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Title: Trumpeter, Sound!

Date of first publication: 1933

Author: David Leslie Murray (1888-1962)

Date first posted: Apr. 7, 2025

Date last updated: Apr. 7, 2025

Faded Page eBook #20250405

This eBook was produced by: Al Haines, John Routh & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net

Illustrated by

JOHN ALAN MAXWELL

[Transcriber note: Illustrations by John Alan Maxwell (1904-1984) are not in the public domain and have been excluded from this eBook edition.]

may be reproduced in any form without

permission in writing from the publisher,

except by a reviewer who may quote brief

passages in a review to be printed in a

magazine or newspaper.

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

Manufactured in the United States of America

A. W. KINGLAKE

and

H. J. WEBB

NOTE

The “Mercuries”, though they may seem to have borrowed a scrap of uniform here or there, are a purely fictitious corps, and none of our historical Hussar regiments is concealed beneath their name and number.

The “Apparition of the ‘Unknown Mounted Officer’ ” at the Alma is a matter of history, discussed by Kinglake in an appendix to his account of the battle; the interpretation of the mystery may perhaps be considered a fair opening for the romancer.

To all the Victorian writers who have contributed details to this picture of their period I offer a thankful acknowledgment, too wide to be particularized.

The early train from the south-coast terminus of the new London and Brighton Railway clanked and jerked violently over the junction-points with the Greenwich line by the Surrey Canal. Black smoke, mingled with smuts and sparks, from the towering, bell-mouthed chimney of the engine rolled over the travellers in the open third-class trucks. Keeper Woodrofe hunched his massive shoulders; his wife, grimacing, drew the fringe of her shawl across her mouth; but the boy with them stood clinging to the wooden door of the compartment, staring about him with a fierce but controlled excitement.

Nothing had quenched his ardour. Not the bite of the raw air, numbing fingers and toes and making a torment of his exposed ears during the first breath-taking miles from Three Bridges, where they had caught the train at half-past eight. Not the hot cinder that had flown into his eye by Red Hill and still left a weeping smart. Not the stifling and alarming Devil’s Mouth of Merstham Tunnel. The rime-coated fields, the silent misty copses, the red and orange roofs of farms and barns had reeled by dizzily to right and left in this incredible tearing progress—objects of scant interest to the country lad, who coughed impatiently in the acrid fumes that soiled the faint blue above and poisoned the pure winter morning, his gaze searching the horizon for one sight and one only, LONDON!

And yonder it was at last—no further doubt of it!—at the end of the long brick viaduct ahead. Beneath a mourning pall of purple sky, darkened by smoke-mists at the border, it spread and bristled as far as view could reach. A lake of dull roofs it looked, pierced by a reed-bank of spires in the midst of which, like an immense phantasmal bubble blown through the pipes of sorcerers, the dome of St. Paul’s hung high in the glooming heaven. Mark Woodrofe’s hazel eyes grew round; his mouth fell open, but was firmly snapped to again.

A few moments more and windmills and market-gardens, with the glittering curve of the Thames to the right, had given place to a huddle of small begrimed houses, roofed with ramshackle tiles and scored by grey-paved streets. The sooty fingers of factory-stacks traced funeral plumes upon the haze; distant gas-holders upheaved their shadowy rotundities; a church-spire or two of carved white stone rose above the speckle of pink chimney-pots; and abruptly, as though it were in one of the streets, a tangle of blood-red sails and the fretted funnel of a steamship appeared.

Now the pace grew slower as the signal-policemen in top-hats and blue swallow-tails held up warning arms, and the jarring increased so that Mark rocked to and fro where he hung by the bolt of the door. On either hand spidery-wheeled locomotives with leather buffers, their boilers gaily painted or cased in fluted mahogany, their muffin-capped drivers standing on open platforms behind their huge haycock-shaped brass domes, roared or panted past; and shortly through the wreathing smoke in front loomed the square campanile and triple wooden span of London Bridge Station. But the boy had eyes only for that vast, pillared cupola, now bellying out between the pinnacles of St. Saviour’s and the dead glitter of the gold ball on the Monument directly over his head. He was still gaping, awed and incredulous, at this masterpiece of black magic when the station enveloped them to a blast of released steam and a clamour of shouts and echoing footfalls.

Keeper Woodrofe stepped down heavily on to the platform and began to brush the cinders from his velveteen coat and waist-high leggings.

“So that be my first jaunt by railroad,” said he, “and like to be the last, too. Thankful, I rackon, to have a whole boane in my boddy still! I never knew the like o’ such a rioting and rampaging. ’Tis noa way for worms to travel, angering Providence like, who maketh his ministers a flaming fire. It be all clean against the Bible. Give me old pony for my money!”

His wife and Mark stared at him, for they could not remember such a continuous speech issuing from his clean-shaved trap of a mouth ever before, not even when on Sundays he combed out his rigid whiskers and put on his stove-pipe hat to walk to Balcombe Church. And as they stood marvelling, a corduroy-clad porter ran a luggage-truck nearly in between Mark’s legs, crying,

The boy’s brick-coloured cheeks flushed furiously at the taunt, and he was swinging round, with his small blue-mottled fists clenched, in pursuit, when Mrs. Woodrofe seized him.

“Whatever are you thinking of, Mark?” she cried. “Go and ask the Guard for your box now, do!”

“Ay, smart, boy!” chimed in the Keeper. “This be noa place for your dreams. Come you, mother, to find coach for Mr. Hepplewhite’s.”

Mark was buffeted in the press of passengers as he recovered his corded wooden box from the van and, shouldering it himself amid the jeers of the porters, sought to rejoin his parents at the gates. A policeman sharply demanded his ticket; and when he explained that his father had already gone through with it, the officer could not, or pretended he could not, understand the lad’s Sussex burr.

“You can stay there, my flash-cove, till you find it,” he pronounced, and Mark had to wait anxiously for Mr. Woodrofe’s irate return, when both he and the policeman damned the boy for a soft-headed sawney and a blundering, disobedient young donkey.

“ ’Adn’t you a tongue in your ’ed, then, to tell me?” the policeman shouted behind his back, as he toiled after his father, bearing the heavy box once more upon his shoulders; and the blood sang angrily in his ears while he trudged on with bowed head in the wake of the Keeper’s chestnut gaiters, half-dazed by the throng of moving legs through which he had to cleave his way. They were marching, marching, a kaleidoscope of dark-coloured, plaid or nankeen pantaloons strapped down upon narrow blunt-toed Wellingtons, varied by black spats and country top-boots, with here a scampering group of schoolboys’ square shoes and white socks protruding from short trousers, and there, darting in and out, a pair of filthy bare feet with a street-sweeper’s muddy besom trailing beside them. Rarely now and again came the twinkle of black-laced sandals or slim grey cloth boots below a swaying flounce, with male feet pacing alongside proprietorially—and they all were marching, marching busily over the stones, with the noise of a sea breaking on shingle, why or whither so eagerly Mark could not imagine. His head swam in the bustle and uproar of it.

Anger and bewilderment alike, however, vanished in delight as, to the rhythmical jolt of the hackney-coach, they swung round past the Gothic clock-tower and chaffering orange-girls at the foot of the station incline, and out on to London Bridge. Mark, braving Mr. Woodrofe’s scowl, scrambled from window to window of the coach, his shoes rustling in the dirty straw underfoot, to catch each detail of the river pageant. In the bleak light of the wintry day, the leaden foam-curled wavelets of the Thames were alive with every kind of traffic. Amid the slow-moving timber and coal-boats a swarm of puffing paddle-steamers, their decks loaded with City passengers, churned their way towards the arches of the bridge, evading by dexterous miracles of steersmanship the shooting skiffs and wherries driven by oar and the giant sweeps at which grim-jowled bargeman strained. Below bridge in the Pool a double line of shipping was moored on each side of the stream, displaying a forest of masts, spars, rigging, brown and bleached sails, with only one or two striped and slender funnels. And while Mark was staring, open-mouthed again, from the ships to the clamorous wharves with their hand-cranes and bales, he suddenly caught sight of four extinguisher-shaped turrets rising from grey-black walls above them, and cried aloud his discovery: “The Tower! ’Tis the Tower o’ Lunnon!”

A thwack from Mr. Woodrofe’s stick across his shins made him sit back on his seat, watching out of the corners of his eyes the pack of gilt-lettered omnibuses, drays laden like swaying towers of Babel, hooded vans, market-carts, hackney-coaches and broughams that kept passing the windows. Like waves of an upper river crossing the one below, the long line of horses’ backs jogged up and down; the tightening and loosening reins made a network across his view. Hoofs clopped, wheels ground and drivers bawled at each other; while along the sidewalks swept the race of pedestrians in a bobbing ripple of black silk hats and grave faces. Abruptly the horses checked in a traffic block.

Mrs. Woodrofe turned her ruddy, keen-eyed face towards her husband with a worried air.

“Happen then we may be able to see something of Lunnon like, when Mark is finished at Mr. Hepplewhite’s?” she asked.

“Little enough worth seeing,” answered the Keeper with a contemptuous glance through the pane.

The coach jerked forward again, passed the bridge, and, after some minutes more driving through tall streets, turned up a winding lane and stopped before a dark doorway with windows on each side obscured by dust. In black paint on the yellow pilasters of the entrance they read, as they descended, the words HEPPLEWHITE BROTHERS. To the left of the passage beyond, a door bore the inscription: “Please Enquire Here,” with a pointing hand in a neat cuff; and entering they found an old clerk with hollow cheeks and wrinkled corners to his eyelids, perched on a high stool at a worm-eaten desk and ramming slips of paper upon a file with great rapidity by the light of a gas-jet.

He assumed steel spectacles at the Keeper’s first words and surveyed the visitors with a keenness not devoid of geniality.

“Mr. Woodrofe, yes,” he said, “we were expecting you. Is this the lad that’s to come to us here? He looks strong, anyway; that’s country air, I’ll be bound, yes, and country bacon, eh? Wish we could get it for breakfast out at Kentish Town. We ought to, you know; I don’t consider that living in London, so I always say to Mrs. Lytchett. Well, my lad”—he bent a kindly but toothless smile upon Mark—“and what do you think of London?”

“It seems very dark,” answered Mark. “Do you have to burn candles all day, Mr. Hepplewhite?”

“Never mind, Mr. Woodrofe; I take it as a high compliment, I do assure you,” said Mr. Lytchett chuckling. “There’s no one in the City, I truly believe, who wouldn’t be proud to be mistaken for our Mr. William. There’s a large-hearted gentleman for you, sir, if ever there was one! Not but what he has his own funny little ways, mind you! I don’t advise any of you to say a word against Mr. Cobden, no, nor Mr. Bright either, if you want to stay in our Mr. William’s good books. But I mustn’t go on gossiping like this,” he went on with a self-reproachful shake of his head as he climbed down from his stool. “Only yesterday Mr. William was telling us that if all the minutes wasted in chattering in his office were added up into hours, he’d have the time of three extra clerks and an office-boy. Very severe, he was, and said the business couldn’t stand it. All the profits, you know, Mr. Woodrofe, in a House like this are made in the last half-hour of each day. Mr. William says the economists have proved it. He proved it to us, too, and a very pretty demonstration it was; only by the time he had finished it we found we had missed the country post and I had to take a coach to St. Martin’s-le-Grand with it. Mr. William said he should stop the time out of our wages—but he won’t, you know. Well, bide you here, while I go up and see if Mr. William’s disengaged.”

He shuffled out of the room, leaving the visitors staring at the reluctant little fire.

“Stand up straight!” said Mr. Woodrofe at length, by way of warning to Mark.

His wife smoothed the boy’s coarse black curls and twitched his necktie into place.

“Wait till Mr. Hepplewhite speaks to you,” she said, “and think next time before you answer, Mark.”

They fell silent again, and Mark gazed with a dismal feeling round the chilly room with its grime-streaked walls, its small window giving on a dark courtyard, and its hanging calendar over the mantelshelf. He had learnt his letters early at the dame’s school outside Balcombe, and now made out without difficulty the date, 1844, and the Gothic letters—though these were harder—in which the title “The Free Trader’s Almanack” and the names of the months were printed. Little medallion pictures adorned the heading: in one of them two muttonchop-whiskered gentlemen of earnest expression were acknowledging the plaudits of a crowd as they passed under a decorated arch, and in another a similar gentleman was standing at a table with a queer thing like a King’s sceptre lying upon it and a man in a wig sitting behind it. There was also a central drawing of a crowd of men, women and children in rags stretching out their hands to ships coming across the sea, with a rayed sun rising above them, across the disc of which ran the letters, FREE IMPORTS! Mark did not know the meaning of that last word.

“You can come up now.” Mr. Lytchett’s whispering voice almost startled him, and he followed the others along a dim passage permeated with the pungent smell of drugs that he was to come to know so well. They climbed a wooden stair with black oak balusters; stopped at a landing upon which a ghostly marble bust in a niche stared at them with sightless eyeballs; and paused while Mr. Lytchett tapped on a door. A voice answered; he opened it; and they passed round a screen into a warm glow of firelight and bright gas-globes.

It was a large room with a cheerful turkey carpet, velvet window-curtains and a bronze clock under a glass dome on the mantelpiece. There were oil-paintings on the walls, of sailing-ships, of an old gentleman in a tight black stock, of black men carrying cases under palm-trees down to a cove. There were armchairs of red leather, a gleaming mahogany writing-table with a great brass inkpot like a sarcophagus upon it; and seated at the table, a bald-crowned gentleman with twinkling eyes who seemed to Mark to fill the whole room with his presence.

Mr. William Hepplewhite, son and nephew of the original Hepplewhite Brothers, of Mincing Lane, wholesale importing druggists, drysalters and macassar-oil merchants, now the sole proprietor of the firm, rose as Mrs. Woodrofe came in, and bowed to her with ceremonious courtesy.

“Good morning to you, ma’am; good morning, Mr. Woodrofe. Lytchett, place chairs; you can go,” he said in a deep, comfortable voice. “We’ve prepared a dreary morning for you, Mrs. Woodrofe. I’ve had the gas on since I came in, and there’s an east wind, my corns tell me; you must have had a bitter journey. Sit you down, Mr. Woodrofe, sit you down, sir. Is this the lad, then? H’m . . . he looks strong, anyway.”

Mark, noticing with a vague discomfort how Mr. Hepplewhite repeated Mr. Lytchett’s very words, found himself suddenly under the lamps of two luminous grey eyes beneath heavily-tufted brows, eyes that continued to twinkle in the kindliest manner though there was a cool penetration in their depths. He dropped his own look awkwardly under the scrutiny; then peeped from under lowered lids at Mr. Hepplewhite’s face, broad and handsome, its white forehead fringed with a ring of grizzled hair, its side-whiskers flowing gracefully to a point, its long, straight mouth slightly twisted at the corner in rebuke of lurking smiles.

Mr. Hepplewhite for his part saw and studied with deliberation a small, sturdy, brown-complexioned boy, with a tangle of black hair, an overhanging forehead, thick brows like a pencil-smudge, heavy lids now veiling the hazel eyes, and a wistful mouth and chin. It was a long while before he took his gaze from Mark and looked across to the Keeper.

“It seems hard, Mr. Woodrofe,” he said with an almost pleading note in his voice, but was met only by a stolid stare.

Mark was bewildered and a trifle alarmed by this sentiment, and anxiously watched Mr. Hepplewhite rise from his table with a letter bearing a black crest in his hand, and walk over to the hearthrug. There he read the letter slowly through, while Mark had time to admire the gold seals and watch-chain looped on his white waistcoat, and the pattern of his shepherd’s plaid trousers.

“Well,” said Mr. Hepplewhite at last, folding up the paper, “it’s after all no business of mine, and perhaps this is the best way really. The catechism tells us, Mr. Woodrofe, to learn and labour truly to get our own living, and to do our duty in that state of life unto which it shall please God to call us. There is much virtue in that shall. Can you tell where Providence shall lead this youngster? Can you, Mrs. Woodrofe? No . . . nor can I, nor any living man. But, Mark, one can make a good beginning anywhere—remember that! Be punctual; keep your nails clean or you may dirty the drugs; never forget that your employer’s interest is your own, if you could only realize it. Don’t drink, don’t bet, don’t fight—fists are a relic of barbarity, and bayonets the Devil’s toothpicks—above all, never read The Times or the Morning Post, and don’t believe the dee’d nonsense they talk (saving your presence, Mrs. Woodrofe) if you ever do. How old are you?”

“Sir?” hinted Mr. Hepplewhite pleasantly to the ceiling. “Can you read and write?” he went on.

“You must do better than middling well, sir, at Hepplewhite Brothers’. Can you cipher?”

“Take care! Take care! You’ll be a railway king bound for Botany Bay with an iron on your leg if you go on like that. All the wealth of Great Britain upon nothing yields nothing. Fix that in your mind, my boy, and see to it that you bring something, wherever you start. Character, if you’ve nothing else. It’s an odd thing, Mr. Woodrofe, but the economists don’t seem to mention character anywhere in their textbooks. I’ve often searched the indexes for the word, but never found it. Character—you can’t enter it under L. or S. or D., so of course”—the grey eyes twinkled—“it’s a thing no instructed man should take account of. And yet, it does somehow creep into the total . . . very irregular, I’m sure.” He swooped upon Mark. “Has anybody been robbing you, my lad?”

“Well, they certainly can’t while you keep both your hands in your pockets. That’s one comfort.”

“Mark!” expostulated Mrs. Woodrofe in a horrified undertone. “How often have I told you?”

“Never mind, Mrs. Woodrofe,” said Mr. Hepplewhite. “Why shouldn’t the youngster show a proper independence, after all? Keep your hands in your pockets, Mark, every time a bishop or a peer, yes, ’egad, or a Prince of the Blood tries to patronize you, and you’ll help to give him a lesson this Age is trying to teach him, but I fear in vain.” He shook his head dolefully. “However, for the sake of discipline in this House we stand up straight, and don’t slouch, d’you hear me? And now, Mr. Woodrofe, where’s the child to lodge? I wonder what Lytchett arranged. Let’s have him in; just touch that bell-pull behind my table, Mark . . . Heavens, boy, we’re not calling the engines! He’s got the muscle of a young ox, ma’am. That’ll never do in the City.”

