The tide was making, too, and with wind and tide to help I pulled over the river bar and towards the creek where daily, after hauling the trammel, I bathed from the boat; a delectable corner in the eye of the morning sunshine, paved fathoms deep with round, white pebbles, one of which, from the gunwale, I selected to dive for.

The sun broke through the sea-fog around us while I stripped; it shone, as I balanced myself for the plunge, on the broad wings of a heron flapping out from the wood's blue shadow; it shone on the scales of the fish struggling and gasping under the thwarts. Divine the river was, divine the morning, divine the moment—the last of my boyhood.

Souse I plunged and deep, with wide-open eyes, chose out and grasped my pebble, and rose to the surface holding it high as though it had been a gem. The sound of the splash was in my ears and the echo of my own laugh, but with it there mingled a cry from Billy Priske, and shaking the water out of my eyes I saw him erect in the stern-sheets and astare at a vision parting the fog—the vision of a tall fore-and-aft sail, golden-grey against the sunlight, and above the sail a foot or two of a stout pole-mast, and above the mast a gilded truck and weather-vane with a tail of scarlet bunting. So closely the fog hung about her that for a second I took her to be a cutter; and then a second sail crept through the curtain, and I recognized her for the Gauntlet ketch, Port of Falmouth, Captain Jo Pomery, returned from six months' foreign. I announced her to Billy with a shout.

"As if a man couldn' tell that!" answered Billy, removing his cap and rubbing the back of his head. "What brings her in here, that's what I'm askin'."

"Belike," said I, scrambling over the gunwale, "the man has lost his bearings in this fog, and mistakes Helford for Falmouth entrance."

"Lost his bearin's! Jo Pomery lost his bearin's!" Billy regarded me between pity and reproach. "And him sailing her in from Blackhead close round the Manacles, in half a capful o' wind an' the tides lookin' fifty ways for Sunday! That's what he've a-done, for the weather lifted while we was hauling trammel—anyways east of south a man could see clear for three mile and more, an' not a vessel in sight there. There's maybe three men in the world besides Jo Pomery could ha' done it—the Lord knows how, unless 'tis by sense o' smell. And he've a-lost his bearin's, says you!"

"Well then," I ventured, "perhaps he has a fancy to land part of his cargo duty-free."

"That's likelier," Billy assented. "I don't say 'tis the truth, mind you: for if 'tis truth, why should the man choose to fetch land by daylight? Fog? A man like Jo Pomery isn' one to mistake a little pride-o'-the-mornin' for proper thick weather—the more by token it's been liftin' this hour and more. But 'tis a likelier guess anyway, the Gauntlet being from foreign. 'Lost his bearin's,' says you, and come, as you might say, slap through the Manacles; an' by accident, as you might say! Luck has a broad back, my son, but be careful how you dance 'pon it."

"Where does she come from?" I asked.

"Mediterranean; that's all I know. Four months and more she must ha' took on this trip. Iss; sailed out o' Falmouth back-along in the tail-end o' February, and her cargo muskets and other combustibles."

"Muskets?"

"Muskets; and you may leave askin' me who wants muskets out there, for in the first place I don't know, an' a still tongue makes a wise head."

I had slipped on shirt and breeches. "We'll give him a hail, anyway," said I, "and if there's sport on hand he may happen to let us join it."

The ketch by this time was pushing her nose past the spit of rock hiding our creek from seaward. As she came by with both large sails boomed out to starboard and sheets alternately sagging loose and tautening with a jerk, I caught sight of two of her crew in the bows, the one looking on while the other very deliberately unlashed the anchor, and aft by the wheel a third man, whom I made out to be Captain Pomery himself.

"Gauntlet ahoy!" I shouted, standing on the thwart and making a trumpet of my hands.

Captain Pomery turned, cast a glance towards us over his left shoulder and lifted a hand. A moment later he called an order forward, and the two men left the anchor and ran to haul in sheets. Here was a plain invitation to pull alongside. I seized a paddle, and was working the boat's nose round, to pursue, when another figure showed above the Gauntlet's bulwarks: a tall figure in an orange-russet garment like a dressing-gown; a monk, to all appearance, for the sun played on his tonsured scalp as he leaned forward and watched our approach.



CHAPTER V.

THE SILENT MEN.

"Seamen, seamen, whence come ye? Pardonnez moy, je vous en prie." Old Song.

A monk he was too. A second and third look over my shoulder left me no doubt of it. He gravely handed us a rope as we overtook the ketch and ran alongside, and as gravely bowed when I leapt upon deck; but he gave us no other welcome.

His russet gown reached almost to his feet, which were bare; and he stood amid the strangest litter of a deck-cargo, consisting mainly— or so at first glance it seemed to me—of pot-plants and rude agricultural implements: spades, flails, forks, mattocks, picks, hoes, dibbles, rakes, lashed in bundles; sieves, buckets, kegs, bins, milk-pails, seed-hods, troughs, mangers, a wired dovecote, and a score of hen-coops filled with poultry. Forward of the mainmast stood a cart with shafts, upright and lashed to the mast, that the headsails might work clear. The space between the masts was occupied by enormous open hatchways through which came the lowing of oxen, and through these, peering down into the hold, I saw the backs of cattle and horses moving in its gloom, and the bodies of men stretched in the straw at their feet.

So much of the Gauntlet's hugger-mugger I managed to discern before Captain Pomery left the helm and hurried forward to give us welcome on board.

"Mornin', Squire Prosper! Mornin', Billy! You know me, sir—Cap'n Jo Pomery—which is short for Job, and 'tis the luckiest chance, sir, you hailed me, for you'm nearabouts the first man I wanted to see. Faith, now, and I wonder how your father (God bless him) will take it?"

"Why, what's the matter?" asked I, with a glance at the monk, who had drawn back a pace and stood, still silent, fingering his rosary.

"The matter? Good Lord! isn't this matter enough?" Captain Jo waved an arm to include all the deck-cargo. "See them pot-plants, there, and what they'm teeled [1] in?"

"Drinking-troughs?" said I. "Or . . . is it coffins?"

"Coffins it is. I'd feel easier in mind if you could tell me what your father (God bless him) will say to it."

"But what has all this to do with my father?" I demanded, and, seeking Billy's eyes, found them as frankly full of amaze as my own.

"Not but what," continued Captain Jo, "they've behaved well, though dog-sick to a man from the time we left port. Look at 'em!"—he caught me by the arm and, drawing me to the hatchway, pointed down to the hold. "A round score and eight, and all well paid for as passengers; but for the return journey I won't answer. It depends on your father, and that"—with a jerk of his thumb towards the tall monk—"I stippilated when I shipped 'em. 'Never you mind,' was the answer I got; 'take 'em to England to Sir John Constantine.' And here they be!"

"But who on earth are they?" I cried, staring down into the gloom, where presently I made out that the men stretched in the straw at the horses' feet were monks all, and habited like the monk on the deck behind me. To him next I turned, to find his eyes, which were dark and quick, searching me curiously; and as I turned he made a step forward, put out a hand as if to touch me on the shirt-sleeve, and anon drew it back, yet still continued to regard me.

"You are a son, signor, of Sir John Constantine?" he asked, in soft Italian.

"I am his only son, sir," I answered him in the same language.

"Ah! You speak my tongue?" A gleam of joy passed over his grave features. "And you are his son? So! I should have guessed it at once, for you bear great likeness to him."

"You know my father, sir?"

"Years ago." His hands, which he used expressively, seemed to grope in a far past. "I come to him also from one who knew him years ago."

"Upon what business, sir!—if I am allowed to ask."

"I bring a message."

"You bring a tolerably full one, then," said I, glancing first at the disorder on deck and from that down to the recumbent figures in the hold.

"I speak for them," he went on, having followed the glance. "It is most necessary that they keep silence; but I speak for all."

"Then, sir, as it seems to me, you have much to say."

"No," he answered slowly; "very little, I think; very little, as you will see."

Here Captain Jo interrupted us. He had stepped back to steady the wheel, but I fancy that the word silenzio must have reached him, and that, small Italian though he knew, with this particular word the voyage had made him bitterly acquainted.

"Dumb!" he shouted. "Dumb as gutted haddocks!"

"Dumb!" I echoed, while the two seamen forward heard and laughed.

"It is their vow," said the monk, gravely, and seemed on the point to say more.

But at this moment Captain Pomery sang out "Gybe-O!" At the warning we ducked our heads together as the boom swung over and the Gauntlet, heeling gently for a moment, rounded the river-bend in view of the great house of Constantine, set high and gazing over the folded woods. A house more magnificently placed, with forest, park, and great stone terraces rising in successive tiers from the water's edge, I do not believe our England in those days could show; and it deserved its site, being amply classical in design, with a facade that, discarding mere ornament, expressed its proportion and symmetry in bold straight lines, prolonged by the terraces on which tall rows of pointed yews stood sentinel. Right English though it was, it bore (as my father used to say of our best English poetry) the stamp of great Italian descent, and I saw the monk give a start as he lifted his eyes to it.

