found irresponsive to femaledistress in any shape or form. Leftenant Vandeloor, you haveupraised your hand against A Woman; you have struck her a Blow. In your teeth I defy you!" (Frantic applause. )

"My word, Bill, the Duke ought to been here to 'ear that!"

"But why isn't he here?" asked the Major. 

"Well, " answered Ben Jope slowly, with a glance along the crowdedgallery and a wink at Bill Adams (but the Major saw neither theglance nor the wink), "to-night, d'ye see, 'twouldn't ha' beenaltogether the thing. He's not like you and me, the Duke isn't. He has to study appearances. "

"I should have thought that, if his Royal Highness studiedpopularity, he could scarcely have found a better occasion. "

"Look here, " put in Mr. Jope sharply, "if the Duke chooses to bedrunk to-night, you may lay to it he knows his business. And lookhere again; I took you for a victim o' misfortun', but if so be asyou're startin' to teach the R'yal family tact, w'y, I changes myopinion. "

"If I could only find my friend Basket, or get a message taken tohim, " ingeminated the Major, whose teeth were chattering despite thetropical atmosphere of the gallery. 

"Eh? What's that you're sayin'?" the seaman demanded in a suddensharp tone of suspicion. "If there's a friend o' your'n in thegallery, you keep by me and point him out when the time comes. I ain't a-makin' no promise, mind; no more than to say it may be thebetter for him; but contrariwise I don't allow no messages, and youmay belay to that!"

"But my friend is not in the gallery. He has a reserved seatsomewhere. "

"Then you may take it he don't _require_ no message, bein' toler'blysafe. As for yourself, you stick to me. Understand? Whateverhappens, you stick to me. "

The Major did not understand in the least; but their conversation atthis moment was interrupted by a roar of applause from all quartersof the house as Tom Taffrail, with a realistic blow from theshoulder, laid his persecutor prostrate on the deck. 

"Brayvo!" grunted Bill Adams. "The lad's nimble enough with hisfives, I will say, for all his sea-lawyerin'. "

"We must 'ave him, Bill; if I take him myself we must 'ave him!"cried Ben Jope, dancing with admiration. '"Tis no more than a mercy, neither, after the trouble he's been and laid up for hisself. "

Into what precise degree of mental confusion Mr. Jope had workedhimself the Major could never afterwards determine; though he soonhad every opportunity to think it out at leisure. 

For the moment, as a boatswain's whistle shrilled close behind hisear, he was merely bewildered. He did not even know that the mouthsounding it was Mr. Jope's. It _ought_ to have sounded on boardH. M. S. _Poseidon_. 

As the crowd to right and left of him surged to its feet, he saw atintervals along the gallery, sailor after sailor leap up with drawncutlass. He saw some forcing their way to the exits; and as thepacked throng, swaying backwards, bore him to the giddy edge of thegallery rails, he saw the whole audience rise from their seats withwhite upturned faces. 

"The Press!" called someone. Half a dozen, then twenty, then ahundred voices took up the cry:

"The Press! The Press!"

He turned. What had become of Mr. Jope?

What, indeed? Cutlass between teeth, Mr. Jope had heaved himselfover the gallery rail, caught a pillar between his dangling feet, andslid down it to the Upper Circle; from the Upper Circle to the DressCircle; from the Dress Circle to the Pit. A dozen seamen hurrahedand followed him. To the audience screaming, scattering before them, they paid no heed at all. Their eyes were on their leader, and insilence, breathing hard, each man's teeth clenched upon his cutlass, they hounded after him and across the Pit at his heels. 

It may be that this vivid reproduction of his alleged exploit offPernambuco for the moment held Mr. Orlando B. Sturge paralysed. At any rate, he stood by the footlights staring, with a face on whichresentment faded into amaze, amaze into stupefaction. 

It is improbable that he dreamed of any personal danger until themoment when Mr. Jope, leaping the orchestra and crashing, on his way, through an abandoned violoncello, landed across the footlights andclapped him on the shoulder. 

"Never you mind, lad!" cried Mr. Jope cheerfully, taking the cutlassfrom between his teeth and waving it. "You'll get better treatmentalong o' we. "

"What mean you? Unhand me--Off, I say, minion!"

"It'll blow over, lad; it'll blow over. You take my advice and comequiet--Oh, but we _want_ you!--an' if you hear another word aboutthis evening's work I'll forfeit my mess. "

"Hands off, ruffian! Help, I say, there--Help!"

"Shame! Shame!" cried a dozen voices. But nine-tenths of theaudience were already pressing around the doors to escape. 

At a nod from Mr. Jope, two seamen ran and cut the cords supportingthe drop-scene. 

"Heads, there! Heads!"

The great roller fell upon the stage with a resounding bang. 

With the thud of it, a hand descended and smote upon the Major'sshoulder. 

"Come along o' me. _You'll_ give no trouble, anyway. "

"Eh?" said the Major. "My good man, I assure you that I have not theslightest disposition to interfere. These scenes are regrettable, ofcourse. I have heard of them, but never actually assisted at onebefore; still, I quite see the necessity of the realm demands it, andthe realm's necessity is--or should be--the supreme law with all ofus. "

"And you can _swim_. You'd be surprised, now, how few of 'em couldtake a stroke to save their lives. Leastways, " Mr. Adams confessed, "that's _my_ experience. "

"I beg your pardon. "

"Ben's impulsive. I over'eard him tellin' you to stick fast to him;but, all things considered, that's pretty difficult, ain't it?Never you mind; _I'll_ see you aboard the tender. "

"Aboard the tender?"

The Major stepped back a pace as the fellow's absurd mistake dawnedon him. "Why, you impudent scoundrel, I'm a Justice of the Peace!"

But here a rush of the driven crowd lifted and bore him against thegallery rail. A hand close by shattered the nearest lamp intodarkness, and the flat of a cutlass (not Bill Adams's) descendingupon our hero's head, put an end for the while to speech andconsciousness. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE "VESUVIUS" BOMB. 

He awoke with a racking headache in pitchy darkness; and with thetwilight of returning consciousness there grew in him an awful fearthat he had been coffined and buried alive. For he lay at fulllength in a bed which yet was unlike any bed of his acquaintance, being so narrow that he could neither turn his body nor put out anarm to lift himself into a sitting posture; and again, when he triedto move his legs, to his horror they were compressed as if betweenbandages. In his ear there sounded, not six inches away, a lowlugubrious moaning. It could not come from a bed-fellow, for he hadno bed-fellow. . . . No, it could be no earthly sound. 

With a strangled cry he flung a hand upwards, fending off thehorrible darkness. It struck against a board, and at the sameinstant his cry was echoed by a sharp scream close beside him. 

"Angels and ministers of Gerrace defend us!" The scream sank to ahoarse whisper and was accompanied by a clank of chains. "Not dead?You--you are not dead?"

The Major lay back in a cold sweat. "I--I thought I was, " hequavered at length. But at this point his mysterious bed seemed tosway for a moment beneath him, and he caught his breath. "Where amI?" he gasped. 

"At sea, " answered the voice in a hollow tone. 

"At sea!" In a sudden spasmodic attempt to sit upright, the Majoralmost rolled himself out of his hammock. 

"Ay, poor comrade--if you are indeed he whom I saw lifted aboardunconscious from the tender--'tis the dismal truth. "

 "Beneath the Orlop's darksome shade Unknown to Sol's bright ray, Where no kind chink's assistant aid Admits the cheerful day. 

"I am not, in the practical sense, seaman enough to determine if thisnoisome den be the precise part of the ship alluded to by the poetunder the name of Orlop. But the circumstances correspond; and mystomach informs me that the vessel is in motion. "

"The vessel?" echoed the Major, incredulous yet. "_What_ vessel?"

"As if to omit no detail of horror, she is called, I believe, the_Vesuvius_ bomb. Phoebus, what a name!"

It drummed for some seconds in the Major's ear like an echo. 

"Yes, yes . . . The theatre, " he murmured. 

"The theatre? You were in the theatre? Then you saw _me_?"

"I beg your pardon. "

"_Me_--Orlando B. Sturge. Yes, sir, if it be any consolation to you, know that I, Orlando B. Sturge, of the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, am your temporary partner in adversity, your co-mate and brother inexile, with the added indignity of handcuffs; and all by an errorwhich would be absurd if it weren't so infernally serious. "

"There has been some horrible mistake. "

"A mistake, sir, for which these caitiffs shall pay dearly, "Mr. Sturge promised in his deepest tragedy voice. 

"A Justice of the Peace!"

"Eh?"

"With a Major's commission!"

"Pardon, I think you must be confusing me with some other person. Orlando B. Sturge is my name, sir, and familiar--as I may say withoutvanity--wherever the Thespian art is honoured. But yesterday thedarling of the public; and now, in the words of our national bard:"

 "'--Now lies he here, And none so poor to do him reverence. '

"You are familiar with the works of Shakespeare, sir? Your speech, ifyou will allow me to say so, suggests a respectable education. "

"I have dipped into them, " answered the Major inattentively, absorbedin his own woes. 

"My consolation is, this will get into the newspapers; and then letthese ignorant ruffians beware!"

"The newspapers! God forbid!" The Major shuddered. 

"Ha?" Mr. Sturge drew back in dark surprise. "'Tis the language ofdelirium. He raves. What ho, without there!" he called aloud. 

"What the devil's up?" responded a voice from the darkness behind theMajor's head. It belonged to a marine standing sentry outside aspare sail which shut off the _Vesuvius's_ sick bay from the rest ofthe lower deck. 

"A surgeon, quick! Here's a man awake and delirious. "

"All right. You needn't kick up such a row, need you?" growled themarine. 

"Like Nero, I am an angler in a lake of darkness. You havehandcuffed me, moreover, so that even if this accursed sty contains abell-rope--which is improbable--I am debarred from using it. A light, there, and a surgeon, I say!"

The marine let fall the sail flap and withdrew, grumbling. But apparently Mr. Sturge's mode of giving an order, being unlikeanything in his experience, had impressed him; for by and by a faintray illumined the dirty whitewashed beams over the Major's hammock, and four persons squeezed themselves into the sick bay--the marineholding a lantern and guiding the ship's surgeon, who was followed inturn by our friends Mr. Jope and Mr. Bill Adams. 

The _Vesuvius_ bomb, measuring but a little more than ninety feetover all, with a beam of some twenty-seven feet, and carrying seventyodd men and boys, with six long six-pounder guns and a couple ofheavy mortars, could spare but scanty room for hospitalaccommodation. At a pinch, a dozen hammocks could be slung in theden which the marine's lantern revealed; but how a dozen sick mencould recover there, and how the surgeon could move between thehammocks to perform his ministrations, were mysteries happily leftunsolved. As it was, the two invalids and their visitors crowded theplace to suffocation. 

"Delirious, you say?" hemmed the surgeon, a bald little man with atwinkling eye, an unshaven chin and a very greasy shirt frill. "Well, well, give me your pulse, my friend. Better a blister on theneck than a round shot at your feet, hey? I near upon gave you upwhen they brought you aboard--upon my word I did. " The Majorgroaned. "You seemed a humane man, sir, " he answered feebly. "Spare me your blisters and get me put ashore, for pity's sake!"

The doctor shook his head. "My good fellow, we weighed an hour agowith a fresh northerly breeze. I haven't been on deck, but by thecant of her we must be clear of the Sound already and hauling up forPortsmouth. "

"On your peril you detain me, sir! I'll have your fool of a captainbroken for this--cashiered, sir--kicked out of the service, byHeaven! I am a Justice of the Peace, I tell you!"

"And _coram_, " put in Mr. Sturge, "and _custalorum_. He'll make aStar-Chamber matter of it. . . . The poor fellow's raving, I tellyou. A curse on your inhumanity! But I can wait for my revenge atPortsmouth. Approach, fellows, and knock off those gyves. "

"Justice of the Peace!" echoed Ben Jope, paying no attention whateverto Mr. Sturge, but turning on Bill Adams with round, wondering eyes. "I _told_ you he was something out o' the common. And you ain't hadno more sense than to knock him over the head with a cutlass!"

"I did not, " protested Bill Adams. "He took it accidental, you beingotherwise engaged; an' I stuck to the creatur', thinkin' as how you_wanted_ him. "

"But _why_ should I want him?"

"Damned if I know. If it comes to that"--Bill Adams jerked a thumbtowards the hammock containing Mr. Sturge--"what d'ye want _him_for?"

"Oh, _him_?" answered Mr. Jope with a grin. "In a gale offPernambuco--"

"What on earth are you two talking about?" asked the surgeon, who hadseated himself on the deck and, with the lantern between his feet, was busily preparing a blister. 

"Beggin' your pardon, sir, but you haven't been on deck yet?You haven't _seen_ the ducks we brought aboard last night?"

"My good man, can I be in two places at once? I have been up allnight with Mr. Wapshott, and the devil of a time he's given me. When they brought me this poor fellow, I hadn't time to do more thanorder him into hammock--indeed I hadn't. Now, then"--he stood on hisfeet again and addressed the marine--"fetch me a basin of water andI'll bathe his head. "

"Is Mr. Wapshott bad, sir?" asked Ben Jope. 

"H'm, " the surgeon hesitated. "Well, I don't mind admitting to youthat he was very bad indeed; but about six bells I got a draught totake effect, and he has been sleeping ever since. "

"And you didn't see the Captain brought aboard, sir?"

"I did not. 'Brought, ' you say?"

Ben Jope nodded his head, and for a moment or two watched in silencethe sponging of our Major's scalp. "I've known this here ship in thevariousest kinds o' weathers, " he announced at length, with quietconviction, "but they was fool's-play one and all compared withwhat's ahead of us. "

"If it comes to that again, " put in Bill Adams, "I don't see but thishere Justice o' the Peace is the plum o' the whole bunch. Maybe"--heturned to his friend--"you ain't never seen a Justice o' the Peace?I hev'. "

"W'y, " asked Ben Jope, "what's there peculiar about 'em?"

"I got committed by one some years ago, " Mr. Adams answered, with agrave effort of memory. "At a place called Farnham, it was, a wayinland up the Portsmouth Road. Me and the landlord of a public therecame to words, by reason he called his house 'The Admiral Howe, ' buton his signboard was the face of a different man altogether. WherebyI asked him why he done so. Whereby he said the painter didn't knowHow. Whereby I knocked him down, and he called in the constables andswore he'd meant it for a joke; and they took me afore a Justice; andthe Justice said he wouldn't yield to nobody in his respect for ourNavy, but here was a case he must put his foot down, and if necessarywith an iron hand; and gave me seven days. Which I mention because Icouldn't pay the fine, having no more than a few coppers besides whatI stood up in, and was then on my way home from the wreck of the_Duck Sammy_ brig, which went ashore on the back of the Wight. But if you ask me what was peculiar about the man, he was calledBart. --Sir Samuel Brooks Bart. --and lived in a fine house as big asGreenwich Hospital, with a gold watch-chain across his belly youcould have moored a pinnace by, and gold in his pocketscorrespondin'. Whereby I larned ever since to know my betters whenashore, and behave myself lowly and give 'em a wide berth. But thisisn't one, nor the beginnings of one, for I took the liberty tos'arch his pockets. "

"Indeed, sir, " our hero appealed to the surgeon, "my name is Hymen--Major Solomon Hymen--of Troy, in Cornwall. On inquiry you will findthat I am actually Chief Magistrate of that borough. Nay, I imploreyou--"

The surgeon, having bathed the wound and bound it with three stripsof plaster, took up the blister, and was on the point of applying it, using persuasions indeed, but with the air of one who would take nodenial, when a terrible outcry at once arrested him and drowned theMajor's protestations. 

The cry--it sounded like the roar of a wounded bull--came from thedeck overhead. Its echoes sounded the very bowels of the ship; butat the first note of it Ben Jope had clutched Bill Adams by the arm. 

"He's seen 'em!" he gasped. "Run, doctor, run--there's a dear soul--or he'll be doin' murder!"

"Seen what?"

"Run, I tell you! Come!" Suiting the action to the word, Mr. Jope, still gripping his comrade's arm, rushed him out of the sick bay, thedoctor and the marine at their heels. In the excitement, the Majortumbled out of his hammock, tore aside the sail-flap, and staggeredafter them along the dim and empty lower-deck to a ladder which ledup to daylight. 

How to describe the spectacle which met his dazzled eyes as he thrusthis head above the hatchway? Aloft the _Vesuvius_ spread her fullsails in cloud upon cloud of dove-coloured grey (for, in fact, shecarried very dingy canvas) against the blue of heaven, and reachedalong with the northerly breeze on her larboard quarter, heelinggently, yet just low enough for the Major to blink as his gaze, travelling beyond the lee bulwarks, caught the dazzle of foam knockedup and spreading off her blunt bows. But not long did he gaze onthis; for in the scuppers under the bulwarks, in every attitude ofcomplete woe, some prostrate, some supine, all depicted with theliveliest yellows and greens of seasickness beneath their theatricalpaint, lay the crew of H. M. S. _Poseidon_. Yes, even the wickedLieutenant reclined there with the rest, with one hand upraised andgrasping a ring-bolt, while the soft sway of the ship now lifted hisgarish tinselled epaulettes into the sunlight, now sank and drewacross them, as upon a dial, the edge of the bulwarks' shadow. 

Right above this disconsolate group, and almost right above theMajor's head as he thrust it through the hatchway--or, to be moreprecise, at the head of the ladder leading to the _Vesuvius's_ poop--clung a little wry-necked, red-eyed, white-faced man in dishevelleduniform, and capered in impotent fury. But as when a child ischastised he yells once and there follows a pause of many secondswhile he gathers up lung and larynx for the prolonged outcry, soafter his first bull-roar Captain Crang, of the _Vesuvius_ bomb, clung to the rail of the poop-ladder and wrestled for speech, while alittle forward of the waist his crew huddled before the storm, yet(although the Major failed to perceive this) not without exchangingwinks. 

"Wha--_what_? In the name of ten thousand devils, what the '----'is _that_?" yelled the Captain, and choked again. 

"_In_ a gale--_off_ Pernambuco, " murmured Mr. Jope. "Steady, Bill;steady does it, mind!" Advancing to the foot of the ladder, hetouched his forelock and stood at attention. "Pressed men, sir. Found in the theayter and brought aboard, as _per_ special order. "

The Captain's throat could be seen working within his disorderedcravat. "Them! But--Oh, help me--look at 'em, Bos'n!"

"Sir!"

"Look at' em!"

"It's not for me to object, sir. As you was sayin', they don't lookit; but bein' ear-marked, so to speak--"

"Where is Mr. Wapshott?"

"Below, sir, as I understand, " answered Mr. Jope demurely. 