“Lytchett,” he continued, as the old clerk ran in breathless from the frantic peal that had sounded in his room downstairs, “what have you settled about young Woodrofe? Did you find a lodging for him, somewhere clean and cheap?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve arranged for him to go to Mr. Fawkes in Clerkenwell that used to be my neighbour. O. Fawkes, sir, late Bluemantel; I think that ought to suit?”

“D’you mean the toy-theatre man, Lytchett? Well, well, that’s odd. I was round at his shop myself lately, trying to buy a piece for my nephew for his birthday. But I could see nothing there except stuff like Robin Hood, glorifying robbery, Lytchett; or The Battle of Waterloo, glorifying war, that devilish thing, Mr. Woodrofe; or fantastic nonsense about giants and fairies, the most debilitating thing for the youthful mind, let me assure you, ma’am. ‘Why don’t you, Mr. Fawkes,’ I said, ‘fit yourself to the Age—make plays about the romance of commerce, give us an arithmetical pantomime, celebrate the progress of machinery in a stupendous ballet?’ But do you know?”—Mr. Hepplewhite’s eyes seemed again to be dancing, though his mouth drooped severely—“he couldn’t understand me a bit. Said such things were not drama. ‘No, my friend,’ I told him, ‘what you call drama—and the House of Lords and the Foreign Office no doubt agree with you—what you call drama means debt, it means dearth, it means disease, it means damnation’ . . . there I go again, Mrs. Woodrofe, you must really excuse me . . . ‘and the sooner,’ I said, ‘you sweep it off your dusty shelves, as this Age means to sweep it off the dusty floor of Westminster, the better for us all.’ As a matter of fact”—Mr. Hepplewhite broke into a smile—“the old fellow didn’t really seem to want to sell me any of his precious sheets at all. . . . And so Mark’s to go there, is he? There’s a daughter, I believe; but still he’s only a child. Yes, it’s an honest house, I’ve no doubt. When will he be ready to start work, Mr. Woodrofe?”

“Oh, come, come, that’s a bit harsh. Let the lad have a sight of London now he’s got here. If he turns up at five to-morrow morning to help the other boys take down the shutters and dust, I shall be quite satisfied. And we shall send him home most nights before nine. I don’t hold with long working hours for children; it’s not economic to tire them right out, which is what my friend, John Bright, don’t seem to understand. Now, about his wages: What rent is he to pay, Lytchett?”

“H’m, well. Then I think we must give him nine and six a week. It’s more, Mr. Woodrofe, I know, than market rate, and I’m doing very wrong in paying it. Oh yes, I am, Lytchett, you needn’t smile into your cuff. Woolly-headed sentimentalists like you would bankrupt this great country of ours in a fortnight if you had your way—you and your precious Charter! The wages fund is a fixed sum, and you can’t add to it without injuring the working man worse than anybody else. I should pay eight; I ought to pay eight; I’m setting a bad example, and I’m heartily ashamed of myself for paying more. But the fact is, I don’t see how the lad could possibly live on eight, and that’s what I wish Mr. Cobden would explain to me some day. So, that’s settled; I hope the boy’ll be happy here and work his way upward. Good day to you, ma’am; good day to you, Mr. Woodrofe. Take the lad to St. Paul’s and show him the Whispering Gallery.”

“I’ll put my dinner-hour forward,” said Mr. Lytchett with his gentle, toothless smile. “There’ll be more room in Frost’s, and I’ll wager that boy of yours is sharpset after his early start.”

A few minutes’ walk under a black sky through the roaring traffic, Mr. Lytchett leading the way with a respirator over his mouth, brought them to the swinging wooden doors of Frost’s Quality Chop House and to the most celestial odour of hot meats that had ever fallen on Mark’s nostrils. His head swirled after the biting cold of the street outside; but soon his fascinated eyes were able to take in the wooden pews and clean tablecloths, the sanded floor set with spittoons, the mantelshelf bearing a paunchy clock and Toby-mugs, and the gridded coal fire on the brick hearth below, with clergymen in white (so he supposed) moving intently about it. Such a spectacle he had seen once before when he had peeped through the window of the great stone kitchen at Crocketts, when there had been a party to celebrate his young lordship’s homecoming from a tour abroad, and Mark had been warned on pain of a stupendous thrashing not to let himself be seen near the House.

And even so a terrible fear fell on him now. For an old gentleman with a grave face and a glistening shirt-front came straight up to them as they entered—of course to turn them out! Mark blushed: why had Mr. Lytchett been so foolish as to bring them into this splendid place at all? The two were talking together, turning their heads to look over the already crowded tables; the great man frowned and Mr. Lytchett actually laughed—Mark was appalled at his impudence, though he rather admired him for it. Presently Mr. Lytchett pointed, and the old gentleman with stately tread led the way to a distant corner, Mark stepping quickly for fear of attracting this new master’s notice by disobedience. They passed between the rows of sharp-eyed townsmen, who stared at the intrusion of a woman into their business haunts, and squeezed into an empty pew at the end of the room; then the grand old gentleman—Mark nearly dropped like a felled ox when he heard it—actually said to Mr. Lytchett with a bow: “What can I get you, sir?” and Mr. Lytchett answered: “Bring the bill quick and let us choose, Charley!”

Choose, indeed! What was there that they left out? The rolls, to a boy nurtured on the dough of cottage bread, were a soft and palate-soothing rapture! And then he whose diet had been potato and dripping, dumpling with rare slices of cold bacon, once or twice a rabbit or the smell of a brace of pheasants retained by the Keeper as a perquisite, revelled in a sizzling steak with red juice, floury smoking potatoes and delicate cabbage. Only his worry over the proper alternate use of knife and fork saved him from choking himself in his excitement.

“Mark, don’t gobble, you’re not a turkey!” Mrs. Woodrofe warned him, but Mr. Lytchett only said, “Let the lad enjoy himself!”; and so he did, diving into a tankard of strong beer that made him cough but warmed him to his toes, and biting ravenously all round the gentleman in the long wig on the thick yellow biscuit that came with the cheese and celery. Mr. Lytchett called it an “Oliver”; and though the Keeper grunted that the cheese was stale and they wouldn’t dare send him such stuff from the home farm at Crocketts, Mark devoured crumbling biscuit and crumbling cheese with equal relish. Slightly muzzy by now with rich food and strong beer, he found it hard to keep his eyes open, and only heard as voices melting into dream, Mr. Lytchett questioning and his father replying.

“A lady of strong character, I should say. She came down into the City one day to see our Mr. William—he is some relation by marriage to her family.”

“It was certainly sign of a good heart in her to take so much trouble to provide for your son. Have you any others, Mr. Woodrofe?”

The voices thinned into a humming of bees in Mark’s ears . . . he was just trying to drive the old cow Kate away from nibbling at the stalks of celery, when a painful poke in the ribs from the Keeper’s stick woke him.

“I must get back to the warehouse, and sharp, too,” the old clerk was saying. “Are you all going to St. Paul’s?”

“Afterwards, you’ll do well, I think,” Mr. Lytchett went on, “to take a coach to Fawkes’s. Remember the number, 9 Greensleeves Row, Clerkenwell—but you can’t mistake the shop, I should say: all men in armour and fairies in the window. Remember, Mark, my lad, on the stroke of five at the warehouse entrance to-morrow morning!”

Of all the sights of that day of never-forgotten wonder, St. Paul’s was the supreme enchantment and miracle. An extraordinary awe hushed the boy’s spirit as they entered the dusky cavern of the nave, and saw in a far distance the carved choir-screen topped by the great organ, with its twin towers crowned by winged figures, like a giant’s castle. This, it seemed, was part of the very land told of in the tattered volume of fairy-tales that lay on the lending-shelf in the school at Balcombe. They stared till their necks were stiff into the giddy inverted gulf of the dome, slashed with grey shafts of misty light from its windows; climbed the winding steps to a room filled with glass cases, strange papers with writing and seals, leather-bound books such as ogres would consult for their runes, and in the middle the divinest toy Mark had ever seen—a tiny St. Paul’s over which an old man in a velvet cap stood murmuring a spell . . . “King Charles II . . . Sir Christopher Somebody-or-other . . . 365 feet to the top of the dome . . . 637 steps . . .”—but the impatient Keeper stumped out again in the middle of the incantation; and so reached at last the Whispering Gallery.

The abyss here was alarming, with its glimpse of the marble floor crawled over by black ants miles below; and it was even worse when a Voice from nowhere sounded suddenly in Mark’s ear: “This is the Whispering Gallery; I am speaking to you from over a hundred feet away on the opposite side. Listen close to the wall, and I will relate to you the story of St. Paul’s Cathedral from the year of Our Lord six hundred and seven.” Mark told himself defiantly, “Nobody shan’t scare me!” as he listened with his ear pressed to the cold stone, but he was glad to come downstairs again.

Down they went; and down yet again into a labyrinth of grey vaults lit by blue gas-jets. Surely this must be where Gunpowder Treason was hatched; at any moment out of one of those sombre alcoves might pop the figure of Guy Fawkes, cloaked and steeple-hatted. Fawkes! Would the gentleman Mark was to live with be anything like the hideous guys he had once been taken to see at Lewes? The thought was terrible down in these eerie cellars, and he thrust it from him.

They walked on and the place seemed to open out into long avenues to right and left, like the nightmares Mark had suffered during the scarlet fever. They came at last to a sort of central hall, in the midst of which rose a mass of dark stone. From behind it stepped yet another black-robed magician with long hair and big, searching eyes. “This,” he said, in a voice that reverberated among the arches, “is the tomb of Horatio, Lord Nelson, who met his death at the Battle of Trafalgar on October 21st, 1805 . . .” and, with his eyes, as it seemed, piercing into Mark’s soul, he told the story of the battle, of Nelson’s fall and death in the cockpit, of the Nation’s mourning, and the sailors carrying the coffin into the Cathedral for burial—here, on a spot right beneath the cross on the summit of the dome.

As Mark listened a strange sensation welled up within him, filling his throat and making his limbs tremble. He felt a passionate love for the frail figure with the soft white hair and slim, white-clad legs, whose picture he had seen in an antiquary’s shop at Brighton; he saw it now, lying streaked with blood that ran among the medals and stars, and felt he would gladly have died to be in Captain Hardy’s place when he received that last kiss. Indefinable yearnings shook him, making him conscious of a secret desire that it would be terrible if any of those around him should guess; and his eyes blurred and he dashed his cuff across them as he followed his parents out of Nelson’s Chapel.

“What are you snivelling about?” demanded Mr. Woodrofe, happening to turn and see him.

“Have you got a pain?” enquired his mother. “You eat much too fast at dinner, I told you so, Mark.”

But when they came out again into the transept he was shaken anew all through his fibres. For the most glorious solemn music was filling the air, swelling and sinking from the tall tubes with pointed ends that clustered between the towers upon the screen. A verger checked the Woodrofes as they trailed behind some people passing through the iron gates of the aisle to the seats within the choir; and, as he did so, a man carrying a black wand passed close to them, followed by a silvery-haired gentleman in a long white gown, with the most beautiful kind eyes Mark had ever seen. His gaze in passing fell upon the tear-flushed little boy straining forward from behind his mother’s flowered poplin skirt, and with a smile he paused to lay his blue-veined hand for a second on Mark’s curls. Then he went on his way behind the verger’s upheld rod, and Mark, with the ecstatic feeling of having been soothed by the touch of an angel and a lord (his twin inculcated standards of sublimity), followed his parents towards the distant West doors.

But suddenly his lagging steps were checked by a shuffle and crash behind the mysterious screen at his back. A booming monotone arose, and was answered unexpectedly by a clear and lovely melody of boys’ voices melting together and lingering on the ear. Mark, casting a swift glance over his shoulder at the secret place behind the towers, now lit within by a golden radiance, at last understood the whole puzzle perfectly. Inside there was Heaven; that was why they had none of them been allowed to enter. . . . It was all exactly as the Bible told you!

It is no use looking for Greensleeves Row in Clerkenwell to-day. The hand of improvement that has spared so much in that quarter of London has obliterated it as completely as if it had never existed; and indeed few noticed at the time the disappearance of a little connecting street consisting of only a dozen or so houses on either side, a street very hard to find in the years when there was no Rosebery Avenue or Clerkenwell Road to delimit to north and south the jungle of winding ways between the New River Head and the Charterhouse. If you sought it from the north, the usual course was to go down Rosamond Street and then lose your way; if from the south, it was wisest to turn up where Old Street ended, and catch a boy—that is, if you could, for boys were too spry to be easily caught in those days. If, however, you did succeed in laying hold of one from out the whirl of tip-cat or “trip-the-baker”—and you had best look sharply after your silk handkerchief in the act—he could take you in a moment to the premises of O. Fawkes, late Bluemantel, the toy-theatre maker. Meanwhile, Mr. Fawkes himself was very thankful that his shop was not accessible to the throngs of children from all over London who would have shadowed his dusty panes with their whitened noses and their spread fingers if they could have found their way there.

For, oddly enough, O. Fawkes, the proprietor of the Juvenile Drama, the kindly enchanter dreamed of by youth alike in Belgravian nurseries, in the back-parlours of the City Road and Finsbury Circus, and in the beetle-haunted tenements of Saffron Hill, O. Fawkes did not love the juvenile world at all. Of this the Woodrofes had swift and startling demonstration when their coach, after a false turn or two and some dangerous backing and wheeling in the narrow streets, at length found itself blocking Greensleeves Row from pavement almost to pavement. For they were met by a noise of derisive screeching, which made Mark pop his irrepressible head out of window. He then beheld a glimmer of small, leaded panes, behind which gesticulating figures in tinsel, and forests and palaces of an incredibly gay colouring shone with a magical brilliance; a half-circle of ragged children hopping defiantly on the paving-stones: and on the flight of three steps that led up to the glass door of the shop, a little oldish man, with hair falling on his shoulders and an apron tied askew round his waist, who was brandishing a long pair of pointed scissors with all the energy of a broadsword combat.

“Go away!” he roared in a deep, throaty voice. “Be GONE, I say, all the pack of you! The shop’s closed!”

“No, it an’t! Yer door’s open!” screamed a small boy in a man’s trailing overcoat, which caught up his heels as he darted away in mock terror from the snap of the great scissors.

“I’m putting up the shutters this minute!” retorted the angry proprietor, “and if you don’t all go away I’ll call the policeman.”

“Kool slop! Kool slop!” hummed the dilapidated swarm, and scattered up and down the street, only to cluster together again like flies round the seductive windows.

“Don’t you go for to call no p’liceman to us!” cried a sturdy little boy, rather better dressed than the others, who stood his ground boldly, clutching his tiny sister by the hand. “We ha’n’t done nuffin wrong, and I’ll tell my farver!”

“Mr. Jollops, the oil-man, and don’t you know it, too! When are you going to pay farver’s bill?”

“Then give us Bluejackets! Me and Adelaide see it on the counter inside just now.”

“H’m . . . Where’s your money?” demanded the shopkeeper, stroking a blue-shaven chin in the rays of the iron lamp above his door.

“Well, come back in the morning, there’s a good lad.” A weary smile flickered for a second round Mr. Fawkes’s heavy chaps. “Come round in the morning and I’ll show you the new Transformation in Sleeping Beauty for nothing.”

“Cut yer throat if yer lie?” The child wet his finger and made mystic gestures.

“So grace and mercy at my need most help me! Cut away to your tea now or your father’ll give you the strap!”

“Vell, if this ain’t vun of our merchant princes!” exclaimed the hackney coachman delightedly as he opened the door. “This the establishment you vanted, sir?”

Keeper Woodrofe descended with heavy authority upon the pavement just in time to stop Mr. Fawkes from vanishing within his shop again.

“Oh yes, oh yes,” said the toy-theatre maker, nodding from the rostrum of his doorsteps after the Keeper’s first few gruff words of explanation. “We was expecting you, sir . . . humble servant, marm. Is this the lad, then?” He gazed down upon Mark with sunk and filmy eyes that seemed to be dreaming, and passed his hand again reflectively down his bristly chin. “He looks—princely!”

Mark started at this unexpected end to a sentence he had grown weary of since he reached London.

“Yes,” pursued Mr. Fawkes, still staring at him with a fixed abstraction. “The Lost Heir, eh?”

“Oh, no offence! There’s no offence, my lord! An artistic resemblance merely. The Blind Boy of Portici in Act I by Master Stubbins, afterwards by Mr. Camperdown, as played at the Ionic, the New River Theatre. It’s all on the sheets, Mr. Woodrofe, ha’penny plain, penny coloured, O. Fawkes’s (late Bluemantel’s) Juvenile Drama, you know. But come in, sir; come inside, marm; I shouldn’t keep you standing in the street. It’s these children, sir, these children—go away, you brats!—they’re the curse of my life. If I let them, I believe they’d clear my whole stock out in a week. This used to be a quiet street when I first came to assist Mr. Bluemantel, and why the neighbours won’t join me in getting the nuisance abated, I can’t imagine. . . . But the kettle’s on the hob; the muffin’s brown. We won’t wait for my daughter; they keep her so late at the ballet-class when pantomime’s brewing! Put your box down here in the shop, young Agib. If he grows much, Mr. Woodrofe, he’ll put his head through our small attic roof—and pray mind your own bonnet, marm, against my ceiling! Do you know who smashed his hat against that very hook when Mr. Bluemantel had the business? Macready, sir! You can’t believe it, eh?”

Oliver Fawkes had never trodden the boards of any playhouse, not even one of the dingy private theatres where amateurs played Richard or Othello for the fee of a couple of guineas; not even to carry on a banner at the Royal Marylebone or the City of London, Bishopsgate. But from earliest childhood almost, as errand boy to a butcher, he had pinched, scraped, tricked, and (it must be owned) pilfered for half-pence to take him at half-price into the gallery to see the last part of the evening’s long entertainment at the Ionic, the drab Grecian pile that frowned upon the railed-in head of the New River. He knew the name of every actor in the Ionic stock company and could give a list of all the parts he had ever played. Had the management only known it they need not have hired a prompter, for young Fawkes could go on by memory from any line in the tragedies, melodramas and farces of the repertory, and could even, through long habit, make a shrewd guess at the coming end of each rhymed couplet in the annual pantomime—the only original feature of the year’s programme and valued proportionately by the patrons in general, if not by the serious-minded Oliver Fawkes.