"We have not these river-creeks in Italy," said he, "nor these woods, nor these green lawns; and yet, if those trees, aloft there, were but cypresses—" He broke off. "Our voyage has a good ending," he added, half to himself.

The Gauntlet being in ballast, and the tide high, Captain Pomery found plenty of Water in the winding channel, every curve of which he knew to a hair, and steered for at its due moment, winking cheerfully at Billy and me, who stood ready to correct his pilotage. He had taken in his mainsail, and carried steerage way with mizzen and jib only; and thus, for close upon a mile, we rode up on the tide, scaring the herons and curlews before us, until drawing within sight of a grass-grown quay he let run down his remaining canvas and laid the ketch alongside, so gently that one of the seamen, who had cast a stout fender overside, stepped ashore, and with a slow pull on her main rigging checked and brought her to a standstill.

"Aut Lacedaemonium Tarentum," said the monk at my shoulder quietly; and, as I stared at him, "Ah, to be sure, this is your Tarentum, is it not? Yet the words came to me for the sound's sake only and their so gentle close. Our voyage has even such an ending."

"I had best run on," I suggested, "and warn my father of your coming."

"It is not necessary."

"Nevertheless," I urged, "they can be preparing breakfast for you, up at the house, while you and your friends are making ready to come ashore."

"We have broken our fast," he answered; "and we are quite ready, if you will be so good as to guide us."

He stepped to the hatchways and called down, announcing simply that the voyage was ended: and in the dusk there I saw monk after monk upheave himself from the straw and come clambering up the ladder; tall monks and short, old monks and young and middle-aged, lean monks and thickset—but the most of them cadaverous, and all of them yellow with sea-sickness; twenty-eight monks, all barefoot, all tolerably dirty, and all blinking in the fresh sunshine. When they were gathered, at a sign from one of them—by dress not distinguishable from his fellows—all knelt and gave silent thanks for the voyage accomplished.

I could see that Billy Priske was frightened: for, arising, they rolled their eyes about them like wild animals turned loose in an unfamiliar country, and the whites of their eyes were yellow (so to speak) with seafaring, and their pupils glassy with fever and from the sea's glare. But the monk their spokesman touched my arm and motioned me to lead; and, when I obeyed, one by one the whole troop fell into line and followed at his heels.

Thus we went—I leading, with him and the rest in single file after me—up by the footpath through the woods, and forth into sunshine again upon the green dewy bracken of the deer-park. Here my companion spoke for the first time since disembarking.

"Your father, sir," said he, looking about him and seeming to sniff the morning air, "must be a very rich signor."

"On the contrary," I answered, "I have some reason to believe him a poor man."

He stared down for a moment at his bare feet, and the skirts of his gown wet to the knees with the grasses.

"Ah? Well, it will make no difference," he said; and we resumed our way.

As we climbed the last slope under the terraces of the house, I caught sight of my father leaning by a balustrade high above us, at the head of a double flight of broad stone steps, and splicing the top joint of a trout-rod he had broken the day before. He must have caught sight of us almost at the moment when we emerged from the woods.

He showed no surprise at all. Only as I led my guests up the steps he set down his work and, raising a hand, bent to them in a very courteous welcome.

"Good morning, lad! And good morning to those you bring, whencesoever they come."

"They come, sir," I answered "in Jo Pomery's ketch Gauntlet, I believe from Italy; and with a message for you."

"My father turned his gaze from me to the spokesman at my elbow. His eyebrows lifted with surprise and sudden pleasure.

"Hey?" he exclaimed. "Is it my old friend—"

But the other, before his name could be uttered, lifted a hand.

"My name is the Brother Basilio now, Sir John: no other am I permitted to remember. The peace of God be with you, and upon your house!"

"And with you, Brother Basilio, since you will have it so: and with all your company! You bear a message for me? But first you must break your fast." He turned to lead the way to the house.

"We have eaten already, Sir John. As soon as your leisure serves, we would deliver our message."

My father called to Billy Priske—who hung in the rear of the monks— bidding him fetch my uncle Gervase in from the stables to the State Room, and so, without another word, motioned to his visitors to follow. To this day I can hear the shuffle of their bare feet on the steps and slabs of the terrace as they hurried after him to keep up with his long strides.

In the great entrance-hall he paused to lift a bunch of rusty keys off their hook, and, choosing the largest, unlocked the door of the State Room. The lock had been kept well oiled, for Billy Priske entered it twice daily; in the morning, to open a window or two, and at sunset, to close them. But it is a fact that I had not crossed its threshold a score of times in my life, though I ran by it, maybe, as many times a day; nor (as I believe) had my father entered it for years. Yet it was the noblest room in the house, in length seventy-five feet, panelled high in dark oak and cedar and adorned around each panel with carvings of Grinling Gibbons—festoons and crowns and cherub-faces and intricate baskets of flowers. Each panel held a portrait, and over every panel, in faded gilt against the morning sun, shone an imperial crown. The windows were draped with hangings of rotten velvet. At the far end on a dais stood a porphyry table, and behind it, facing down the room, a single chair, or throne, also of porphyry and rudely carved. For the rest the room held nothing but dust—dust so thick that our visitors' naked feet left imprints upon it as they huddled after their leader to the dais, where my father took his seat, after beckoning me forward to stand on his right.

But of all bewildered faces there was never a blanker, I believe, since the world began than my uncle Gervase's; who now appeared in the doorway, a bucket in his hand, straight from the stables where he had been giving my father's roan horse a drench. Billy's summons must have hurried him, for he had not even waited to turn down his shirt-sleeves: but as plainly it had given him no sort of notion why he was wanted and in the State Room. I guessed indeed that on his way he had caught up the bucket supposing that the house was afire. At sight of the monks he set it down slowly, gently, staring at them the while, and seemed in act of inverting it to sit upon, when my father addressed him from the dais over the shaven heads of the audience.

"Brother, I am sorry to have disturbed you: but here is a business in which I may need your counsel. Will it please you to step this way? These guests of ours, I should first explain, have arrived from over seas."

My uncle came forward, still like a man in a dream, mounted the dais on my father's left, and, turning, surveyed the visitors in front.

"Eh? To be sure, to be sure," he murmured. "Broomsticks!"

"Their spokesman here, who gives his name as the Brother Basilio, bears a message for me; and since he presents it in form with a whole legation at his back, I think it due to treat him with equal ceremony. Do you agree?"

"If you ask me," my uncle answered, after a pause full of thought, "they would prefer to start, maybe, with a wash and a breakfast. By good luck, Billy tells me, the trammel has made a good haul. As for basins, brother, our stock will not serve all these gentlemen; but if the rest will take the will for the deed and use the pump, I'll go round meanwhile and see how the hens have been laying."

"You are the most practical of men, brother: but my offer of breakfast has already been declined. Shall we hear what Dom Basilio has to say?"

"I have nothing to say, Sir John," put in Brother Basilio, advancing, "but to give you this letter and await your answer."

He drew a folded paper from his tunic and handed it to my father, who rose to receive it, turned it over, and glanced at the superscription. I saw a red flush creep slowly up to his temples and fade, leaving his face extraordinarily pale. A moment later, in face of his audience, he lifted the paper to his lips, kissed it reverently, and broke the seal.

Again I saw the flush mount to his temples as he read the letter through slowly and in silence. Then after a long pause he handed it to me; and I took it wondering, for his eyes were dim and yet bright with a noble joy.

The letter (turned into English) ran thus—

"To Sir John Constantine, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Star, at his house of Constantine in Cornwall, England.

"MY FRIEND,

"The bearer of this and his company have been driven by the Genoese from their monastery of San Giorgio on my estate of Casalabriva above the Taravo valley, the same where you will remember our treading the vintage together to the freedom of Corsica. But the Genoese have cut down my vines long since, and now they have fired the roof over these my tenants and driven them into the macchia, whence they send message to me to deliver them. Indeed, friend, I have much ado to protect myself in these days: but by good fortune I have heard of an English vessel homeward bound which will serve them if they can reach the coast, whence numbers of the faithful will send them off with good provision. Afterwards, what will happen? To England the ship is bound, and in England I know you only. Remembering your great heart, I call on it for what help you can render to these holy men. Addio, friend. You are remembered in my constant prayers to Christ, the Virgin, and all the Saints.

"EMILIA."

At a sign from my father—who had sunk back in his chair and sat gripping its arms—I passed on this epistle to my uncle Gervase, who read it and ran his hand through his hair.