"You mean to tell me, you '--' '--', that Mr. Wapshott allowed--"

But just then, from a hatchway immediately behind Captain Crang, there slowly emerged--there uprose--a vision whereat our Major wasnot the only spectator to hold his breath. A shock of dishevelledred hair, a lean lantern-jawed face, desperately pallid; these werefollowed by a long crane-neck, and this again was continued by a pairof shoulders of such endless declivity as surely was never seen butin dreams. And still, as the genie from the fisherman's bottle, theapparition evolved itself and ascended, nor ceased growing until itoverlooked the Captain's shoulder by a good three-fourths of a yard, when it put out two hands as if seeking support and stood swaying, with a vague, uneasy smile. 

"D'ye hear me?" thundered the Captain, leaning forward over theladder. 

"Ay, ay, sir, " Ben Jope answered cheerfully. 

"Then what the '--' are ye staring at, you son of a '--'? Like astuck pig, '--' you! Like a clock-face! Like a glass-eyed cat in a'--' thunderstorm! Like a--"

Here, as Captain Crang drew breath to reload, so to speak, a slightyawing of the ship (for which the helmsman might be forgiven) broughtthe tall shadow of the apparition athwart his shoulder, and fetchedhim about with an oath. 

"Eh? So _there_ you are!"

Mr. Wapshott, still with his vague smile, titubated a moment, advanced with a sort of circumspect dancing motion to the rail of thepoop, laid two shaking hands upon it, heaved a long sigh, and noddedaffably. 

"_Tha's_ all right. Where else?"

"Look there, sir!" Captain Crang wagged a forefinger at the crowd inthe scuppers. "I want your explanation of _that!_"

Mr. Wapshott brought his gaze to bear on the point indicated; but notuntil he had scanned successively the deck gratings, the rise of theforecastle and the main shrouds. 

"Re-markable, " he answered slowly. "Mos' remarkable. One funniestthings ever saw in my life. Wha's yours?"

"My what, sir?"

"Eggs. Eggs-planation. Mus' ask you, sir, be so good hear me out. "

"Good Lord!" With a sudden look of horror Captain Crang let go hishold of the poop-ladder and staggered back against the bulwarks. "You don't mean--you're not telling me--that _I_ brought thatmenagerie aboard last night!" His gaze wandered helplessly from thefirst officer to the crew forward. 

"Now then, Bill, steady does it, " whispered Mr. Jope, and salutedagain. "You'll excuse me, sir, but Mr. Wapshott was below last nightwhen we brought you aboard from dinin' with his R'yal Highness. "

"I remember nothing, " groaned Captain Crang. "I never _do_ rememberwhen--and before the Duke too!"

Mr. Jope coughed. "His R'yal Highness, sir--if you'll let me sayso--was a bit like what you might call everyone else last night. He shook hands very affectionate, sir, at parting, an' hoped to haveyour company again before long. "

"Did he so? Did he so?" said Captain Crang. "And--er--could you atthe same time call to mind what I answered?"

Mr. Jope looked down modestly. "Well, sir, having my hands full atthe time wi' this here little lot, I dunno as I can rememberprecisely. Was it something about the theayter, Bill?" he demanded, turning to Mr. Adams. 

"It wor, " answered Mr. Adams sturdily. 

"And as how you'd never shipped a crew o' playactors afore, but you'ddo your best?"

"Either them very words or to that effect, " confirmed Mr. Adams, breathing hard and staring defiantly at the horizon. 

"The theatre? . . . I was at the theatre?" Captain Crang passed ashaking hand over his brow. "No, damme! . . . And yet I remember nowat dinner I heard the Duke say--"

Here it was Captain Crang's turn to stare dumbfounded at anapparition, as a pair of handcuffed wrists thrust themselves upthrough the main hatchway and were painfully followed by the rest ofMr. Orlando B. Sturge. 

"Oh, good Lord! Look! Is the ship full of 'em?" shouted theCaptain. 

"They ain't real, " murmured Mr. Wapshott soothingly. "You'll getaccustomed. They began by being frogs, " he explained, with theinitiatory air of an elder brother, and waved a feeble hand. "Eggs--if you'll 'low me, sir, to conclude--egg-sisting in the 'maginationonly. Go 'way--shoo!"

But Mr. Sturge was not to be disembodied so easily. On the contrary, as the vessel lurched, he sat down suddenly with a material thud andclash of handcuffs upon the poultry-coop, nor was sooner haled to hisfeet by the strong arm of Mr. Adams than he struck an attitude andopened on the Captain in his finest baritone. 

"'Look, ' say'st thou? Ay, then, look! Nay, gloat if thou wilt, tyrant--miscreant shall I say?--in human form! Yielding, if I mayquote my friend here"--Mr. Sturge laid both handcuffed hands on theshoulder of Bill Adams--"yielding to none, I say, in my admiration ofBritain's Navy, I hold myself free to protest against the lawlessnessof its minions. I say deliberately, sir, its minions. My name, sir, is Orlando B. Sturge. If that conveys aught to such an intelligenceas yours, you will at once turn this vessel round and convey us backto Plymouth with even more expedition than you brought us hither. "

Captain Crang fell back and caught at the mizzen shrouds. 

"Was I so bad as all that?" he stammered, as Ben Jope, believing himattacked by apoplexy, rushed up the poop-ladder and bent over him. 

"Lor' bless you, sir, " said Mr. Jope, "the best of us may be mistakenat times. But as I've al'ays said, and will maintain, gentlemen willbe gentlemen. "

But Captain Crang, letting slip his grasp of the shrouds, plumpeddown on deck in a sitting posture and with a sound like the echo ofhis own name. 

CHAPTER XV. 

UP-CHANNEL. 

 "A wet sheet and a flowing sea, "

(Sings Allan Cunningham), "A wind that follows fast, And fills the white and rustling sail And bends the gallant mast; And bends the gallant mast, my boys, When, like an eagle free, Away the good ship flies, and leaves Old England on the lee. "

I quote these famous lines for their spirit rather than theiraccuracy. It is not every ship that can so defy the laws of natureas to run off a lee shore with a shore wind; and the _Vesuvius_ bomb, reaching up Channel with a rare nor'-nor'-westerly breeze, kept oldEngland well to windward all the time. But as Mr. Sturge explainedto the Major, later in the day, "Without being a practical seaman, anartist can yet catch the spirit of these things and impart it to hisfellow-men. "

Mr. Sturge was not criticising (by anticipation) Allan Cunningham'slines, but talking, as usual, about himself. Many circumstancescombined to induce a cheerful mood in him. To begin with, hismanacles had been removed. Also he had overcome the morning'snausea. The _Vesuvius_--a deep vessel for her size--was by no meansspeedy off the wind, and travelled indeed like a slug; but her frame, built for the heavy mortars, was extraordinarily stout in comparisonwith her masts, and this gave her stability. She was steering acourse, too, which kept her fairly close inshore and in smooth water. 

Indeed, so far as physical conditions went, Mr. Sturge was enjoying apleasure trip. His bold expostulations, moreover (for he did notlack courage), had considerably impressed Captain Crang, who, thoughnot easily cowed as a rule, met them at a double disadvantage, beingat once unable to recall the events of overnight, and firmlyconvinced that the whole misadventure was a trick of his RoyalHighness. In this state of mind the Captain, shaken by his debauch, had almost collapsed before Mr. Sturge's demand that the ship shouldbe put about--or, as he expressed it, turned round--and navigated tothe nearest point of shore. 

"If, " said Mr. Sturge, with a comprehensive wave of the hand, "ifalong yon coast, in cove or bay or any natural recess--call it howyou will--there lurk a bench of magistrates insensate enough, as youbelieve, to uphold this violation of a British subject's liberty, steer for them, sir! I challenge you to steer for them! I can sayno fairer than that. Select what tribunal you please, sir, and Iwill demonstrate before it that I and my companions, in spite ofappearances, are _no_ seamen. You are to understand that by thisdisclaimer I cast no reflection upon even the humblest toiler of thedeep. Nay, while myself inept either to trim the sail or net thefinny tribes, I respect those hardy callings--no man more so. Only Iclaim that my own profession exempts me from this respectable butun-congenial service; and that in short, sir, by forcibly trepanningme, you have rendered yourself liable to swingeing damages, besidesinviting public attention to the fact that you were senselesslyintoxicated last night. "

This harangue, admirably delivered, took Captain Crang between windand water. It was in vain he looked to his first officer for help. Mr. Wapshott, still swaying by the poop rail, lifted and wagged anadmonitory forefinger. 

"No use y'r asking me, " said Mr. Wapshott. "_I_ didn't dine with theDuke. " He paused and asked with sudden inconsequent heartiness, "Well, and how did you get along, you two?"

"If only I could tell!" murmured Captain Crang, passing a hand overhis brow. 

"Not stuck-up, I hope? Affable? I'll bet any man sixpence he wasaffable. Mind you, I don't speak from 'xperience, " went on Mr. Wapshott, more in sorrow than in anger. "_I_ don't dine out withAdmirals of the Fleet. The Blood Royal don't invite James Wapshottto take a cup of kindness yet for auld lang syne, for auld lang syne, my dear, for auld. . . . You'll excuse me, sir, some little emotion;Robert Burns--Robbie--affecting beggar, mor' specially in hishomelier passages. A ploughman, sir; and from Ayrshire, damme!"

 "'Wee sleekit crimson-tippit beastie--'"

"Are you addressing me, sir?" roared Captain Crang. 

"Norratall. Field-mouse. _That_"--Mr. Wapshott drew himself up--"_that's_ the 'stonishing thing about it. "

"Go to your cabin, sir, " the Captain commanded; "and you, Mr. What's-your-name, come below and explain yourself. "

Thus, not without dignity, he withdrew from the field. But hewas beaten; and in his cabin a few minutes later he capitulated. Mr. Sturge having been convinced that the ship could not be turnedaround and headed back for Plymouth without grave inconvenience, andperhaps detriment to his Majesty's service, it was agreed that he andhis company should be packed ashore immediately on reachingPortsmouth. The question of compensation was waived by consent;though Captain Crang shrewdly expressed his hope that, whatever stepsMr. Sturge might take after consulting a solicitor, his RoyalHighness would not be dragged into the affair. 

In short, Mr. Sturge reappeared on deck in high spirits. He hadbearded a British officer--and a formidable one--in his den and hadcome off victorious. He had secured his own liberty and hiscomrades', and (as reflection told him) a first-class advertisementto boot. Altogether, he had done very well indeed; and Mr. Jope, chastened by his own narrow escape from a situation which at onemoment had promised to be serious, wisely left him all the credit ofthis lucky turn of affairs. Mr. Jope, who ranked next to the Captainand First Officer on the ship's executive, and actually ruled herduring their indisposition, exacted no work from his prisoners; butwas content to admire them from a distance--as, indeed, did the restof the crew--retiring from time to time behind convenient shelters tohide their indecorous mirth. During the afternoon it may be saidthat Mr. Sturge's troupe had the deck aft of the forecastle tothemselves. Being unacquainted with naval usage, they roamed thepoop indifferently with the main deck, no man forbidding them, whileCaptain Crang and Mr. Wapshott slumbered below; the one of setpurpose, in the hope of recapturing through the gates of horn, if notthe complete data of last night's imbroglio, at least sufficient fora plausible defence; the other under the influence of sedativesadministered by the Doctor. 

"I should soon get used to this life, d'ye know?" announced Mr. Sturge, approaching the Major with a jaunty, almost extra-nauticalstep, and clapping him, seaman fashion, on the shoulder. 

It was the hour of sunset. The _Vesuvius_, bowling along merrily, abare three miles off Berry Head, had opened the warm red-sandstonecliffs of Torbay; and the Major, leaning over the larboard bulwark, gazed on the slowly moving shore in gloomy abstraction. He had beenless fortunate than Mr. Sturge in his encounter with the Captain, whom he had interrupted in the act of retiring to slumber. 

"One moment, sir, " he had begun, confidently enough. "Theaccomplished _artiste_ to whose representations you have been goodenough to listen, has told you--so far as he is concerned--the simpletruth. To a certain extent I can corroborate him. But I beg you tounderstand that he and I--if I may employ a nautical phrase--are notin the same boat. "

"Who the devil may _you_ be?" Captain Crang interposed. 

"That, sir, " answered the Major with dignity, "is precisely what Ipropose to explain. By an accident I find myself without avisiting-card; but my name, sir, is Hymen--Major Hymen, sir--of theTroy Volunteer Artillery (better known to you, perhaps, as theGallants), and Chief Magistrate of that ancient and picturesquelittle borough. "

Captain Crang stared at him for a moment with lowered brows and jawworking as if it chewed the cud of his wrath. 

"Look here, " he replied. "You're the funny man of the troupe, Isuppose? Comic Irishman and that sort of thing, hey?"

"I assure you, sir--"

"And I assure _you_, sir, that if you come the funny dog over me, I'll have you up to the gratings in two shakes of a duck's tail, andtickle your funny ribs with three dozen of the best. Understand?"The Captain paused, trembling with rage. "Understand, hey, you'--' little barnstorming son of a '--'? Made a mistake, have I?Cut your capers at my expense, would you, you little baldheaded runt?By '--' if you pull another face at me, sir, you shall caper off theyardarm, sir; on a string, sir; high as Haman, sir! I hope, sir, "wound up Captain Crang, recovering his calm, "that on this point, atany rate, I have left no room for misunderstanding. "

It will excite no wonder that Mr. Sturge found the Major somewhatirresponsive to his own jubilant mood. 

"I should soon get used to this life, " he repeated. "There's aspirit in it--a breeziness, I may call it--which is positivelyinfectious. You don't find it so?"

"I do not, " the Major confessed. 

Mr. Sturge pointed his toe and seemed about to execute the firststeps of a hornpipe, but checked himself. 

"Rough tongue, the Captain's?" he queried. 

The Major swallowed a lump in his throat but did not answer. 

"Hasty temper. Under the circumstances, we may make some littleexcuse, perhaps. "

"I prefer not to discuss it. The man has insulted me. "

"His bark is worse than his bite, I find, " said Mr. Sturgecomplacently. "And, after all, the moment you chose was notprecisely opportune--was it, now?"

"I am not used, sir, to have my word doubted by any man. "

"Well, but--appearances considered--you pitched it pretty strong, eh?Local magnate, and that sort of thing . . . It _did_ seem like takingadvantage of his condition. "

"Advantage? Appearances? What do you mean, sir?"

The Major turned resentfully, and at the same instant recollectedthat he wore no wig. He blushed, His hand went up to his scalp. 

"Makes a difference, " said Mr. Sturge. "Allow me. " He drew from thebreast of his shirt a small pocket mirror. "I carry it always. Useful--tittivate myself--in the wings. "

"The wings?" echoed the Major dully, taking the glass. He gazed intoit and started back with a cry. 

What an image was there confronting him! Was this the face of Troy'sChief Magistrate? (forgive the blank verse). Were these thefeatures--was this the aspect--from which virtue had so often derivedits encouragement and wrongdoing its reproof? Was this the figurethe ladies of Troy had been wont to follow with all but idolatrousgaze? Nay, who was this man--unshaven, unkempt, unbewigged, smearedwith mud from head to foot, and from scalp to jaw with comminglingbloodstains? The Major groaned incredulous, horrified; gazed, shuddered, and groaned again. 

"Mind you, " said Mr. Sturge reassuringly, "I'm not calling the truthof your story into question for a moment. But under thecircumstances you'll allow it was a trifle stiff. "

"It is true to the last particular, " insisted the Major, recoveringhis dignity. 

"But come, now! Without a penny in your pocket, or so much as ascrap of paper to identify you, you'll admit it was stiff?Look here, " he went on with a change of tone, slipping his armamicably within the Major's, "I've an idea. Comrades in adversity, you know, and all that sort of thing. I've taken a liking to you, and can do you a good turn. Drop that yarn of yours--'yarn, 'seafaring expression; odd how one catches the _colour_, so to speak. Drop that yarn of yours. You're one of _us_, understand? TheCaptain'll believe that; indeed, he believes it already--called you adamned low-comedy man in my hearing. Very well; soon as we anchoroff Spithead, he outs with a boat and lands us ashore. I have hissolemn promise. Leave me to square that bos'n fellow--Jope, orwhatever he calls himself--and the job's as good as done. "

"And do you seriously propose, " interrupted the Major, folding hisarms, "that I should pass myself off for a play-actor? Never, sir;never!"

"Why not?" asked Mr. Sturge easily. 

"I forbear, sir, to wound your feelings by explaining why yoursuggestion is repugnant to me. Let it suffice that I detest deceit, subterfuge, equivocation; or, if that suffice not, let me ask if youdo not propose, on reaching shore, to institute legal proceedingsagainst this petty tyrant?"

"Probably. "

"Why, then, and how much more reparation does he not owe _me_, aJustice of the Peace? Nay, sir, he shall pay me damages for thiskidnapping; but he has not stopped short there. He has used languageto me which can only be wiped out in blood. My first business onstepping ashore will be to seek someone through whom I can convey mydemand for satisfaction. With what face, think you, could I presentthis cartel if my own behaviour had been other than correct?"

"You're not telling me you mean to fight him?" asked Mr. Sturge, convinced by this time that he had to deal with a lunatic. 

"Pardon me. " The Major bowed with grave irony. "This conversation, sir, was of your seeking. I have paid you, it appears, too high acompliment in assuming that you would understand what follows when agentleman is called the son of a--!"

Mr. Sturge shrugged his shoulders and walked forward to seek BenJope, whom he found by the forecastle hatchway engaged in slicing aquid of black tobacco. 

"You'll excuse me, " he asked, "but that rum little man who callshimself Hymen--where did he escape from?"

"Escape!" Ben Jope sprang to his feet, but catching sight of theMajor, who had resumed his pensive attitude by the bulwarks, sat downagain heavily. "Lord, but you frightened me! That Hymen don'tescape; not if I know it. He's the apple of my eye, or becoming so. Now I tell you, " said Mr. Jope, beginning to slice again at histobacco, then pausing to look up with engaging frankness; "you tookmy fancy terrible for a few minutes; but, come to see you bydaylight, you're too pink. "

Mr. Sturge might have pressed for an explanation; but at thisjuncture the first lieutenant of H. M. S. _Poseidon_ came forward, still with his painted scowl, and demanded to know, since the_Vesuvius_ could not reach Portsmouth for many hours, when supperwould be served, and what bedroom accommodation she provided. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

FAREWELL TO ALBION!

Shortly after noon next day, the wind still holding from the N. N. W. , though gradually falling light, the _Vesuvius_ dropped anchor offSpithead, and Captain Crang at once ordered a boat's crew to conveythe captives ashore. 

The Major waved farewell to them from the deck. Though once againapproached by Mr. Sturge, he had repelled all persuasions. In hisbreast there welled up an increasing bitterness against his fate, buton the point of dignity he could not be shaken. He would, on thefirst fit occasion, have Captain Crang's blood; but he was obdurate, though it cost him liberty for a while and compelled him todisgusting hardship, to stand on the strictest terms of quarrel. 

He turned to find the boatswain at his elbow, eyeing him withsympathy and even a touch of respect. 