It had been as the opening of gates of Paradise to the shambling slow-witted youth with the dim eyes, long sallow chin, camel-like lip and slow fat smile, half cunning and half imbecile, when he was accepted at the age of fourteen as apprentice by the formidable Mr. Bluemantel of the Juvenile Drama, Print and Tinsel Warehouse in Greensleeves Row. Mr. Bluemantel and his assistants manufactured the small wooden theatres for children on which cardboard figures and scenery, designed by romantic artists, some of whom became famous and others earned an anonymous immortality in the memories of thousands of grown-up boys and girls, reproduced in miniature the plays and players of the Ionic, the “Brit”, the Coburg, the Surrey, Astley’s, and even Drury Lane and Covent Garden. Bluemantel, grim and black-avised like a pirate, quickly discovered that young Fawkes’s stumpy fingers had a miraculous delicacy in handling the paint-brushes, the stencil-plates, the paste-bowls and scissors whereby the personages of the toy drama were developed from the chrysalis of “plain” sheets in blurred print into the butterfly splendour of the attitudinizing cardboard outlines, decked in dazzling colours, that glided with an odd lifelikeness on tin slides over the few inches of their little wooden stages framed in sumptuous prosceniums. Fawkes learnt also to affix the tinsel to the portraits of famous tragedians, clowns and circus-riders that formed the sideline to the toy-theatre industry with an unrivalled judgment in making a flashing constellation of many-coloured atoms; and what Mr. Bluemantel, who cared no more for art or drama than the stone post in front of his shop, for his hobbies were rat-catching and prize-fighting, his religion long-haired terriers, what Mr. Bluemantel was further shrewd enough to perceive, O. Fawkes where others laboured, loved. Hours did not exist for him; an order that crushed the rest of the apprentices and cutters down beneath a load of blasphemy at Christmas-time, was for Oliver a trumpet-call that lit his bleared eyes and summoned him to forty-eight-hour stretches with brush and scissors, from which he rose, stiff and pallid, but triumphant as a saint after maceration. How should he complain of overwork whose spirit was living all the days his body spent beside the flickering coal fire in the little iron grate of the workroom within that great stage-world he could never hope to enter in the flesh—an inarticulate Gulliver who bowed gladly to the kingship of his brilliant Lilliput.

In time it came to be O. Fawkes who cut down the texts of plays to make the “books of words” supplied with the scenes and characters; O. Fawkes who decided what pieces, what pantomimes should (though their authors did not realize it) escape the oblivion of posterity by being incorporated in the Juvenile Drama; O. Fawkes who found the designers for the plates and who drove the bargains, hard and often dishonest, with the feckless breed of artists; O. Fawkes who, when the scenes turned out unsatisfactory, ordered them to be re-drawn from designs he himself scrawled in blue chalk on brown packing-paper with an unerringness that even the infuriated artists could not dispute. Presently Bluemantel realized to his joy that he was practically becoming a country gentleman; that he could afford to spend not week-ends only but whole weeks at his cottage on the Essex marshes with his dogs and his gun, without fear that his coadjutor would either cheat him or neglect his interests. By degrees he who was used to thrust his impatient fist into every detail of the work became utterly and incuriously dependent, he whose meanness used to rasp like a file upon all he dealt with became carelessly generous to all O. Fawkes’s demands—luckily they were never for himself but always for the business. When Fawkes was thirty the business had become “Bluemantel and Fawkes”; before he was forty, “Fawkes, late Bluemantel”; for the pirate had his tombstone now in an Essex village and his sporting-print, surrounded by his terriers, in all the local inns. Raised to this pinnacle of security and absolutism, O. Fawkes gave play to his fantasy. His hair grew lanker, his chin bluer, his top-hat more widely brimmed, his neckcloth more voluminous, his voice more huskily resonant; and the change of his rapid shuffle into a tragedian’s dragging gait nearly choked his customers with impatience.

He had displaced Bluemantel by agreement in the house over the shop at the time of his marriage. His wife had been a workwoman in the business, the most deft and industrious of the band, Fawkes’s veritable first lieutenant, who could be relied upon not to ruin sheets by letting the colours run together over the edges of the stencil or by lopping off a finger from a hand or a feather from a hat in the anxious task of cutting out the fantastically-clad characters. It was Judith, too, who uncomplainingly bent her straight black poll over the long wooden table during the days and nights of pressure at Christmas-time; and it was Judith’s threat to secede to Mr. Wellington’s establishment in Old Street in order to “better herself” that decided O. Fawkes to choose matrimony as a lesser evil than the preposterous rise in wages which she demanded and which he felt sure Mr. Wellington had never really offered her.

Herein he erred—he had no wit outside his kingdom of cardboard—for once the ring was on Judith’s finger neither that hand nor its fellow ever touched stencil or scissors again. “I wouldn’t demean myself,” she said with the tranquil inflexibility that sounded far less reassuring now than in the days when it promised unflagging application to the work in hand. Fawkes realized that marriage was a snare, and acquiescing in his idle wife’s determination to make the first-pair front into a proper parlour with lace curtains, brass rods, a sofa and a copperplate engraving of “The Flight to Gretna” (which her husband vaguely resented) buried himself even more deeply than before in the company of Grindoff the Miller, Charles II, Paul Clifford, and Zorilda, Princess of Mingrelia.

The birth of a baby had been an alarm and a nuisance; and then, as it seemed to him, a needless expense. The small creature with podgy legs and square feet that tumbled among the litter on the floor of the workroom he had looked upon as a larger form of cockroach for which unhappily no trap was permissible; and he noted nothing of the changes that were taking place till one summer evening—about a year after his wife’s early death—when a faint pink sky was flushing behind the black and crooked chimney-pots in the Row and he saw a little girl with finely-moulded limbs and pale brown hair tumbling from the ribbon that sought to tame it, dancing on the stones outside the shop to the encouragement of the Italian hurdy-gurdy man and the applause of his compatriot, the merchant of plaster images. “It’s my Fancy, and she’ll do for the ballet-class!” he cried with a thrill, and, rushing out of doors, snatched her up to cover her with unaccustomed stubbly kisses that she wailingly resented.

The very next day Fawkes took his daughter round to the Ionic and presented her to Mr. Polidori, who played Clown in the pantomimes, dumb slaves and monkeys in the melodramas; and who held a Dancing Academy at his tiny house with its red-washed façade and arched doorway supported by wooden half-pillars, in a by-street overshadowed by the vast brick sidewall of the theatre.

With stick and snuff, with grimace, whine, curse, sarcasm and very rare rewards of minute lollipops, the square little Cockney, who had lost all traces of his Italian origin but his name, hammered the rudiments of ballet technique into his shabby pupils, and in so doing hammered out every vestige of joy in movement, every rhythmic impulse, every touch of the floating puff-ball that had marked the little girls when their parents handed them over to his training. He affected a burglarious dress when teaching which made him even more terrifying than usual—fur cap on his bald head, a gamekeeper’s coat with deep leather-bound pockets, velveteen knee-breeches and white thread stockings ending unexpectedly in thin court pumps instead of hob-nailed half-boots. The fiddle, handled by a ’prentice violinist from the theatre orchestra who read last Sunday’s paper all the time he was playing, scraped listlessly, and Mr. Polidori, the green eyes in his white face gleaming devilishly, hopped, skipped and crossed his balustrade calves, while he shouted, “Now then, gels! One, two, cut! Three, four, spring! Won’t I warm your ankles, you, Alice Farwell, if you don’t cut! Come, put some life into it, gels! Oh! my Curls and Tweezers! Not a bit like it! Not a bit like it! Not a bit LIKE it!” Before him, thumping dismally on the rosined floor of the stuffy overcrowded room, moved the pale-faced row of débutantes in their tattered gauze skirts, soft-haired, lithely framed, with the beauty that only London’s poor possess, etherealized by hunger, sharpened by premature acquaintance with life’s ambushes, and ready to flop sobbing with fatigue upon the filthy boards whenever their implacable little tyrant should stop, incredibly possessed still of all his breath, to cram his nostrils with black snuff and to strut about the room, his neck twitching with a nervous habit, while he abused them. “None o’ yer make dancers! Not a b——y one o’ yer! I dunno what I’ll do to yer, gels, if you don’t do better. Put the red-hot poker on yer legs, see if I don’t! See if I don’t! You better be careful and take heed, young ladies!”

In this school Fancy Fawkes acquired solid ankles, heavy calf-muscles, stout thighs and a prematurely-developed bust. Here she learnt to substitute a precise and steely flexion of her legs for the childish grace that had enchanted her father; to stamp upon the boards she would have skimmed over; to pound rigidly on the points of her hardened toes across the stage, shaking the planks at every movement—and in spite of all to arrest the observer’s eye by something clean and finished in her motion, something dashing yet resigned in her bearing, like a pathetic little tin soldier, symmetrical, alert and perfectly balanced.

That day her father had crushed her in his arms when he found her dancing to the organ he had felt as if he were kissing a flower with a faintly stuffy scent. Now her lips, swelling to an almost pouting fullness in the centre, were vivid, but firm and folded tight at the corners; her large, white, laughing teeth had a disquieting suggestion of a young wolf; her blue eyes pierced you with their metallic sheen; her high-bridged nose, a trifle too long for beauty, gave her face an imperious sharpness. Only the pale brown hair retained the softness and delicacy of her childhood; it still tumbled out of every kind of dressing or ribbon, shading away the prominent line of her cheek-bones, falling in loops to soften the strained keenness of her eyes and darken their hard blue to mystery.

At nine she had been an Imp, at eleven a Fairy in Ionic pantomimes. At sixteen, now, precociously developed to the proportions of a woman, she was used to being a peasant boy or girl, a ball-guest, a sailor, a bayadère in the varying moods of the romantic drama. She was always in the Eight, often in the Quartette, once in a pas de deux with Polidori himself, but had never reached a solo. “What’s the matter with you, you little rat?” he would ask despairingly. “It’s not guts you want, nor strength. You’re finished. God knows you’ve given me sweat enough to turn you out!—and you’re somebody; you know how to take the stage. But you’ve not got it, God help yer! Why are you so hard? Why are you so obvious? Still, you’re young yet, you’re a child yet, and you got to improve!” Then he would twine his fingers in the silky brown hair and lift her, stout as she was, with his strong-muscled arms, right off the stage, biting her lips with the tears in her eyes, but never screaming; and then he would slap her face, twist her shapely white ear round till it scorched, and offer her a sticky sweetmeat from his capacious pocket. This she once struck out of his hand and rushed away, leaving him jerking and chuckling, when the rest of the girls had expected he would thrash her until she howled.

To-day her earnings had become very welcome to O. Fawkes, even her poor sixteen shillings a week. For the business, while its fame grew, while literary men wrote essays about the old shop, while Australian farmers and Canadian trappers and Indian administrators sent importunate demands for stages, scenes and characters, the business was undoubtedly going downhill. It was going downhill because O. Fawkes as he grew older had developed an odd reluctance to sell. He could no longer bear to be parted from any of his precious stock, pleading to his angry daughter that it was irreplaceable; that some of the books were out of print, that some of the woodblocks had been destroyed in a fire and others had disappeared into inaccessible corners of his cellars and his garrets. The truth was that the array of little posturing figures had grown dearer to him than children of the flesh; that the bosky groves, the wild caverns, the fountained gardens and Gothic palaces had become resorts of his fancy more precious than any ancestral acres. Often the wealthy customer at the counter found the particularly fine sheets he coveted snatched from him at the last moment and locked back into their labelled drawers by a mumbling, grimacing, threatening curmudgeon, and went off in a rage to spread abroad the news that old Fawkes had gone mad. Postal demands were neglected or answered by a superb piece of floriated handwriting, triumphantly announcing “Out of Print”; the shutters were put up at the approach of exploring parties from the West End; and children, as has been seen, were chased out of the shop with violence. The apprentices came to an end; workmen and workwomen could no longer be employed; the rent was often overdue; and tradesmen called with menacing civility carrying their bills. Hence it was that while the name of Oliver Fawkes bade fair to become as much of a household word as the original Guy’s throughout the British Empire, the man himself was glad to welcome for a lodger the wondering, brown-eyed child who now stood fascinated by the scintillating marvels shut up in glass cases all about him.

“Do you like them, me b’y?” enquired O. Fawkes, placing the hand of a heavy stage-father upon his shoulder. “Then see you never lay a finger on ’em, if you and I are not to quarrel.”

From the low-browed shop they passed through a half-glass muslin-curtained door into the workroom at the back. It was a wonderful place, with a bare floor thick in shavings and scraps and a narrow wooden carpenter’s bench running all down its length, littered with rolls of brown paper, coils of curling cardboard, bowls of paste and a tray of oozing paints. On a smaller table beside it a complete theatre had been set up in working order with its oil footlights softly glowing, its painted orchestra fiddling mutely, and its proscenium boxes packed with ringletted white-bosomed beauties and their heavily-whiskered and macassared swains. The curtain was raised, displaying a triple row of fairies in flower-like ballet skirts, who were footing it in a moonlit grotto that opened upon a silver waterfall. “Just testing the new pantomime transformation,” murmured Fawkes, pushing Mark sternly past the ravishing spectacle, “it’s not on sale yet”; and he edged his guests towards the fireplace where a kettle hissed on one of the side-hobs and a plate of muffins sizzled in their butter on a blue plate with a bitten rim in the fender.

Above the narrow mantelshelf with its painted canister of tea and its brown jar of tobacco hung an oil portrait in a gilt frame. It was heavily streaked down one side with soot, which gave a squinting expression to the tall gentleman in a sealskin waistcoat, with a heavily-ringed hand, a pugnacious bluish chin and long, black locks, who stared out from it at the visitors.

“Is it meant for you?” blurted out Mark to Mr. Fawkes, and increased his enormity by pointing.

“It shows the lad has sharp eyes,” he said. “He’s not the first by a long way to make that mistake. But no, my lad: that is Mr. Belper, our Mr. Belper, the first Hamlet, the second Richard, and, let us say, the fourth Sir Giles Overreach of the day. I’ll take you to see him one night, if you’re a good boy, before the pantomime opens, in which, of course, he don’t appear. He’s the glory of the Ionic, the most purely intellectual tragedian, Mr. Woodrofe, of the modern theatre.”

“I doan’t hold with play-acting,” replied the Keeper roughly. “Do the boy noa good to lead him among all they painted strumpets.”

“Come, come!” tittered Mr. Fawkes. “You’re severe, sir. We stage-folk are badly spoken of, I know, but we’re less black, believe me, than your pulpits paint us. ‘If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?’ But take a seat, marm, I beg. These muffins will be leather if we wait much longer.”

He placed Mrs. Woodrofe in an armchair which had a snake of wool curling from its seat and which lacked a castor, so that it rocked alarmingly as she sat down; moved a pile of “plain” sheets from a kitchen chair with a broken back to make a seat for the Keeper; and upturned an empty packing-case for Mark. Then, after making tea in a minute china pot and minuter cups that he rummaged from a cupboard, he perched himself upon a tall spindly stool, round the legs of which he sinuously wrapped his thin shanks.

For some minutes there was silence as their jaws sank into the muffins, and Mark, between sips of scalding tea, was able to let his eyes rove again round the queer room. On each side of the fireplace there hung upon the wall a trophy of arms. That on the right was made up of two short broadswords and a brass-studded leather target, but that on the left was much more curious. It consisted of a white wooden wand, nailed below a black cocked-hat and a black mask with holes for the eyes. Mark had never before seen anything in the least like it; and as he contemplated it, the hat and the mask seemed to come together into a face that rather disquieted him. He turned away and saw a flat glass case fixed on the wall, containing, it seemed, spread out, some sort of a gown, worked in a flowered pattern and trimmed with fur. This brought him to the door, and he had to turn his head to see the wall behind him. Then he had a shock, and nearly choked on a piece of muffin. Another large portrait was leering at him. It was a man with a white face enlivened by red crescents on either cheek and hair lifted into a peak over his forehead. He was stuffing a live duck into one pocket of a bulging pair of spotted calico trunks, and a gold watch into the other. He wore crimson stockings, and a frill round his neck that made his ferociously-grinning head look as if it were being served up on a plate, and to the boy he appeared altogether menacing. Mark was glad to turn his back on this fellow before catching his malevolent eyes.

As he made this movement he caught sight of a medley of objects on an old wooden chest in the corner behind the fireplace. There was a patched tambourine, a stick with bells on it and a Punch’s head (Mark had seen Punch in Lewes and recognized him), a filmy purple scarf spangled with gold stars, and a stumpy umbrella frayed round the ferrule. This was an intriguing heap; and Mark, after making sure that his elders were engaged in conversation, was leaning over to finger that scarf when he saw on the floor by the chest the queerest little pink shoe, flat at the heel and with a pink ribbon straying from it. Surreptitiously he picked it up and began to finger it. It was covered with some sort of shining stuff worn fluffy in places; and it was soft and bent easily till you came to the toe, where it suddenly got stiff, so stiff that you could not bend it there, however hard you might squeeze it.

Mark dropped the shoe in haste as he fancied he saw his mother watching him. But her gaze was vacant, seeing him, he thought, and not seeing him. She was not listening to what the two others were saying, but looking at him, he was sure of it, in this funny distant way, and—yes—there was a tear gleaming in the firelight on one of her eyelids. Why, for goodness’ sakes?

“So you’re not returning to Sussex by the late train, Mr. Woodrofe?” Mr. Fawkes was enquiring as he wiped his muffin-greased hands on his trousers, where he supposed his apron to be spread, though it was really twisted round behind him.

“Noa; sleep in Lunnon to-night, if man can sleep in this din, and find coach to go home to-morrow. Noa more Puffing Billy for me.”

“You’ll not find many coaches still running, I’m afraid,” cackled O. Fawkes, highly amused. “We’d be glad to lodge you and your good lady here for the night, sir, if we could. ‘My door was never shut against the wretched while I knew prosperity, nor shall it be closed now,’ as Old Kelmar says in The Miller. But whether I may so describe you, Mr. Woodrofe, or not, your young Prince has taken up all our available accommodation.” He turned to Mrs. Woodrofe. “I hope we shall be able to make the lad comfortable here, marm.”

“Oh, he won’t be hard to please, sir,” answered Mrs. Woodrofe, turning her gaze away from Mark at last, to his great relief.

“Better not be!” assented her husband grimly. “Comfort, indeed! He’s come to Lunnon to work!”