"Dear me!" said he, running his eye over the attentive monks, "this lady, whoever she may be—"

"She is a crowned queen, brother Gervase," my father interrupted; "and moreover she is the noblest woman in the world."

"As to that, brother," returned my uncle, "I am saying nothing. But speaking of what I know, I say she can be but poorly conversant with your worldly affairs."

My father half-lifted himself from his seat. "And is that how you take it?" he demanded sharply. "Is that all you read in the letter? Brother, I tell you again, this lady is a queen. What should a queen know of my degree of poverty?"

"Nevertheless—" began my uncle.

But my father cut him short again. "I had hoped," said he, reproachfully, "you would have been prompt to recognize her noble confidence. Mark you how, no question put, she honours me. 'Do this, for my sake'—Who but the greatest in the world can appeal thus simply?"

"None, maybe," my uncle replied; "as none but the well-to-do can answer with a like ease."

"You come near to anger me, brother; but I remember that you never knew her. Is not this house large? Are not four-fifths of my rooms lying at this moment un-tenanted? Very well; for so long as it pleases them, since she claims it, these holy men shall be our guests. No more of this," my father commanded peremptorily, and added, with all the gravity in the world, "You should thank her consideration rather, that she sends us visitors so frugal, since poverty degrades us to these economies. But there is one thing puzzles me." He took the letter again from my uncle and fastened his gaze on the Brother Basilio. "She says she has much ado to protect herself."

"Indeed, Sir John," answered Brother Basilio, "I fear the queen, our late liege-lady, speaks somewhat less than the truth. She wrote to you from a poor lodging hard by Bastia, having ventured back to Corsica out of Tuscany on business of her own; and on the eve of sailing we heard that she had been taken prisoner by the Genoese."

"What!" My father rose, clutching the arms of his chair. Of stone they were, like the chair itself, and well mortised: but his great grip wrenched them out of their mortises and they crashed on the dais. "What! You left her a prisoner of the Genoese!" He gazed around them in a wrath that slowly grew cold, freezing into contempt. "Go, sirs; since she commands it, room shall be found for you all. My house for the while is yours. But go from me now."

[1] Tilled, planted.



CHAPTER VI.

HOW MY FATHER OUT OF NOTHING BUILT AN ARMY, AND IN FIVE MINUTES PLANNED AN INVASION.

Walled Townes, stored Arcenalls and Armouries, Goodly Races of Horse, Chariots of Warre, Elephants, Ordnance, Artillery, and the like: All this is but a Sheep in a Lion's Skin, except the Breed and disposition be stout and warlike. Nay, Number it selfe in Armies importeth not much where the People is of weake courage: For (as Virgil saith) It never troubles a Wolfe, how many the sheepe be."—BACON.

For the rest of the day my father shut himself in his room, while my uncle spent the most of it seated on the brewhouse steps in a shaded corner of the back court, through which the monks brought in their furniture and returned to the ship for more. The bundles they carried were prodigious, and all the morning they worked without halt or rest, ascending and descending the hill in single file and always at equal distances one behind another. Watching from the terrace down the slope of the park as they came and went, you might have taken them for a company of ants moving camp. But my uncle never wholly recovered from the shock of their first freight, to see man by man cross the court with a stout coffin on his back and above each coffin a pack of straw: nor was he content with Fra Basilio's explanation that the brethren slept in these coffins by rule and saved the expense of beds.

"For my part," said my uncle, "considering the numbers that manage it, I should have thought death no such dexterity as to need practice."

"Yet bethink you, sir, of St. Paul's words. 'I protest,' said he, 'I die daily.'"

"Why, yes, sir, and so do we all," agreed my uncle, and fell silent, though on the very point, as it seemed, of continuing the argument. "I did not choose to be discourteous, lad," he explained to me later: "but I had a mind to tell him that we do daily a score of things we don't brag about—of which I might have added that washing is one: and I believe 'twould have been news to him."

I had never known my uncle in so rough a temper. Poor man! I believe that all the time he sat there on the brewhouse steps, he was calculating woefully the cost of these visitors; and it hurt him the worse because he had a native disposition to be hospitable.

"But who is this lady that signs herself Emilia?" I asked.

"A crowned queen, lad, and the noblest lady in the world—you heard your father say it. This evening he may choose to tell us some further particulars."

"Why this evening?" I asked, and then suddenly remembered that to-day was the 15th of July and St. Swithun's feast; that my father would not fail to drink wine after dinner in the little temple below the deer-park; and that he had promised to admit me to-night to make the fourth in St. Swithun's brotherhood.

He appeared at dinner-time, punctual and dressed with more than his usual care (I noted that he wore his finest lace ruffles); and before going in to dinner we were joined by the Vicar, much perturbed—as his manner showed—by the news of a sudden descent of papists upon his parish. Indeed the good man so bubbled with it that we had scarcely taken our seats before the stream of questions overflowed. "Who were these men?" "How many!" "Whence had they come, and why?" etc.

I glanced at my father in some anxiety for his temper. But he laughed and carved the salmon composedly. He had a deep and tolerant affection for Mr. Grylls.

"Where shall I begin!" said he. "They are, I believe, between twenty and thirty in number, though I took no care to count; and they belong to the Trappistine Order, to which I have ever been attracted; first, because I count it admirable to renounce all for a faith, however frantic, and secondly for the memory of Bouthillier de Rance, who a hundred years ago revived the order after five hundred years of desuetude."

"And who was he?" inquired the Vicar.

"He was a young rake in Paris, tonsured for the sake of the family benefices, who had for mistress no less a lady than the Duchess de Rohan-Montbazon. One day, returning from the country after a week's absence and letting himself into the house by a private key, he rushed upstairs in a lover's haste, burst open the door, and found himself in a chamber hung with black and lit with many candles. His mistress had died, the day before, of a putrid fever. But—worse than this and most horrible—the servants had ordered the coffin in haste; and, when delivered, it was found to be too short. Upon which, to have done with her, in their terror of infection, they had lopped off the head, which lay pitiably dissevered from the trunk. For three years after the young man travelled as one mad, but at length found solace in his neglected abbacy of Soligny-la-Trappe, and in reviving its extreme Cistercian rigours."

"I had supposed the Trappists to be a French order in origin, and confined to France," said the Vicar.

"They have offshoots: of which I knew but one in Italy, that settled some fifty years back in a monastery they call Buon-Solazzo, outside Florence, at the invitation of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. But I have been making question of our guests through Dom Basilio, their guest-master and abbot de facto (since their late abbot, an old man whom he calls Dom Polifilo, died of exposure on the mountains some three days before they embarked); and it appears that they belong to a second colony, which has made its home for these ten years at Casalabriva in Corsica, having arrived by invitation of the Queen Emilia of that island, and there abiding until the Genoese burned the roof over their heads."

The Vicar sipped his wine.

"You have considered," he asked, "the peril of introducing so many papists into our quiet parish?"

"I have not considered it for a moment," answered my father, cheerfully. "Nor have I introduced them. But if you fear they'll convert—pervert—subvert—invert your parishioners and turn 'em into papists, I can reassure you. For in the first place thirty men, or thirty thousand, of whom only one can open his mouth, are, for proselytizing, equal to one man and no more."

"They can teach by their example if not by their precept," urged the Vicar.

"Their example is to sleep in their coffins. My good sir, if you will not trust your English doctrine to its own truth, you might at least rely on the persuasiveness of its comforts. Nay, pardon me, my friend," he went on, as the Vicar's either cheekbone showed a red flush, "I did not mean to speak offensively; but, Englishman though I am, in matters of religion my countrymen are ever a puzzle to me. At a great price you won your freedom from the Bishop of Rome and his dictation. I admire the price and I love liberty; yet liberty has its drawbacks, as you have for a long while been discovering; of which the first is that every man with a maggot in his head can claim a like liberty with yourselves, quoting your own words in support of it. Let me remind you of that passage in which Rabelais—borrowing, I believe, from Lucian—brings the good Pantagruel and his fellow-voyagers to a port which he calls the Port of Lanterns. 'There (says he) upon a tall tower Pantagruel recognized the Lantern of La Rochelle, which gave us an excellent clear light. Also we saw the Lanterns of Pharos, of Nauplia, and of the Acropolis of Athens, sacred to Pallas,' and so on; whence I draw the moral that coast-lights are good, yet, multiplied, they complicate navigation."

"And apply your moral by erecting yet another!"

"Fairly retorted. Yet how can you object without turning the sword of Liberty against herself? Have you never heard tell, by the way, of Captain Byng's midshipman?"

"Who was he?"

"I forget his name, but he started his first night aboard ship by kneeling down and saying his prayers, as his mother had taught him."

"I commend the boy," said my uncle.