"You done well, " said Mr. Jope. "You don't look it, but you donewell, and I'll see you don't get put upon. "

The _Vesuvius's_ destination, as the Major learnt, was to join asquadron watching the Gallo-Batavian flotilla off the ports ofBoulogne, Ambleteuse and Calais; and the occasion of her droppinganchor off Portsmouth on the way was a special and somewhat singularone; yet no more singular than the crisis with which Great Britainhad then to cope. 

Behind the sandhills from Ostend around to Etaples lay a French armyof 130, 000 men, ready to invade us if for a few hours it could catchour fleets napping. To transport them Napoleon had collected in theports of Ostend, Dunkirk, Calais, Ambleteuse, Vimereux, Boulogne andEtaples, 954 transports and 1339 armed vessels--gun-brigs, schooners, luggers, schuyts and prames; and all these light vessels lay snug intheir harbours, protected by shoals and sandbanks which our heavierships of war, by reason of their draught, could not approach. 

In particular, a double tier of vessels--one hundred and fifty inall--which were moored outside the pier of Boulogne, and protected byheavy shore batteries, excited while it baulked the rage of ourgallant seamen manoeuvring in the deep waters of the Channel. 

Strange diseases suggest strange remedies. Our Admiralty, in thespring of the year, had been approached by an ingenious gentlemanwith the model of an invention by which he professed himself able toreach these hundred and fifty ships in Boulogne and blow them in airwithout loss or even danger to our fleet. This machine consisted ofa box, about twenty feet long by three feet wide, lined with lead, caulked, tarred, ballasted and laden almost to the water's edge withbarrels of powder and other combustibles. In the midst of theinflammable matter was placed a clockwork mechanism which, on thewithdrawal of a peg, would in a fixed time (within some ten minutesor thereabouts) ignite and explode the vessel. 

A dozen of these engines, claimed the inventor, if towed within rangeand released, to be swept down upon Boulogne pier by the tide, wouldwithin a few minutes shatter and dispel the nightmare of invasion. 

The Admiralty sanctioned the experiment, news of which had awakenedsome interest not unmixed with derision throughout the British Fleet;and the business which called the _Vesuvius_ to Portsmouth was totake in tow the first of these catamarans (as our sailors calledthem) and convey it across to the squadron watching Boulogne. 

On the morning after the _Vesuvius's_ arrival, two dockyard boatsarrived with the hull of the machine in tow--it resembled nothing somuch as a mahogany coffin--and attached her to the _Vesuvius's_ sternby a kind of shoreline. This done, the officer in charge presentedhimself on board with the clockwork under his arm, and in his hand aletter for Captain Crang, the first result of which was an order todress ship. Within half an hour the _Vesuvius's_ crew had adornedher from bowsprit to trucks and from trucks to stern with bunting, asif for a Birthday; though, as Mr. Jope observed, with a glance at thecatamaran astern, the preparations pointed rather to a funeral. Mr. Jope, as third officer of the ship, betrayed some soreness thathis two superiors had not taken him into their confidence. 

At eleven o'clock Captain Crang and Mr. Wapshott appeared on the poopin full uniform, and a further order was issued to load the gunsblank for a salute. 

Hitherto the Major had been but an idler about deck; but finding thecrew of a gun short-handed, he volunteered his services, and wasimmersed in the business of loading when a hand clapped him on theshoulder. Turning, he confronted the boatswain. 

"And you go for to pretend for to tell me, " said Mr. Jopereproachfully, "that you're a amachoor!"

The Major was about to explain that as an officer of artillery heunderstood the working of a gun, when a loud banging from the towndrew all eyes shoreward; and presently Captain Crang, who had beengazing in that direction through his glass, called to Mr. Wapshott, who in turn shouted an order to man the yards. 

As this was an order which the Major neither understood nor, had heunderstood it, could comply with, he remained on deck while thesailors swarmed aloft and disposed themselves in attitudes the meresight of which turned him giddy, so wantonly precarious they seemed. 

The strains of the National Anthem from a distant key-bugle drew hiseyes shoreward again, and between the moored ships he descried awhite-painted gig approaching, manned by twenty oars and carrying anenormous flag on a staff astern--the Royal Standard of England. 

Not until the gig, fetching a long sweep, had made a half-circuit ofthe _Vesuvius_ and fallen alongside her accommodation-ladder did theMajor comprehend. Captain Crang, with Mr. Wapshott behind him, hadstepped down the ladder and stood at the foot of it reverentlylifting his cocked hat. 

That rotund, star-bedecked figure in the stern sheet, beside the PortAdmiral--that classic but full-blooded face crowned with a chestnutwig. . . . Who could it be if not his Royal Highness the PrinceRegent?

Yes, it was he. Had not our Major scanned those features oftenenough--in his own mirror?

The Port Admiral was inviting Captain Crang to step into the gig. The Prince nodded a careless, haughty assent, shrinking a little, however, as Mr. Wapshott passed down the clockwork of the catamaranfor his royal inspection. Recovering himself, he glanced at itperfunctorily and nodded to the sailors to give way and pull towardsthe hull of the infernal machine. 

The curiosity which had brought him down to Portsmouth to inspect itseemed, however, to have evaporated. The gig fell alongside thecoffin-like log, and the Port Admiral, having taken the clockwork outof Captain Crang's hand, had launched into an explanation of itsworking when the Prince signified hurriedly that he had seen as muchas he desired. Back to the ship the gig drifted on the tide, andCaptain Crang, dismissed with a curt nod, stepped on to the ladderagain, turned, and saluted profoundly. 

As he did so, the Major, erect above the bulwarks, found speech. 

"Your Royal Highness!" he cried. "Nay, but pardon me, your RoyalHighness! If I may crave the favour--explanation--a prisoner, unjustly detained--"

The Prince Regent lifted his eyes lazily as the bowman thrust off. 

"What a dam funny-looking little man!" commented he aloud, nudgingthe Port Admiral, who had risen and was calling out the order to giveway for shore. 

"But, your Royal Highness!--"

The Major raised himself on tiptoe with arms outstretched after thereceding boat. On the instant the ship shook under him as with anearthquake, and drowned his voice in the thunders of a royal salute. 

"The Emperor Jovinian, Mr. Jope--"

"Who was 'e?" Mr. Jope interrupted. 

Two days had passed, and the better part of a third. They seemed asmany years to our hero as, seated on the carriage of one of the_Vesuvius's_ starboard guns in company with the boatswain and BillAdams, he watched through its open port the many-twinkling smiles ofthe sea, and, scarce two leagues away, the coast of France goldenagainst the sunset. 

"I am not precisely aware when he flourished, " said the Major, "butwill make a point of inquiring when I return home. To tell you thetruth, I heard the story in church, in a sermon of our worthyVicar's, little dreaming under what circumstances I should recall itas applicable to my own lot. "

"If it's out of a sermon, " said Mr. Jope, "you may fire ahead. But if, as you say, the man was taken for someone else, I thought itwould be clearer to start by knowing who he _was_. "

"It happened in this way. The Emperor Jovinian one sultry afternoonin summer was hunting--"

"What--foxes?"

"Keep quiet, " put in Mr. Adams. "When he's telling you it happenedin a sermon!"

"In the ardour of the chase he had left his retinue far behind; andfinding himself by the shore of a lake, he alighted and refreshedhimself with a swim in its cool waters. While he thus disportedhimself, a beggar stole his horse and his clothes. "

Mr. Jope smote his leg. "Now I call that a thundering good yarn!Short, sharp, and to the point. "

"But you haven't heard the end. "

"Eh? Is there any more of it?"

"Certainly. The Emperor, discovering the theft, was forced to creepnaked and ashamed to the nearest castle. "

"What was he ashamed of?"

"Why, of being naked. "

"I see. Damme, it fits in like a puzzle!"

"But at the castle, sad to say, no one recognised the proud Jovinian. 'Avaunt!' said the porter, and threatened to have him whipped for hisimpudence. This distressing experience caused the Emperor to reflecton the vanity of human pretensions, seeing that he, of whom the worldstood in awe, had, with the loss of a few clothes, forfeited therespect of a slave. "

"I see, " repeated Mr. Jope, as the narrator paused. "What became ofthe beggar?"

"I knew a worse case than that, even, " said Bill Adams, turning hisquid meditatively. "It happened to a Bristol man, once a shipmate ofmine; by name Zekiel Philips, and not at all inclined to stoutnesswhen I knew him. "

"Why _should_ he be?"

"You wait. His wife kept a slop-shop at Bristol, near the foot ofChristmas Stairs--if you know where that is?"

The Major, thus challenged, shook his head. 

"Ah, well; you'll have heard of O-why-hee, anyway--where theybarbecued Captain Cook? And likewise of Captain Bligh of the_Bounty_--Breadfruit Bligh, as they call him to this day?Well, Bligh, as you know, took the _Bounty_ out to the Islands underGovernment orders to collect breadfruit, the notion being that itcould be planted in the West Indies and grown at a profit. When hecame to grief and Government lookedlike dropping the job, a party ofBristol merchants took the matter up, having interests of their ownin the West Indies, and fitted out a vessel--a brig she was, as Iremember--called the _Perseverance_. Whereby this here friend o'mine, Zekiel Philips by name, shipped aboard of her. Whereby theymade a good passage and anchored off one of the islands--Otaheety ornot, I won't say--and took aboard a cargo, being, as they supposed, ord'nary breadfruit; and stood away east-by-south for the Horn, meaning to work up to Kingston, Jamaica. But this particularbreadfruit was of a fattening natur', whether eaten or, as you maysay, ab-sorbed into the system through a part of it getting down tothe bilge and fermenting, and the gas of it working up through thevessel. Whereby, the breeze holding steady and no sail to trim forsome days, the crew took it easy below, with naught to warn 'em, unless, maybe, 'twas a tight'ning o' the buttons. Whereby on thefifth day they ran a-foul of a cyclone; and the cry being for allhands on deck, half a dozen stuck in the hatchway and had to be sawedloose. Whereby, in the meantime, she carried away her mainm'st, andthe wreckage knocked a hole in her starboard quarter. Likewise, herstern-post being rotten, she lost a pintle, and the helm began tolook fifty ways for Sunday. All o' which caused the skipper to layto, fix up a jury rudder and run up for the nearest island to caulkand repair. But meantime, and before he sighted land, thisunfortunate crew kept puttin' on flesh--and the cause of it hid fromthem all the time--till there wasn't on the ship a pair ofsmallclothes but had refused duty. Whereby, coming to the island inquestion, they went ashore, every man Jack in loin-cloths cut out o'the stun-s'le, and the rest of 'em as bare as the back of my hand. Whereby their appearance excited the natives to such a degree, beingsuperstitious, they was set upon and eaten to a man. The moralbein', " concluded Mr. Adams, "that a man lay be brought low by bein'puffed up. "

"Ay, " said Mr. Jope after a pause. "I never had no greatacquaintance with poetry, but I bought a pocket-handkercher once fortuppence with a verse on it:"

 "'Ri fal de ral diddle, ri fal de ral dee, What ups and downs in the world there be!'

"And I don't believe you could use a truer text for the purpose, nomatter what you paid. "

The Major sighed. He was a high-spirited man, as the reader knows, and I believe that, but for one cruel memory, he might have learnteven to taste some humour in his situation. Thanks to Mr. Jope andMr. Adams, who had taken a genuine fancy to him, he found life onboard the _Vesuvius_ cheerful if not comfortable. The fare wasSpartan, indeed, but, for a short holiday, tolerable. The prospectof seeing some real fighting excited him pleasurably, for he was nocoward. Here, before his eyes, lay the coast of France; the actualforts and guns with which his imagination had so often played. What a tale he would have to tell on his return! And, by the way, how his poor Trojans must be suffering in his absence, without newsof him! He pictured that return. . . . Yes, indeed, it was at theexpense of Troy that Fortune had conceived this practical joke. He could even smile, as yet, at the thought of the Baskets' dismay asthey searched the house for him. He wondered if Mr. Basket hadforwarded his letter to Miss Marty, at the same time announcing hisdisappearance. Well, well, he would dry her tears. . . . 

But upon this came the recollection of those cruel words:

"_What a dam funny-looking little man!_"

He might--he assuredly would--keep them a secret in his own breast. But they echoed there. 

His vanity was robust. Again and again it asserted its health in hisday-dreams, expelling, or all but expelling, that poisonous memory. Only at night, in his hammock, it awoke again--sinister, premonitory. But as yet the man continued cheerfully incredulous. Fate wasplaying, less on him than through him, a rare practical joke--nomore. 

On the eighth of June, at about nine o'clock in the evening, itoccurred to Admiral Lord Keith that the wind and weather afforded anexcellent opportunity of testing the _Vesuvius's_ far-famed catamaranagainst the shipping moored off Boulogne pier. He signalledaccordingly; and at nine-thirty, under the eyes of the squadron, aboat from the bomb-ship started to tow the infernal machine towardsthe harbour. By leave of Bill Adams, commanding, our Major made oneof the crew of twelve. 

In less than a quarter of an hour their approach was signalled by theenemy's vedettes to the forts ashore, which promptly opened fire. Mr. Adams, having towed the catamaran within its proper range, withhis own hand pulled the plug releasing the clockwork, and gave theorder to cast off, leaving wind and tide to do the rest; which theydoubtless would have done had not a gun from one of the Frenchbatteries plumped a shot accurately into the catamaran. 

The catamaran exploded with a terrific report, and the wave of theexplosion caught the retreating boat, lifted her seven feet, capsizedher, and brought her accurately down, bottom upwards. 

A score of boats put out to the rescue, picked up the exhaustedswimmers, and attempted to right and recover the boat, but abandonedthis attempt on the approach of an overwhelming force of French. 

These, coming up, seized on the boat and gallantly, under ashort-dropping fire from our squadron, proceeded to right theirprize; and, righting her, discovered Major Hymen, clinging to athwart, trapped as an earwig is trapped beneath an invertedflower-pot. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

MISSING!

Miss Marty had just finished watering her sweet-peas and mignonette;had inspected each of the four standard roses beside the front gatein search of green-fly; had caught a snail sallying forth to dinelate upon her larkspurs, and called to Cai Tamblyn to destroy it;had, in short, performed all her ritual for the cool of the day; andwas removing her gardening gloves when a vehement knocking agitatedthe front door, and Scipio hurried to announce that a caller--aMr. Basket--desired to see her on important business. 

"Mr. Basket?" she echoed apprehensively, and made at once for theparlour, where she found her visitor mopping his brow. Despite theheat, he was pale. In his left hand he held a letter. 

"You will pardon me, " he began in a flutter. "Am I addressing MissMartha Hymen?"

"You are, sir. " Miss Marty clasped her hands in alarm at hisdemeanour. "Oh, tell me what has happened!"

"All the way from Plymouth on purpose, " answered Mr. Basket. "Most mysterious occurrence . . . Ate a good dinner and retired tohis room apparently in the best of health and spirits. On our returnfrom the theatre he was gone. "

"Gone?"

"Disappeared, vanished! We searched the house. His watch andpocket-book lay on the bed, together with a certain amount ofloose change. His wig, too . . . You were aware?"

"I have gone so far as to suspect it. But what dreadful news isthis? Disappeared? Leaving no clue?"

"We are in hopes, my wife and I, that this may afford a clue. A letter, and addressed to you; it lay upon his writing-table. We did not feel ourselves at liberty to break the seal. I trust--Isincerely trust--it may put a period to our suspense. "

Miss Marty took the letter, glanced at the address and tore the paperopen with trembling hands. She perused the first few sentences witha puckered, puzzled brow; then of a sudden her eyes grew wide andround. Despite herself she uttered a little gasping cry. 

"It contains a clue at least?" asked Mr. Basket, who had beenwatching her face anxiously. "Dear lady, what does he say?"

"Nun--nothing, " Miss Marty caught at the back of a Chippendale chairfor support. 

"Nothing?" echoed Mr. Basket blankly. 

"Nothing--That is to say I can't tell you. Oh, this is horrible!"

"But pardon me, " Mr. Basket insisted. "After travelling all the wayfrom Plymouth!"

"I can't possibly tell you, " she repeated. 

"But, madam, consider my responsibility! I must really ask you toconsider my responsibility. "

"If I could only realise it! Oh, give me time, sir!"

"Certainly, certainly; by all means take your time. Nevertheless, when you consider my distress of mind, I appeal to you, madam, to bemerciful and relieve it. After travelling all this distance in thedark--"

"In the dark?" queried Miss Marty, with a glance at the window. 

"Tormented by a thousand speculations. In my house, too! In goodhealth, and apparently the best of spirits; and then without a word, like the snuff of a candle!"

"His brain must be affected, " Miss Marty murmured, gazing at theletter again. The handwriting swam before her. "Excuse me, sir, Iwill not detain you a minute. "

She ran from the room and upstairs to her room, her knees shakingbeneath her. Heaven grant that the Doctor was at home! She agitatedher window-blind violently and drew it down to the third pane. "You are wanted--urgent, " was the message it conveyed. 

Yes, he was at home. "I come, instantly, " answered her lover'swindow; and in less than a minute, to her infinite relief, the Doctoremerged from his front doorway and came bustling up the street almostat a trot. 

She ran down and admitted him. In her face he read instantly thatsomething serious had happened; something serious if notcatastrophical: but with finger on lip she enjoined silence and ledthe way to the parlour. 

"This gentleman has just arrived from Plymouth, with serious news ofthe Major. "

"Serious? He is not ill, I trust?"

"Worse, " said Mr. Basket. 

"But first, " interposed Miss Marty, "you must read this letter. Yes, yes!"--blushing hotly, she thrust it into the Doctor'sunresisting hands--"you have the right. Forgive me if I seemindecorous: but in such a situation you only can help me. "

"Eh? Oh, certainly--h'm, h'm!--" The Doctor adjusted his glasses andbegan to read in a low mumbling voice. By and by he paused, thenslowly looked up with pained, incredulous eyes. 

"This is some horrible dream!" he groaned and, feeling his way to theMajor's armchair, sank into it heavily. 

"He swoons!" exclaimed Miss Marty. "One moment--a glassful of theFra Angelico!"

She ran to the cupboard, found decanter and glasses, poured out adose and came hurrying back with it. He declined it, waving her offwith a feeble motion of the hand. 

She appealed to Mr. Basket. "Will _you_, sir?"

Mr. Basket confessed afterwards that for the moment, excusablyperhaps, he lost his presence of mind. She had motioned to him toadminister the dose. He misunderstood. Taking the glassdistractedly, he drained it to the dregs, clapped a hand to hiswindpipe, and collapsed, sputtering, in a chair facing the Doctor. 

"Oh, what have I done?" wailed Miss Marty. 

"He deserved it!"

The Doctor pulled himself together, stood erect, and, lurchingforward, gripped Mr. Basket by the shoulder. 

"Sir, this lady is my affianced wife!"