“Well, if he wants amusement,” ruminated Fawkes, “he must make friends of his own age in the City. This is a dull old house, I fear, Mrs. Woodrofe, and we’re staid folk who inhabit it.”

The bell on the street door clashed and tinkled away in long-drawn echoes; a light step was heard moving in the shop; and a high voice floated through the curtained panes that parted it from the workroom:

“Li-tooral, li-tooral, li-tooral-li!” trilled Fancy Fawkes as she appeared, after hanging up her bonnet and shawl, on the threshold of the workroom. “Oh, Sixpence! I didn’t know you had company, papa!”

“Mr. and Mrs. Woodrofe, my dear, and their heir, who is making his shelter beneath our roof. Mr. and Mrs. Woodrofe, allow me . . . my child!”

“ ’Servant, ma’am.” Fancy curtsied, with her foot drawn formally back, to Mrs. Woodrofe. “ ’Servant.” She made a short inclination to the Keeper. “Father, why do you let Mr. and Mrs. Woodrofe sit in the dark all the time? There are the candles and there . . . what have you done with all those spills? I left a mugful this morning.” She rapidly twisted a scrap of paper from the work-table in her fingers and stooped to catch a flame from the grate. As the spill blazed up, Mark caught the blue gleam of her eyes between her drooping corkscrews; the next moment the radiance of the candles quenched the leaping shadows of the firelight and dimmed the orange patches of the windows across the stone-paved back-yard.

“Papa, how could you!” she exclaimed. “Only think of using those ridiculous little cups to make the tea! You know they’re the ones I had given me years ago for my great doll Barbara; I hid them in the cupboard on purpose that you shouldn’t find them!”

“Oh, but they were quite large enough for us, I’m sure, Miss Fawkes,” declared Mrs. Woodrofe graciously. “We have had a delicious tea. Mark here enjoyed your muffins, I can tell you.”

“Oh, is that your son, the lodger?” Fancy wheeled round again to the fireside corner where Mark sat. “Stand up, boy!” she commanded, “and let me have a good look at you!”

“H’m,” said Fancy with her head on one side. “I’m taller than you are by a foot—that’s one good thing. So you like muffins with your tea, boy, do you? I wonder if you thought to leave one for me? Yes!” She swooped on the hearth and began to rip the last sodden piece from the bottom of the plate.

“Me child!” groaned O. Fawkes. “That will make you very ill. ‘Let good digestion wait on appetite’—that muffin is tough enough by now to sole your shoe!”

Fancy waved a derisive hand at him as she set her gleaming teeth wolfishly in the white and brown circle.

“When one’s been rehearsing with Poll-parrot since ten, papa,” she mumbled through her full mouth, “and nothing by way of dinner but half a pint of porter, one feels able to eat one’s shoes without indigestion . . . and I almost did coming home. Boy, pour me a cup of tea, if you can without slopping it into the saucer. I’m parched.”

“It’s time for us to be seeking our inn, Amos,” she murmured. “By your leave, Mr. Fawkes, we will just bid good-bye to Mark.”

She drew the boy apart into the shop and laid her black woollen-gloved hand upon his shoulder. Again he felt that troubled, wistful look in the eyes that rested upon him.

“Good-bye, Mark,” said the old woman. “You’re your own man now; try and be a man that’s respected. I’ve done my best to act as a good mother to you, though no one knows my infirmities better than myself. I might have done better still perhaps if you and I had been something different from what we are to one another . . . but there, shame on my tongue! What’s the good of talking to you of things you couldn’t understand and are happier not to know.”

“Why certainly, Mark, if you have time. You must remember to write to Mrs. Pomeroy, the housekeeper, if you want new clothes; she has kindly promised to attend to that. . . . But of course write to me too if you wish. I’ll ask schoolmaster to read it over to me; my eyes won’t follow writing now, never would very well.”

“Why, my dear,” her voice softened at his eagerness, “that’s as it turns out. You won’t have time for gadding about now, you know.”

Suddenly Mark understood that her red projecting cheeks, her feathery grey eyebrows and her wide black-toothed mouth were going out of his life; that her black gloves and black-fringed shawl, the medallion of the Allied Sovereigns that clasped her bodice at the throat, her reticule of clinking imitation jet with its stringy rows of broken beads, were vanishing—along with the cottage, the beehives in the garden patch, the paths into the woods, everything that was Home. He had never realized before the meaning of that word, and could hardly make out now why for the first time it made his throat swell and tears come stinging under his eyelids.

“And I’ve something to say to you, too.” The Keeper interrupted his struggles. “You’re here in Lunnon to work; doan’t let me hear tell o’ you taking up wi’ bad company. If you do, this stick o’ mine, he’ll find time to travel back to town, and you know, I rackon, what he tarks like by now!”

The street door bell clashed, and by the rays of the lamp over the steps outside, Mark saw the heads of his parents go stolidly past the window between the peaked stage-fronts and the dancing fairies. Then a mist fell over his eyes, which he dashed away to find O. Fawkes standing looking at him with pensive strokings of his long chin.

“Don’t . . . don’t your parents ever kiss you, my boy?” he asked at length, with a note almost of timidity in his voice.

“Kiss me?” replied Mark in round-eyed amazement. “I an’t a girl, to be kissed, am I?”

“Well, shoulder your box, laddie, and I’ll escort you to your chamber. ’Tis but a garret beneath the stars, and I hope,” he added dubiously, “you won’t prove another Chatterton.”

Mark growled sulkily that he had been taught when to hold his tongue, and climbed behind Mr. Fawkes’s flapping list slippers, bearing his box with difficulty up the narrow staircase to the top of the tall lean house.

The startlingly beflowered stair-covering and the brass rods stopped at the first floor, which held the best parlour, left untouched since Mrs. Fawkes’s death—(the widower had not even had the spirit to take down “The Flight to Gretna”)—and a small back room known as the “boudoir”, which Fancy had slowly annexed piecemeal to herself, first pulling up the carpet to get bare boards for her dancing practice, then carrying down the long mirror from the best bedroom above to watch her steps by, then filling the drawers of the once polished rosewood tallboy with her sandals and her sewing, then pulling the shelves out of an alcove that had held china pots and geegaws, and hammering in nails upon which to hang her dresses, of which she had plenty, for she made them all herself. There was good excuse for this invasion since it was impossible for a person of Fan’s lavish efficient untidiness to keep her possessions and carry on her half-score activities as dancer, housekeeper, spare hand at need in the workroom, and dry-nurse at all times to papa, from such a confined base as the chilly back bedroom that she occupied on the second floor above, next to her father’s room, formerly the connubial chamber.

Mark’s lodging, however, had not even the faint comfort of Fan’s. It had to be reached by a deserted and ghostly third floor, crammed to bursting with cases, packages and one or two spectral pieces of swathed furniture, from a corner of which a wooden ladder mounted to a trap-door in a twisting loft. Mark’s first experience of it, after he and Mr. Fawkes had pantingly hoisted his box through the trap, was a stunning blow on the head from the steeply-falling eaves. But when he had done counting the stars, he felt a thrill of glorious proprietorship in the ten-foot-by-six of freshly-whitewashed garret (Fan had done the whitewashing the Sunday before) with its bed improvised out of a straw palliasse laid over two packing-cases of unequal height that made a ridge in the middle, its four hooks screwed into a beam by way of wardrobe, and its earthen washing-basin on a triangular ledge in a corner, where Mark, as he rose from examining it, promptly hit his head on another beam. There was no window but a skylight of grimy glass.

Despite his contusions Mark would have stayed shivering and admiring in the goblin shadows flung by the candle O. Fawkes held in a wavering hand; but his landlord soon tired of the gloom and the chill.

“Come downstairs again,” he urged. “Fan is sure to be cooking something warm for supper.”

Supper now! Mark wondered if these Londoners ever stopped eating. But at the foot of the stairs such a pleasant odour of frying sausage came from the little kitchen projecting out at the back into the yard that he felt his appetite stealing on again.

“Toast, indeed!” ejaculated Fancy, bouncing out of the kitchen in a blue checked apron, her cheeks aflame from the range. “Why didn’t you tell me you wanted toast before I did the sausages? What’s the fire like in the workroom then? Low, is it? Very well; I’ll pop the sausages back into the oven to keep, while I toast.”

“And that will just give me the time,” hinted O. Fawkes, “to step round to the Blue Lion for nine penn’orth of brandy to make a sip of toddy. . . . Er . . . have you ninepence, my dear?”

“Well, I’m afraid there’s hardly as much in the till. We’ve had rather a quiet day, Fan.”

“I know your quiet days, father! How many customers have you turned away and how many children have you frightened off the doorsteps for ever? Hear-r-rtless parent!” She rolled her blue eyes and pressed her left hand against her side with an agony that alarmed Mark. “Would you let your pretty ones star-r-rve in the bleak, inclement wood? . . . Well, I don’t know where I left my reticule. Find it, and don’t stay gossiping in the bar—not even if they ask you to recite, papa; for the sausages won’t wait for long, and neither will I, that’s a fact. You, boy, pick up that loaf and come and cut the slices for me to toast.”

Mark obediently followed her into the workroom and squatted beside her, knife in hand, on the rag-mat before the fender.

“Oh! you needn’t bother about pleasing me, and for the Lord’s sake don’t ‘miss’ me. My name’s Fan, and you’re welcome to the use of it. What’s the country like?”

“Can you milk a cow, ride a horse, keep bees and grow roses? I wish I could.”

“Cut another slice, evenly this time, and don’t try to be satirical! Perhaps you weren’t trying to be satirical, though? Do you really think I’m clever?”

“It’s a shame to quiz; but I can’t help it, I’m feeling gay to-night. Have you ever been to the theatre, Mark?”

“How can you tell when you’ve never been inside one? They an’t so fine behind as they look from the front, I can tell you.”

Mark turned such a bewildered brow upon her that she once more spluttered into laughter.

“I can’t help it,” she apologized. “You’re such a nice little green growing thing. And your hair curls so prettily, and you’re square and sturdy with round brown eyes like Polidori’s thrush in the cage. . . .”

Mark dropped plate and bread helter-skelter into the mat and scrambled to his feet in a fury.

“I’m NOT!” he roared. “I’m not a babby and I won’t be treated like one, not by a gal!”

“He woan’t, he woan’t, he woan’t!” retorted Fan, mocking his country burr and making a rapier of the toasting-fork to lunge at him.

“Boo! Now you’re going to blubber, aren’t you, cry-baby? . . . But, oh! good Heavens! I forgot . . . what a little wretch I am! You’ve just left your father and mother and must be feeling miserable! Come nestle up and be friends; I won’t tease you any longer. I can see I’ve got to take your mother’s place. Is she very kind to you?”

“Don’t you understand? My mother worshipped me . . . and didn’t she spoil me? Oh no! Not at all, I don’t think. Would you like me to spoil you?”

“Oh!” She gave a scream. “Sixpence! There’s the toast in the fire! Papa will kill me! . . . Don’t, Mark! You’ll burn your fingers, ’tisn’t worth it . . . you shouldn’t have done that, you know; let me see your hand! You have scorched it, badly. Shall I put butter on it? No? You’re brave, aren’t you? I’m sorry now I called you a cry-baby. . . . Lord, there’s papa back, and only three slices done and one of ’em a cinder!”

O. Fawkes, wearing a felt hat worthy of his namesake, put a face of solid jubilation in at the workroom door and waved a small black bottle as though it were a sceptre.

“Papa! Papa! Wait a minute!” cried his daughter. “Don’t go away again! I’ve been trying to tell you ever since I came home. Listen, papa,” she gabbled, “old Poll was so pleased with me this morning because I was the only one in the Quartette that could do chassé-croisé cleanly—so he said, though both Alice Farwell and Jenny Peters are cleverer than me really, but I’m taller than either of them though two years younger—that he said, Poll-parrot said, papa, that he’d make me the dandizette in the pantomime this year. The dandizette! Oh, Fancy, my girl, fancy that!”

“The dandizette!” he said. “Pooh! I’d rather they had picked you for Anna, the female attendant on Lady Douglas.”

“So would not Miss Belleville, I rayther think! Really, papa, you are provoking! Don’t you understand it means ten a week extra—apart from the position?”

“The position, forsooth! Pantomime, me child, is the lowest form of theatrical art.”

“Is it indeed, sir? Then, pray why have we Patchy’s bat and mask on one wall”—she pointed—“and the portrait of Mr. Grimaldi on the other? Yes, tell me that, papa!”

“As for the Harlequin’s insignia, my dear,” answered Fawkes solemnly, “they are those used by Edmund Kean in his strolling days at the Fairs.”

“So the dealer told you. I don’t believe it. But anyhow if Edmund Kean played in pantomime . . .”

“As for the portrait of Mr. Grimaldi,” her father interrupted, “it was left me, as you surely know, by my benefactor, Mr. Bluemantel, in his Will. Otherwise”—he looked at the malicious white face with a shade of uneasiness—“it would not be, I confess, the countenance I would choose to decorate my apartment.”

“That’s the fellow I don’t like,” said Mark suddenly, pointing to the Harlequin mask. “He looks sly!”

“And is that so, me lord? Do you know why a Harlequin is like a good little boy?”

“He is seen and not heard.” (Chatterbox again! thought Mark ruefully, and retired deep into his shell.) “And as for you, father, all I can say is that you went eight times last year to Astley’s, though you say you hate circuses, to see Harlequin-Richard II. or what Wat Tyler did to the Lord Mayor’s Horse. Why? I suppose it was to see that fat thing Caroline Pakenham’s legs as the Lord Mayor.”

“I may be tender or I may be tough, papa! What I say and will maintain is that it’s most disheartening to come on and get a reception like this. Don’t you know I shall wear the latest bonnet and an eight-flounced skirt on Boxing Night? The dandizette always does.”

“Yes; to cross stage twice and have your pocket picked by the Clown. Bah! What art is there in that?”

“Perhaps Poll will put in a few steps for the dandizette this year, as it’s me he’s so fond of.”

“Columbine, indeed! You take care that I’m not Columbine when I’m a year or two older. I know Signor Bolossi would sooner play Patchy to me than to that broomstick Varesi. No, I’m not jealous, papa, and I forbid you to think it. All I mean is, how can a foreigner dance the sailor’s hornpipe with any soul? Tell me that, pray!”

Folding her arms as gracefully as the toasting-fork permitted, and whistling shrilly to accompany herself, she broke into the first movement of the hornpipe herself. Her feet tapped furiously upon the boarded floor, and the dust and scraps of waste rose in a halo about her.

“Well?” She stopped abruptly and glowered at Mark. “What are you gaping at? Never seen a girl’s ankles before, lout?” She cast a glance down at her shapely white-stockinged calves and screamed. The lace frill of her right-leg pantalette was drooping almost to the string of her muddied black sandal. “Oh, Sixpence!” she sighed, “if I’m not a slut! I meant to sew that tape before I went out this morning.” Calmly, before the astounded eyes of Mark, she plucked her skirt over her knees and began to tuck up the trespassing lace.

“All right, papa! If Master Mark’s a gentleman he’ll know it’s the moment for Blind Man’s Buff. . . . What a state of mud my skirt’s in! Where’s the brush . . . and, oh my Curls and Tweezers, as Poll says, whatever’s become of the toast all this while? Why, Mark, you good boy, I declare you’ve done those four pieces to a turn!”

Supper over, Fancy swept up the hearth; revived the fire till it burned clean and bright again; served the toddy, allowing Mark one sip out of the spoon; and then carried the litter from the wooden chest in the corner to the table in the middle of the room, to sort it.

“If I don’t mend this scarf to-night and take the whole load back to wardrobe to-morrow,” she declared, as she threaded a needle, “I shan’t hear from old Mother Winyates. Oh no! Tell me not so! ‘Biss Fawkes! You agaid! You really are the bost deglige’t of all our ladies. I shall have to report you to the Damageme’t.’ ”

After hunting about for her thimble and finding it at last in O. Fawkes’s tobacco-jar on the mantelshelf, she subsided into rapid stitching. Her father at the other end of the table snipped away absorbedly. Mark drew near on tiptoe and peeped over his shoulder.

“No!” O. Fawkes spread jealous hands over the sheets. “Well . . . I don’t know. Are your hands clean? Be careful, then. I’ve got my eye on you. . . . No, don’t touch those, you little nuisance; can’t you see I’m working at them?”

Mark collected an armful from the distant middle of the table and retired mouse-like with his spoils to the chimney corner. In a second he had passed into dreamland. The plates he had hit upon belonged mostly to that very equestrian drama of The Battle of Waterloo that had outraged the Peace principles of Mr. Hepplewhite. There was Hougomont blazing amid pallid corpses, a line of slim-legged Highlanders advancing with the step of dancing-masters to fire a volley, a cannon belching red and grey clouds, Shaw the Lifeguardsman perishing heroically on the top of a pyramid of slaughtered French cuirassiers and their steeds.

Mark was studying these tableaux entranced; his eyes burned; he clenched his fists and began to make unobtrusive sabre-strokes around his knees. Suddenly out of the sheaf of Waterloo plates there fluttered to the floor a figure that did not belong. It was one of the larger contemporary portraits designed for illumination with tinsel, and it represented a tall officer on a prancing horse. Mark tried to read the name at the bottom; but the printing was badly blurred and all he could make out was: “Lieut.-Col. the Earl of ——an, 11th Hussars.” He pored again over the face with its bush of whisker and its fierce dominant nose, and abruptly his mind seemed to fly open, and a scene of nearly three years ago, long buried in his memory, rose again before him. . . .

He was standing in a leafless ride of Balcombe Woods, watching the autumn leaves swirl yellow between the black boughs and listening to the far-away notes of a hunting-horn. Of a sudden, hoofs thundered along the soft track, and turning he found himself gazing up at a huge man on a tall bay horse. He wore a gleaming top-hat and a tail-coat of hunting-pink, white breeches and highly-polished boots, now streaked with mud-splashes. But it was his face that stood out most clearly now in Mark’s awakened memory, the very face of the portrait on his knee, though the staring eyes were blue, the whiskers fair and the high cheek-bones mottled with red in the memory-picture. Pungently in this London workroom Mark smelt again the mixture of horseflesh and leather with some strong perfume that added to the overpowering impact of the domineering, luxurious figure.