"I also commend him: but the crowd of his fellow-midshipmen found it against the custom of the service and gave him the strap for it. This, however, raised him up a champion in one of the taller lads, who protested that their conduct was tyrannous: 'and,' said he, very generously, 'to-morrow night I too propose to say my prayers. If any one object, he may fight me." Thus, being a handy lad with his fists, he established the right of religious liberty on board. By-and-by one or two of the better disposed midshipmen followed his example: by degrees the custom spread along the lower deck, where the dispute had happened in full view of the whole ship's company, seamen and marines; and by the time she reached her port of Halifax she hadn't a man on board (outside the ward-room) but said his prayers regularly."

"A notable Christian triumph," was the Vicar's comment.

"Quite so. At Halifax," pursued my father, "Captain Byng took aboard out of hospital another small midshipman, who on his first night no sooner climbed into his hammock than the entire mess bundled him out of it. 'We would have you to know, young man,' said they, 'that private devotion is the rule on board our ship. It's down on your knees this minute or you get the strap.'

"I leave you," my father concluded, "to draw the moral. For my part the tale teaches me that in any struggle for freedom the real danger begins with the moment of victory."

Said my uncle Gervase after a pause, "Then these Corsicans of yours, brother, stand as yet in no real danger, since the Genoese are yet harrying their island with fire and sword."

"In no danger at all as regards their liberty," answered my father, poising his knife for a first cut into the saddle of mutton, "though in some danger, I fear me, as regards their queen. They have, however, taken the first and most important step by getting the news carried to me. The next is to raise an army; and the next after that, to suit the plan of invasion to our forces. Indeed," wound up my father with another flourish of his carving-knife, "I am in considerable doubt where to make a start."

"I hold," said my uncle, eyeing the saddle of mutton, "that you save the gravy by beginning close alongside the chine."

"I was thinking for my part that either Porto or Sagone would serve us best," said my father, meditatively.

Dinner over, the four of us strolled out abreast into the cool evening and down through the deer-park to the small Ionic temple, where Billy Priske had laid out fruit, wine, and glasses; and there, with no more ceremony than standing to drink my health, the three initiated me into the brotherhood of St. Swithun. It gave me a sudden sense of being grown a man, and this sense my father very promptly proceeded to strengthen.

"I had hoped," said he, putting down his glass and seating himself, "to delay Prosper's novitiate. I had designed, indeed, that after staying his full time at Oxford he should make the Grand Tour with me and prepare himself for his destiny by a leisured study of cities and men. But this morning's news has forced me to reshape my plans. Listen—

"In the early autumn of 1735, being then at the Court of Tuscany, I received sudden and secret orders to repair to Corte, the capital of Corsica, an island of which I knew nothing beyond what I had learnt in casual talk from the Count Domenico Rivarola, who then acted as its plenipotentiary at Florence. He was a man with whom I would willingly have taken counsel, but my orders from England expressly forbade it. Rivarola in fact was suspected—and justly as my story will show—of designs of his own for the future of the island; and although, as it will also show, we had done better to consult him, Walpole's injunctions were precise that I should by every means keep him in the dark.

"The situation—to put it as briefly as I can—was this. For two hundred years or so the island had been ruled by the Republic of Genoa; and, by common consent, atrociously. For generations the islanders had lived in chronic revolt, under chiefs against whom the Genoese—or, to speak more correctly, the Bank of Genoa—had not scrupled to apply every device, down to secret assassination. Uno avolso non deficit alter: the Corsicans never lacked a leader to replace the fallen: and in 1735 the succession was shared by two noble patriots, Giafferi and Hyacinth Paoli.

"Under their attacks the Genoese were slowly but none the less certainly losing their hold on the island. Their plight was such that, although no one knew precisely what they would do, every one foresaw that, failing some heroic remedy, they must be driven into the sea, garrison after garrison, and lose Corsica altogether; and of all speculations the most probable seemed that they would sell the island, with all its troubles, to France. Now, for France to acquire so capital a point d'appui in the Mediterranean would obviously be no small inconvenience to England: and therefore our Ministers—who had hitherto regarded the struggles of the islanders with indifference—woke up to a sudden interest in Corsican affairs.

"They had no pretext for interfering openly. But if the Corsicans would but take heart and choose themselves a king, that king could at a ripe moment be diplomatically acknowledged; and any interference by France would at once become an act of violent usurpation. (For let me tell you, my friends—the sufferings of a people count as nothing in diplomacy against the least trivial act against a crown.) The nuisance was, the two Paolis, Giafferi and Hyacinth, had no notion whatever of making themselves kings; nor would their devoted followers have tolerated it. Yet—as sometimes happens—there was a third man, of greater descent than they, to whom at a pinch the crown might be offered, and with a far more likely chance of the Corsicans' acquiescence. This was a Count Ugo Colonna, a middle-aged man, descended from the oldest nobility of the island, and head of his family, which might more properly be called a clan; a patriot, in his way, too, though lacking the fire of the Paolis, to whom he had surrendered the leadership while remaining something of a figure-head. In short my business was to confer with him at Corte, persuade the Corsican chiefs to offer him the crown, and persuade him to accept it.

"I arrived then at the capital and found Count Ugo willing enough, though by no means eager, for the honour. He was, in fact, a mild-mannered gentleman of no great force of character, and frequently interrupted our conference to talk of a bowel-complaint which obviously meant more to him than all the internal complications of Europe: and next to his bowel-complaint—but some way after—he prized his popularity, which ever seemed more important than his country's welfare: or belike he confused the two. He was at great pains to impress me with the sacrifices he had made for Corsica— which in the past had been real enough: but he had come to regard them chiefly as matter for public speaking, or excuse for public bowing and lifting of the hat. You know the sort of man, I dare say. To pass that view of life, at his age, is the last test of greatness.

"Still, the notion of being crowned King of Corsica tickled his vanity, and would have tickled it more had he begotten a son to succeed him. It opened new prospects of driving through crowds and bowing and lifting his hat: and he turned pardonably sulky when the two Paolis treated my proposals with suspicion. They had an immense respect for England as the leader of the free peoples: but they wanted to know why in Tuscany I had not taken their Count Rivarola into my confidence. In fact they were in communication with their plenipotentiary already, and half way towards another plan, of which very excusably they allowed me to guess nothing.

"The upshot was that my interference threw Count Ugo into a pet with them. He only wanted them to press him; was angry at not being pressed; yet believed that they would repent in time. Meanwhile he persuaded me to ride back with him to one of his estates, a palace above the valley of the Taravo.

"I know not why, but ever the vow of Jephthah comes to my mind as I remember how we rode up the valley to Count Ugo's house in the hour before sunset. 'And behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances, and she was his only child.' He had made no vow and was incapable, poor man, of keeping any so heroic; and she came out with no timbrel or dance, but soberly enough in her sad-coloured dress of the people. Yet she came out while we rode a good mile off, and waited for us as we climbed the last slope, and she was his only child.

"How shall I tell you of her? She helped my purpose nothing, for at first she was vehemently opposed to her father's consenting to be king. Her politics she derived in part from the reading of Plutarch's Lives and in part from her own simplicity. They were childish, utterly: yet they put me to shame, for they glowed with the purest love of her country. She has walked on fiery ploughshares since then; she has trodden the furnace, and her beautiful bare feet are seared since they trod the cool vintage with me on the slopes above the Taravo. . . . Priske, open the first of those bottles, yonder, with the purple seal! Here is that very wine, my friends. Pour and hold it up to the sunset before you taste. Had ever wine such a royal heart? I will tell you how to grow it. Choose first of all a vineyard facing south, between mountains and the sea. Let it lie so that it drinks the sun the day through; but let the protecting mountains carry perpetual snow to cool the land breeze all the night. Having chosen your site, drench it for two hundred years with the blood of freemen; drench it so deep that no tap-root can reach down below its fertilizing virtue. Plant it in defeat, and harvest it in hope, grape by grape, fearfully, as though the bloom on each were a state's ransom. Next treat it after the recipe of the wine of Cos; dropping the grapes singly into vats of sea water, drawn in stone jars from full fifteen fathoms in a spell of halcyon weather and left to stand for the space of one moon. Drop them in, one by one, until the water scarcely cover the mass. Let stand again for two days, and then call for your maidens to tread them, with hymns, under the new moon. Ah, and yet you may miss! For your maidens must be clean, and yet fierce as though they trod out the hearts of men, as indeed they do. A king's daughter should lead them, and they must trample with innocence, and yet with such fury as the prophet's who said 'their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment: for the day of vengeance is in my heart, and the year of my redeemed is come.' . . ."

My father lifted his glass. "To thee, Emilia, child and queen!"

He drank, and, setting down his glass, rested silent for a while, his eyes full of a solemn rapture.

"My friends," he went on at length, with lowered voice, "know you that old song?