"Would you--mind--tapping me in the back?" pleaded Mr. Basket, between the catches of his breath. 

"Not at all, sir. " The Doctor complied. "As I was saying, this ladyis my affianced wife. Though Major Hymen were ten thousand times myfriend--by placing both hands on your stomach and bending forward alittle you will find yourself relieved--though Major Hymen were tenthousand times my friend, it should be over my prostrate body, sir;and so you may go back and tell him!"

"But I can't find him!" almost screamed Mr. Basket. 

"He has disappeared!" quavered Miss Marty. 

"It's the best thing he could do!" Dr. Hansombody folded his arms andlooked at Mr. Basket with fierce decision. "Disappeared? Where?"

They answered him in agitated duetto. "Where indeed?" The Major hadvanished, dissolved out of mortal ken, melted (one might say) intothin air. "If one may quote the Bard, sir, in this connection"--Mr. Basket wound up his recital--"like an insubstantial pageant faded hehas left not a rack behind; that is to say, unless the letter in yourhands may be considered as answering that description. "

"There's only one explanation, " the Doctor declared. "The man mustbe mad. "

Mr. Basket considered this for a moment and shook his head. "We lefthim, sir, in the completest possession of his faculties. In all mylong acquaintance with him I never detected the smallest symptom ofmental aberration; and last night--good God! to think that thishappened no longer ago than last night!"--Mr. Basket passed a handover his brow--"Last night, sir, I recognised with delight the sameshrewd judgment, the same masculine intellect, the same large outlookon men and affairs, the same self-confidence and self-respect--inshort, sir, all the qualities for which I ever admired my oldfriend. "

"Nevertheless, " the Doctor insisted, "he must have been mad when hepenned this letter. "

"Of the contents of which, let me remind you, I am still ignorant. "

The Doctor glanced at Miss Marty, then handed the letter to Mr. Basket with a bow. "You have a right to peruse it, sir. You willsee, however, that its contents are of a strictly private nature, andwill respect this lady's confidence. "

"Certainly, certainly. " Mr. Basket drew out his spectacles, and, receiving Miss Marty's permission, seated himself at the table, spread out the letter and slowly read it through. "Mostextraordinary! _Most_ extraordinary! But you'll excuse my sayingthat while, unfortunately, it affords no clue, this seems to me asfar as possible removed from the composition of a madman. " He gazedalmost gallantly over his spectacles at Miss Marty, who coloured. "In any case, " he went on, folding up the letter and returning it, "the man must be found. I understand, madam, that you are a relativeof his? Has he any others with whom we can communicate?"

"So far as I know, sir, none. "

"I have a chaise awaiting me on the other side of the ferry. With all respect, dear madam, I suggest it; I am sorry indeed to putyou to inconvenience--"

"You propose that Miss Marty, here, should accompany you back toPlymouth?"

"That was the suggestion in my mind. And you, too, sir--that is, ifyou can make it square with your engagements. Mrs. Basket will behappy to extend her hospitality. . . . Two heads are better than one, sir. We will prosecute our investigations together . . . With thehelp of the constabulary, of course. We should communicate with theconstabulary, or our position may eventually prove an awkward one. "

"Yes, yes; the man having disappeared from your house. "

"Quite so. Apart from that, I see no immediate necessity for makingthe matter public; but am willing to defer to your judgment. "

"That is a question we had better leave until we have seen the ChiefConstable at Plymouth. To publish the news here and now in Troywould cause an infinite alarm, possibly an idle one. By the time wereach Plymouth our friend may have reappeared, or at least disclosedhis whereabouts. "

Alas! at Plymouth, where they arrived late that night, no news of themissing one awaited them. Mrs. Basket, her face white as a sheet, her ample body swathed in a red flannel dressing-gown, herself openedthe door to the travellers as soon as the chaise drew up. For hoursshe had been expecting it, listening for the sounds of wheels. Almost before the introductions were over she announced with tearsthat she had nothing to tell. 

For a while she turned her thoughts perforce from the disaster to thebusiness of making ready the bedrooms for her guests and preparing alight supper. But the meal had not been in progress five minutes, before, in the act of loading Miss Marty's plate, she sat back with agasp. 

"Oh, and I was forgetting! Misfortunes, they say, never come singly, and--would you believe it, my dear?--as I was walking in the gardenthis afternoon, thinking to calm my poor brain, I happened to look atthe fish-pond and what do I see there but two of the gold-fishfloating with their chests uppermost!"

"Chests, madam?" queried Dr. Hansombody. 

But sharp as his query was came a cry from Mr. Basket. "The fish-pond?" He thrust back his chair, a terrible surmisedawning in his eyes. "And the fish, you say, floating--"

"Chest uppermost, " repeated Mrs. Basket, "and dead as dead. "

"She _means_, on their backs, " her husband explained parenthetically;"a fashion de parlour, as the French would say. Did you examine thepond? Heavens, Maria! did you examine the pond?"

"Elihu, you make my flesh creep! Why should I examine the pond?You don't mean to tell me--"

"My shrimping-net! Don't sit shivering there, Maria, but bring me myshrimping-net! And a lantern!" Mr. Basket caught up aSheffield-plated candle-sconce from the table, motioned the Doctor tofetch along its fellow, and led the way out to the front garden. 

The night outside was windless, but dark as the inside of a hat. 

Their candles drew a dewy glimmer from the congregated statuary:apparitions so ghostly that the Doctor scarcely repressed a cry ofterror. Mr. Basket advanced to the pond and set down his light onthe brink. 

"A foot deep . . . Only a foot deep, " he murmured. "It could notpossibly cover him. "

The two goldfish floated as Mrs. Basket had described them. Mr. Basket, taking the shrimping-net from his wife, who shrank backat once into darkness, plunged it beneath the water, deep into themud. Dr. Hansombody held a sconce aloft to guide him. 

The two ladies cowered behind a pedestal supporting the FarneseHercules. 

For a while nothing was heard in the garden but the splash of wateras Mr. Basket plunged his net again and again and drew it forthdripping. Each time as he drew it to shore, he emptied the mud onthe brink and bent over it, the Doctor holding a candle close toassist the inspection. 

As he emptied his net for maybe the twentieth time, something jingledon the pebbles. Mr. Basket stooped swiftly, plunged his hand in theslime, and held it up to the light. 

"Eh?" said the Doctor, peering close. "What? A latchkey?"

"My duplicate latchkey!" In spite of the heat engendered by hisefforts, Mr. Basket's teeth chattered. "My wife gave it to him thelast thing. "

He turned and drove his net beneath the dark water with redoubledenergy. The very next haul brought to shore an even more convincingpiece of evidence--a silver snuff-box. 

It was the Major's. Mr. Basket had seen his friend use it a thousandtimes; and called Miss Marty forward to identify it. Yes, undeniablyit was the Major's snuff-box, engraved with "S. H. , " his initials, inentwined italics. 

The two male searchers, regardless of their small-clothes, nowplunged knee-deep into the pond. For an hour they searched it;searched it from end to end; searched it twice over. 

No further discovery rewarded them. 

Here was evidence--tangible evidence. Yet of what? The Majorhad visited the pond during his hosts' absence at the theatre, andhad dropped these two articles into it. How, if accidentally?If purposely, why? The mystery had become a deeper mystery. 

A little after midnight the search was abandoned. Mrs. Basketadministered hot brandy-and-water to the two gentlemen, and thehousehold retired to rest--but not to sleep. 

At breakfast next morning, before seeking the Chief Constable, Mr. Basket and the Doctor compared notes. Each owned himself morepuzzled than ever. 

As it turned out, their discoveries led them straight away from thetrue explanation. The Chief Constable, when they interviewed him, was disposed for a brief while to suspect the press-gang. There had, in fact, on the night before last, been a "hot press, " as it wascalled. At least a score of bodies of the Royal Marines, in partiesof twelve and fourteen, each accompanied by a marine and a navalofficer, had boarded the colliers off the new quay, the ships inCattewater and the Pool, and had swept the streets and gin-shops. A gang of seamen, too, had entered the theatre and cleared the wholegallery except the women; had even descended upon the stage andcarried off practically the whole company of actors, including thefamous Mr. Sturge. (This Mr. Basket could confirm. ) The whole townwas in a ferment. He had already received at least seventy visitsfrom inquirers after missing relatives. 

But the discoveries in the fish-pond led him clean off the scent. No press-gang would enter a private house or a private garden such asMr. Basket's. Even supposing that their friend had fallen a victimto the press while walking the streets, they must admit it to beinconceivable that he should return and cast a latchkey and asnuff-box into Mr. Basket's fish-pond. 

"_Cui bono?_" asked the Chief Constable. 

"I beg your pardon?" said Mr. Basket. 

"Well, in other words, what do you suggest he did it for? It's anexpression we use in these cases. "

The Doctor granted the force of the Chief Constable's reasoning, butsuggested that there could be no harm in rowing round the Fleet andmaking inquiries. 

The Chief Constable answered again that the squadron--it was no morethan a squadron--had taken precious good care to time the press forthe eve of sailing; had in fact weighed anchor in the small hours ofthe morning, and by this time had probably joined AdmiralCornwallis's fleet off Brest. 

What was to be done?

"In my belief, " said the Chief Constable, "it's a case of foul play. Mind, I'm not accusing anyone, " he went on; "but this persondisappeared from your house, Mr. Basket, and in your place I'd putmyself right with the public by getting out a handbill at once. "

This dreadful possibility of coming under public suspicion had neveroccurred to Mr. Basket. He begged to be supplied at once with pen, ink and paper. 

"'Lost, stolen or strayed'--is that how you begin?"

"If you ask me, " said the Chief Constable, "I'd put him down as'Missing. ' It's more usual. "

"'Missing, ' then. 'On the night of May 2nd--'"

"From your house. "

"Must that go in?" Mr. Basket pleaded. 

"If you want to put yourself right with the public. "

"Yes, yes--'from The Retreat, East Hoe, the residence of E. Basket, Esq. , on the night of May 2nd, between the hours of 7 and 11 p. M. , aGentleman--'"

Mr. Basket paused. 

"We must describe him, " said the Doctor. 

"I am coming to that. 'A Gentleman, answering to the name ofHymen--'"

"Why 'answering'?"

Mr. Basket ran his pen through the word. "The fact is, " heexplained, "I've only written out a thing of this sort once before inmy life; and that was when Mrs. Basket missed a black-and-tanterrier. H'm, let me see. . . . Between the hours of 7 and 11 p. M. , Solomon Hymen, Esquire, and Justice of the Peace, Major of the TroyVolunteer Artillery. The missing gentleman was of imposingexterior--"

"Height five feet, three inches, " said the Doctor. 

"Eh? Are you sure?"

"As medical officer of the Troy Artillery, I keep account of everyman in the corps; height, chest measurement, waist measurement, anypeculiarity of structure, any mole, cicatrix, birth-mark and so on. I began to take these notes at the Major's own instance, for purposesof identification on the field of battle. Little did I dream, as Ipassed the tape around my admired friend, that _his_ proportionswould ever be the subject of this melancholy curiosity!"

"It reminds me, " said Mr. Basket, "of a group in my garden entitled_Finding the body of Harold_. Five feet three, you say? I hadbetter scratch out 'imposing exterior'; or, stay!--we'll alter it to'carriage. '"

"Chest, thirty-six inches; waist, forty-three inches; complexion--does that come next?" Doctor Hansombody appealed to the ChiefConstable, who nodded. 

"Complexion, features, colour of hair, of eyes . . . Any order youplease. "

"We must leave out all allusion to his hair, I think, " said Mr. Basket; "and, by the way, I suppose the--er--authorities will desireto take possession of any other little odds-and-ends our friend leftbehind him? Complexion, clear and sanguine; strongly markedfeatures. His eye, sir, was like Mars, to threaten and command; butI forget the precise colour at this moment. We might, perhaps, content ourselves with 'piercing. ' If I allow myself to be betrayedinto a description of his moral qualities--"

"Unnecessary, " put in the Chief Constable. 

"And yet, sir, it was by his moral qualities that my friend everimpressed himself most distinctly on all who met him. Alas! that Ishould be speaking of him in the past tense! He was a man, sir, asShakespeare puts it:

 "Take him for all in all, We shall not look upon his like again. "

"A most happy description, Mr. Basket, " the Doctor agreed. "Would you mind saying it over again, that I may commit it tomemory?"

Mr. Basket obligingly repeated it. 

"Most happy! Shakespeare, you say? Thank you. " The Doctor copiedit into his pocket-book among the prescriptions. 

"One might add, perhaps, " Mr. Basket submitted respectfully, "that amere physical description, however animated, cannot do justice to myfriend's moral grandeur, which, indeed, would require the brush of aMichael Angelo. "

The Chief Constable inquired what reward they proposed to offer. 

"Ah, yes; to be sure!" Taken somewhat unexpectedly, Mr. Basket andthe Doctor exchanged glances. 

"On behalf of the relatives, now--" began Mr. Basket. 

"So far as I know, Miss Martha was the one relative he had in theworld, " answered the Doctor. 

"So much the better, my friend, seeing that you have (as Iunderstand) her entire confidence. "

"I was about to suggest that--circumstances having forced you intoprominence--to take the lead, so to speak, in this unhappy affair--"

"But why do we talk of price?" interposed Mr. Basket briskly, "seeing that the loss, if loss it be, is nothing short ofirreparable? To my mind there is something--er--"

"Desecrating, " suggested the Doctor. 

"Quite so--desecrating--in this reduction of our poor friend topounds, shillings, and pence. "

"Nevertheless it is usual to name a sum, " the Chief Constable assuredthem. "Shall we say fifty pounds?" Mr. Basket took off hisspectacles and wiped them with a trembling hand. Dr. Hansombodystood considering, pulling thoughtfully at his lower lip. 

"I think I can undertake, " he suggested, "that the Town Council willcontribute a moiety of that sum. Something can be done by privatesubscription. "

Mr. Basket brightened visibly. "Put it at fifty pounds, then, " hecommanded, with a wave of the hand. "Should Providence see fit torestore him to us, our friend, as a reasonable man, will doubtlessdischarge some part of the expenses. "

Accordingly the bill was drafted, and the Chief Constable, afterrunning his blue pencil through some of its more monumental periods, engaged to have it printed and distributed. 

"Do you know, " confessed Mr. Basket, as he and the Doctor walkedhomewards, "I felt all the while as if we were composing our friend'sepitaph. I have a presentimen--"

"Do not utter it, my dear sir!" the Doctor entreated. 

"He was a man--"

"Yes, yes; 'taking one thing with another, it is more than likely weshall never see him again. ' The words, sir, struck upon my spiritlike the tolling of a bell. But for Heaven's sake let us notdespair!"

"Life is precarious, Dr. Hansombody; as your profession, if any, should teach. We are here to-day; we are gone--in the more suddencases--to-morrow. What do you say, sir, to a glass of wine at the'Benbow'? To my thinking, we should both be the better for it. "

CHAPTER XVIII. 

APOTHEOSIS. 

At this point my pen falters. The order of events would require usnow to travel back to Troy with Miss Marty and the Doctor and breakthe news to the town. But have you the heart for it? Not I. 

I tell you that I never now pass the Ferry Slip on the shore facingTroy, on a summer's evening when the sun slants over the hill and thesmoke of the town rises through shadow into the bright air throughwhich the rooks are winging homeward--I never rest on my oars towatch the horse-boat unmooring, the women up the street filling theirpitchers at the water-shute, the strawberry-gatherers at work intheir cliff gardens; but I see again Boutigo's van descend the hilland two passengers in black alight from it upon the shore--Miss Martyand the Doctor, charged with their terrible message. I see themstand on the slip and shade their eyes as they look across to thetown glassed in the evening tide, I see beneath the shade of her palmMiss Marty's lips tremble with the words that are to shatter thathappy picture of repose, brutally, violently, as a stone crashinginto a mirror. In the ferry-boat she trembles from head to foot, between fear and a fever to speak and have it over. . . . 

But the town would not believe. Nay, even when Town Crier Bonaday, dropping tears into his paste-pot, affixed the placard to the door ofthe Town Hall, the town would not believe. Men and women gathered athis back, read the words stupidly, looked into each other's faces andshook their heads. Two or three gazed skyward. 

"The Major gone? No, no . . . There must be some mistake. He wouldcome back--to-morrow, perhaps--and bring light and laughter back withhim. It was long since the town had enjoyed a good laugh, and herewere all the makings of a rare one. "

But the days passed and brought no tidings. 

Miss Marty had drawn down the blinds in the Major's house, in tokenof mourning and to shut out prying eyes: for during the first day ortwo small crowds had collected in front and hung about the gardengate to stare pathetically up at the windows. They meant no harm:always when Cai Tamblyn or Scipio stepped out to remonstrate, theymoved away quietly. 

They were stunned. They could not believe. 

On the third day the Town Council met and elected Dr. HansombodyDeputy-Mayor, "during the temporary absence of one whose permanentloss this Council for the present declines to contemplate. "That same evening the Doctor called a public meeting, and in acareful speech, interrupted here and there by emotion, told theburgesses all there was to tell. "My friends, " he concluded, "With asad and sorry heart I lay these few facts, these poor shreds ofevidence, before you. Oppressed as I am by the shadow of calamity, Irefuse to consider it as more than a shadow, soon under Providence tobe lifted from us. You, the witnesses of our daily intimacy, willunderstand with what emotion I take up the sceptre which has fallenfrom my friend's hand, with what diffidence I shall wield it, withwhat impatience I shall expect the hour which restores it to hisstrong grasp. In the words of Shakespeare"--here the Doctorconsulted his note-book--"he was indeed a man:"

 "'Take him for all in all We shall not look upon his like again. '"

"Of my own instance, ladies and gentlemen, I made bold to bid fiftypounds for his recovery, feeling confident that Troy would endorsethe offer. Nor did I mistake. This morning the Corporation byunanimous vote has guaranteed the sum. I have now the melancholyprivilege of proposing from this chair that a house-to-house canvassbe made throughout the town with the object of doubling thisguarantee. " (Murmurs of approval from all parts of the hall. )

The Vicar seconded. He would remind his audience that in thethirteenth century Richard, Earl of Cornwall, afterwards King of theRomans, had the misfortune to fall into the hands of the Saracens whoheld him at ransom: and that by the promptness with which theCornishmen of those days, rich and poor together, made voluntarycontribution and discharged the price, they earned their coat-of-armsof fifteen gold coins upon a sable ground, as well as their proudmotto "One and All. " It had been said (I forget if in my hearing), that the days of chivalry were past. Here was an opportunity todisprove it and declare that the spirit of their ancestors survivedand animated the Cornishmen of to-day. (A Voice--"How about theMillennium?") He would pass over that interruption with the contemptit deserved. They were not met to bandy personalities, but ascitizens united in the face of calamity by affection for their commonborough. As stars upon the night, as the gold coins on their Duchy'ssable shield, so might their free-will offerings spell hope upon thedark ground of present desolation. He, for his part, was ready tosubscribe one guinea--yes, and more if necessary. 