“Haw! Squire! Here’s a chawbacon! Perhaps he can tell us which way the fox has gone,” said the tall man to a second rider behind him, an elderly man in black with drawn-in cheeks, thin lips and pale watchful eyes over which the lids seemed to droop to make ambush for them.

“Come here, boy!” ordered the rider in pink, waving his crop. “Did you see the fox?”

Awed by the piercing eyes, Mark had gulped and stammered; whereupon the stranger had bellowed the question a second time in a voice that made him jump.

“No, zir, I see no fox,” he had managed to gasp out, and the gentleman with a shout of “Dolt!” had dragged his horse round with heavy brown-gloved hands and a thrust of the shining steel spur on his great foot, to ride back the way he had come.

But the other, whom he had called “Squire”, stopped him and spoke to him in a low voice, casting furtive glances sidelong at Mark.

“No!” roared his companion aloud. “Haw! Haw! Haw! Another of old Earl George’s slips? No! You’re woasting me, Squire! It’s impossible, by Gad!”

“Are you the son of Keeper Woodwofe?” he asked, his full lips curved in a malicious smile.

“It’s a wise son that knows his own father, my lord!” sneered the man in black.

The horn sounded loudly in front of them and, with an impatient snarl into his moustache, he drove the mighty bay forward, while Mark watched in terror the powerful thighs clamped to the saddle, the savage movement of the spurring heels, and was almost overpowered by the whiff of macassar and new leather as it swept close by his nostrils. The Squire followed, cantering more gingerly, his small feet pointed down with only the toes touching the stirrups.

Mark had not understood what it all meant then; he did not understand now, as he went over it again. He had never, for some secret reason equally unfathomable, liked to speak of the scene to his father or his mother. But it was strange that that man—he was quite sure it was the same man—should have his picture here. Again Mark tried to make out the titling: “Lieut.-Col. the Earl of ——an, 11th Hussars,”—and suddenly he was racked by an immense yawn.

“Bedtime, Mark!” she called to him. “Don’t forget I’m your mother now. Off with you at once! You’re making an early start to-morrow, you know!”

“Yes, me b’y,” murmured O. Fawkes, his eyes still following the scissors. “Take her advice:—

“And off with you, too, papa, you’ve done quite enough for to-day,” interrupted his daughter, and began blowing out candles despite his querulous protests.

So ended the first day of Mark Woodrofe’s life as a Londoner—day of marvels that, as the weeks rolled into years, were to become to him as commonplace as work or wages.

“You boys,” declared Mr. Hepplewhite with a despairing gesture, “wear me out. You make me feel ready to blow up the planet. . . . You needn’t laugh, for you do and that’s a fact.”

Neither Mark Woodrofe nor Jim Ballon, hot and dishevelled as they stood in the presence, with Mr. Lytchett mounting guard over them, felt that this was the moment for merriment, though Mark had been unable to repress a twist of his bleeding lip at the familiar threat. During the three years he had now been working at Mr. Hepplewhite’s he had heard such a lot of speculation, down on the wharf in Thames Street, up in the distilling-rooms and the packing-shed in Mincing Lane, as to where Mr. Hepplewhite might keep this famous “plannit” of his, and whether it would be as fine as Guy Fawkes’s night if he ever did make good his oft-repeated menace and blow it up.

“I know exactly what you thought,” pursued Mr. Hepplewhite, his keen grey eyes boring into them. “You thought that because Saturday is the morning old Jawsticks usually goes hunting it would be safe to try your outrageous tricks then. You didn’t consider that I might look in here very early for an important letter before riding on to the meet.”

The boys’ hearts sank deeper still into their thick-soled shoes at this revelation that the Governor actually knew the name by which he was currently spoken of in the warehouse, besides being able to read the deep thoughts of his employees with such disheartening thoroughness.

“Where,” enquired Mr. Hepplewhite, “did you get the terrier from, you precious pair of rapscallions?”

“From Mr. Burjoyce of the Loriners’ Arms,” mumbled Jim Ballon, his plump red face with the pale-green eyes set close on either side of the high-ridged nose keeping its accustomed air of impertinence.

“What for?” Mr. Hepplewhite’s voice cracked like a pistol-shot in responsive exasperation.

“I see: so you thought it a good excuse to indulge your native savagery by organizing a rat-hunt in my yard. Isn’t there a parish rat-catcher to attend to these things in a humane way? But no, unless you can see some helpless dumb animal chased and killed you’re not happy, are you? I’ve a very good mind to give you a thrashing here and now!” As Mr. Hepplewhite rose from behind his table, his overcoat swinging open to reveal his hunting-pink and snowy cords, he was a truly Jove-like figure of retribution. “And you, Woodrofe!” He swung round upon Mark. “What were you doing with the gallipot there?”

“Every drop spilt and the gallipot smashed to atoms, too! How came you to drop it, you oaf?”

“Pushing about! Fighting, you mean! That’s how you got that lip of yours. A pretty advertisement, isn’t it, for a respected firm to have their goods carried round by a boy looking like a dissipated mohock?”

“I don’t think,” put in Mr. Lytchett with a sense of justice, “that Woodrofe did much fighting. It was Ballon here hit him, as far as I could see.”

“And didn’t you stand up for yourself, then?” asked Mr. Hepplewhite in a pitying voice. “Let him hit you? Well, you are a queer boy.”

Mark felt the world darkening about him. It was beyond his eloquence to explain that when Ballon had first tripped him from behind and then landed that unexpected blow on his mouth he had been too much appalled by the crash of the gallipot and the sight of the senna running black upon the cobbles and oozing stickily over his trousers to think for the moment of self-defence. Then the Carter had pulled him back with a throttling jerk on his necktie, and Mr. Lytchett had come running across the yard to hale them both before the Governor. And now old Jawsticks thought he had been afraid to fight!

“I’ve half a mind,” said Mr. Hepplewhite with deliberate slowness, “to send you both back to your parents. . . . But I won’t,” he added hurriedly, a little ashamed as he saw their sticky pallor. “Your mother, Ballon, is a decent, hard-working body, and you, Woodrofe, well . . .” he coughed awkwardly, “I wouldn’t like to return you to Crocketts disgraced. I could also, if I was severe, send you both up before the magistrate for a birching—and I will if it happens again ever; or I could make stoppages out of your wages until you had made good every penny of the loss you have caused me. As it is, you will each be fined five shillings—for a warning! Lytchett, see that Mr. Comper makes the deduction from these boys’ wages to-night. Now, get off sharp back to your work. . . . No, stop! You, sir! Woodrofe, I mean! What the devil’s all this?”

As Mark turned back with a fresh stunned sense of dismay, Mr. Hepplewhite made a dart at him and plucked from his jacket pocket a protruding paper-covered story with the title, The Black Prince’s Love, or The Gage of the Fair Emmeline.

“What trash is this?” he demanded sternly, eyeing the picture of the tournament on the cover for a moment before pitching the booklet on to his fire. “Is this the way you waste your employer’s valuable time? What does a boy of your age want with love-stories? It’s indecent! And all this medieval sham—chivalry and broken spears and green-gages and what not—what help is that to a young man at the start of a commercial career? If I wanted to read about fighting, I wouldn’t bother about those obsolete humbugs in tin-cans on hobby horses; I’d read how Gentleman Jackson thrashed the Jew Mendoza, and serve him right with his fried fish and all; or how Tom Cribb . . . that is to say, I wouldn’t read about that sort of thing at all. Disgusting barbarism! I’ve sworn never to go to another prize-fight in my life, and I shan’t miss much either. I’ve seen the best of the old bruisers, and your moderns can’t match ’em. But look here, my boy, if you want to read, I’ll lend you something profitable.”

“Lives of the Benefactors,” he read out, “by Alderman Prysk. There’s a book that should inspire a lad like you. It shows you, among other things that you ought to know, how no fewer than three boys who started life without a shilling in their pockets, or shoes to their feet, died worth upwards of a hundred thousand pounds—died in great agony, two of ’em, with incurable diseases that baffled all the faculty. Think of being able to afford a death-bed like that, surrounded by all the bigwigs of Harley Street and Cavendish Square! Eh, Lytchett?”

“H’m,” coughed Mr. Lytchett discreetly. “No doubt, Mr. William, it must have been a privilege to die so expensively . . . still, in a sense, sir, it’s cold comfort.”

“Ah! But only think what a gorgeous time the old rascals must have had destroying their health first!” cried Mr. Hepplewhite, with a little sprite dancing far down in the depth of his luminous eyes. “But come, don’t you put the boy off my friend Prysk’s excellent book. He was a file, old Prysk, if ever there was one. Yes, and a slippery customer, too! Which reminds me, it’s time I was in my slippery saddle and jogging on towards Croydon to meet the hounds. Answer that firm, Lytchett, and tell ’em Hepplewhite Brothers didn’t come to the City yesterday!”

When Mark got downstairs again to the packing-room he found all three of the other boys employed in the warehouse busily engaged stuffing bottles of ipecacuanha wine into straw-filled crates, nailing up wooden cases and shaking down glistening mag. sulph. crystals into blue-paper packages.

They turned their eyes as he approached, but without daring to slacken work. Jim Ballon still wore his sulky scowl; the little Cockney wag, Tim Mullins, twisted his upturned nose and monkey lips into a crying grimace and laid down his hammer just long enough to give his own behind a couple of resounding thwacks—as a pantomimic enquiry into Mark’s fate; Roger Verinder, “the Saint”, let his pebble-spectacled eyes flicker for a moment off the powdered orris mica that was whitening his arms to the elbow, and a faint ironical smile just shadowed his hollow cheeks.

“An hour’s b——y jaw all about nothing,” Ballon was grunting to his companions, as he rapped the crystals hard on to the table in his efforts to square the package. “Five bob stoppages, so that I can’t pay Joe Burjoyce what I owe him on Slinky Sam’s terrier’s match at the Loriners’ last Saturday night, and all because this greenhorn can’t hold a gallipot in his butter-fingers! See if I don’t tap your claret for this, young Woodrofe!”

“I should ha’ thought you’d had enough of fighting in the yard, after what Mr. Hepplewhite said to you,” remarked the “Saint”. “Be careful, Ballon, can’t you? You’ve split that package, thumping it on the table so hard!”

Ballon with a dirty word specially designed to annoy the “Saint”, snatched another sheet of the blue paper and began again.

“How often have I told you not to waste our paper like that? D’you think it’s given free to us?” Mr. Lytchett, passing through the room, gave Ballon’s ear a twist that increased his fury.

“Look ’ere, my covins,” murmured Tim Mullins to him through a mouthful of nails. “Seems to me precious like you got yerself into that scrape, bringing in the terrier. And it wos you tripped up ole Markantonio here so that he dropped the jar—for I see yer do it. Vot’s the good o’ blamin’ the boy for it, swelp me!” he concluded judicially.

“Shut your hash-trap, fogle-snatcher!” snarled Ballon. “And you, Woodrofe, mind your eye next time!”

“P’raps you better mind yours now!” suggested Mullins with a meaning jerk of his bullet-head towards Mark.

The other two looked round curiously. Mark was standing eyeing Ballon, with his long fingers clenched tight on the book Mr. Hepplewhite had just given him, and a dark flame in his brown eyes.

“Put up yer maulies, Jim!” advised Mullins, his eyes goggling with happy anticipation. But Mark slowly turned aside and slipped into his place at the work-table, laying down the book beside him.

“Crikey! Vy you ain’t niver not afraid of ’im, my flash-cove, are you?” he asked in dismay.

“Let him be!” interposed the “Saint”. “He’s the only one with any sense or right feeling of you all. If he gets caught fighting twice in one morning, Mr. Hepplewhite’ll likely give him the sack straightaway. P’raps he thinks of his parents, if you fellers don’t!”

“Oh, Gawd!” groaned Ballon. “If it isn’t worse’n having a blessed parson on the premises with you always preachin’. Any’ow, as this Johnny Soft don’t dare put ’em up, I’m going to land him one on his ugly jaw, just to teach him.”

He slid from his high stool and walked towards the corner of the table where Mark was packing. When he was about a pace away, Mark spun round and took a step forward.

There was silence in the room, while the bluish March light fell through the tall bleared windows upon the still figures of the four boys in their coarse shirts and brown aprons. Mark had gone taut all over; he looked like a little stone statue muffled in shabby garments and patched shoes. Ballon, though a head taller, hesitated, and a look of cautious cunning stole over his puffy face.

“Vell, give us an early call, von’t you, ven yer kvite ready to ’it ’im,” sniggered Tim Mullins at length.

“Don’t be a fool, Ballon,” said the “Saint” sharply. “Let Woodrofe get on with his packing, or else we shall all be fined.”

“What’s that book you got there?” enquired Roger Verinder, to change the conversation.

“Mr. Hepplewhite lent it to me,” explained Mark. “I better put paper covers on it so’s not to get it marked.”

“Jawsticks lent it!” exclaimed Ballon. “Lord! He must be gone sweet on yer. He don’t lend much without interest, not if I knows him.”

“What’s it about?” asked Verinder. “Anything it does you good to read?”

Mark wiped his fingers on his apron and gingerly turned the leaves of Alderman Prysk’s gift to his fellow-men.

“Seems to tell you about a lot of men that did things like,” he said in hesitating tones. “Here’s one that was a railway builder, and got rich. Here’s a merchant in the India trade, it says, who rose to own a fleet of sixty ships.”

“Not that I can find. He was made a baron . . . b-baronite, it says, and died worth three hundred thousan’ pounds.”

“This one,” pursued Mark with bent brows, “was a tinned-beef contacter . . . no, contracter—what’s that, I wonder? He rose, it says, from mud-hovel to Mansion House. This one . . .”

“Oh, my eye and Betty Martin!” yawned Ballon. “These chaps had someone to shove ’em, you bet. Things is all done by shove and pull in the City. No chance for a feller to rise by his wits, no matter ’ow bright he may be. I found that out long ago. So’ll you, sharp lad, afore you’re much older.”

“Wisht ’ee’d hanged hisself in a pair of ’em,” said Ballon impatiently. “An’t there any prize-fighters, you muff?”

“I suppose there’s no bishops nor mitred abbots?” asked the Puseyite Roger Verinder.

“I did hope there might a’ been a General,” he sighed; and resumed his packing in silence.

When the bell clanged for the dinner-hour and Mark emerged into the Lane through the shadow of the yard archway, he had leisure to realize for the first time the full extent of the morning’s disaster. The docking of his wages meant that the treat he had planned for to-night, to take Fan to the Eagle Tavern in the City Road and let her see the Grecian Saloon, the dancing and the cosmorama, before standing her half a dozen oysters, had gone into the land of dreams. Poor Fan! He knew she had been looking forward to it; and they had been treating her so hardly at the theatre lately—he could not understand why. He had heard her say something to her father about “not putting up with Mr. Montgomery’s sauce”, and remembered how her cheeks had flamed as she said it, and how old Fawkes had answered: “Montgomery, indeed! Moggs, his name used to be when he was utility at the Coburg! You’re right, me dearr; I wouldn’t have me own daughter act otherwise; but remember, Fan, it’s bitter hard quarrelling with the Manager.” Then it seemed they had taken away her part as one of the Dancing Zingari in Rinaldo of Naples, and old Poll-parrot (“Always licking the boots of the Management!” Fan declared in a fury) had pushed her into the ballet again after being classed as character-dancer for three seasons now. “But they won’t bend me that way!” she asseverated. “There are plenty of girls to fall to Montgomery’s pimply nose and red whiskers—such a killer, he is, I fancy not!” And she had gone stubbornly about her reduced work at the theatre and her duties at home, only singing less and dancing less, and sometimes sitting swinging her slipper on her toe before the fire in the workroom or digging her fork through the rents in the tablecloth after dinner with a shut-in savage look and a twitch at the corner of her scarlet lips that brought out more strongly than ever that suggestion of the young wolf.

So Mark had planned this treat for her because he judged that she deserved it. She had been to him the mother she had promised she would be—and if Fan was a mother, Mrs. Woodrofe, he was now very sure, had not been one. Fan—pooh-poohing the intervention of distant Mrs. Pomeroy at Crocketts—mended his clothes before he could notice they were torn; dosed him, rather terribly but efficaciously, as soon as he owned to the beginnings of a cold or a stomach-ache; plastered his cuts and arnica-ed his bruises; saved little hot suppers for him when he came home late at busy seasons, his eyes dim with picking over the dry brown cloves or shelling castor-oil seeds, his arms stiff from grinding with the ponderous metal pestles or working the handle that spun the pill-rounding machine. All this she did without a touch of sentiment, joking and teasing and bullying and making him feel a red-hot fool three times a day.

He had minded that at first: he did not mind it now. Fan had become the law and the prophets, alike when she told him that his manners were bad, his new necktie a horror, and the words he picked up on the wharf a disgrace and not to be repeated in Greensleeves Row without a rap on the head from her umbrella or whatever kitchen utensil might be in her hand. It was Fan, too, who had forbidden him to go to that “Orphic and Terpsichorean Entertainment” at the Loriners’ Arms on Christmas Eve along with Ballon and Mullins. “You’ll only lose your money, my lad,” she had warned him, “and maybe something more precious than your money, though you’re too young to understand what I mean by that.”

“I an’t too young, Fan!” he had protested crossly; but of course he had obeyed, and hadn’t Fan been right? For there had been the hell and all of a turn-up at the Loriners’ that night; the windows had been broken, and the Peelers had come in. They had given Jim Ballon a crack on the cheekbone with a truncheon, though he hadn’t done nothing, so he said, and Tim had had to swarm up a flue (he was good at that, having started life as a sweep’s climbing-boy) and hide there till it was all over. Mark felt sorry he had missed all this; but old Jawsticks had seen the marks of conflict on the two boys the next morning, and hadn’t he pitched it hot into them both with a cane, and bellowed about peace and good will! “Oh, no! Not at all! Not by no means!” reflected Mark, imitating Fan.

Poor Fan! How cruel to have to tell her there would be no treat after all! Mark felt suicidal as he slouched down the winding slope of St. Dunstan’s Hill, vainly seeking a transient consolation in a glance upwards at the arched stone coronal of St. Dunstan’s steeple spreading its white wings to escape from the network of sad-coloured houses around its foot. And Lord, how hungry he was! Another side of the Calamity thereupon struck him with a chill. He would not be able now to afford to go to the Alamode Beef House for his usual plate of thick meat and coarse vegetable, smothered in strong sauce, a sauce that warmed and heartened you after six hours’ stiff work on a breakfast of a ha’penny loaf and a cup of milk. A five shilling stoppage meant that he must dine for heaven knows how long on a twopenny meat-pie.