"'Methought I walked still to and fro, And from her company could not go— But when I waked it was not so: In youth is pleasure, in youth is pleasure.'

"All that autumn I spent under her father's roof, and—my leave having been extended—all the winter following. The old Count had convinced himself by this time that by accepting the crown he would confer a signal service on Corsica, and had opened a lengthy correspondence with the two Paolis, whose hesitation to accept this view at once puzzled and annoyed him. For me, I wished the correspondence might be prolonged for ever, for meanwhile I lived my days in company with Emilia, and we loved.

"I was a fool. Yet I cannot tax myself that I played false to duty, though by helping to crown her father I was destroying my own hopes, since as heiress to his throne Emilia must be far removed from me. We scarcely thought of this, but lived in our love, we two. So the winter passed and the spring came and the macchia burst into flower.

"Prosper, you have never set eyes on the macchia, the glory of your kingdom. But you shall behold it soon, lad, and smell it—for its fragrance spreads around the island and far out to sea. It belts Corsica with verdure and a million million flowers—cistus and myrtle and broom and juniper; clematis and vetch and wild roses run mad. Deeper than the tall forests behind it the macchia will hide two lovers, and under the open sky hedge off all the world but their passion . . . In the macchia we roamed together, day after day, and forgot the world; forgot all but honour; for she, my lady, was a child of sixteen, and as her knight I worshipped her. Ah, those days! those scented days!

"But while we loved and Count Ugo wrote letters, the two Paolis were doing; and by-and-by they played the strangest stroke in all Corsica's history. That spring, at Aleria on the east coast, there landed a man of whom the Corsican's had never heard. He came out of nowhere with a single ship and less than a score of attendants—to be precise, two officers, a priest, a secretary, a major-domo, an under-steward, a cook, three Tunisian slaves, and six lackeys. He had sailed from Algiers, with a brief rest in the port of Leghorn, and he stepped ashore in Turkish dress, with scarlet-lined cloak, turban, and scimetar. He called himself Theodore, a baron of Westphalia, and he brought with him a ship-load of arms and ammunition, a thousand zechins of Tunis, and letters from half a dozen of the Great Powers promising assistance. Whether these were genuine or not, I cannot tell you.

"Led by the two Paolis—this is no fairy tale, my friends—the Corsicans welcomed and proclaimed him king, without even waiting for despatches from Count Rivarola (who had negotiated) to inform them of the terms agreed upon. They led him in triumph to Corte, and there, in their ancient capital, crowned and anointed him. He gave laws, issued edicts, struck money, distributed rewards. He put himself in person at the head of the militia, and blocked up the Genoese in their fortified towns. For a few months he swept the island like a conqueror.

"All this, as you may suppose, utterly disconcerted the Count Ugo Colonna, who saw his dreams topple at one stroke into the dust. But the chiefs found a way to reconcile him. Their new King Theodore must marry and found a dynasty. Let a bride be found for him in Colonna's daughter, and let children be born to him of the best blood in Corsica.

"The Count recovered his good temper: his spirits rose at a bound: he embraced the offer. His grandsons should be kings of Corsica. And she—my Emilia—

"We met once only after her father had broken the news to her. He had not asked her consent; he had told her, in a flutter of pride, that this thing must be, and for her country's sake. She came to me, in the short dusk, upon the terrace overlooking the Taravo. She was of heart too heroic to linger out our agony. In the dusk she stretched out both hands—ah, God, the child she looked! so helpless, so brave!—and I caught them and kissed them. Then she was gone.

"A week later they married her to King Theodore in the Cathedral of Corte, and crowned her beside him. Before the winter he left the island and sailed to Holland to raise moneys! for the promises of the Great Powers had come to nothing, even if they were genuinely given. For myself, I had bidden good-bye to Corsica and sailed for Tuscany on the same day that Emilia was married.

"Now I must tell you that on the eve of sailing I wrote a letter to the queen—as queen she would be by the time it reached her—wishing her all happiness, and adding that if, in the time to come, fate should bring her into poverty or danger, my estate and my life would ever be at her service. To this I received, as I had expected, no answer: nor did she, if ever she received it, impart its contents to her husband. He—the rascal—had a genius for borrowing, and yet 'twas I that had to begin by seeking him out to feed him with money.

"News came to me that he was in straits in Holland, and had for a year been drumming the banks in vain: also that the Genoese, whom his incursion had merely confounded, were beginning to lift their heads and take the offensive again. At first he had terrified them like a mad dog; the one expedient they could hit on was to set a price upon his head. Certainly he had gifts. He contrived—and by sheer audacity, mark you, backed by a fine presence—to drive them into such a panic that, months after he had sailed, they were petitioning France to send over troops to help them. The Corsicans sent a counter-embassy. 'If,' said they to King Louis, 'your Majesty force us to yield to Genoa, then let us drink this bitter cup to the health of the Most Christian King, and die.' King Louis admired the speech but nibbled at the opportunity. Our own Government meanwhile had either lost heart or suffered itself to be persuaded by the Genoese Minister in London. In the July after my Emilia's marriage, our late Queen Caroline, as regent for the time of Great Britain, issued a proclamation forbidding any subject of King George to furnish arms or provisions to the Corsican malcontents.

"And now you know, my dear Prosper, why I cast away the career on which I had started with some ambition. My lady lacked help, which as a British subject I was prohibited from offering. My conscience allowed me to disobey: but not to disobey and eat His Majesty's bread. I flung up my post, and as a private man hunted across Europe for King Theodore."

I ran him to earth in Amsterdam. He was in handsome lodgings, but penniless. It was the first time I had conversed with him; and he, I believe, had never seen my face. I found him affable, specious, sanguine, but hollow as a drum. For her sake I took up and renewed the campaign among the Jew bankers.

"To be short, he sailed back for Corsica in a well-found ship, with cannon and ammunition on board, and some specie—the whole cargo worth between twenty and thirty thousand pounds. He made a landing at Tavagna and threw in almost all his warlike stores. His wife hurried to meet him: but after a week, finding that the French were pouring troops into the island, and becoming (they tell me) suddenly nervous of the price on his head, he sailed away almost without warning. They say also that on the passage he murdered the man whom his creditors had forced him to take as supercargo, sold the vessel at Leghorn, and made off with the specie—no penny of which had reached his queen or his poor subjects. She—sad childless soul— driven with her chiefs and counsellors into the mountains before the combined French and Genoese, escaped a year later to Tuscany, and hid herself with her sorrows in a religious house ten miles from Florence.

"So ended this brief reign: and you, Prosper, have met the chief actor in it. A very few words will tell the rest. The French overran the island until '41, when the business of the Austrian succession forced them to withdraw their troops and leave the Genoese once more face to face with the islanders. Promptly these rose again. Giafferi and Hyacinth Paoli had fled to Naples; Hyacinth with two sons, Pascal and Clement, whom he trained there (as I am told) in all the liberal arts and in undying hatred of the Genoese. These two lads, returning to the island, took up their father's fight and have maintained it, with fair success as I learn. From parts of the island they must have completely extruded the enemy for a while; since my lady made bold, four years ago, to settle these visitors of ours in her palace above the Taravo. It would appear, however, that the Genoese have gathered head again, and his business with them may explain why Pascal Paoli has not answered the letter I addressed to him, these eight months since, notifying my son's claim upon the succession. Or he may have reckoned it indecent of me to address him in lieu of his Queen, who had returned to the island. I had not heard of her return. I heard of it to-day for the first time, and of her peril, which shall hurry us ten times faster than our pretensions. Prosper," my father concluded, "we must invade Corsica, and at once."

"Good Lord!" exclaimed my uncle. "How!"

"In a ship," my father answered him as simply. "How otherwise?"

Said my uncle, "But where is your ship?"

Answered my father, "If you will but step outside and pick up one of these fir-cones in the grass, you can almost toss it on to her deck. She is called the Gauntlet, and her skipper is Captain Jo Pomery. I might have racked my brain for a month to find such a skipper or a ship so well found and happily named as this which Providence has brought to my door. I attach particular importance to the name of a ship."

My uncle ran his hands through his hair. "But to invade a kingdom," he protested, "you will need also an army!"

"Certainly. I must find one."

"But where?"

"It must be somewhere in the neighbourhood, and within twenty-four hours," replied my father imperturbably. "Time presses."

"But an army must be paid. You have not only to raise one, but to find the money to support it."

"You put me in mind of an old German tale," said my father, helping himself to wine. "Once upon a time there were three brothers—but since, my dear Gervase, you show signs of impatience, I will confine myself to the last and luckiest one. On his travels, which I will not pause to describe in detail, he acquired three gifts—a knapsack which, when opened, discharged a regiment of grenadiers; a cloth which, when spread, was covered with a meal; and a purse which, when shaken, filled itself with money."