Although the Chairman had deprecated cheering, the audience brokeinto loud applause as the Vicar resumed his seat. The town had takenfire. Resolving itself into Committee, the meeting then and therenominated fifty collectors, all volunteers. Nor did the movement endhere. Under the leadership of Miss Pescod the ladies of Troy devotedeach a favourite article of personal adornment to be coined at needinto money for the Major's redemption. (I myself possess a broochwhich, left by my great-grandmother to her daughter upon thiscondition, to this day is known in the family as the Major's Cameo. )In six days the guarantee fund ran up to eleven hundred pounds, ofwhich at least one-third might be accounted good money. In Troy weallow, by habit, some margin for enthusiasm. 

A new placard was issued at once, and the reward increased to onehundred and fifty pounds. 

For ten days this handsome offer evoked no more response than theprevious one. For ten days yet all trace of the Major vanished atthe edge of Mr. Basket's fish-pond. 

"It would almost seem, " said Miss Sally Tregentil, discussing themystery for the hundredth time with Miss Pescod, "as if from thatfatal brink he had soared into the regions of the unknown and scaled, as the expression goes, the empyrean. "

"If that's the case, " remarked Miss Pescod practically, "twice themoney won't bring him back. "

On the 2nd of July the Chief Constable wrote to Dr. Hansombody thathe had discovered a clue. A doorkeeper of the Theatre Royal reported(and was corroborated by the man in charge of the ticket-office) thaton the night of May 2nd, at about 10. 30, a rough-looking fellow hadpresented himself, dripping-wet, at the doors and demanded, in astate of agitation, apparently the result of drink, to see Mr. Basket, who occupied a reserved seat in the house; further, thatfalling in with two sailors, who bought a ticket for him, the man hadmounted the gallery stairs in their company, and this was the lastseen of him by either of the deponents. 

The Doctor posted to Plymouth, carrying with him the only extantportrait of the Major--a miniature taken at the age of twenty-five;called on Mr. Basket, haled him off to the Chief Constable's office, and there by appointment examined the two witnesses. The men stuckto their story, but swore positively that the fellow they had seenbore no resemblance to the portrait. 

"If you ask _me_, " added the doorkeeper with conviction, "he was adam sight more likely to have been his murderer. He looked it, anyhow. "

The Doctor and Mr. Basket returned to the latter's house in deeperperplexity than ever. 

"The evidence, " began Mr. Basket, lighting his pipe after dinner, "vague as it is, points more decidedly than before to foul play. We have been assuming that our poor friend, whether by accident ordesign, found himself in my fish-pond. "

"He would hardly have walked into it on purpose, " said the Doctor. 

"It is at least highly improbable. Well, here we have another manwho comes running to the theatre wet through--also, we will assume, from an immersion in the fish-pond. We will suppose that he plungedinto it to the rescue and having brought his burden safe to shore, ran to the theatre to inform me of the accident. At once we areconfronted with half a dozen serious difficulties. To begin with, why, having asked for me, did he disappear?"

"Press-gang, " the Doctor suggested. 

"Granted. But why, having an urgent message to deliver, did heproceed to take a ticket for the gallery in company with two sailors, apparently strangers to him? Again, this explanation does not eventouch the crucial question, which is--How came our friend todisappear?"

The Doctor shook his head. 

"On the other hand, " Mr. Basket continued, "if we take the darkerview, that this man had entered the fish-pond not for purposes ofrescue, but--dreadful thought--to hold the victim under water, whyshould he have exposed himself to detection by coming to the theatre?Why, in fine, should he desire to communicate at all with me?"

"Perhaps, " suggested Mrs. Basket, who had been listening while sheknitted, "his conscience pricked him. "

"My dear Maria!" began her husband testily. But at this moment thehouse rang with an alarm upon the front-door bell. 

The poor lady stood up fluttering, white in the face. 

"You must answer it, Elihu! I couldn't, not if you was to offer metwice the reward at this moment--and him standing there, perhaps, orhis ghost, like Peter out of prison!"

But their visitor proved to be the Chief Constable himself. He, too, was pale with excitement, and he held in his hand a copy of theSherborne _Mercury_. 

"Your friend--" he began. 

"Well?"

"He is dead. The mystery is not, indeed, explained, but the issue ofit appears too certain. I was walking along old Town Street when theSherborne Rider came along. He gave me my copy, and see here!"--TheChief Constable spread the paper under the lamp and pointed to thisparagraph:

 "_Operations off Boulogne_. By advices received from Admiral Lord Keith, the first experiment made with the new engines of destruction (of which so much was hoped) against the vessels moored off Boulogne pier, has not resulted in an unqualified success. On the 15th ult. One of these catamarans, as they are called, was launched against the foe from the _Vesuvius_ bomb. The machinery had been set in motion, and the bomb's boat, having towed it into range, was preparing to return to the ship, when a shot from the shore batteries, falling close, precipitated our gallant fellows into the water. We are happy to add that they were all picked up by the boats of the squadron with the exception of one seaman, recently shipped at Plymouth. His name is given as Hymen; and the Captain of the _Vesuvius_ reports that he joined as a volunteer. 

 "We need hardly remind our readers that the name of Hymen has figured prominently for a fortnight past in our advertisement columns. If this gallant but unfortunate man should prove to be none other than Solomon Hymen, Esquire, Chief Magistrate of Troy, Cornwall, whose recent mysterious disappearance has cast a gloom over the small borough, we commiserate our friends in the West while envying them this exemplar of an unselfish patriotism. _Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori_. "

Troy required no further evidence. To those of us indeed who hadknown the man--who, to borrow the words of a later poet, had lived inhis mild and magnificent eye--the news carried its own verification. Precisely how--in what circumstances--he had volunteered, we mightnever elucidate: but the act itself, when we came to consider it, wasof a piece with his character. He had left us in chagrin, betrayedby our unworthiness, nursing a wound deeper than any personal spite. Summarily, by a stroke, in the simplicity of his greatness, he had atonce rebuked us and restored our pride. Perishing, he had left us animperishable boast; an example to which, though our own consciencemight accuse us, we could point, and saying "This was a Son of Troy, "silence detraction for ever. Need I add that we made the most of it?

Mayor-choosing Day came round, and Dr. Hansombody, elected by theunanimous vote of his fellow-councillors, attained to one of the twinsummits of his ambition and was indued as Chief Magistrate with robeand chain. Six weeks later the town heard, at first incredulously, that he and Miss Marty were betrothed. The nuptials, it wasannounced, would be celebrated next June, on the decent expiry of ayear of mourning. 

Miss Sally Tregentil, on hearing the news, opined the Doctor'sconduct to be quixotic--a self-immolation, almost, upon the altar offriendship. 

Miss Pescod, for her part, believed that he was after the woman'smoney. This unworthy suspicion the Doctor was fortunately able torebut, and in the most public manner. After the wedding (a quietone) he and his bride spent a short honeymoon at Sidmouth andreturned but to announce their departure on a more distant journey. The Major's death being by this time, in legal phrase, "presumed, "the Court of Canterbury had allowed Miss Marty to take out letters ofadministration. It behoved her now to travel up to London, interviewproctors, and prove the will, executed (as the reader will remember)on the eve of that fatal First of May and confided to Lawyer Chinn'skeeping. The town having subscribed for and purchased a pair ofsilver candelabra as a homecoming gift, the Mayor and Mayoress had nosooner returned and been welcomed with firing off cannon and pealingof bells than a day was fixed and a public meeting called for thepresentation--a ceremony performed by the Vicar in brief butfelicitous terms. The Doctor made a suitable speech ofacknowledgment, and then, after waiting until the applause hadsubsided, lifted a hand. 

"My friends, " he said, "before we disperse I am charged to tell youthat my wife and I contemplate another journey, and almostimmediately. You may think how sad that errand is for us when I tellyou that we go to prove the late Major Hymen's will. But I dare tohope you will understand that our feelings are not wholly tinged withgloom when you hear the provisions of that document, which I will nowask my friend Mr. Chinn to read aloud to you. "

And this is the substance of what Lawyer Chinn read:

 To his kinswoman Miss Martha Hymen, the Major left a life interest in the sum of five thousand pounds, invested in Government stock. 

 To his faithful servant Scipio Johnston the sum of one hundred and fifty pounds. To his servant Caius Tamblyn, fifty pounds. 

 To each member of the Corporation of the Borough of Troy holding office at the time of his death, five pounds to buy a mourning ring. 

 To the Town Clerk the same, and to Mr. Jago, Town Constable, the same. 

 To the Honourable and Gallant Corps of the Troy Volunteer Artillery, nineteen guineas, to purchase two standards, to be borne by them on all occasions of ceremony. 

 To the Vicar and Churchwardens, two hundred pounds, the interest to be distributed annually among the poor of the Parish, on Easter Day. 

 To the Feoffees and Governors of the Free Grammar School, a like sum to be spent in renovating the building, and a further sum of one thousand pounds to be invested for the maintenance, clothing and education of ten poor boys of the Borough. 

 To the Vicar and Dr. Hansombody, his executors, fifty pounds apiece. 

 And lastly, the residue of his estate (some four thousand pounds), together with the five thousand pounds reverting on his kinswoman's death, to the Mayor and Corporation, to build and endow a Hospital for the relief of the sick; the same to be known as the Hymen Hospital, 'in the hope that the name of one who left no heirs may yet be preserved a while by the continuity of human suffering. '

At the conclusion of Lawyer Chinn's reading it is not too much to saythat all his audience caught their breaths. They had known the Majorto be a great man: but not till now--not perhaps until that lastsolemn sentence fell on their ears--had they understood hisgreatness. 

I have heard that the silence which followed was broken by a sob. Certainly the meeting dispersed in choking silence. 

At length Troy realised its loss. 

From that moment the figure, hitherto remembered in the clearoutlines of affection, begun to grow, loom, expand, in the mists ofawe. It ceased to be familiar, having put on greatness. Men beganto tell how, on that last fatal expedition, the Major had turnedsingle-handed and held a whole squadron of Dragoons at bay. 

In his garden, by the brink of the fish-pond, Mr. Basket reared astone with the following inscription:

 ATTEND O PASSER BY! ON THIS SPOT AS NEARLY AS CAN BE ASCERTAINED SOLOMON HYMEN, ESQUIRE SEVEN TIMES MAYOR OF TROY IN CORNWALL RELINQUISHED HIS HONOURS FOR HIS COUNTRY'S NEED AND RESOLUTELY SACRIFICED EASE, FRIENDSHIP, FAME TO EMBARK HIS SOLE MANHOOD IN HER DEFENCE AMID THE SURROUNDING MEMORIALS OF GREECE AND ROME CHALLENGING THE SEVEREST VIRTUES OF ANTIQUITY WITH A BRITON'S RESOLUTION

CHAPTER XIX. 

THE RETURN. 

There lies before me a copy of _The Plymouth and Dock Telegraph_, dated Saturday, July 2nd, 1814, much tattered and broken along thecreases into which my great-grandmother (the same that left us theMajor's Cameo) folded it these many years ago, to be laid away for amemorial. 

The advertisements need not detain us long. Two husbands will not beresponsible for their wives' debts, and one of them alleges that hislady "has behaved herself improperly during my absence at sea. "A solicitor will lend 1000 pounds on good security. A medical man, yielding to the persuasions of numerous friends, will remain anotherfortnight in the town; and may be consulted as usual at Mr. Kitt's, Grocer, King Street, Dock, every Tuesday and Saturday from ten tosix. M. La Barre (whom I guess to have been a Royalist refugee) willreopen instruction for young ladies and gentlemen in the Frenchlanguage on the 12th inst. The tolls and profits of the Saltash andthe Ashburton turnpikes will be bidden for by public auction. The schooner _Brothers_ and the fast-sailing cutter _Gambier_ are forsale, together with the model of a frigate, "about six feet twoinches long, copper-bottomed, and mounted with thirty-two guns. "The Royal Auxiliary Mail will start from Congdon's Commercial Innevery afternoon at a quarter before five, reaching the "Bell andCrown, " Holborn, in thirty-six hours: passengers for London have afurther choice of the "Devonshire" (running through Bristol) or the"Royal Clarence" (through Salisbury). Two rival light coachescompete for passengers to Portsmouth. The "Self-Defence, " Plymouthto Falmouth, four insides, will keep the same time as His Majesty'sMail. The Unitarian Association advertises a meeting at which Dr. Toulmin of Birmingham will preach. The Friends of the Abolition ofthe Slave Trade print a long manifesto. The Phoenix, Eagle and AtlasCompanies invite insurers. Sufferers from various disorders willfind relief in Spilsbury's Patent Antiscorbutic, Dr. Bateman'sPectoral, and Wessel's Jesuit's Drops. 

Turning to the news columns, we find the whole country aflame withjoy at the restoration of Peace. Once again (it is ten years sincewe last saw him there) the Prince Regent is at Portsmouth, feasting, speech-making, dancing, reviewing the fleet and the troops. With himare the Emperor of Russia; the Emperor's sister, the Duchess ofOldenburg; the King of Prussia; the Royal Dukes of Clarence, York, Cambridge; the Duke of Wellington and Field-Marshal Blucher. We readthat on first catching sight of Wellington the Prince Regent "seizedhis hand and appeared lost in sensibility for the moment. " As forBlucher, a party of sailors, defying his escort of dragoons, boardedand "took possession of the quarter-deck, or, in other words, the topof the carriage. "

 "Some were capsized; but two of them swore to defend the brave, and, as the carriage drew on, to the delight of all the tars commenced reels _a la Saunders_ on the top, all the way to Government House, where the General was received with open hands and hearts, amid a group of as brave warriors as ever graced a festive table or bled in defence of their country's wrongs (_sic_). "

At the subsequent Ball:

 "The Duke did not dance: and the gallant Blucher was so overcome by the heat of the ballroom as to oblige him to retire for a short time. . . . The two gallant Generals rode from the Government House in the same carriage; and it was observed that the Emperor of Russia shook hands with the illustrious Wellington every time he was near him. "

From Portsmouth next day the Duke posts up to Westminster, to beintroduced by the Dukes of Richmond and Beaufort and take his seat inthe Lords under his new patents of nobility. Simultaneously in theCommons, Lord Castlereagh moves a Vote of Thanks, which is carried bya unanimous House. For the rest, Parliament is mainly occupied indiscussing Lord Cochrane's case and the sorrows of Her Royal Highnessthe Princess of Wales, especially "the inadequacy of her income tosupport the ordinary dignities of her rank, and afford her thoseconsolations which the unfortunate state of her domestic feelingsrequire. " Mr. Wilberforce delivers a most animated speech againstthe Slave Trade. It is rumoured that Princess Charlotte of Waleshas definitely refused the hand of the Prince of Orange, and thatthe rejected lover has left London, full of grief, in hiscarriage-and-four. 

In short, our Major has been lost to us for ten full years, and stillthe world goes on: nay, for the moment it is going on excitedly. The procession with which the officers and artificers of PlymouthDockyard yesterday celebrated the establishment of Peace aloneoccupies five columns of the paper. 

What, then, of Troy? Ah, my friends, never doubt that Troy did itspart, and, what is more, was beforehand as usual!

 REJOICINGS AT TROY

 "In consequence of the re-establishment of Peace, the inhabitants of Troy were at an early hour on _Monday_, June 13th, busily employed in decorating their houses with laurel, etc. , and forming arches in the streets, variegated with flowers and emblematical representations; and thirty-eight well-formed arches soon graced the joyful town. . . . "

Thirty-eight arches! Consider it, you provincial towns of twice, thrice, ten times Troy's size, who erected a beggarly five or six onQueen Victoria's last Jubilee, and doubtless plumed yourselves onyour exuberant loyalty!

 ". . . To regale the poor, a bullock, two sheep (each weighing a hundred pounds), eight hundred twopenny loaves, with a great quantity of beer and porter, the gift of Sir Felix Felix-Williams, were distributed in the Market House and Town Hall by the Mayor (Dr. Hansombody) and gentlemen. Every individual appeared happy: indeed it was highly gratifying to see so many people with joy painted on their countenances showing forth the delight of their hearts. To crown the day, a number of respectable citizens drank tea with the Mayoress, after which they adjourned to the Town Hall and commenced dancing, which was kept up for a long time with great spirit and regularity. 

 "_Tuesday_ morning was ushered in with ringing of bells, etc. , and a great number of people assembled before the 'Ship' Inn to dance, during which the ladies were engaged in ornamenting, with flowers, flags and emblems, two boats placed on wheel sledges drawn by the populace. In fitting them up with such taste and elegance, Miss P--d and Miss S. T--l were particularly active and deserve every praise. At three o'clock the Mayor and a respectable company sat down to an excellent dinner at the 'Ship' Inn, the band playing many grand national tunes in an adjoining room. After the repast signals were given from the Town Quay for the Battery guns to fire, and they accordingly fired three royal salutes in compliment to the Allied Sovereigns. The boats before mentioned were soon ready to start, the former filled by ladies with garlands and other emblems of Peace in their hands, and the latter with musicians; but previous to their removal Lord Wellington and some Cossacks appeared on horseback in search of Bonaparte, who according to his late practice had taken flight. However, he was soon driven back and taken, being met by a miller, who jumped up behind him and, observing his dejected and mournful countenance, embraced him with all the seeming fondness of a parent, desiring him to rouse up his spirits, if possible, to preserve his life. The grand procession of boats now began by a slow but graceful movement of the first, in the bow of which was a dove with outspread wings, holding an olive branch in her mouth. The boats were followed by a great concourse of people through the streets, and on their return were met by many gentlemen with wine, etc. This day, like the preceding, ended with a merry dance in the Town Hall. 

 "_Wednesday's_ rejoicings opened at noon with a dinner at the 'King of Prussia, ' attended by the survivors of the disbanded Troy Volunteer Artillery, attired in the uniforms of that ever-famous corps. The sight of the old regimentals evoked the tears of sensibility from more than one eye which had never flinched before the prospect of actual warfare. After the meal, at which many a veteran 'told his battles o'er again, ' a number of toasts were proposed by the Mayor, including 'The Allied Sovereigns, ' 'The Prince Regent, '' The Duke of Wellington' (with three times three), 'The Troy Gallants, ' 'The Memory of their first beloved Commander, Major Hymen'--this last being drunk in silence. The company then dispersed, to reassemble below the Town Quay, where the boats which had adorned Monday's festivities were again launched, this time upon their native element, and proceeded, amid the clanging of joy-bells from the church tower, to cross the harbour, on the farther shores of which a large and enthusiastic crowd awaited them. In the first boat were the musicians; in the second a number of ladies and gentlemen in fancy costumes. A score of boats followed, filled with spectators; and were welcomed, as they reached the shore, with loud expressions of joy. Lord Wellington was again mounted on horseback, with General Platoff and some Cossacks. Bonaparte and his followers were also mounted, and some skirmishes took place of so lifelike a character as to evoke universal plaudits. . . . "

A wooden-legged man, who had been stumping it for many hours alongthe high road from Plymouth, paused on the knap of the hill, moppedhis dusty brow, and gazed down upon the harbour, shading his eyes. He wore a short blue jacket with tattered white facings, a pair ofwhite linen trousers patched at the knees, a round tarpaulin hat, aburst shoe upon his hale foot, and carried a japanned knapsack--allpowdered with white dust of the road in which his wooden leg had beenprodding small round holes for mile after mile. 