His thoughts turned to the Monument where a kidney-pie man had usually his stand with his hot tin oven. Mark’s split lip smarted and the east wind of nascent Spring cut through his scanty clothing. In the light of the dull day all the world around him seemed dull. The tall buildings and the smoking chimneys smothering him under a dun-coloured blanket, the drawn-looking City workers hurrying up and down in their sombre clothing, the jaded van-horses drooping with bleared eyes over their midday nosebags, the hatchet-faced policemen in their gloomy great-coats, the rat-like beggars huddling barefooted under the portico of St. Magnus-the-Martyr or routing for garbage in the adjacent fish-market, all weighed oppressively upon his young spirit as he turned up Fish Street Hill. This afternoon, he reflected, as he presently stood beside the pieman in a corner of the little square about the Monument, cramming the last crumbs of hard-baked crust into his hungry mouth, this afternoon he would have to go round again on the van, jolting till his teeth rattled over paving-stones and cobbles, to unload at apothecaries’ and chemists’, sharp-nosed fussy men for the most part, who loved their little brief authority of hectoring the wholesaler’s boy as he tottered under the weight of packages and jars. To-morrow would only bring once more the long-drawn monotony of the Sabbath—the melancholy church in Myddelton Square with its dim galleries and cackling preacher in bib and black gown; and after dinner the choice between a tramp through the empty echoing terraces round the New River Head or sitting at home to listen to old Fawkes snoring with a silk handkerchief over his face beneath the malignant grin of the Clown upon the wall, while Fancy stitched silently for fear her father should be disturbed. It would now not even be possible to read for the thirtieth time the story of the Black Prince, since Mr. Hepplewhite had burned his book. As for the Lives of the Benefactors, well, that book was like his own life, stupid, with the same thing happening over and over again: three years passed already, and no escape that he could see from balances and scoops, punches and presses, stifling vats and reeking condensers, stuffy bales and dusty packing-cases, loading and unloading, grinding and sieving, painting and scaling, bottling and packing in straw—with only rare blissful releases when he was sent to the slimy, blowy wharf below the Customs House to find out if ships had arrived or unloaded yet. But never anything new on the rim of his world. . . . How was it possibly to be borne for ever and ever?

There was a sudden shout and a rush of people from a small public-house opposite. Above the clamour a woman was shrieking and a loud male voice cursing; then in a flash the knot of topers scattered, leaving a space round a tall man who stood with a girl clinging to his arm.

Mark stared at this figure fascinated. He was dressed in tight, crimson, gold-striped overalls and a fur-cuffed blue jacket barred with gold braid, now torn open at the throat. His ruddy whiskered face was purple-mottled with drink; his round forage-cap had been knocked over one eye, and he glowered defiance out of the other as he swung his riding-whip and swore at his assailants. The woman who was hugging him, one of the lowest Billingsgate drabs, in an immense battered bonnet covered with pink roses, a mud-embroidered skirt and violently-striped stockings, poured out a torrent of shrill vituperation at the blacklegs who had been trying to lure her prey from her by proposing gambling-games in the pub. The bystanders hooted, and the general disposition was to take sides against the soldier and his Poll.

Mark felt himself blushing with a curious agony at the shame of the situation. The hussar’s apparel made a splash of glory against the grimy carved base of the Monument, the leering faces of the mob of confidence-men, betting-touts, market-porters, beggars and prostitutes encircling him, the refuse of fish-scales and cabbage-stalks that clung to his reeling spurs. There was a contrast that stabbed even the boy’s crude comprehension between the besotted face and bewildered eyes of the man and the majesty of the uniform; and when a swing of heavy boots resounded on the cobbles and two policemen in their dead-blue overcoats and black leather-bound hats advanced impassively through the crowd and seized the soldier one by each arm, amid cheers from the civilians, he clenched his fists with a savage desire to rush in. He would like to pummel those Peelers, knock the grin off the silly faces of the crowd; he would like . . . St. Magnus’ clock clanged reverberatingly in his ears and he rushed off to Mincing Lane . . . to find his name taken as a quarter of an hour late. This was not his lucky day; no, not by no means at all!

Yet Fan was just fine when he got home and blurted out the news. She did not sigh or scold, but just arched her pretty eyebrows and whistled.

“Sixpence! You look as if you’d been in the wars, lad!” she commented. “Whoever sliced you up so neatly? They couldn’t have done it better in a cookshop.”

“I never! He tripped me up and then hit me without warning when my hands were full!”

“Yes, Jim Ballon!” broke out Mark again. “See if I don’t mill him proper one of these days! Always imitating me and spoiling my work; see if I don’t get even! I’m not afraid of a ’leg like him!”

“Hoity-toity! Don’t spit at me! The more you fight, the more trouble you’ll bring home, so there! ‘Let dogs delight’—but not nice rosy-cheeked little boys.”

“Oh, Fan!” pleaded Mark, almost crying, “I an’t a little boy, nor yet rosy nor yet nice.”

“No; ums shan’t be nice if ums doesn’t want to,” Fan agreed. “Come here and let me plaster that cut to keep the dirt out. Now you look like Mr. Palmer as Charles Surface; and then as our treat has gone bang—for I can’t afford to stand it, even if a gemman like you would allow me to—I’ll stir my lazy stumps to find something nice for supper at home. How say you, Alonzo, shall’t be a sweetbread and a Welsh rabbit, piping hot, to follow?” Mark’s hungry eyes began to glisten and Fancy trilled into a laugh. “I know the plaster for male sorrows. Moreover, as we can’t have our expensive treat to-night, I’ll stand you a cheap one to-morrow. You shall take me to Primrose Hill.”

“H’m, well,” Fan was diplomatic, “it’s a bit early in the year, isn’t it? Not Easter yet, you know.”

“Well, us shall go and see. Old Bentham the greengrocer drives out every Sunday morning after church in his cart to the Chalk Farm Tavern for tea—as he calls it—and he shall give us a lift there and pick us up coming home. He shall, even though I have to pay in kisses. There’s no harm in old Bentham, though he does prick dreadfully—and I rather like the smell of old Jamaica,” added the abandoned woman. “We’ll carry our dinner with us, and papa can dish up his own steak and suet pudding for this once.”

All was as she had planned on Sunday; and, though there were no primroses on the hill, the country lad, after long confinement to rattling City streets, felt a solace as he climbed the trampled turf in the mere sight of fields and hedges rising, behind the fresh-looking railway-cutting with its black tunnel-mouth, to where, on the heights behind the square mass of Belsize Manor House, the red-brick and spire of Hampstead shone through the trees.

“You’re turning your back to the real view, stoopid!” Fan warned him, as she stepped briskly up behind him, her hands in her worn rabbit-skin muff; and at her words he swung round from the north and stood gazing, with a faint revival of his first wonderment, at the giant vision of London, stretched beneath the pallid sky of the March afternoon. From the stately terraces that in the foreground edged the grim leaflessness of the Regent’s Park, the piled chaos of brown and sooty housetops, mould for a grove of Gothic spires and classic steeples, ran out on either hand till in the West the scaffolding of the new Houses of Parliament rose to balance the eastward towers and dome of St. Paul’s. Beyond, the faint curve of the Surrey hills hung phantom-wise.

In this bleak light the metropolis seemed drained of colour, a dusky monster arrested in its smoking and devouring monotony of gain by the sabbath spell that served only to fix more rigidly the frown upon its brows. With all its strength it appeared to lower upon the two young creatures standing in shabby clothes upon the trampled hillock, and presuming, it seemed, to scan its black and white of dingy poverty and dull prosperity in quest of picturesqueness and diversion.

“S-s-sixpence!” shivered Fancy, “this is not the day for a picnic, Mark, and if we played games to warm ourselves on a Sunday we might shock the neighbourhood. But I daresay we can run a race round the top to keep the cold out a bit.”

As she spoke she was off, swooping round the swell of the Hill just below the crest with a speed that Mark’s sturdy legs could not outstrip. Her bonnet-ribbons fluttered and her grey laced ankle-boots twinkled in and out of her skirts as she waved her muff defiantly and plumped down first again upon the single mouldering bench adorning the summit.

“Now then,” she said, unpacking the sandwiches from a paper inside her muff. “Tuck in, young Agib! Why does papa always call you that?”

“I dunno. He thinks I’m like the little figure in his play, I s’pose. But I an’t small really, am I, Fan?”

“What’s a cavalier, Fan? Isn’t that one of the chaps that fought for King Charles I?”

“I never heard about that. I didn’t have your school-larnin’, laddie. I was too busy larnin’ cuts and pas basques and spring-bounds with old Poll. But I mean by a cavalier, a gallant, a gentleman to take me out and spoil me and make love to me.”

“Well, I’m just nineteen, seven years older than you, if you want to know,” said Fan acidly.

“Don’t you go to church, you little heathen? Who do you hear about there?”

“Mark!! . . . Oh, take this last piece of beef and stop your mouth with it! I don’t know what to do with you.”

“I only meant, Fan,” mumbled Mark through his sandwich, “that you must be wonderful clever, to know so much and still be so young. Tell me, do the chaps make love to you same as if you was one of these beautiful girls? What a lark!” His white teeth flashed out in a humorous and delighted smile.

“I don’t see anything funny,” said Fan, tapping her little black-capped toe on the broken wooden foot-rest of the bench and elevating her nose which was a little too long for beauty with an unfortunate prominence in the air. “Let me tell you, more than one young gentleman has already thought me decidedly passable.”

“Oh, you’re pretty as flowers, Fan,” assented Mark casually, “but not like the Fair Emmeline in the picture.”

The sabbatical calm was broken by a sound crisp as a shot on the summit of Primrose Hill. Mark grinned as he rubbed a stinging ear, and Fan shook a numbed wrist and fingers.

“Serves me right for hitting a block of wood,” she snapped, and drew off her glove to nurse her hand.

“Was you ever made a fuss of by a sojer?” queried Mark then, returning to his former interest.

“A soldier! What do you take me for? I had a bouquet last season from an officer.”

“I should say not! Am I a cook to let a drunken private take liberties with me?”

“Because they’re the sweepings of the streets. No one takes the shilling unless he’s starving or trying to dodge the police.”

“I’d like to be a sojer,” exclaimed Mark suddenly, “an officer, I mean, of course. I’d like to dress smart and ride a fine horse and charge the b——y Froggies and cut their heads off . . . so!” He made a sweep with a blackened twig he had twisted off the tree they sat under.

“Well, upon my soul!” cried Fan, aghast. “To think you could really be such a cruel little wretch with your innocent baby face and all. Also, what did I say about that word ‘b’?”

The warrior ruefully searched his pockets for the appointed ha’penny fine, but Fan relented in consideration of his recent bankruptcy.

“Though I shall make it a penny, if it goes on,” she warned him. “And what would you do next, pray, when you had cut off all the poor Frenchies’ heads?”

“Conquer all the kings in the world and burn their cities, and be made a Field-Marshal with medals, and ride in the Lord Mayor’s Show, and let off my own fireworks on the Fifth of November, and keep a terrier to hunt rats (yes, I would!) and have a moustache, and tobacco, and chops and tomatoes for breakfast every morning, and Christmas pudding for dinner every Sunday, and go driving with the Queen in her gold coach with the cream ponies, and be buried in St. Paul’s amid a people’s grief.”

“And very nice, too, I’m sure. I see I must keep the lucifers out of your hands, my boy, with your burnings and your fireworks. Now, Mark, shall I tell you what I’d like to do?”

“Well: to begin with, I’d appear at Her Majesty’s in the Opera as prima ballerina assoluta!”

“Enormous in fame, stoopid! The stage’d be smothered in divine flowers every night I danced, and presents of bracelets and brooches thrown to me—which I’d send back, at least, p’raps I would. Then a Lord should make me an offer—a young Lord; I wouldn’t object if he was an officer. I should refuse him twice, and accept him the third time to save his life. Then I’d leave the stage for good . . .”

“Quick as a lamp-lighter with his little ladder! And I’d have a landau and pair in the Park and a mansion in Belgrave Square with a hall like the ballroom scene in Romeo and Juliet, and troops of servants—though I think I’d still do the cooking, because I enjoy that; and a little nigger-boy for page, to take your place, Mark, while you were away killing and burning; and I’d get papa out of the business, though that would kill him, I s’pose, so back he goes, with one of my footmen in powder to keep the customers away for him—won’t it be odd, the Marchioness of Carabas calling to see her father at the shop in Greensleeves Row? And I’d buy Alice Farwell a ring, because she’s a good creature and don’t prig my hare’s-foot in the dressing-room like the others, and give Tiddles his cat’s meat every day on a silver plate, and have a garden with roses and pinks growing in it all the year round, as well as a fountain with gold-fish.”

“If he’s worth it. But men aren’t really, you know, Mark. They only want one thing—what that is you’ll understand one day, Lord help you!—and all their pretty speeches are just playing up to you for it. But they don’t fool Fancy Fawkes with their pussy-cat airs. Do you see much green in my eye?” (And certainly as she pressed down the lid with her little finger there was none visible in that flashing blue jewel.) “So, if I ever marry it’ll only be a Lord, an Archbishop or a Field-Marshal, like you said.”

“Lor’, Fan, how can you be so dummy? A Field-Marshal’d never marry you.”

“Accept my thanks for these fair flowers, Rinaldo! Come on, we must be jogging home. Stir your stumps!”

Reluctantly he rose with her for a last look at the view. With the waning of the day the evanescent blue in the cold sky had been drowned in ash-coloured gloom. The shapes of the houses and the needles of the spires, fast failing in the twilight, seemed more drear and still than ever. Two or three yellow stars winked with a subdued Sunday melancholy from the rows of strictly-drilled windows in the facades at the foot of the Hill. No sound or stir of life came from the muddied knoll on which they stood.

“Do dreams ever come true, Mark?” she asked. “And would it be lucky, I wonder, if they did?”

The machine of Commerce, after the Sunday pause, rolled forward again upon its grinding wheels; but Life has always a trick up its sleeve, and that very week brought a bright surprise to Mark. The orders came from Astley’s! Mr. Fawkes was entitled to them, since he showed the Amphitheatre’s bills in his window, but he never troubled to write for them. Now the Management had actually sent three seats in the Upper Boxes of their own accord; and since O. Fawkes declared that a circus was not worth crossing the bridges to see, it was arranged that Mark should go as cavalier to Fan and a girl friend from the theatre—luckily there was no ballet at the Ionic on the chosen evening. It was actually to be his first night at the play, for Fan had forbidden her father to carry out his promise of taking Mark to see Mr. Belper in Hamlet—“Frighten the poor child out of his wits with the Ghost and all that!”—and when one Boxing Night he had joined the crush round the Gallery entrance to see her as the dandizette in the pantomime, someone had driven an elbow into his ribs the moment the doors were opened, someone else had knocked him flat, and the rest had trampled over him so that he knew no more. That painful memory made the present occasion the more joyous.

It is true that there had been a fearful moment of uncertainty when Mr. Hepplewhite had received O. Fawkes’s request in his fairest copperplate hand to give Mark leave of early absence on the day. For Mr. Hepplewhite had demanded loudly whether he was expected to pay boys to amuse themselves; whether people supposed that the City of London could afford to put up its shutters at five o’clock every evening in order that its employees might get into their white shirts for the Opera; whether, in short, Mr. Fawkes and Master Woodrofe wished to ruin Hepplewhite Brothers, and if so could they oblige him with a recommendation to a convenient almshouse; and lastly what the deuce anybody wanted to go to Astley’s for now that old Ducrow was dead? It was Mr. Lytchett, dry but benevolent Mr. Lytchett, who intervened to say that Mark had forfeited part of last Boxing Day to help in getting the new furnace ready to dry the spice-room, and who was sure that Woodrofe would come early and stay late and eat his dinner at his stool indefinitely to atone for the profligate waste of time—all of which Mark was sincerely ready to vow.

So the permission was wrung at last from Mr. Hepplewhite with the parting warning, “Don’t you learn to imitate the Clown’s tricks, sir, and think that’ll help you on in the City!”; and here, the incredible evening come, was Mark racing home to black his shoes till they scintillated, and to put on his dearest treasure, his white Sunday trousers. He had but one coat and waistcoat, which must be made to do with a special brushing, and Fan had been darning the best of his two shirts. Shabby as his clothes were, Mark had lately developed a passion for brushing and cleaning and polishing buttons that earned Fancy’s half-sarcastic approval, for she was herself a queer mixture of fastidious cleanliness and serene untidiness. She seemed always to have passed through a gale, but a fond and romantic one.

Never a more romantic one, you would have agreed, than to-night when she appeared on the threshold of her room with a candle in one hand and Mark’s best shirt with its wide, turnover collar in the other. One mitten was on and the other wrapped round the flat stand of the candle, and the rays in the narrow passage shone upon her party-frock of sky-blue muslin, patterned with red-ribboned bunches of flowers. She had evidently laboured with the curling-tongs; but in spite of all one soft brown tendril had already escaped from its corkscrew across her cheek, while her shawl drooped to her waist, and the ribbons of a stiff new pair of sandals trailed behind her along the floor.

“Look sharp!” she admonished Mark. “Alice will be here any minute now, and I’m going to make tea the moment she comes.”

She was turning back to her room when the bell of the shop gave a long, imperious jangle, showing that the door had been opened by a masterful hand.

“It’s not,” answered Fan quickly. “Alice always comes by the back to find me in the kitchen. It’s a customer—at this hour! And papa at the Blue Lion for his evening constitutional! Well, I must just serve shop myself, as I am. P’raps there’s no harm, for papa will not sell nowadays, and I’m determined to part with something to them, whoever they may be.”

She hurried past Mark towards the staircase; tripped in her untied sandal-strings on the first step; and clung to the banisters with one of those words that she had always assured Mark were only heard in the City. He stared aghast as she stooped to whip the loose ribbons round her ankles, and, snatching up the candle, pattered away on light feet down the stair into the shadow. Then he climbed to his garret to finish his own dressing.

For all his anxiety to make speed, he was not satisfied about his perfect tidiness for nearly half an hour, when the bell of St. Mark’s Church warned him of his tardiness and sent him rushing downstairs to find Fan.