"Will you be serious, brother?" cried my uncle.

"I am entirely serious!" answered my father. "The problem of an army and its pay I propose to solve by enlisting volunteers; and the difficulty of feeding my troops (I had forgotten it and thank you for reminding me) will be minimized by enlisting as few as possible. Myself and Prosper make two; Priske, here, three; I would fain have you accompany us, Gervase, but the estate cannot spare you. Let me see—" He drummed for a moment on the table with his fingers. "We ought to have four more at least, to make a show: and seven is a lucky number."

"You seriously design," my uncle demanded, "to invade the island of Corsica with an army of seven persons?"

"Most seriously I do. For consider. To begin with, this Theodore— a vain hollow man—brought but sixteen, including many non-combatants, and yet succeeded in winning a crown. You will allow that to win a crown is a harder feat than to succeed to one. On what reckoning then, or by what Rule-of-Three sum, should Prosper, who goes to claim what already belongs to him, need more than seven?

"Further," my father continued, "it may well be argued that the fewer he takes the better; since we sail not against the Corsicans but against their foes, and therefore should count on finding in every Corsican a soldier for our standard.

"Thirdly, the Corsicans are a touchy race, whom it would be impolitic to offend with a show of foreign strength.

"Fourthly, we must look a little beyond the immediate enterprise, and not (if we can help it) saddle Prosper's kingdom with a standing army. For, as Bacon advises, that state stands in danger whose warriors remain in a body and are used to donatives; whereof we see examples in the turk's Janissaries and the Pretorian Bands of Rome.

"And fifthly, we have neither the time nor the money to collect a stronger force. The occasion presses: and fronte capillata est, post haec Occasio calva. Time turns a bald head to us if we miss our moment to catch him by the forelock."

"The Abantes," put in Mr. Grylls, "practised the direct contrary: of whom Homer tells us that they shaved the forepart of their heads, the reason being that their enemies might not grip them by the hair in close fighting. I regret, my dear Sir John, you never warned me that you designed Prosper for a military career. We might have bestowed more attention on the warlike customs and operations of the ancients."

My father sipped his wine and regarded the Vicar benevolently. For closest friends he had two of the most irrelevant thinkers on earth and he delighted to distinguish between their irrelevancies.

"But I would not," he continued, "have you doubt that the prime cause of our expedition is to deliver my lady from the Genoese; or believe that Prosper will press his claims unless she acknowledge them."

"I am wondering," said my uncle, "where you will find your other four men."

"Prosper and I will provide them to-morrow," my father answered, with a careless glance at me. "And now, my friends, we have talked over-long of Corsica and nothing as yet of that companionship which brings us here—it may be for the last time. Priske, you may open another four bottles and leave us. Gervase, take down the book from the cupboard and let the Vicar read to us while the light allows."

"The marker tells me," said the Vicar, taking the book and opening it, "that we left in the midst of Chapter 8—On the Luce or Pike.

"Ay, and so I remember," my uncle agreed.

The Vicar began to read—

"'And for your dead bait for a pike, for that you may be taught by one day's going a-fishing with me or any other body that fishes for him; for the baiting of your hook with a dead gudgeon or a roach and moving it up and down the water is too easy a thing to take up any time to direct you to do it. And yet, because I cut you short in that, I will commute for it by telling you that that was told me for a secret. It is this: Dissolve gum of ivy in oil of spike, and therewith anoint your dead bait for a pike, and then cast it into a likely place, and when it has lain a short time at the bottom, draw it towards the top of the water and so up the stream, and it is more than likely that you have a pike follow with more than common eagerness. And some affirm that any bait anointed with the marrow of the thigh-bone of a heron is a great temptation to any fish.

"'These have not been tried by me, but told me by a friend of mine, that pretended to do me a courtesy. But if this direction to catch a pike thus do you no good, yet I am certain this direction how to roast him when he is caught is choicely good—'"

"Upon my soul, brother," interrupted my uncle Gervase, removing the pipe from his mouth, "this reads like a direction for the taking of Corsica."



CHAPTER VII.

THE COMPANY OF THE ROSE.

"Alway be merry if thou may, But waste not thy good alway: Have hat of floures fresh as May, Chapelet of roses of Whitsonday For sich array ne costneth but lyte." Romaunt of the Rose.

Somerset. "Let him that is no coward Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me." First Part of King Henry VI.

Early next morning I was returning, a rosebud in my hand, from the neglected garden to the east of the house, when I spied my father coming towards me along the terraces, and at once felt my ears redden.

"Good morning, lad!" he hailed. "But where is mine?"

I turned back in silence and picked a bud for him. "So," said I, "'twas you, sir, after all, that wrote the advertisement?"

"Hey?" he answered. "I? Certainly not. I noted it and sent you the news-sheet in half a hope that you had been the advertiser."

"You were mistaken, sir."

He halted and rubbed his chin. "Then who the devil can he be, I wonder? Well, we shall discover."

"You ride to Falmouth this morning?"

"We have an army to collect," he answered, gripping me not unkindly by the shoulder.

We rode into Falmouth side by side in silence, Billy Priske following by my father's command, and each with a red rose pinned to the flap of his hat. Upon the way we talked, mainly of the Trappist Brothers, and of Dom Basilio, who (it seemed) had at one time been an agent of the British legation at Florence, and in particular had carried my father's reports and instructions to and fro between Corsica and that city, avoiding the vigilance of the Genoese.

"A subtle fellow," was my father's judgment, "and, as I gave him credit, in the matter of conscience as null as Cellini himself: the last man in the world to turn religious. But the longer you live the more cause will you find to wonder at the divine spirit which bloweth where it listeth. Take these Methodists, who are to preach in Falmouth to-day. I have seen Wesley, and stood once for an hour listening to him. For aught I could discover he had no great eloquence. He said little that his audience might not have heard any Sunday in their own churches. His voice was hoarse from overwork, and his manner by no means winning. Yet I saw many notorious ruffians sobbing about him like children: some even throwing themselves on the ground and writhing, like the demoniacs of Scripture. The secret was, he spoke with authority: and the secret again was a certain kingly neglect of trifles—he appeared not to see those signs by which other men judge their neighbours or themselves to be past help. Or take these Trappists: Dom Basilio tells me that more than half of them are ex-soldiers and rough at that. To be sure I can understand why, having once turned religious, an old soldier runs to the Trappist rule. He has been bred under discipline, and has to rely on discipline. 'Tis what he understands, and the harder he gets it the more good he feels himself getting—"

We were nearing the town by the way of Arwennack, and just here a turn of the road brought us in sight of a whitewashed cottage and put a period to my father's discourse, as a garden gate flew open and out into the highway ran a lean young man with an angry woman in pursuit. His shoulders were bent and he put up both hands to ward off her clutch. But in the middle of the road she gripped him by the collar and caught him two sound cuffs on the nape of the neck.

She turned as we rode up. "The villain!" she cried, still keeping her grip. "Oh, protect me from such villains!"

"But, my good woman," remonstrated my father, reining up, "it scarcely appears that you need protecting. Who is this man?"

"A thief, your honour! Didn't I catch him prowling into my garden? And isn't it for him to say what his business was? I put it to your honour"—here she caught the poor wretch another cuff—"what honest business took him into my garden, and me left a widow-woman these sixteen years?"

"Ai-ee!" cried the accused, still shielding his neck and cowering in the dust—a thin ragged windlestraw of a youth, flaxen-headed, hatchet-faced, with eyes set like a hare's. "Have pity on me sirs, and take her off!"

"Let him stand up," my father commanded. "And you sir, tell me— What were you seeking in this good woman's garden?"

"A rose, sir—hear my defence!—a rose only, a small rose!" His voice was high and cracked, and he flung his hands out extravagantly. "Oh, York and Lancaster—if you will excuse me, gentlemen—that I should suffer this for a mere rose? The day only just begun too! And why, sirs, was I seeking a rose? Ay, there's the rub." He folded his arms dramatically and nodded at the woman. "There's the gall and bitterness, the worm in the fruit, the peculiar irony—if you'll allow me to say so—of this distressing affair. Listen, madam! If I wanted a rose of you, 'twas for your whole sex's sake: your sex's, madam—every one of whom was, up to five or six months ago, the object with me of something very nearly allied to worship."

"Lord help the creature!" cried the woman. "What's he telling about? And what have you to do with my sex, young man? which is what the Lord made it."

"It is not, madam. Make no mistake about it: 'twere blasphemy to think so. But speaking generally, what I—as a man—have to do with your sex is to protect it."

"A nice sort of protector you'd make!" she retorted, planting her knuckles on her hips and eyeing him contemptuously.