He had halted first as his ear caught the merry chime of bells fromthe opposite shore. Having mopped his brow, he moved forward andhalted again by a granite cross and drinking-trough whence the roadled steeply downhill between the first houses of the village. He wasvisibly agitated. His hand trembled on his stick: his face flushedhotly beneath its mask of dust and sweat, and upon the flush acicatrix--the mark of a healed bullet-wound--showed up for the momenton his left cheek, white as if branded there. 

The people were shouting below, cheering vociferously. Yes, andalong the harbour every vessel, down to the smallest sailing-boat, was bedecked with bunting from bowsprit-end to taffrail. The bellsrang on like mad. The bells. . . . He dropped the hand which hadbeen shading his eyes, let dip his frayed cuff in the water of thefountain and, removing his hat, dabbed his bald head. This--had heknown it--worsened the smears of dust. But he was not thinking ofhis appearance. 

He was thinking--had been thinking all the way from Plymouth--only ofthe harbour at his feet, and the town beyond. His eyes rested onthem again, after ten years. All the way his heart had promised himnothing but this. He had forgotten self; having in ten years, andpainfully, learnt that lesson. 

But the music of the bells, the distant sounds of cheering, recalledthat forgotten self; or perhaps it leapt into assertiveness againunwittingly, by association of ideas with the old familiar scene. He had left the people cheering. . . . Was it ten years ago?They were cheering still. . . . 

The road within view was deserted. But from below the dip of thehill the cheers ascended, louder and louder yet, deepening in volume. 

He had intended to walk down the hill--as he hoped, unrecognised--cross the ferry, and traverse the streets of Troy to his own frontdoor; then, or later, to announce himself. A thousand times in hisfar prison in Briancon among the high Alps he had pictured it. He had discounted all possibilities of change. In ten years, to besure, much may happen. . . . 

But here below him lay the harbour and the town, save for theseevidences of joy surprisingly unchanged. 

Why were the church bells ringing; the people shouting? Could wordhave been carried to them? He could not conceive how the news hadmanaged to outstrip him. 

He had left the people cheering; they were cheering still. . . . Werethese ten years, then, but a grotesque and hideous dream? He gazeddown upon his wooden leg, stiffly protruding before him and pointing, as it were ironically, at the scene of which it shared no memories. 

A moment later he lifted his head at the sound of hoofs galloping upthe road towards him. Round the corner, on a shaggy yellow horsealmost _ventre-a-terre_, came a little man in a cocked hat, who rosein his stirrups drunkenly and blew a kiss to a dozen armed pursuerspounding at his heels. 

Between wonder and alarm, the Major (you have guessed it was he)sprang up from his seat by the fountain. Fatal movement! At thesudden apparition the yellow horse shied violently, swerving morethan halfway across the road; and its rider, looking backwards andtaken at unawares, was shot out of his stirrups and flungshoulders-over-head in the dust, where he rolled sideways and laystill. His pursuers reined up with loud outcries of dismay. The Major advanced to the body, knelt beside it and turned it over. The man was bleeding from a cut in the head; but this and a slightconcussion of the brain appeared to be the extent of his injuries. His neck-cloth being loosened, he groaned heavily. The Major lookedup. 

"A nasty shock! For the moment I was half afraid--"

The words died away on his lips. One or two of the riders hadalighted and all stood, or sat their horses, around him in a ring. He knew their faces, their names; yes, one and all he knew them; andthey wore the uniform of the Troy Volunteer Artillery!

With a tightly beating heart he waited for their recognition. . . . No sign of recognition came. They eyed him curiously. It seemed tothem that he spoke with something of a foreign accent. To be sure hearticulated oddly--owing to his wound, of which his cheek bore thevisible scar. 

He knew them all. Had they not, each one of them, aforetime salutedhim their commander, raising their hand to the peaks of these veryshakos? Had they not marched, doubled, halted, presented arms, stoodat attention, all as he bade them? He recognised the victim of theaccident, too--a little tailor, Tadd by name, who in old days hadborne a reputation for hard drinking. 

"I reckon they must ha' stationed you here for a relay, " suggestedGunner Sobey (ever the readiest man, no matter in what company hefound himself) after eyeing the Major for a while. 

"I beg your pardon?"

"I beg _yours_. Seemin' to me I've seen your features before, somewhere, though I can't call up your name. " It is a point ofhonour with the men of Troy (I may here observe) to profess anignorance of their less-favoured neighbours across the harbour. "I can't call up your name for the moment, dressed as you be--but'twas thoughtful of 'em, knowing Tadd's habit, to post up a secondfigger for a relay. The man seems to be shaken considerable, " hewent on. "'Twould be a cruelty, as you might say, to ask him to goon playin' Boney, with a wife and family dependent and his heart notin it. "

"He certainly isn't fit to mount again, if that is what you mean, "said the Major, and glanced up the road where one of the troop(Bugler Opie) had ridden in pursuit of the yellow horse and nowreappeared leading back the captive by the bridle. 

"That's just what I'm saying, " agreed Gunner Sobey; "andyou'll do very well if you change hats. " He stooped and pickedTadd-Bonaparte's _tricorne_ out of the dust and brushed it with thesleeve of his tunic. "Here, let's see how you look in it. "He flipped off the Major's tarpaulin hat, clapped on the substitute, and fell back admiringly. "The Ogre to the life, " he exclaimed; "and_with_ a wooden leg! Hurroo, boys!"

Before the Major could expostulate a dozen hands had lifted him intothe saddle astride the yellow horse. 

"But--but I don't know in the least, my friends, what you intend!I cannot ride; indeed I cannot!"

"_With_ a wooden leg! The idea!" answered Gunner Sobey, cheerfully. "Never you mind, but catch hold o' the pommel. We'll see to therest. "

The riders closed in and walked him forward down the hill, GunnerSobey pressing close and supporting him, holding his wooden leg tightagainst the saddle-flap. The Major cast a wild look about him andsaw Bugler Opie and another Gallant (Gunner Warboys--he knew alltheir names) lifting the half-unconscious Tadd and bearing himtowards the fountain, to revive him. What was happening? Should hedeclare himself, here and now?

The company broke into cheers as they set their horses in motion. Had they indeed recognised him? The procession was assuredly atriumph, of some sort or another. But what did they intend?

From across the harbour the bells of Troy were ringing madly. 

The Major shut his teeth. If this were indeed the town's fashion ofwelcoming him, well and good! If it were a mistake--a practical joke(but why should it be either?)--he had not long to wait for hisrevenge. . . . 

Let _The Plymouth and Dock Telegraph_ narrate, in its own succinctlanguage, what followed:

 "The Corsican tyrant coming to grief in an attempt to elude the righteous wrath of his pursuers, another impersonator was speedily found, with the additional touch of a wooden leg, which was generally voted to be artistic. This new Boney on being conveyed down to the water's edge was driven into a boat, his countenance eliciting laugher by its almost comic display of the remorse of fallen ambition. A pair of his _soi-disant_ supporters leapt in and affected to aid his escape, and were followed by pursuing boats in every direction, which had a most pleasing effect. At length, being hemmed in and made captive, he was taken to an island near the shore, supported by two officers of the Troy Volunteers, who affixed a board over him, upon which was printed, in large letters, 'ELBA. ' We regret to say that in his vivacious efforts to reproduce the feelings of the fallen tyrant, the impersonator--who by latest accounts is a seaman recently paid off and impressed, almost at a moment's notice, for the _role_ he sustained with such impromptu spirit--slipped on the wet seaweed and sustained a somewhat serious injury of the hip. Being with all expedition rescued, he was conveyed ashore to the Infirmary, which, founded by the late Major Hymen as a War Hospital, henceforward will open its doors to those diseases and casualties from which even Peace cannot exempt our poor humanity. By latest advices the invalid is well on his way to recovery. In the evening there was a grand display of fireworks on the Town Quay, conducted by the Magistrates, to whom every praise is due for their efforts to promote conviviality and order. "

CHAPTER XX. 

IN WHICH THE MAJOR LEARNS THAT NO MAN IS NECESSARY. 

For six days Troy continued to rejoice, winding up each day with adance. We will content ourselves, however, with one last extractfrom _The Plymouth and Dock Telegraph_:

 "At noon on Thursday the town assembled again and escorted its Mayor and Mayoress to the Hymen Hospital, where, in the presence of a distinguished company, Mrs. Hansombody (ward and heiress of the late S. Hymen) unveiled a bust of her gallant kinsman, whose premature heroic death Troy has never ceased to lament. Sir Felix Felix-Williams made eulogistic reference to the deceased, remarking on the number of instances by which the late war had confirmed the truth of the Roman poet's observation that it is pleasant and seemly to die for one's country. The Mayor responded on behalf of his amiable lady, whom Sir Felix's tribute had visibly affected. The sculpture was pronounced to be a lifelike image, reflecting great credit on the artist, Mr. Tipping, R. A. The pedestal, five feet in height, is of polished black Luxulyan granite, and bears name and date with the words 'Take Him for All in All We shall not Look upon his Like again. ' The bust, executed in plaster of Paris, will be replaced by marble when funds allow. The crowd dispersed in silence after the ceremony. Dancing in the street followed at 6 p. M. , and was kept up with spirit for some hours, during which a large quantity of beer was given away. "

The Major lay in the next room--the casualty ward--and stared up atthe whitewashed ceiling. 

His whole being ached as though, mind and body, he had been setupon and beaten senseless with bladders. And this was the secondtime! Yes--good heavens, how had he deserved it?--the second time!He remembered, after the disaster off Boulogne--many days after--awaking to consciousness in his prison bed in the fortress of Givet. Then, as now, he had lain staring, his whole soul sickened by thecruel jar of the jest. Hand of fate, was it? Nay, a jocose andblundering finger, rather, that had flipped him, as a man might flipa beetle, into the night. Then, as now, his soul had welled up insullen indignation. He blamed no one; for in all the stupid chapterof accidents there was no one to blame. But when the Protestantchaplain in Givet came to his bed he turned his face to the wall. 

He refused to give his name. He did not understand this blindmalevolence of fate, but he would make no terms with it. He--SolomonHymen--had a will of his own and a proper pride. If the world choseto use him so, after all his services to mankind, let it go and bedamned to it. I tell you, the man had courage. 

If his friends at home valued him, let them seek him out. He hadgiven them cause enough for gratitude. If not, he asked nothing ofthem. In the prison he gave his name as Mr. Solomon. 

Yet he had made two attempts to escape. In the first he ran awaywith two comrades as far as Mezieres. Being pursued by the_gens-d'armes_ there, and called upon to surrender, his companionshad given themselves up. Not so our hero; nor was he secured untilhe lay unconscious with a bullet-hole in the cheek. It was thiswhich ever afterwards affected his speech, the bullet having cut orpartially paralysed some string of the tongue. 

It had been touch-and-go with him; but he recovered, and, passinghenceforward as a desperate character, was drafted south with a dozenother desperate characters to the gloomy fortress of Briancon. There, in a second attempt for liberty, a fall from the ramparts hadcost him his leg. 

But worse than all his incarceration had been the final tramp throughFrance--right away north to Valenciennes; then left-about-turn, threehundred and fifty miles to Tours; then south-east to Riou; and fromRiou south-west to Bordeaux, where the transport took him off--one ofsix transports for about fifteen hundred released prisoners. All theway, too, on a wooden leg! Heaven knows how bitterly he had come tohate that leg. Yet his heart, hardened though it was by all thislong adversity, had melted as the _Romney_ transport beat up closerand closer for England, and at sight of Plymouth heights he hadbroken into tears. 

Troy! Troy! After all, Troy would remember him. Though he knew itbrought him nearer to freedom, all that marching through France hadbeen a weariness eating into his soul. Now a free man, along theroad from Plymouth to Troy he had almost skipped. 

And this had been his homecoming!

They remembered him. Beyond all his hopes they remembered him. In their memory he had grown into a Homeric man, a demi-god. He hadonly to declare himself. . . . 

The Major lay on his hospital bed and stared at the ceiling. It wasall very well, but ten years had made a difference--a mightydifference; a difference which beat all his calculations. It was adouble difference, too; for all the while that he had been shrinkingin self-knowledge, his reputation at home had been expanding like acucumber. 

Good Lord! How could he live up to it now? To obey his impulses anddeclare himself was simple enough, perhaps; but afterwards--

He had nearly betrayed himself when Cai Tamblyn--in a queerstraight-cut frock-coat of livery, blue with brass buttons, butotherwise looking much the same as ever--thrust his head in at thedoor. 

In the first shock of astonishment the Major had almost cried out onhim by name. 

"Why--eh?--what are _you_ doing here?" he stammered. Hitherto he hadbeen waited on by a strange doctor (Hansombody's new partner) and anurse whom he had assisted twelve years ago, when she was left awidow, to set up as a midwife. 

"Might ask the same question of you, " said Cai Tamblyn. "I'm thekew-rator, havin' been Hymen's servant in the old days, and showsaround the visitors, besides dustin' the mementoes--locks of hisbloomin' 'air and the rest of the trash, I looked in to see how youwas a-gettin' on after the palaver. If I'm not wanted I'll go. "

"Don't go. "

"Very well, then, I won't. " Mr. Tamblyn took a seat on the edge of anunoccupied bed, drew from his pocket a knife and a screw of pig-tailtobacco, sliced off a portion and rubbed it meditatively between hishands. "I done you a good turn just now, " he continued. "Some o'the company--the womenkind especially--wanted to come in and make afuss over you before leavin'. "

"Why should they want to make a fuss over me?"

"Well you may ask, " said Mr. Tamblyn, candidly. "'Tain't a questionof looks, though. There's a kind of female--an' 'tis the commonestkind, too--can't hear of a man bein' hurt an' put to bed but shewants to see for herself. 'Tis like the game a female child playswith a dollies' house. Here they've got a nice little orspital toamuse 'em, with nice clean blankets an' sheets, an' texteses 'pon thewalls, an' a cupboard full o' real medicines an' splints, and alongcomes a real live patient to be put to bed, an' the thing's complete. Hows'ever, they didn' get no fun out of 'ee to-day, for I told 'emyou was sleepin' peaceful an' not to be disturbed. "

"Thank you. " Under pretence of settling down more comfortablyagainst the pillow, the Major turned his head aside. "Then it seemsyou knew this--this--"

"Hymen? Knew him intimate. "

"What--what sort of man was he?"

Cai Tamblyn transferred the shreds of tobacco to a pouch made ofpig's bladder, pocketed it, and rubbed his two palms together, chuckling softly. 

"Look here, I'll show you the bust of 'en if you like; that is"--hechecked himself and added dubiously--"if you're sure it won't exciteyou. "

"Excite me?"

"Sure it won't give you a relapse or something o' the sort?The woman Snell has stepped down to the Mayor's to wash up after thelight refreshments, and I'm in charge. Prettily she'll blow me up ifshe comes back an' finds I've been an' gone an' excited you. "He cleared a space on the wash-stand. "I've no business to be inhere at all, really, talkin' wi' the pashent; but damme, you can'tthink what 'tis like, sittin' by yourself in a museum. I wishsometimes they'd take an' stuff me!"

He hobbled out and returned grunting under the weight of the bust, which he set down upon the wash-stand, turning it so that the Majormight have a full view of its features. 

"There!" he exclaimed, drawing back and panting a little. 

"Good heavens!" The Major drew the bed-clothes hurriedly up to hischin. "Was he--was he like _that_?"

"I thank the Lord he was not, " Mr. Tamblyn answered, slowly andpiously. "Leavin' out the question o' colour and the material, whichis plaster pallis and terrible crips, and the shortage, which is nomore than the head an' henge of 'en, so to speak, 'tis no more likethe man than _you_ be. And I say again that I thank the Lord for it. For to have the old feller stuck up in the corner an' glazin' at menat'rel as life every time I turned my head would be more than nervescould stand. "

"You wouldn't wish him back, then, in the flesh?"

Cai Tamblyn turned around smartly and gazed at the patient, whoseface, however, rested in shadow. 

"Look 'ee here. You've a-been in a French war prison, I hear, butthat's no excuse for talkin' irreligious. The man was blowed topieces, I tell you, by a thing called a catamaran, off the coast o'France; not so much left of 'en as would cover a half-crown piece. And you ask me if I want 'en back in the flesh!"

"But suppose that should turn out to be a mistake?" muttered theMajor. 

"Hey?" Cai Tamblyn gave a start. "Oh, I see; you're just puttin' itso for the sake of argyment. Well, then, "--the old man turned hisquid deliberately--"did you ever hear tell what old Sammy Mennearsaid when his wife died an' left him a widow-man? 'I wouldn' ha' lostmy dear Sarah for a hundred pound, ' said he; 'an' I dunno as I'd haveher back for five hundred. ' That's about the size o't with Hymen, Ireckon--though, mind you, I bear en no grudge. He left me fiftypound by will, and a hundred an' fifty to a heathen nigger; and howthat can be reconciled with Christian principle I leave you toanswer. But I bear 'en no grudge. "

"What? They proved his will?" The Major stared at his portrait andshivered. 

"_In_ course they did. The man was blowed to pieces, I tell you. 'Tis written up on the pedestal. 'Take 'en for all in all'--or pieceby piece, they might ha' said, for that matter--'we shall not lookupon his like agen. ' No, nor they don't want to, for all theirspeechifyin'. I ain't what the parson calls a _pessimist_; I thinkspoorly o' most things, that's all; _and_ folks; and I say they don'twant to. Why, one way and another, he left close on twelve thousandpound!"

The Major drew the bed-clothes maybe an inch farther over his chinand so lay still, answering nothing, his eyes fastened on the bust. Beneath its hyacinthine curls it beamed on him with a fixedbenevolent smile. 