He stumbled into the unlit workroom where the grin of dying coals in the grate and the greenish radiance from the shop-lamp streaming through the half-open connecting door made a faint glimmer; and suddenly an astonishing feeling stole over him. He was back again at Crocketts! A series of dissolving pictures formed in his bewildered mind. He saw the great House of pseudo-Gothic stucco, with its jostling towers and pinnacles, outlined on the sombre drapery of the woods; he saw the slit of the vast, cold hall, its stone pillars, antlers and tall oil-paintings as they used to be disclosed to him for a moment through the front doors when he was—rarely—sent to deliver messages from the Keeper’s cottage to the butler; he saw the smoking-room, thrust out from the body of the House amid dank shrubberies, through the windows of which he used to peep audaciously and fearfully to see the prints of steeplechases running round the red-papered walls; he saw the October-tinted rides in Balcombe Forest slowly traversed by sportsmen in hip-high leather gaiters and green shooting-coats, the blue clouds from their cigars coiling against the faint autumn sky.

Cigars! That was it! The smell of cigar-smoke! It was drifting through the shop-door and slowly vanquishing the stuffy paste-and-cardboard smell of the workroom. Mark stood, inhaling the rich fragrance in a fuddle of tingling reminiscence, until the click of a coal in the grate and the whistle of an expiring jet of gaseous flame roused him to his whereabouts. Then in the momentary brightness he saw the Harlequin’s mask flickering upon the wall, for all the world as though someone had that moment entered it and his eyes were gleaming through the slits.

Mark tiptoed towards the shop. Was the cigar-smoking customer still there? He heard no voice, and ventured to peer round the edge of the door.

The candle was burning on the counter and Fancy stood alone in the middle of the floor beneath the dim hanging-lamp. She was softly chinking something in her hand, and did not hear Mark till he came close behind her, when she spun round with a shivering start.

“Sell?” she answered vaguely. “Oh yes. Heaps of stuff! Look what I’ve taken, Mark.” She opened her fist for a moment and showed a pile of silver with a couple of gold sovereigns shining in the middle. “Won’t papa be pleased—furious, I mean! He took the Miller, Blind Boy, Jack Cade, Freischütz, Guy Fawkes, Lodoiska, Waterloo, Silver Palace, Cinderella, Maid and the Magpie, Dame Trot pantomime, five tinsel portraits . . . oh, almost everything! Isn’t it strange he should come all the way from his Club in the West End to see our shop? He says he’s a painter himself . . . but I don’t think he can be a proper artist. He’s a swell, Mark, if ever I met one behind at the Ionic . . . but not like the others, no, not a bit like them!”

“The Marquis of Carabas? Oh yes, Mark, do let’s pretend he is . . . though I expect he’s really just one of these students from Oxford or somewhere, or perhaps one of these young lawyers from the Temple.”

“If he’s the Marquis of Carabas, Fan, remember you’ve promised to marry him!”

“That’s Alice getting impatient at the back-door. Wait a second, I must throw this money into the till . . . Mark!” She paused over the open drawer behind the counter. “You won’t peach on me, will you? I’m going to turn thief.”

“Yes, I’m going to rob poor papa. See this new silver four-penny piece? I’m going to bore a hole in it and hang it on a chain.”

“To remind me of a nice, gentle young man who said . . . though, to be sure, it was very impertinent of him to say it . . . that I was the figure best worth an artist’s while to look at in this shop, and wasn’t I for sale along with the other fairies?”

“He must have a tile loose to think that! I’d like to see the muff. Is he coming here again?”

“Is he coming here again?” Fancy seemed suddenly dashed to the earth. She stared blankly at the street door for a moment, then rallied with pluck. “Our customers always come back, and so, of course, he must—if it’s only to see me. Come now, Mark, let’s prophesy!”

She was still clutching the coins the stranger had paid her. Opening her fingers, she now let them chink one by one into the till.

“He loves me,” she counted, “he loves me not . . . He loves me . . . Not! O-o-oh, dear! He loves me . . . He . . .” She threw the last ones in together in a sudden panic. “Who cares?” she cried. “I know he loves me. . . . No, I don’t . . . Don’t listen to me; I’m off my head to-night!” And with a pealing laugh she rushed out of the shop.

They would all be late for the play, Mark thought gloomily as he followed her. It was odd how this swell’s cigar had made him think of Crocketts. Swells smoked cigars all day, he believed. He had watched them strolling and puffing on the terraces and lawns of the House and remembered their terrifying, deep laughter. From what he could recall of them, though, he could not imagine any of them wanting to keep company with Fancy. Perhaps this one was different. Anyhow he had made them late for the play; Mark cursed even shrimps and toast as he went in to tea.

Passing through the workroom, he found that Fan in her distraction had plumped the candle down again, this time on a stool below the portrait of Mr. Grimaldi. Wilting in a ghostly winding-sheet, it shot its beams upward upon the leering white face, which had never, thought Mark, looked more spitefully exultant.

His fears of missing the best of the Show were groundless, however. For O. Fawkes, at tea, after gazing for a long while at his daughter in her finery, throwing away the bodies of his shrimps and salting the heads in his cup before devouring them with apparent relish, exclaimed suddenly,

“You look as pretty to-night, my dear, as Rosalba in The Duchess’s Double, or Diamond and Paste, and you shall go in a coach to the play; of course you must ride in a coach!”

So the till was rifled of the stranger’s money, and in the most genteel style they arrived at Astley’s in the Westminster Bridge Road, and took their places just as the green baize curtain rolled up on the first scene of The Crusaders of Jerusalem.

Squeezed tightly in between the billowing skirts of the two girls, his eyes half-blinded by the gas-glare from the huge crystal chandelier and the glitter of the gilt-mirrored, gaudily-pillared balconies, his nostrils choked by the reek of tan and orange-peel, his ears distracted by the clamour of the gallery and the shrill calling of ginger-beer, whelks and meat-pies, which drowned the muffled resonance of the voices on the far-away stage, his fingers blackening from the smudged ink of the playbill he twisted in his clammy hands, Mark knew that evening a transport such as had never yet borne him away from the drabness of everyday living. It was an ecstasy that faded more and more into a roseate haze as years advanced, and Mark in his old age could not have sworn precisely whether it was in this Spring of 1847 or at some other date in his childhood or perhaps partly in his dreams that he saw the spangled and bearded Moslem tyrant defied by the captive Crusader, clanking in fetters, to make his white warhorse kneel down, leap through a golden hoop or pick out the fairest lady in the Saracenic Court—all of which feats the proudly-arched creature then performed at a mere nod from his lawful master.

This naturally made Saladin feel cheap; and in his rage he imprisoned the Crusader with the Fairest Lady, who had been imprudent enough to pity him, in a very lofty, very narrow dungeon. There they might be to this day if the dumb, black, Christian Slave of Trebizond had not gnawed their steel chains asunder with his teeth, and handed the pieces across the footlights to show that they were the real Mackay and no deception. Mark nearly perished with suspense when, after that, the lovers yet delayed their flight to sing a long duet about Maytime in Gloucestershire. However, escape they did at last, though they had to push the wall of the dungeon back a little to avoid bumping into Saladin, who came in just as they went out. Fortunately he appeared not to notice them, and confessed quite condescendingly to the red-nosed Chief Turnkey that he could not tell him the difference between a mouse, a mill-wheel, a music-master and the Monument.

Mark could not have told him, either, five minutes later (though he found it excruciatingly witty at the moment), for the lights had gone up to a blare of trumpets, and the mysterious tan circle in front of the stage had begun to fill with crusaders on horse and foot, in dazzling gold and silver armour, each fourth one carrying a banner on a pole and the band playing the “British Grenadiers”. Then the ramparts of Jerusalem were disclosed, with Saladin upon a high tower mounted on the Captive’s own white charger. “You thief!” roared Mark, springing up in his seat so that Fan had to pull him down and speak severely to him. He need not have been so agitated, however; for the next moment the escaped Captive appeared below the castle walls and whistled to his horse, which straightway flung off the Moslem tyrant, jumped clean from the battlements, and came and knelt at his master’s feet. Then the crusaders (still to the tune of the “British Grenadiers”) began to walk gingerly up ladders into Jerusalem; Saladin came down and was worsted in a terrific broadsword combat with the Captive; and in a blaze of red fire, the fumes of which made all the audience cough, the victor requested assent to the proposition that “Britannia need never fear while her men are brave, her women pew-er as they are fairrr, her Fleet and Army stout bulldogs, and all here present loyal subjects of the Queen!!!”

There was an interval now, during which the half-price came in and poured clattering on to the stage, which would not be used for the second part of the programme. Mark turned to Fancy and, with a self-revelation that made him blush the whole of the next day, asked whether she didn’t think the Fairest Maiden “an angelically beautiful creature”?

“Listen to him, Alice!” groaned Fan. “He’s arrived at the calf and we shall have to listen to his throbbing raptures over old Mother Harris.”

“As old as you’re young, laddie,” retorted Fan inflexibly, “but she’s a dear ancient monument with her spectacles and shawl on.”

“I should say she was clay-ver, Mr. Woodrofe,” suggested Alice Farwell, whom Mark detested for her over-curled hair of dyed gold, her saucer-like eyes and carefully-bowed mouth of artificial red. “Clay-ver, yes, but hardly beautiful still.”

“Oh, well,” replied Mark, trying to turn off his embarrassment, “did you admire the Captive, Fan?” He nudged her with his elbow and whispered, “Was your swell as handsome?”

“Aren’t you delicious, Mark! Fresher than a new-laid egg, any day. Alice, my dear,” she leaned across him unconcernedly, “this child thinks Foljambe, with his game leg and his paunch, a riglar swell. Isn’t he a darling?”

“No, I don’t,” protested Mark treacherously. “I was only roasting you.” He pointed down to a stage-box where a couple of young men in white shirt-fronts with opera-hats crushed under their arms were standing up to ogle the house through their glasses. “Was he like either of them two?”

“Much, much handsomer!” Fancy leaned back in her seat and hummed a little melody to the flashing chandelier overhead.

“Is it not odd how thirstay srimps makes one, Mr. Woodrofe?” observed Miss Farwell; and then protested, “Oh, but you mustn’t . . . I’m sure I never meant . . . whatever will you think of me?” as Mark sprang up to signal to the ginger-beer boy, and in his haste jerked a fusillade of his last half-pence into the pit, which fought for them desperately and then rose to give “Three cheers for the noble Cap’en in the boxes!”

“And ’is pretty lady!” added an old man with a bulbous nose, kissing his hand to Fancy.

“Verray vulgar!” declared Miss Farwell in a vicious tone. “How painful for you, Fan dear, to be quizzed like that by all those silly men!”

However, the ginger-beer when it came quenched heat, and the beginning of the “scenes in the circle” diverted further recrimination. Mark decided quickly that this was the most thrilling part of the performance. It is true that he was haunted by a curious illusion. It seemed to him, for instance, that the voice of the ringmaster was the voice of Saladin, especially when he acknowledged to the Clown that he could not tell him the difference between the Duke of Wellington and a filleted sole—it had something puzzling to do with a “boney part”. And again the swelling calves of Zinko, the Moldavian Hercules, when he was snapping iron bars and devouring sabres, were amazingly like the black legs of Hassarac, the dumb Christian slave of Trebizond. And there simply could be no doubt—bewildering as it all was—that M. Armand, who supported Mlle. Coralie in poses plastiques upon the padded back of a piebald horse, was the Captive Crusader (whom Fan had called Foljambe, and accused—monstrously—of a paunch and a game leg) just as Mlle. Coralie was the Fairest Maiden, and quite obviously, with her rose-pink cheeks and raven hair floating to her waist, not a day older than Fancy herself.

Mark was enchanted by the liberty horses waltzing in pairs, each black one picking out a white partner; but his enthusiasm did not reach its summit till Captain Spitzikow, late Riding-Master to the Imperial Russian Horse Guards, performed his CELEBRATED EQUESTRIAN, MILITARY, SPECTACULAR ACT entitled The Courier of Warsaw. The way in which this long-legged personage with the gaunt nose and bloodshot eyes, clad in Lancer helmet and scarlet plastron, began by riding one horse, and then gradually acquired six, on two of which he stood, while driving the other four and discharging his pistols at pursuing French dragoons, was for Mark the intoxicating climax of the evening. He screamed for the glorious Captain to come back till Fan clapped her mitten over his mouth; and he did not cease to hope right up to the sorrowful moment when the band began to cover up their instruments and the lights to be dimmed overhead. He knew then that it was vain to hope any longer, and that he must now begin to feed upon his memories.

They came out from the Upper Boxes entrance under the colonnade just as the brightly-dressed flood from the better parts of the house emerged from their own lobby. And then a surprising thing happened. Fan had been as jolly as could be, poking Mark in the back with her finger to make him go quicker down the stairs, and telling Miss Farwell that a sailor had winked at her. Now abruptly she fell silent, staring at a group that was waiting for a carriage. There were three or four young ladies in silk dresses and velvet cloaks, with flowers and jewels in their hair, and attending them the two swells Mark had noticed earlier in the evening. They were stroking their whiskers and gazing vacantly about, affecting not to notice the throng from the cheaper seats that poured by them. Mark was turning to whisper to Fan that she looked much nicer than the rich young women with their sallow complexions and prim lips, when he was taken aback by the extraordinarily bitter look on her face.

A big carriage rolled up at the moment with a crested hammer-cloth and a wigged coachman, and a linkman held up his blazing torch to escort the gentlefolk out to the door, which a footman carrying a long white stick jumped down from behind to open. The carriage rumbled off, amid shouts of “Clear the way there! Make room please!”, and Mark asked Fancy, who was still looking with tragic eyes after it,

“Know them! Is it likely I’d know them? A ballet-girl earning twenty shillings a week always visits in Grosvenor Square, I don’t think!”

“Don’t you wonder about what doesn’t concern you, you impertinent little boy!”

“No, I’m not cross, but I’ve got a headache from the banging of that dreadful band. This Astley’s is the stupidest place in London, I think.”

“No, Alice, and if you stand gaping here you won’t see the last bus to Smithfield, either. And it’ll wear your dainty slippers clean out if you have to traipse the whole way on them, won’t it?”

Miss Farwell surveyed her elegant pink sandals with an injured air, but followed the others without protest.

In the omnibus Fan lolled back against the window with her eyes closed. Mark thought it didn’t become her when she looked sullen. However, as they jolted over Westminster Bridge, deserted at this late hour, with its double row of gas-jets shimmering back from the dark water, the freshness and romance of the night took hold of him and he allowed his fancy to run back to the kingdom of marvels they had quitted. It was all horses’ heads that he saw now when he shut his lids, horses’ heads with their bright understanding eyes and handsome forelocks. He had always fondled the old cart-horses about the home-farm and the teams that carried the felled timber from the woods . . . but they, though beloved, were very different from the prancing creatures he had watched to-night. There were horses like them, kept for riding, he knew, at Crocketts, up in the stables at the House—but what a thrashing he had had from the head-groom the day he had dared to stray into the yard! The only rides he had ever had were, shouldering a twig, on the broad backs of the horses dragging the haycarts. . . . What a life the Captain’s must be!

“Are you getting out here, Mark or going on alone?” enquired Fancy’s angry voice. “I’ve told you three times to wake up.”

He tumbled out and changed buses meekly. After seeing Miss Farwell safely to her father’s house they walked in weary silence the last few streets home. Fan’s latch-key jarred in the cumbrous old lock of the shop-door, and creeping in they found that Mr. Fawkes had set a candle for them at the foot of the stairs.

“Curse the things!” she muttered. “They’ve given me a corn on my toe.”

“I say, Fan,” pleaded Mark, timidly approaching her. “Are you unhappy? Have I done something bad?”

“You?” She looked up from nursing her flexible dancer’s foot to stare at him. “Who’s thinking about you, I should like to know, Mr. Important?”

“Be quiet about the swell,” she hissed. “He’s gone and I shall never see him again; I was a little fool to think I should. What have I to do with people like that in their silks and their jewels? I shall ride in a carriage, like them, shan’t I? Oh, yes, certainly, who denies I won’t? Why, if he met me coming out of the cheap seats of a theatre, he’d look through me just like those two damned, insulting young puppies to-night. . . . Let me go back to be sworn at by Poll-parrot and have Mr. Montgomery to make love to me. . . . Oh Lord! . . . love! . . . and be thankful for my wages. . . . Oh! Mark, I’m a little beast, I know it, with papa so fond of me . . . and you too, I believe. But I’m that wretched to-night I wish I might never wake up to-morrow morning!”

Mark stood astounded at her passion, astounded at her grief. She was sobbing with quivering shoulders and her head in her hands, and the tears ran out through her fingers and made dark spots upon her pretty flowered dress.

“Go to bed,” she quavered, “go to bed and don’t stop to look at me when I’m like this. . . . You’re a good boy; go away. . . . Go away. . . . B-better in the morning.”

Always prompt in obedience, he stepped awkwardly over her hunched form and began to mount to his distant garret with his brain spinning. Could grown-ups cry like that? . . . He had never thought it possible. . . . Did Mlle. Coralie cry? If so, who comforted her, lucky fellow? How long the stairs seemed to-night; he must be half-asleep. However, as he confronted the knob of the banisters on the top landing, which now wore a turbaned look to his eyes in the pale starlight from the uncurtained window, he could not refrain from pausing a moment to murmur,

“False muslin tyrant, do your worst! You shall not bow the resolution of a warrior of ’Oly Cross!”

If it had not been for Fan’s strange, terrifying fit of crying after they got home from Astley’s it is improbable that Mark as long as four years afterwards would still have remembered the episode of the swell’s visit to the shop at all. Indeed he had been so busy growing that he might well have forgotten more important things. The square little boy who had stood awkwardly at the foot of the stairs watching his adopted mother’s unaccountable grief had shot up into a slim youth as tall as a full-grown man and with a curious loose grace of movement. His voice bothered him these days and made him shy, for it had developed a queer way of cracking and squeaking in moments of excitement. Once when he came quietly into the kitchen and spoke behind Fan’s back as she stood cooking she had jumped with alarm, and then cried, mimicking him: “Sixpence! It’s never you, Mark, with that great growl, is it?”