"I am a beginner, madam, and have much to learn. But you shall not discourage me from protecting you, though you deny me the rose which was to have been my emblem. Every woman is a rose, madam, as says the poet Dunbar—

"'Sweet rose of vertew and of gentilness, Richest in bonty and in bewty clear And every vertew that is werrit dear, Except only that ye are merciless—"

"You take me? 'Merciless,' madam?"

"I don't understand a word," said she, puzzled and angry.

"He was a Scotsman: and you find it a far cry to Loch Awe. Well, well—to resume—

"'Into your garth this day I did pursue—'"

"by 'garth' meaning 'garden': a good word, and why the devil it should be obsolescent is more than I can tell you—"

But here my father cut him short. "My good Mrs. Ede," said he, turning to the woman, "I believe this young man intended no harm to you and very little to your garden. You are quits with him at any rate. Take this shilling, step inside, and choose him a fair red rose for the price and also in token of your forgiveness, while he picks up his hat which is lying yonder in the dust."

"Hey?" The youth started back, for the first time perceiving the badges in our hats. "Are you too, sirs, of this company of the rose?" His face fell, but with an effort he recovered himself and smiled.

"You are not disappointed, I hope?" inquired my father.

"Why—to tell you the truth, sir—I had looked for a rendezvous of careless jolly fellows. For cavaliers of your quality it never occurred to me to bargain." He held up a flap of his ragged coat and shook it ruefully.

My father frowned. "And I, sir, am disappointed. A moment since I took you for an original; but it appears you share our common English vice of looking at the world like a lackey."

"I, sir?" The young man waved a hand. "I am original? Give me leave to assure you that this island contains no more servile tradesman. Why, my lord—for I take it I speak to a gentleman of title?—"

"Of the very humblest, sir. I am a plain knight bachelor."

The original cringed elaborately, rubbing his hands. "A title is a title. Well, sir, as I was about to say, I worship a lord, but my whole soul is bound up in a ledger: and hence (so to speak) these tears: hence the disreputable garb in which you behold me. If I may walk beside you, sir, after this good woman has fetched me the rose— thank you, madam—and provided me with a pin from the chevaux de frise in her bodice—and again, madam, I thank you: you wear the very cuirass of matronly virtue—I should enjoy, sir, to tell you my history. It is a somewhat curious one."

"I feel sure, sir"—my father bowed to him from the saddle—"it will lose nothing in the telling."

The young man, having fastened the rose in his hat, bade adieu to his late assailant with a bow; waved a hand to her; lifted his hat a second time; turned after us and, falling into stride by my father's stirrup, forthwith plunged into his story.

THE TRAVELS OF PHINEAS FETT.

"My name, sir, is Phineas Fett—"

He paused. "I don't know how it may strike you: but in my infant ears it ever seemed to forebode something in the Admiralty—a comfortable post, carrying no fame with it, but moderately lucrative. In wilder flights my fancy has hovered over the Pipe Office (Addison, sir, was a fine writer; though a bit of a prig, between you and me)."

"There was a Phineas Pett, a great shipbuilder for the Navy in King Charles the Second's time. I believe, too, he had a son christened after him, who became a commissioner of the Navy."

"You don't say so! The mere accident of a letter . . . but it proves the accuracy of our childish instincts. A commissionership—whatever the duties it may carry—would be the very thing, or a storekeepership, with a number of ledgers: it being understood that shipping formed my background, in what I believe is nautically termed the offing. I know not what exact distance constitutes an offing. My imagination ever placed it within sight and sufficiently near the scene of my occupation to pervade it with an odour of hemp and tar."

He paused again, glanced up at my father, and—on a nod of encouragement—continued—

"The nuisance is, I was born in the Midlands—to be precise, at West Bromicheham—the son of a well-to-do manufacturer of artificial jewellery. The only whiff of the brine that ever penetrated my father's office came wafted through an off-channel of his trade. He did an intermittent business in the gilding of small idols, to be shipped overseas and traded as objects of worship among the negroes of the American plantations. Jewellery, however, was his stand-by. In the manufacture of meretricious ware he had a plausibility amounting to genius, in the disposing of it a talent for hard bargains; and the two together had landed him in affluence. Well, sir, being headed off my boyhood's dream by the geographical inconvenience of Warwickshire—for a lad may run away to be a sailor, sir, but the devil take me if ever I heard of one running off to be a supercargo, and even this lay a bit beyond my ambition—I recoiled upon a passion to enter my father's business and increase the already tidy patrimonial pile.

"But here comes in the cross of my destiny. My father, sir, had secretly cherished dreams of raising me above his own station. To him a gentleman—and he ridiculously hoped to make me one—was a fellow above working for his living. He scoffed at my enthusiasm for trade, and at length he sent for me and in tones that brooked no denial commanded me to learn the violin.

"Never shall I forget the chill of heart with which I received that fatal mandate. I have no ear for music, sir. In tenderer years indeed I had made essay upon the Jew's harp, but had relinquished it without a sigh.

"'The violin!' I cried, though the words choked me. 'Father, anything but that! If it were the violoncello, now—'

"But he cut me short in cold incisive accents. 'The violin, or you are no son of mine.'

"I fled from the house, my home no longer. On the way to the front door I had sufficient presence of mind, and no more, to make a detour to the larder and possess myself of the longest joint; which my heated judgment, confusing temporal with linear measurement, commended to me as the most lasting. It proved to be a shin of beef: unnutritious except for soup (and I carried no tureen), useless as an object of barter. With this and two half-crowns in my pocket I slammed the front-door behind me and faced the future."

Mr. Fett paused impressively.

"And you call me an original, sir!" he went on in accents of reproach; "me, who started in life with two half-crowns in my pocket, the conventional outfit for a career of commercial success!"

"They have carried you all the way to Falmouth!"

"The one of them carried me so far as to Coventry, sir: where, finding a fair in progress as I passed through the town, and falling in with three bridesmaids who had missed their wedding-party in the crowd, I spent the other in treating them to the hobby-horses at one halfpenny a ride. Four halfpennies—there were four of us—make twopence, and two's into thirty are fifteen rides; a bold investment of capital, and undertaken (I will confess it) not only to solace the fair ones but to ingratiate myself with the fellow who turned the handle of the machine. To him I applied for a job. He had none to offer, but introduced me to a company of strolling players who (as fortune would have it) were on the point of presenting Hamlet with a dramatis personae decimated by Coventry ale. They cast me for 'Polonius' and some other odds and ends. You may remember, sir, that at one point the Prince of Denmark is instructed to 'enter reading.' That stage direction I caught at, and by a happy 'improvisation' spread it over the entire play. Not as 'Polonius' only, but as 'Bernardo' upon the midnight platform, as 'Osric,' as 'Fortinbras,' as the 'Second Gravedigger,' as one of the odd Players—always I entered reading. In my great scene with the Prince we entered reading together. They killed me, still reading, behind the arras; and at a late hour I supped with the company on Irish stew; for, incensed by these novelties, the audience had raided a greengrocer's shop between the third and fourth acts and thereafter rained their criticism upon me in the form of cabbages and various esculent roots which we collected each time the curtain fell.

"Every cloud, sir, has a silver lining. I continued long enough with this company to learn that in our country an actor need never die of scurvy. But I weary you with my adventures, of which indeed I am yet in the first chapter."

"You shall rehearse them on another occasion. But will you at least tell us how you came to Falmouth?"

"Why, in the simplest manner in the world. A fortnight since I happened to be sitting in the stocks, in the absurd but accursed town of Bovey Tracey in Devonshire. My companion—for the machine discommodated two—was a fiddler, convicted (like myself) of vagrancy; a bottle-nosed man, who took the situation with such phlegm as only experience can breed, and munched a sausage under the commonalty's gaze. 'Good Lord,' said I to myself, eyeing him, 'and to think that he with my chances, or I with his taste for music, might be driving at this moment in a coach and pair!'

"'Sir,' said I, 'are you attached to that instrument of yours?' 'So deeply,' he answered, 'that, like Nero, I could fiddle if Bovey Tracey were burning at this moment.' 'You can perform on it creditably?' I asked. 'In a fashion to bring tears to your eyes,' he answered me, and offered to prove his words. 'Not for worlds,' said I; 'but it grieves me to think how Fortune distributes her favours.' I told him of my father. 'I should like to make the acquaintance of such a man,' said he. 'You shall,' said I; and fetching a pencil and a scrap of paper out of my pocket, I wrote as follows:—

"To Mr. Jonathan Fett, Manufacturer of Flams, W. Bromicheham."

"The Public Stocks, Bovey Tracey, Devon. June 21st (longest day)."

"DEAR FATHER, Adopt bearer, in lieu of Your affectionate son, PHINEAS."