"Not that Hymen hadn't decent qualities, mind you, " Cai Tamblyncontinued. "The fellow was plucky, and well-meanin', too, in hisway; and a better master you wouldn't find in a day's march. What hesuffered from was wind in his stomach. With all the women settin'their caps at him he couldn't help it: but so 'twas. And the menwere a'most as bad. Just you hearken to this--"

Cai seated himself on the edge of the bed again, felt in hisbreast-pocket and drew out a spectacle-case and a folded pocket-book;adjusted the spectacles on his nose, slapped the pocket-bookviciously, spread it on his knee, cleared his throat, and began toread:

 "'As a boy he was studious in his habits, shy in company, unflinchingly truthful, and fond of animals. For obvious reasons these pets of his childhood are unrepresented among the memorials so piously preserved in the Hymen Museum; but through the kindness of our esteemed townswoman, Mrs. (or, as she is commonly called, 'Mother') Hancock, aged ninety-one, we are able to include in our collection a marble of the kind known as 'glass-alley, ' with which she avers that, at the age of ten or thereabouts, our future hero disported himself. It must have been by some premonition that the venerable lady cherished it, having received it originally, as she remembers, in barter for a pennyworth of saffron cake, a species of delicacy to which the youthful Solomon was pardonably addicted. . . . '

"I got to show that damned glass-alley, " interjected Mr. Tamblyn. "Why? Because a man past work can't stay his belly on the interesto' fifty pound. Oh, but there's more about it:

 "'The cobble-stones with which the streets of Troy are paved do not lend themselves readily to expertness in shooting with marbles. But the subject of this memoir was ever one who, adapting himself to difficulties, rose superior to them. The glass material of which the relic is composed shows numerous indentations in its spherical outline, eloquent testimony to the character which had already begun to learn the lesson of greatness and by perseverance to bend circumstances to its will. In the case containing this relic, and beside it, reposes a horn-book, used for many generations in the Troy Infant School, conducted A. D. 1739-1782 by Miss Sleeman, schoolmistress. Although we have no positive evidence, there is every reason to believe that the youthful Solomon--'

"Ain't it enough to make a man sick?" demanded Cai Tamblyn, lookingup. "And I got to speak this truck, day in an' day out. "

"Who wrote it?"

"Hansombody. Oh, I ain't denyin' he was well paid. But when I see'dMiss Marty this very afternoon, unwrappin' the bust with tears in hereyes, an' her husband standin' by as modest as Moll at a christenin', and him the richer by thousands--"

"WHAT?"

The Major, despite his hurt, had risen on his elbow. Cai Tamblyn, too, bounced up. 

"The Mayor, I'm talkin' of--Dr. Hansombody, " he stammered, gatinginto the invalid's face in dismay. 

So, for ten slow seconds or so, they eyed one another. Speech beganto work in Cai Tamblyn's throat, but none came. He cast onebewildered, incredulous, horror-stricken glance back from the face onthe bed to the fatuously smiling face on the washhand stand, and withthat--for the Major had picked up his pillow and was poising to hurlit--flung his person between them, cast both arms about the bust, lifted it, and tottered from the room. 

CHAPTER XXI. 

FACES IN WATER. 

"Eh? Wants to get up, does he?"

Dr. Hansombody during the last year or two had gradually withdrawnhimself from professional cares, relinquishing them to his young andenergetic assistant, Mr. Olver. Magisterial and other publicbusiness claimed more and more of the time he more and moregrudgingly spared from domestic felicity and the business ofrearranging his entomological cabinet. He had found himself, earlyin his third term of mayoral office, the father of a bouncing boy. A silver cradle, the gift of the borough, decorated his sideboard. As for the moths and butterflies, he designed to bequeath them, underthe title of "The Hansombody Collection, " to the town. They wouldfind a last resting-place in the Hymen Museum, and so his name wouldgo down to posterity linked with that of his distinguished friend. This was the first visit he had paid to the stranger's bedside; andeven now he had only stepped in, at his assistant's request, from thenext room, where for half an hour he had been engaged with CaiTamblyn in choosing a position for the first case of butterflies. 

"Wants to get up, does he?" asked the Doctor absently, after aperfunctory look at the patient. "Restless, eh?" He still carried inhis hand the two-foot rule with which he had been takingmeasurements. "You've tried a change of diet?"

"I fancy, " Mr. Olver suggested, "he is worried by the number ofvisitors--ladies especially. "

"Georgiana Pescod has been worrying?"

The patient lifted his right hand from the bed and spread out all itsfingers; lifted his left, and spread out three more. 

"What? Eight visits?"

"And that's not the worst of it, " put in the Nurse, Mrs. Snell, sympathetically, smoothing the coverlet. "First and last there'sbeen forty-two in these six days. It can't be for his looks, as Itell en; and his name bein' Solomon won't account for the whole ofit. "

"I sometimes think, " said the Doctor pensively and with entiregravity, turning to his assistant, "we shall have to diminish thenumbers of the Visiting Committee. My dear friend Hymen planned it, in years gone by, on a war footing; and even so I remember suggestingto him at the time that the scale was somewhat--er--grandiose. But it was characteristic of him, and we have clung to it for thatreason, in a spirit perhaps _too_ piously conservative. Forty-twoladies! My good fellow"--he turned to the patient--"I really think--if your leg is equal to it--a short stroll in the fresh air may bepermitted. Pray do not think we desire to hurry your cure. Even setting aside the dictates of charity, and our naturaltenderness towards one who, as I understand, has bled for our commoncountry, we owe you something"--the Major's fingers plucked nervouslyat the bed-clothes--"some reparation, " the Doctor went on, "forthe--er--character of your reception. In short, I hope, on yourcomplete recovery, to find you some steady employment, such as toomany of our returning heroes are at this moment seeking in vain. In the meanwhile our town has some lions which may amuse yourconvalescence--a figurative term, meaning objects of interest. "

Once or twice, in the course of his first stroll, the Major's eyescame near to brimming with tears. The town itself had sufferedsurprisingly little change. The Collector--he seemed scarcely a dayolder--stood as of old at the head of the Custom House stairs, andsurveyed the world benignly with his thumbs in the arm-holes of hiswaistcoat. Before the Major's own doorway the myrtles were in bloom, and a few China roses on the well-trimmed standards. By the BroadShip as of old his nostrils caught the odours of tar and hemp with awhiff of smoke from a schooner's galley (the _Ranting Blade_, withher figure-head repainted, but otherwise much the same as ever). Miss Jex, the postmistress, still peered over her blind. She studiedthe Major's wooden leg with interest. He, on his part, seemed todetect that the down on her upper lip had sensibly lightened incolour. _En revanche_, from the corner of his eye, as he passed theopen door, he saw that the portrait over the counter (supposed ofyore to represent the Prince Regent) wore a frame of black ribbon. The black, alas! was rusty. 

The manners of the children had not improved. Half a dozen urchins, running into him here by the corner of the post-office on their wayfrom school, fell back in a ring and began to call "Boney!"derisively. He escaped from them into the churchyard, and passing upbetween the graves, rested for a while, panting in the cool of theporch. 

The door stood ajar. Pushing it open, he stepped within and pausedagain, half terrified by the unfamiliar _tap-tap_ of his wooden legon the pavement. The sunshine lay in soft panels of light across thefloor, and ran in sharper lines along the tops of the pews, worn to apolish by generations of hands that had opened and shut their doors. Aloft, where the rays filtered through the clerestory windows, theirinnumerable motes swam like gold-dust held in solution. 

The Major found his own pew, dropped into the familiar seat, andstrove to collect his thoughts. A week ago, on his way fromPlymouth, it had seemed the easiest thing in the world to revealhimself and step back into his own. The only question had been howto select the most impressive moment. 

His eyes, travelling along the wall on his right, encountered anunfamiliar monument among the many familiar ones; an oval slab ofblack marble enclosed in a gilt wreath and inscribed with giltlettering. He leaned forward, peering closer, blinking against thesunlight that poured through the window. 

 SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF SOLOMON HYMEN, ESQUIRE SEVEN TIMES MAYOR OF THIS BOROUGH AND MAJOR COMMANDING THE TROY VOLUNTEER ARTILLERY UNFORTUNATELY AND UNTIMELY SLAIN IN ACTION OFF THE COAST OF FRANCE NEAR BOULOGNE ON MAY 15TH, MDCCIV. THIS TABLET WAS ERECTED BY SUBSCRIPTION AMONG HIS SORROWING FRIENDS AND FELLOW CITIZENS OF THE BOROUGH HE, LIVING, ADORNED WITH HIS WISDOM AND DYING, ENDOWED WITH HIS WEALTH AS WITH HIS EXAMPLE. FORTIBUS ET COELUM PATRIA

He spelled out the inscription slowly, and, turning at the sound of afootstep in the porch, was aware of a tall figure in the doorway--hisown faithful Scipio. 

Least of all was Scipio changed. Ten years apparently had not eventarnished his livery. It shone in its accustomed scarlet and greenand gold in the rays which, falling through the windows of the southaisle, lit up his white teeth and his habitual gentle grin. 

"Mistah will be studyin' de board--berry fine board. Not so fineboard in Cornwall, dey tell me. "

The Major turned his face, avoiding recognition. 

"No, not dat; dat's modern trash, " went on Scipio, affably, followinghis gaze. "Good man, all same, Massa Hymen; lef plenty money. One hundred fifty pound. Lef Cai Tamblyn fifty. Every person sayremarkable difference. But doan' you look at _him_; he's moderntrash. Massa Hymen lef' me _one_ hundred fifty pound. Dat all go toboard up yonder, you see; 'Scipio Johnson, Esquire, of this Parish'in red letters an' gilt twirls. I doan' mind tellin' you. De hullparish an' Lawyer Chinn has it drafted--Vicar he promises me it shallgo in--'Scipio Johnson, Esquire, _of_ this Parish, ' an' twiddlesround de capital letters. Man, I served Mas' Hymen han' an' foot, wet an' dry, an' look like he las' anudder twenty year. "

"You mean to say that I--that you, I mean--"

"Dat's so, " put in Scipio, nodding cheerfully, while thestained-glass windows flung flecks of red and blue on his honestebony features. "An' Cai Tamblyn all de while no better'n a fool. '_Him_, ' he'd sneer, not playin' up, but pullin' his cross face. Dat's a lesson if ebber dere was one. Cai Tamblyn left with fifty, an' me with three time fifty. 'To my faithful servant, ScipioJohnson. . . . ' And so Miss Marty, when it came to choose, took meon--Scipio Johnson, Esquire, of this Parish--and Cai Tamblyn no morethan 'Mister, ' nor ebber a hope of it. "

The Major found himself in the churchyard, staring at a headstone. He did not remember the stone, yet it seemed by no means a new one. Weather-stains ran down the lettering and lichen spotted it. 

He read the name. It was the name of a man whom he had left hale andyoung--a promising corporal. 

He made his way back slowly to the hospital, leaning heavily on hisstick. Strange shrill noises brought him to a halt on the threshold. They came from the back of the house. 

At the sound of his wooden leg in the brick passage, Cai Tamblynthrust his head out from the kitchen doorway. 

"You come in, " said he. "Please the Lord, the worst is over; but Ihad to tell her. "

"Her?" echoed the Major in bewilderment. "Who?"

"Why, you see, fixed up as we were here--the woman with six emptybeds to nurse, and me on 'tother side with a roomful o' momentoes, an' no end to it but the grave--there seemed no way out butmatterimony. What with my fifty an' her little savin's we might ha'managed it, too, comfertable enough. But when along comes you an'upsets the apple-cart, w'y, in justice, the woman had to be told. Which it took her like a slap in the wind, an' I'm surprised the wayshe'd set her heart on it. But never you mind; she's sensible enoughwhen she comes round. "

"Cai, " said the Major, solemnly, "I thought we had agreed that no onewas to be told?"

"So we did, sir, " answered Mr. Tamblyn, setting his jaw. "But, cometo think it over, 'twasn't fair to the woman. Not bein' a marriedman yourself, sir, or as good as such--"

"Excuse me, " said the Major, lifting a hand. "I quite wellunderstand. But suppose that I have not come back after all!"

CHAPTER XXII. 

WINDS UP WITH A MERRY-GO-ROUND. 

Troy on a Regatta Day differs astonishingly from Troy on any otherday in the year, and yet until you have seen us on a Regatta Day youhave not seen Troy. 

Once every August, on a Monday afternoon, the frenzy descends uponus; and then for three days we dress our town in bunting and bangstarting guns and finishing guns, and put on fancy dresses, and marchin procession with Japanese lanterns, and dance, and stare atpyrotechnical displays. But the centre, the pivot, the axis of ourrevelry is always the merry-go-round on the Town Quay. 

 "The merry-go-round, the merry-go-round, the merry-go-round at Troy, They whirl around, they gallop around, man, woman, and maid and boy!"

Yachtsmen, visitors, farmers and country wives, sober citizens andmothers of families, all meet centripetally and mount and arewhirled to the mad strains of the barrel-organ under the flamingnaphtha, around the revolving pillar where the mirrored images chaseone another too quickly for thought to answer their reflections. We make no toil of our pleasure; yet, if you will mark thedistinction, it keeps us hard at work, and reflection must wait untilThursday morning. Then we dismiss the yachts on their Channel racewestward. We fire the last gun, pull down the blue Peter, and offthey go. We draw a long breath, stow away our remaining blankcartridges, pocket the stopwatch, heap the recall numbers together, and, having redded up the jolly-boat, light our pipes and sit andgaze awhile after our retreating visitors. They go from us silent asgreat white moths; but, silent themselves, they take, as theybrought, all the noise and racket with them. Our revel is over;behind us the harbour lies almost deserted, and we row back to ourdiurnal peace. 

To be sure, in the days of which I write, there were no yachts tovisit us. But three of His Majesty's training-brigs had arrived, bringing their gigs and long-boats, and sailing cutters, with theracing-shells in which the oarsmen of Dock were to do battle with ourchampions of Troy, and a couple of crews of the famous Saltashfishwomen who annually gave us an exhibition race for a purse of goldand in the evening danced quadrilles and country reels on thequarter-deck with His Majesty's officers. 

The town, on its part, had made all due and zealous preparations; andat eight o'clock in the morning, when the Major stepped out of thehospital for a look at the weather (which was hazy but warm, withpromise of a cloudless noon), already the streets breathed festival. Sir Felix's coppices had been thinned as usual for the occasion, andscores of small saplings, larch and beech and hazel, lined the narrowstreets, their sharpened stems planted between the cobbles, theirleafy tops braced back against the house-fronts and stayed with ropeswhich, leading through the upper windows, were made fast within tobars of grates, table-legs and bed-posts. Over them, from house tohouse, strings of flags waved in the light morning breeze, and overthese again the air was jocund with the distant tunding of a drum andthe voices of flute and clarionet calling men to mirth in the TownSquare. 

The Major gave a glance up and down the street and retired indoors toprepare his breakfast, for he was alone. Cai Tamblyn and the widowSnell had the day before departed--on their honeymoon. 

To arrange that his honeymoon should take him from Troy on the day ofall days to which every other soul in the town looked forward, wasquite of a piece with Cai Tamblyn's sardonic humour. But he surelyexcelled himself when, the day before his marriage, he called on theMayor and begged leave to appoint the patient in the hospital as his_locum tenens_ for the week. 

"The man's well enough to look after the place, " he urged; "and youwon't find him neglectin' it to go gaddin' round the shows. A woodenleg's a wonderful steadier at fair-times. " And the Doctor assented. 

It were too much to say that his appointment, when Cai Tamblynreported it, touched our hero's sense of humour, for he had none; buthe winced under the dreadful irony of it. 

"Do you know what you're asking?" he cried. "Suppose that visitorscall--as they will. Would you have me show them round and point outmy own relics?"

"Damme, and I thought I was givin' you a bit o' fun!" said Cai, scratching his head. "It can't be often a man finds hisself in yourposition; and in the old days when you got hold of a rarity you likedto make the most of it. "

"Fun!" echoed the Major. "And you'd have me reel off all thosereminiscences--all the sickening praise, yard by yard, out of thatinfernal hand-book!"

Cai Tamblyn eyed him gravely. 

"You don't like that neither?" he asked. 

"Like it!" the poor man echoed again, sank into a chair, and, shuddering, covered his face. "It makes my soul creep with shame. "

Silence followed for a dozen long seconds. 

"Master!"

The Major shuddered again, but looked up a moment later with tears inhis eyes as Cai laid a hand kindly yet respectfully on his shoulder. 

"Master, I ax your pardon. " He stepped back and paused, seemingto swallow some words in his throat before he spoke again. "You're a long way more of a man than ever I gave 'ee credit to be. Twelve year I passed in your service, too; an' I take ye to witnessthat 'twas Cai Tamblyn an' not Scipio Johnson that knawed 'ee agen, for all the change in your faytures. Whereby you misjudged us, sir, when you left me fifty pound and that nigger a hundred an' fifty. Whereby I misjudged ye in turn, an' I ax your pardon. "

"No, Cai; you judged me truly enough, if severely. There was a timewhen I'd have fed myself on those praises that now sicken me. "

"An' you was happy in them days. "

"Yes, happy enough. "

"Would you have 'em back, master?"

"Would I have them back?" The Major straightened himself up andstood for a moment staring out of the window. "No, Cai, " he saidresolutely, squaring his chin; "not for worlds. "

"There's one little bit of it, sir, you got to have back, " said Cai;"an' that's my fifty pound. "

"Nonsense, man. I sha'n't hear of it. "

"I've a-talked it over wi' the woman, an' she's agreeable. She says'tis the only right an' proper thing to be done. "

"She may be as agreeable as--as you deserve, Cai; but I tell you Idon't touch a penny of it. And you may have formed your own opinionof me during twelve years of service, but in all that time I don'tthink you ever knew me go back on my word. "

"That's truth, sir, " Cai admitted, scratching his head again;"and more by token, 'tis about the only thing the book has forgot topraise 'ee for. "

"Perhaps, " said the Major, in his bitterness almost achieving awitticism, "the author felt 'twould be out of place. "

"But all this apart, sir, I don't see how you'll get along withoutmoney. "

"Make your mind easy on that score, my friend. I rather fancy thatI'm provided for; but if that should prove to be a mistake, I maycome to you for advice. "

"Marryin'?" queried Cai. "But no; with a wooden leg--you'll excuseme--"

"Devil take the man! _You_ can't argue that womenkind aresqueamish. "

Cai grinned, "You'll take on this little job, anyway, sir? I can'tvery well go to his Worship an' beg you off; it might set himsuspectin'. "

"I'll take the job, " said the Major, hastily. 

"Brayvo! But what I'd like to do"--Cai rubbed his chinreflectively--"is to get that cussed book written over agen, an'written different. "

"Give it time, " his master answered sadly. "Maybe even that is a jobthat will get itself done one of these days. "

Cai and his bride had departed, and the Major faced the ordeal ofRegatta Day with much trepidation. Heaven help him to play his partlike a man!

But it appeared that the sightseers, who, as ever, began to pour intothe town at nine in the morning and passed the door in one steady, continuous stream until long past noonday, had either seen the HymenHospital before or were intent first on culling the more evanescentpleasures of the day. In fact, no visitor troubled him until oneo'clock, when, in the lull between the starts of the sailing and therowing races, and while the Regatta Committee was dining ashore tothe strains of a brass band, a farm labourer in his Sunday best, crowned with a sugar-loaf hat, entered, flung himself into a chair, and demanded to have a tooth extracted. 

"You needn' mind which, " he added encouragingly; "they all aches attimes. Only don't let it be more than one, for I can't afford it. I been countin' up how to lay out my money, an' I got sixpence over;an' it can't be in beer, because I promised the missus. "

The Major assured him that the extraction of a tooth or teeth did notfall within the sphere of the hospital's provision. 

"W'y not?" asked the countryman, and added coaxingly, "Just to passthe time, now!"

"Not even to pass the time, " the Major answered with firmness. 

"Very well, " said the man resignedly. "If you won't, you won't; butlet's while it away somehow. Give me a black draught. "

At rare intervals from three o'clock till five other countryfolk dropped in, two or three (once even half a dozen) at a time. As a show the Hymen Hospital and Museum appeared to have outlivedits vogue. The male visitors, one and all, removed their hats onentering, and spoke in constrained tones as if in church. To the Major's relief, no one asked him to recite from the book, andthe questions put to him were of the simplest. A farm maiden fromthe country requested that the bust might be wound up. 

"I beg your pardon?"

"You don't tell me there isn' no music inside!" the maiden exclaimed. "What's it _for, _ then?"

With difficulty the Major explained the purpose and also the limitsof statuary. The girl turned to her swain with a _moue_ of disgust. 

"It's my belief, " she reproached him, "you brought me here out ofstinginess, pretending not to notice when we passed the waxworks, which is only tuppence, and real murderers with their chests a-risingan' fallin', as Maria's young man treated her to a last Regatta; an'a Sleepin' Beauty with a clockwork song inside like distant angels. "

But at five o'clock, or thereabouts, arrived no less a personage thanSir Felix Felix-Williams himself, gallantly escorting a couple ofladies whom he had piloted through the various rustic sights of thefair. 

"O--oof!" panted Sir Felix, gaining the cool passage and mopping hisbrow. "A veritable haven of rest after the dust and din! Hallo, mygood man, are you the caretaker for the day? I don't seem torecollect your face. . . . Eh? No? Well, show us round, please. These ladies are curious to know something of our local hero. "

The Major, his wooden leg trembling, opened the door of the Museum. The ladies put up their eye-glasses and gazed around, while Sir Felixdusted his coat. 

"Hymen, his name was. That's his bust yonder, " Sir Felix explained, flicking at his collar with his handkerchief. "A very decent body; aretired linen-draper, if I remember, from somewhere in the City, where he put together quite a tidy sum of money. Came home and spentit in his native town, where for years he was quite a big-wig. But our friend here has a book about him, written up by theapothecary of the place. Isn't that so?" he appealed to the Major, who drew the document from his pocket with shaking fingers. 

"Eh? I thought so, " went on Sir Felix. "But spare us thelong-winded passages, my friend. Just a few particulars to satisfythe ladies, who, on this their first visit to Cornwall, are goodenough to be inquisitive _a folie_ about us--about Troy especially. "

"But it is ravishing--quite ravishing!" declared one of the ladies. 

"A duck of a place!" cried the other, inspecting the bust. "And see, Sophronia, what a duck of a man! And you say he was only alinen-draper?" She turned to Sir Felix. 

"But all the Cornish are gentlemen--didn't Queen Elizabeth orsomebody say something of the sort?" chimed in the first. "And the place kept as neat as a pin, I protest!"

"Gentlemen in their own conceit, I fear, " Sir Felix answered. "But this fellow was, on the whole, a very decent fellow. Success, or what passes for it in a small country town, never turned his head. He had a foible, I'm told, on the strength of a likeness (you'll beamused) to the Prince Regent. But, so far as I observed, he knew howto conduct himself towards his--er--superiors. I had quite a respectfor him. Yes, begad, quite a respect. "

"I think, sir, " said the Major, controlling his voice, "since you askme to select a passage, this may interest the ladies:

 "'But perhaps the most remarkable trait in the subject of our memoir was his invariable magnanimity, which alone persuaded all who met him that they had to deal with no ordinary man. It is related of him that once in childhood, having been pecked in the leg by a gander, he was found weeping rather at the aggressive insolence of the fowl (with which he had good-naturedly endeavoured to make friends) than at the trivial hurt received by his own boyish calves. '"

The ladies laughed, and Sir Felix joined in uproariously. 

"How deliciously quaint!" exclaimed the one her friend had addressedas Sophronia. "What rural detail!"

"The very word. Quaint--devilish quaint!" Sir Felix agreed. "We _are_ devilish quaint in these parts. "

The Major turned a page:

 "'So far as inquiry lifts the curtain over the closing scene, it was marked by a similar calm forgetfulness of self in the higher interests of his Sovereign, his Country, the British Race. If enemies he had, he forgave them. Attending only to his country's call for volunteers to defend her shores, he followed it in the least conspicuous manner, and fell; leaving at once an example and a reproach to those who, living at home in ease, enjoyed the protection of spirits better conscious of the destinies and duties of Englishmen. '"

"Gad, and so he did!" Sir Felix exclaimed. "I remember thinkingsomething of the sort at the time and doubling my subscription. "He yawned. "Shall we go, ladies?" he asked. "I assure you there isno time to be lost if you wish to see the menagerie. "

But when the ladies were in the passage, the Major half-closed thedoor, shutting Sir Felix off. 

"May I have just one word with you, sir? I will not detain you morethan a moment. "

"Eh?" said Sir Felix, and pulled out a shilling. "Is that whatyou're after? Well, I'm glad you had the delicacy to let the ladiespass out first. They think us an unsophisticated folk. "

The Major waved the coin aside. He planted himself on his woodenleg, with his back to the door, and faced the baronet. 

"I just want to tell you, " he said quietly, "that the whole of what Iread was a lie. "

"Naturally, my good fellow. One allows for that in those memoirs. "

"The man, except in parable, was never bitten by a gander in hislife, " persisted the Major. "Nor did he enlist and fall--if hefell--through any magnanimous motive. He just left Troy on findinghimself betrayed by a neighbour--a dirty, little, mean-spirited, pompous gander of a neighbour--and whatever example he may haveunwittingly--yes, and unwillingly--set, the lesson does not appear tohave been learnt--at least, until this moment. But, " concluded theMajor, throwing wide the door, "we keep the ladies waiting, SirFelix. "

Sir Felix, ordinarily the most irascible of men, gasped once andpassed out, cowed, beaten, utterly and hopelessly bewildered. The Major stood by the door with chest inflated as it had not beeninflated for ten years and more. 

Perhaps this inflation of the chest, reviving old recollections, prompted him to do what next he did. Otherwise I confess I cannotaccount for it. He stepped back from the door and looked around theroom, emitting a long breath. Outside the window the dusk wasalready descending on the street. Within a glass-fronted cupboard inthe corner, hung his old uniform, sword, epaulettes and cocked hat;above the mantelpiece a looking-glass. 

He stepped to the cupboard, opened it, and took down the time-rottenregimentals. Slowly, very slowly, he divested himself of hisclothes, and, piece by piece, indued himself in the old finery. 

At the breeches he paused; then drew them on hastily over his woodenleg, and left them unbuttoned at the knees while he thrust his armsinto coat and waistcoat. Prison fare had reduced his waist, and thegarments hung limply about him. But the breeches were worst. Around his wooden leg the buttons would not meet at all. And what todo with the gaiter?

Methodically he unstrapped the leg and regarded it. Heavens! how forthese three years past he had hated it! He looked up. From the farside of the room the bust watched him, still with its fatuous smile. 

He rose in a sudden access of passion, gripping the leg, taking aim. . . . A slight noise in the passage arrested him, and, leaningagainst the door-jamb, he peered out. It was the woman with theevening's milk, and she had set down the jug in the passage. 

He closed the door, swayed a moment, and with a spring off his soundleg, leapt on the still grinning bust and smote at it, crashing itinto pieces. 

Mrs. Tiddy, the milkwoman, ran home declaring that, in the act ofdelivering the usual two pennyworth at the hospital, she had seen theghost of the Major himself, in full regimentals, in the act ofassaulting his own statue; which, sure enough, was found next morningscattered all over the floor. 

The crash of it recalled the Major to his senses. He stared down onthe fragments at his feet. He had burnt his boats now. 

As methodically as he had indued them he divested himself of hisregimentals, and so, having slipped into his old clothes again andstrapped on his leg, stumped resolutely forth into the street. 

Cai Tamblyn, like every other Trojan, kept a boat of his own; and onthe eve of departing he had placed her at the Major's disposal. She lay moored by a frape off a semi-public quay door, approachedfrom the Fore Street by a narrow alley known as Cherry's (orCharity's) Court. 

The Major stumped down to the waterside in the fast gathering duskand hauled in the boat. Luckily the tide was high, and reachedwithin four feet of the sill of the doorway; luckily, I say, becausefew contrivances in this world are less compatible than a ladder anda wooden leg. The tide being high, however, he managed to scrambledown and on board without much difficulty; unmoored, shipped a paddlein the sculling-notch over the boat's stern, and very quietly workedher up and alongshore, in the shadow of the waterside houses. 

Arrived at the quay-ladder leading up to Dr. Hansombody's garden--once, alas! his own--and to the terrace consecrated by memories ofthe green-sealed Madeira, he checked the boat's way and looked up fora moment, listening. Hearing no sound, he slipped the painter arounda rung, made fast with a hitch, and cautiously, very cautiously, pulled himself up the ladder, bringing his eyes level with the sillof the open door. 

Heaven be praised! the little garden was empty. A moment later hehad heaved himself on to the sill and was crawling along the terrace. 

At the end of the terrace, in a dark corner by the wall, grew astunted fig-tree, its roots set among the flagstones, its boughsoverhanging the tide; and by the roots, between the bole of the treesand the wall, one of the flagstones had a notch in its edge, a notchin old days cunningly concealed, the trick of it known only to theMajor. 

He drew out a small marlingspike which he carried in a sheath at hiship, and, bending over the flagstone, felt for the notch; found it, inserted the point, and began to prise, glancing, as he worked, overhis shoulder at the windows of the house. A lamp shone in one. . . . So much the better. If the room had an inmate, the lamp wouldmake it harder for him or her to see what went on in the dim garden. Ten years. . . . Could his hoard have lain all that time undisturbed?He had hidden it in the old days of the invasion-scare, as many acitizen had made secret deposit against emergencies. Banks werenovelties in those days. Who knew what might happen to a bank, ifBoney landed?

But ten years . . . A long time . . . And yet to all appearances thestone had not been tampered with. He levered it up and thrust itaside. 

No! There the bags lay amid the earth! Two bags, and a hundredguineas in each! He clutched and felt their full round sides. Yes, yes, they were full, as he had left them!

WHO-OOSH!

Heavens! What was _that_?

The Major gripped his bags and was preparing to run; but, an instantlater, cowered low, and backed into the fig-tree's shadow as thewhole sky leapt into flame and shook with a terrific detonation. 

The Regatta fireworks had begun. 

Across the little garden a window went up. 

"My dear, " said a voice (the Doctor's), "bring the child to look, ifhe won't be frightened. "

In the window they stood, all three--the Doctor, "Miss Marty, " thechild--a happy domestic group, framed there with the lamp behindthem. Deep as he could squeeze himself back into the shadow, theMajor cowered and watched them. 

The child crowed and leapt with delight. His father and motherlooked down at him, then at one another, and laughed happily. Alas! poor Major!

They had no eyes to search the garden. What should they suspect, those two, there in the warm circle of the lamp, wrapped in their ownsecurity?

The rockets ceased to blaze and bang. At length the heavens resumedtheir dark peace, and the distant barrel-organ reasserted itself fromthe Town Quay. The child's voice demanded more, but his fatherclosed the window and drew the curtain close. Panting hard, his browclammy with sweat, the Major stole forth and down to the boat withhis poor spoils. 

Half an hour later he found himself in the crowd, his pocketsweighted with guineas. Whither should he go? In what direction sethis face? Eastward for Plymouth, or westward for Falmouth?He roamed the streets, letting the throng of merrymakers carry himfor the while as it willed; and it ended, of course (you may make theexperiment for yourself on a regatta night), in carrying him to themerry-go-round on the Town Quay. 

He stared at it stupidly, his hands in his bulging pockets. He feared no thieves. To begin with, his appearance was notcalculated to invite the attention of pickpockets, and moreover, there are none in Troy. He stared at the whirling horses, theblazing naphtha jets, the revolving mirrors, the laughing, irresponsible faces as they swept by and away again, and reappearedand once again passed laughing thither where, on the farther side ofthe circle, brooded (as it seemed to him) a great shadow of darkness. 

Suddenly his heart stood still, and his few hairs stiffened under histarpaulin hat. That sailor, riding with a happy grin on his face, and his face towards his horse's tail! Surely not--surely it couldnot be . . . ? But as the sailor whirled round into view again, itsurely was Ben Jope!

The music and the merry-go-round slowed down together and came to astandstill. A score of riders clambered off, and a score ofonlookers surged up and took their places. The Major ran with them, pushing his way to the far side of the circle where Mr. Jope's horsehad come to a stop. He arrived, but too late. Mr. Jope haddisappeared. 

A moment later, however, the Major caught sight of him, elbowing hisway through the gut of a narrow lane leading off the Quay by thefish-market, and gave chase. But the weight in his pocketshandicapped him, and the crowd seemed to take a malicious delight inblocking his way. 

Nevertheless he kept his quarry in sight. A dozen times at least Mr. Jope halted before a shop or a booth and dallied, staring, but everon the point of capture he would start off again, threading thethrong with extreme nimbleness. With a dexterity as marvellous as itwas unconscious, he dodged his pursuer past the Broad Ship, up CustomHouse Hill, along Passage Street, out through the Tollway Arch andamong the greater shows--the menagerie, the marionettes, thetravelling theatre--all in full blast, almost to the extreme edge ofthe fair, where it melted into the darkness of the woods and the highroad winding up between them into open country. Here, hanging on hisheel for a moment, he appeared to make a final choice between thesemany attractions, and dived into a booth over which a flaming boardannounced a conjuring entertainment by Professor Boscoboglio, --"Prestidigitateur to the Allied Sovereigns. "

The Major spied Mr. Jope's broad back as he dipped and enteredbeneath the flap of the tent; and followed, elate at having run hisquarry to earth. A stout woman, seated at the entrance beside a drumon which she counted her change, thrust out an arm of no meanproportions to block his entrance, and demanded twopence, fee foradmission. 

The Major, who had forgotten this formality, dipped his hand into hisbreeches pocket and tendered her a guinea. She eyed it suspiciously, took it, rang it on the lid of her money-box, and, recognising it fora genuine coin, at once transferred her suspicions to him. 

"Tuppence out of a guinea?" she sniffed. "Not likely, with a man of_your_ looks. "

"It's genuine, ma'am. "

"I ain't a fool, " answered the lady. "I was wondering how you cameby it. Well, anyway, I can't give you change; so take yourself off, please. "

He argued, but she was obdurate. She hadn't the change about her, she affirmed, with a jerk of her thumb towards the interior of thetent. Their takings to-day hadn't amounted to five shillings, as shewas a Christian woman. 

The Major, glancing beneath the tent-cloth, spied a melancholy manextracting ribbons from his mouth before an audience of three men, achild and a woman. He heard Ben Jope's voice raised in approval. He announced that he would wait outside until the performanceconcluded. 

"Twenty minutes, " said the stout woman nonchalantly. 

"Good evening, ma'am, " said he, and stepping back, began to pace toand fro in front of the tent. 

Why had he followed this man who, if you looked at it in one way, hadbeen the prime cause of all his calamity? He smiled grimly at thethought that, as justice went in this world, he should be trackingBen Jope down in a cold passion of revenge; whereas, in fact, he washungry to grip the honest fellow's hand. From the panorama of theseten mischanced years the face of Ben Jope shone out as in a halo, wreathed with good-natured smiles. Ben Jope--

Here the Major flung up both hands and tottered back as, with a liftof the earth beneath his feet, a flame ripped the roof off the tent, and roaring, hurled it right and left into the night. 

Under the shock of the explosion he dropped on hands and knees, and, still on hands and knees, crawled forward to a ditch, a full tenyards to the left of the spot where the tent had stood. In thedarkness one of the victims lay groaning. 

"Are--are you hurt?" The Major's teeth chattered as he crawled nearand stretched out a hand towards the sufferer. 

"Damn the fellow!" swore Ben Jope cheerfully, sitting up. "What'llbe his next trick, I wonder?"

"You--you are not hurt?"

"Hurt? No, I reckon. Who are you?"

"Hymen, Ben--Solomon Hymen. You remember--in the Plymouth Theatre, ten years back. Oh, hush, man, hush!" for Ben, casting both hands upto his face, had let out a squeal like a rabbit's. 

"An' I saw you die! Oh, take him away someone! With these veryeyes! No, damn it!" Mr. Jope pulled himself together and scrambledto his feet. "I paid for two pennyworth, but if this goes on I getsmy money back!"

By this time showmen and merrymakers, startled out of theneighbouring tents by the explosion, as bees from their hives, wererunning to and fro with lanterns and naphtha flares, seeking for thevictims. A ring of the searchers came to a halt around the Major andBen Jope, and Ben, catching sight of his companion's face, let outanother yell. 

"It's all right. " The Major clutched him by the arm and turned. "It's all right, my good people. He can walk, you see. I'll takehim along to the hospital. "

He managed to reassure them, and they passed on. He slipped an armunder Ben's and led him away into the darkness. 

"But I seen you blowed into air, ten years ago, _with_ these veryeyes, " persisted Ben. 

"And with these very eyes I saw you blown into air ten minutes ago;and yet we're both alive, " the Major assured him. 

"An' I come here o' purpose to look up your ha'nts, havin' beenalways pretty curious about that tale o' your'n, but kep' moderatebusy all these years. "

"And Bill Adams?"

"Wot?" Mr. Jope halted. "Haven't you 'eard? Bill's dead. Drink done it--comin' upon it too 'asty. Simmons's boarding-house, Plymouth, that's where it was. _Quite_ a decent house, an' theproprietor behaved very well about it, I will say. But where onearth have you been hidin' all these years, that you never heardabout Bill?"

"In a French war prison, Ben. And, Ben, you found me a berth once, you remember. I wonder if you could get me into another?"

"O' course I can, " Mr. Jope answered cheerily. "You come along o' meto Plymouth an' I'll put you into the very job. A cook's galley, itis, and so narra' that with a wooden leg in dirty weather you canprop yourself tight when she rolls, an' stir the soup with itbetween-times!"

They entered the hospital, and the Major packed his knapsack withhasty, eager hands. 

"What's this mess on the floor?" asked Ben Jope, pointing to thefragments of plaster of Paris. 

"That?" The Major looked up from his packing. "That's a sort ofimage I broke. Come along; we haven't time to pick up the pieces. "

They crossed the harbour in Cai Tamblyn's boat, and moored her safelyat the ferry slip. On the knap of the hill the Major turned for alast look. 

From the Town Quay, far below and across the water, the lights of themerry-go-round winked at him gaily, knowingly.