"The fiddler at first suspected a jest: but on my repeated assurances took the letter thankfully, and at parting, on our release, pressed on me the end of his sausage wrapped in a piece of newspaper. I ate the sausage moodily and was about to throw the paper away when my eye caught sight of an advertisement in the torn left-hand corner. I read it, and my mind was made up. I am here, and (thanks to you, sir) with a rose in my hat."

By the time Mr. Fett concluded his narrative we had reached the outskirts of the town, and found ourselves in a traffic which, converging upon the Market Strand from every side-street and alley, at once carried us along with it and constrained us to a walking pace. My father, finding the throng on the Market Strand too dense for our horses, turned aside to the Three Cups Inn across the street, gave them over to the ostler, and led us upstairs to a window which overlooked the gathering.

The Market Strand at Falmouth is an open oblong space, not very wide, leading off the main street to the water's edge, and terminating in steps where as a rule the watermen wait to take off passengers to the Packets. A lamp-post stands in the middle of it, and by the base of this the preachers—a grey-headed man and two women in ugly bonnets— were already assembled, with but a foot or two dividing them from the crowd. Close behind the lamp-post stood a knot of men conversing together one of whom stepped forward for a word with the grey-headed preacher. He wore a rose in his hat, and at sight of him my heart gave a wild incredulous leap. It was Nat Fiennes!

I pushed past my father and flung the open window still wider. The grey-haired preacher had opened the Bible in his hand and was climbing the stone base of the lamp-post when a handful of filth struck the back of the book and bespattered his face. I saw Nat whip out his sword and swing about angrily in the direction of the shot, while the two women laid hands on either arm to check him; and at the same moment my father spoke up sharply in my ear.

"Tumble out, lad," he commanded. "We are in bare time."

I vaulted over the window-ledge and dropped into the street; my father after me, and Mr. Fett and Billy close behind. Indeed, that first shot had but given the signal for a general engagement; and as we picked ourselves up and thrust our way into the crowd, a whole volley of filth bespattered the group of Methodists. In particular I noted the man with whom Nat Fiennes, a minute since, had been conversing—a little bald-headed fellow of about fifty-five or sixty, in a suit of black which, even at thirty paces distant, showed rusty in the sunshine. An egg had broken against his forehead, and the yellow of it trickled down over his eyes; yet he stood, hat in hand, neither yielding pace nor offering to resist. Nat, less patient, had made a rush upon the crowd, which had closed around and swallowed him from sight. By its violent swaying he was giving it something to digest. One of the two women shrank terrified by the base of the lamp-post. The other—a virago to look at, with eyes that glared from under the pent of her black bonnet—had pulled the grey-headed preacher down by his coat-tails, and, mounting in his room, clung with an arm around the lamp-post and defied the persecutors.

"Why am I here, friends?" she challenged them. "O generation of vipers, why am I here? Answer me, you men of Belial—you, whose fathers slew the prophets! Because I glory to suffer for the right; because to turn the other cheek is a Christian's duty, and as a Christian woman I'll turn it though you were twice the number, and not be afraid what man can do unto me."

Now, my father was well known in Falmouth and pretty generally held in awe. At sight of him advancing, the throng fell back and gave us passage in a sudden lull which reached even to where Nat Fiennes struggled in the grasp of a dozen longshoremen who were hailing him to the quay's edge, to fling him over. He broke loose, and before they could seize him again came staggering back, panting and dishevelled.

"Prosper!" he cried, catching sight of me, and grinning delightedly all over his muddied face. "I knew you would come! And your father, too? Splendid, lad, splendid?"

"Ye men of Falmouth"—the woman by the lamp-post lifted her voice more shrilly—"what shall I testify of the hardness of your hearts? Shall I testify that your Mayor sending his crier round, has threatened to whip us through Falmouth streets at the cart-tail? Shall I testify—"

But here my father lifted a hand. "Gently, madam; gently, I am not defending his Worship if he issued any such proclamation; but 'tis an ancient punishment for scolds, and I advise you to lend him no colour of excuse."

"And who may you be, sir?" she demanded, looking down, angry, but checked in spite of herself by my father's air of authority.

"One," he answered, "who has come to see fair play, and who has—as you may see—for the moment some little influence with this rabble. I will continue to exert it while I can, if you on your part will forbear to provoke; for the tongue, madam, has its missiles as well as the hands."

"I thank you, sir," said the grey-headed preacher, stepping forward and thrusting a book into my father's hands. "We had best begin with a hymn, I think. I have some experience of the softening power of music on these occasions."

"We will sing," announced the woman, "that beautiful hymn beginning, 'Into a world of ruffians sent.' Common metre, my friends, and Sister Tresize will give the pitch:

"Into a world of ruffians sent, I walk on hostile ground—"

My father bared his head and opened the hymn-book; the rest of us, bareheaded too, ranged ourselves beside him; and so we stood facing the mob while the verses were sung in comparative quiet. The words might be provocative, but few heard them. The tune commanded an audience, as in Cornwall a tune usually will. The true secret of the spell, however, lay in my father's presence and bearing. A British crowd does not easily attack one whom it knows as a neighbour and born superior; and it paid homage now to one who, having earned it all his life, carelessly took it for granted.

"Begad, sir," said Mr. Fett in my ear, "and the books say that the feudal system is dead in England! Why, here's the very flower of it! Damme, though, the old gentleman is splendid; superlative, sir; it's ten to one against Coriolanus, and no takers. Between ourselves, Coriolanus was a pretty fellow, but talked too much. Phocion, sir? Did I hear you mention Phocion?"

"You did not," I answered.

"And quite right," said he; "with your father running, I wouldn't back Phocion for a place. All the same," Mr. Fett admitted, "this is what Mr. Gray of Peterhouse, Cambridge, would call a fearful joy, and I'd be thankful for a distant prospect of the way out of it."

"Indeed, sir"—my father, overhearing this, turned to him affably— "you touch the weak spot. For the moment I see no way out of the situation, nor any chance but to prolong it; and even this," he added, "will not be easy unless the lady on the lamp-post sensibly alters the tone of her discourse."

Indeed, at the conclusion of the singing she had started again to address the crowd, albeit—acting on my father's hint—in more moderate tones, and even, as I thought, somewhat tepidly. Her theme was what she called convictions of sin, of which by her own account she had wrestled with a surprising quantity; but in the rehearsal of them, though fluent, she seemed to lose heart as her hearers relaxed their attention.

"Confound the woman!" grumbled my father. "She had done better, after all, to continue frantic. The crowd came to be amused, and is growing restive again."

"Sir," interposed Mr. Fett, "give me leave to assure you that an audience may be amused and yet throw things. Were this the time and place for reminiscences, I could tell you a tale of Stony Stratford (appropriately so-called, sir), where, as 'Juba' in Mr. Addison's tragedy of Cato, for two hours I piled the Pelion of passion upon the Ossa of elocutionary correctness, still without surmounting the zone of plant life; which in the Arts, sir, must extend higher than geographers concede. And yet I evoked laughter; from which I may conclude that my efforts amused. The great Demosthenes, sir, practised declamation with his mouth full of pebbles—for retaliatory purposes, I have sometimes thought."

Here my father, who had been paying no attention to Mr. Fett's discourse, interrupted it with a sharp but joyful exclamation; and glancing towards him I saw his face clear of anxiety.

"We are safe," he announced quietly, nodding in the direction of the Three Cups. "What we wanted was a fool, and we have found him."



CHAPTER VIII.

TRIBULATIONS OF A MAYOR

"Like the Mayor of Falmouth, who thanked God when the Town Jail was enlarged."—Old Byword.

His nod was levelled at a horseman who had ridden down the street and was pressing upon the outskirts of the crowd: and this was no less a dignitary than the Mayor of Falmouth, preceded on foot by a beadle and two mace-bearers, all three of them shouting "Way! Make way for the Mayor!" with such effect that in less than half a minute the crowd had divided itself to form a lane for them.

"Eh? eh? What is this? What is the meaning of all this?" demanded his Worship, magisterially, as, having drawn rein, he fumbled in his tail pocket, drew forth a pair of horn spectacles, adjusted them on his nose, and glared round upon the throng.

"That, sir," answered my father, stepping forward, "is what we are waiting to learn."

"Sir John Constantine?" The Mayor bowed from his saddle. "You will pardon me, Sir John, that for the moment I missed to recognize you. The fact is, I suffer, Sir John, from some—er—shortness of sight: a grave inconvenience, at times, to one in my position."

"Indeed?" said my father, gravely. "And yet, as I have heard, 'tis a malady most incident to borough magistrates."

"You don't say so?" The Mayor considered this for a moment. "The visitations of Providence are indeed inscrutable, Sir John. It would give me pleasure to discuss them with you, on some—er—more suitable occasion, if I might have the honour. But as I was about to say, I am delighted to see you, Sir John: your presence here will strengthen my hands in dealing with this—er—unlawful assembly."