That seemed almost the only time anybody noticed a change in him. It is true that O. Fawkes had ceased to call him “young Agib”, and now called him “young Lothair”—a promotion from infant to “juvenile lead”—but at the warehouse the elders, themselves ageing and whitening yet more, were too busy to pass remarks upon his growth—they had never been so busy or so prosperous as in this year when the Great Exhibition was to open in Hyde Park—and as for the other boys they had grown to keep pace with Mark and noticed no inequality. Only the old warehouse in Mincing Lane remained unchanged with its haunting smells of the tropics, its giant scales and scoops, its dim background of casks and bales and bark cases, its arm-breaking pestles with their worn shiny bases, and its mortars cast from church-bell metal and decorated with symbolic bands of plant-leaves. The sides of these Mark used to tap to elicit the semblance of far-away chimes, until Mr. Hepplewhite came upon him thus pausing from his toil, and asked whether he thought he was Dick Whittington, and, if so, would he kindly remember that it was a sound business proposal and no dee’d dreaming nonsense that his exemplar had listened to on Highgate Hill?

Things did not change, though people did. Tim Mullins, the Cockney imp with the indiarubber face, had taken to high collars and a tall hat, and supplemented his wages at night by singing comic songs at a public-house Grotto of Harmony, out Walworth Way. Roger Verinder, the “Saint”, wore a black overcoat reaching almost to his feet and a brass cross on a chain, and would (it was believed) have been already promoted to the cashier’s desk if Mr. Hepplewhite had not asked how you could “trust a fellow to add up figures correctly who spent Sundays making his parish church look like the Pantheon Toy Bazaar or Jack-in-the-Green on May-Day, dash my wig!” Jim Ballon, nearly as tall as Mark, but more thick-set, with a florid handsomeness about his high-ridged nose and full lips, now smoked gunpowdery cheroots as soon as he got clear of the yard archway; read murders and the crim. con. cases assiduously in the Sunday papers; took lessons in boxing from a pug at the Loriners’ Arms, and boasted that he had acquired “science” enough for six. Mark often felt a tingling desire to know what it was like to be licked by a fellow with all that science, for the two had not grown to love one another any better. Here, at any rate, was an unchanging human factor to set beside the unchanging background.

It did not even seem to make any difference in the bustling somnolence of business routine that Mark was now a far less conscientious labourer than he had been in his frightened childhood; chiefly because that now since Keeper Woodrofe was dead and his wife had retired to an almshouse near Hayward’s Heath, there was nobody left at Crocketts to care whether he earned a good report or not. But old Lytchett, with his own powers failing, though he might fume and storm, was not likely because of occasional truancies to get rid of the only youth he would be able, when Verinder went upstairs to the counting house, to trust for sorting out a confusing consignment in a hurry, remembering an important message without mistake, or even smoothing away the grievance of an angry suburban chemist. He once received a letter from an offended customer who had threatened to change his wholesaler, which began:—“Having regard to the satisfactory explanations of your delay in executing my order of the 12th inst., for ginseng, liquorice and Peruvian bark, offered yesterday by your young gentleman in person . . .”, and sat for a long while over it, twitching his supple lips, letting his spectacles run down to the very tip of his gaunt nose, and occasionally peering through the little window of his office into the courtyard, where Mark could be plainly seen playing pitch-and-toss against himself, without uttering a word of protest.

So if Mark ever recalled the swell it was but dimly. He had not come again to the shop, Mark felt sure of that; and it looked as if Fancy had stopped thinking about him. When, Mark could not have said; but if he had bothered over the question he might perhaps have agreed that it was at the time, somewhere about the summer of 1850, when her fortunes at the theatre began to mend. Mr. Montgomery, wearied of a fruitless persistence, had changed front suddenly and offered his attentions to Miss Farwell. She was not so obdurate as Fan; and among the outward tokens of her complaisance were her appearance at rehearsal in a minivir-trimmed jacket and a sparkling ring; an icy unconsciousness and elevation of the nose that was still just a trifle too long for beauty on the part of her former friend, Fan, whenever she met her in the theatre or the street; and finally her billing for the part of Rosalind. As this was an insult to Mrs. Belper, who had played the part for thirty years, Mr. Belper threw up his rôle of Orlando; the gallery, loudly espousing his cause, flung a ginger-beer bottle at Miss Farwell the moment she appeared with her undoubtedly very shapely legs in the male hose; and it was widely reported in the Press that the new Rosalind had been “damned” at the Ionic.

Hereupon the directors of the theatre—two flourishing soap-boilers and a publican with a chain of Islington gin-palaces—awoke to the dangerous potentialities of Mr. Montgomery’s infatuation, and decided to curb his zeal by giving him an Associate Manager. They chose for the post Mr. Isidore Behrmann, hitherto known to the public chiefly as the owner of an emporium of stuffed birds and beasts in the Commercial Road. Whatever weaknesses might be cloaked by Mr. Behrmann’s wooden face with its inky blots of ear-whisker and its inexpressive beady eyes that seemed to have been borrowed for economy from one of the specimens in his shop, they were not those of the flesh—Mrs. Behrmann amply provided against such lapses. So the ladies of the Ionic ballet enjoyed relative peace again; and Mr. Polidori, with no further need to trim his sails to Mr. Montgomery’s wind, restored Fan to his favour, put her back as the dandizette in the pantomime and as “Cracovienne (with Tambourine Pas de Deux)” in The Polish Rebellion, and even held out a hope that he would pick her for “June Rose (England)” in the forthcoming grand ballet d’action entitled Peace Among the Nations, that was to mark the opening of the Great Exhibition.

The Exhibition! There was no getting away from it. It was the sole topic of conversation this year as the leaves broke out on the smutty London boughs and the evenings lengthened down the pale Spring vistas of the streets. The novelty of the Prince Consort’s Great Conception; the bewildering display of marvels from all over the globe and the staggering influx of foreigners from all nations that were anticipated; the impending immediate dissolution of all Armies and uncommissioning of all war-fleets; the fairy wonder of the great arch of crystal that was already making a carpet of the sward of Hyde Park and ornamental indoor shrubs of its lofty elms—these were the excitements that seethed about Mark’s half-comprehending ears at his work and at his leisure.

It was a hubbub that did not pierce very deeply into his mind. It only gave an added zest and thrill to the Springtime, which in this year 1851 seemed to fill him with an energy that was new in his life. His feet were elastic as he strode through the streets or the parks, pausing sometimes to eye with a vague sense of beckoning distances the gorgeous beadles of the East India Company in Leadenhall Street; the gay colouring of trees and flowers and clothes struck him as never before; and from time to time he would stare up rapt at the resplendent blue or gleaming white floss of the April skies. The nights, too, took on a strange alluringness. One evening he was taking a prowl along Oxford Street after working hours, to see the flags and decorations that were being put up in readiness for the opening of the Exhibition. It was a warm, scented night; a sky like a deep blue shell curved over from one coping of the street to the other; and the gas-lamps, flickering a little in the occasional puffs of soft wind, stretched away to the Marble Arch as if they had been a double line of blown primroses. Hansoms with bright lamps flitted by, bearing pleasure-seekers to the theatres, and their jingling bells rang against the hollow shuffle of the crowd strolling like Mark to view the embellishments. Patterned by the rosy lights from the cigar-divans and by the golden beams that streamed through the portico of the Princess’s Theatre and irradiated the bold lettering on the playbills, the very pavement over which he walked seemed a magic flooring.

It was soon after passing this theatre that Mark was arrested for a moment by the sudden emergence of three work-girls from a furrier’s that had just put up its shutters. There was nothing novel to him in such a trio of laughing young women, but to-night they made an astonishing impression upon him. He had never before felt the fascination of curls beneath a tantalizing bonnet, a waist half-disclosed under a fringed shawl, a black-sandalled foot descending from a doorstep. The three linked arms and passed him, making for New Oxford Street, and as they brushed by at a dancing pace with eyes a-sparkle, a sudden fire leapt in his veins and he swung round to follow them. Then, blushing furiously, he turned back and resolutely resumed his original direction. But it was with a new sense and a fresh interest. He began to shoot furtive looks under every pretty bonnet that passed and to cast shy eyes down as he walked in the hope that some rustling petticoat would reveal such another slim-arched instep crossed by black ribbons.

And from that evening ramble, ended as blamelessly as it had begun, Mark dated the sense of expectation that thenceforth continued to haunt him. Something great and wonderful was always about to break into his life and change it from top to bottom. At times its delay sickened him with longing; but usually the conviction that it, the indefinable, the bejewelled Something, was waiting for him round the next corner, sufficed to give worth and enjoyment to his days. . . .

Yet it was with no special presentiment that on April 27th, three nights before the date fixed for the opening of the Exhibition, he went with Mr. Fawkes, to whom orders had been conceded, to see the first performance of the ballet Peace Among the Nations at the Ionic.

Soon after dawn the next day a boy stood with his cap off upon London Bridge, panting as he drank in the exhilaration of the fresh morning breeze and let his intoxicated eyes rove over a world made wholly new. The clean-swept Spring sky with its dapple of tiny clouds still flushed from the sunrise, the river breaking into silver creases as it sped under the arches, the reddish sails of the barges filling lazily in the little wind, St. Paul’s with its gold cross glittering above its shining towers, the distant church-spires agleam like pale beacons, the smudges of smoke from the huddled warehouses of the Surrey side, traced fleetingly on a Heaven too pure and remote to be stained by them—all these things sang with Mark’s own enormous joy.

He did not know how to relieve his feelings without bursting. That was why he had come out so early, to be alone on the bridge before going to Mincing Lane. And when he looked back on the Mark of yesterday he could not understand the poor creature any longer, though he pitied him heartily. “To think,” he repeated to himself for the hundredth time, “that I’ve lived with her all these years and didn’t know—to think I have wasted all these precious days!”

For to him, the evening before, in the stuffy, grimy old Ionic, had come at last the revelation that changes the face of the universe. “June Rose (England)” they had called her in the list of the figurantes in the scene of “Dame Europe’s Flower Garden”; and this was actually Fan, Fan whom he had known as a shabby little creature, bunched out by skirts and shawls and jackets, Fan his quite unhaloed, if affectionately regarded, playmate and preceptress! No, Good Lord, no: it was he who had been blind all these years! This, not the other, was the real Fan, lithe and exquisite in her pink-petal skirts—she also had grown slimmer in the last year or two—and escaped by some mysterious bound from the rigidities of Polidori’s routine, Fan with her blue eyes wide and dreaming, and her red mouth laughing at the enthusiastic audience as though she would love to take them all in simplicity to her heart. . . . How they had clapped and stamped and made her repeat her short solo twice before the sulking Italian prima ballerina was allowed to come on again! . . . Whereat Mark had felt welling up in him, hot and clawing, a sensation that he hated but could not master—jealousy. He could not bear to share Fan—his Fan—with all these people!

What an odd mixture of rapture and pain had possessed him from that instant! He had refused, in the grip of a sudden, paralysing shyness, to go round behind with Mr. Fawkes and congratulate Fancy after the ballet. All he wanted was to get away; to be alone; to creep into bed and draw the cover over his head that he might bury himself in this strange warmth, these wondrous new dreams. All in a moment he was afraid of Fan; her voice, her movements, he realized, had acquired a cruel capacity for torturing him. But how could it be, he asked himself, as he writhed in his narrow bed and tumbled his coarse sheets upon the floor, how could it be that she, who from now onwards was to be an unbroken source of delight to him, could also be the cause of this searing agony? He sat up, soaked in perspiration, as St. Mark’s clock struck two; and a moment afterwards the latch-key grated downstairs and he heard old Fawkes’s hoarse growl and Fancy’s voice answering lightly. He cowered and held his breath for terror lest she should knock on his door to call good night to him—and then, when he heard her own door shut on the landing below, he was ready to cry with rage at her cruelty in not coming to ask why he had been absent from among her congratulating friends at the theatre. He might have been ill, or dead, for all she now seemed to care!

But he awoke, blinking at the sunbeams, in a torrent of joy without a single smart in it—though he still felt the same dread of facing the new, wonderful girl. That was another reason why, overcome with the desire for fresh air and walking, he had stolen away without waiting for breakfast, for fear she might be already down, as she often was despite her late nights in the theatre. Only, as he tiptoed down from his garret, carrying his shoes in his hand, he had dared with thudding heart to press his lips against the panel of her bedroom door before fleeing out into this world re-made and freshly-coloured for him.

“You’re early, Mark,” said old Lytchett with an approving smile as he entered the warehouse. “You’re one, I see, who doesn’t mean that Mr. William shall suffer for his kindness in promising to take us all on a visit to the Crystal Palace later in the season. Very proper! Very proper!”

“Of course not, Mr. Lytchett,” said Mark, appropriating the compliment with easy effrontery. “What shall I begin on?”

“I want you presently,” said Mr. Lytchett, “to take a satchel and go to Pilkington’s off the Mornington Crescent with these nux vomica powders and nutmegs. He writes urgently and the vans are booked for other rounds to-day.”

“Shall I,” he suggested, “come back by City Road and Moorfields and enquire for orders as I go along?”

“Why yes, you might as well. It’ll set Mr. Drake free for his Paddington and Ealing circuit. A bright idea of yours, Mark!”

Mark went out jauntily to fetch the satchel, his mind filled, not with the interests of Hepplewhite Brothers, but with the sublime idea of buying Fan some flowers and taking them to her at the theatre; she was sure to be called for a rehearsal this morning to put right the small defects of the previous night’s show. You could get nice fresh blooms from the old women with baskets down by the Monument—though not, of course, anything like the wired, silver-tinselled bouquets the swells would give—the only difficulty was about paying for them; his dinner-money would not go far.

He had paused outside the van-house to think out this problem, and as he stood there he heard, from the shadows around the great shafts within, subdued voices and the clink of coin. Peering round the patched brown hood of one of the vans he then saw two of the younger carters discreetly indulging in pitch-and-toss before the day’s work started.

Seeing that it was only one of the boys that had disturbed them, they bade him with pithy epithets be off; but, instead of obeying, Mark pulled out his dinner-money and begged to be allowed to join the game. They jeered, but at length agreed; and Mark, enjoying beginner’s luck, came away with nine shillings in his pocket and a pleasant memory of the slaps on the back and the good-natured congratulations his partners had given him. He was, it seemed, a “good plucked-’un” and a “sporting toff”. So, in fact, he had always believed himself to be, and he wondered why, when there was this easy way of making money, he had never gambled before. Just because old Jawsticks had called it disgraceful. Really he had been soft, b——y soft, all these years, for he didn’t feel a bit of a criminal now, and went away gaily, humming the “Lincolnshire Poacher”.

He was carrying daffodils, tulips, and sprays of sweet-smelling lilac when not long after noon he arrived at the stage-door of the Ionic. He had been behind the scenes before with messages from O. Fawkes, and Mr. Mobbs the doorkeeper passed him with only a stare as from a very ancient and decaying fish at his bouquet.

Mark threaded his way among huge pieces of scenery looking like a giant baby’s daubings in the dusty twilight until he saw the row of dimmed battens illuminating the stage. Mr. Polidori, standing beside the gas T-light at the prompter’s table, was swearing resonantly at a row of ballet-girls. His voice summoned squeaking echoes out of the holland-swathed auditorium where a single sun-ray from the roof woke a ruddy gleam from a brass kettledrum in the orchestra. Fancy was not among the girls rehearsing, and Mark waited with a patient expense of his employer’s time until Polidori bawled, “Postpone! Quarter of an hour only, gels . . . and let me see some dancing when you come back!”

He strolled towards the wings and, accosting Mark with a ferocious grin, enquired,

Mark hated him most when he grinned: he was so like the portrait of the Clown at home.

“Flowers?” he proceeded. “Ah! ‘Give that Wreath to me,’ ” and, with a practice in harlequinade pilfering that made him too quick for Mark, he whisked them out of the boy’s grasp. “Oh! my Curls and Tweezers!” he lisped. “I say, gels!”—and minced across the stage with an eccentric dislocation of a heavy swell’s walk, amid sycophantic titters from the resting coryphées. “Look, mamma!” he fluted, “here’s a gentleman brought me such a bee-yewt-iful booquet,” and stooping down, pretended to give the boards a vigorous brushing with the heads of Mark’s flowers.

“You give ’em back!” roared the boy, and dashing on to the stage sought vainly to wrest them from the Clown’s grip.

“Oh p-p-p-please, sir, d-d-don’t hit me! Oh, p-p-please, I will be g-g-good!” Polidori performed a pantomime of extravagant terror, ending up with “Would yer then? You ’it me, you great ——, ——, ——, you ——,” the blanks we leave being filled in with terms that made even the eldest and stoutest of the ballet-girls squeal and cry,

It was Fancy’s cool voice; and Mark, jumping round, saw her standing in her crumpled gauze practice-dress just under the T-light, which kindled metallic sparkles in her blue eyes.

Polidori flung himself down and, writhing towards her on his knees, rubbed his left ribs with a circular motion and rolled his frog’s eyes up into their lids, while he croaked,

“Accept these flow-yers, fairest of thy sex, from the ’umble shepherd’s lad, Camillo!”

Abruptly everything vanished from before Mark’s eyes in a crimson blur. He felt his fingers squeezing at Polidori’s beer-spotted black neckcloth, and heard the girls screaming. Somebody—it was the practised Clown—hit him a blow on the point of his chin that filled his fiery sky with crackling gold stars, and he became conscious of Fan’s voice:

“Stop it, this minute, Mark! This minute, do you hear? I’m ashamed of you!”

Limply he let go and reeled backwards, wondering what on earth had led him to make such a precious muff of himself. Polidori, his face the colour of the freshly-mown lawn outside the theatre-porch, was choking and trying to refold his neckcloth amid the unctuous solicitude of a group of his girls; Fan was glowering at Mark; and the little black-coated figure of the prompter was bouncing up and down in the middle of the stage quavering peevishly,

“Most discreditable! Most discreditable! I never heard such a riot, no never! What is this lad doing here anyhow? Who let him in?”

“He’s a young friend of mine, just a silly boy, Mr. Valerian,” said Fan, to Mark’s surprise and horror flinging her arm round the prompter’s neck. “It was only a lark. Don’t be cross, there’s a darling Val,” and she kissed Mr. Valerian’s bald forehead as casually as if she were picking a thread off his lapels.

“Yes, darling, yes, I understand, I quite understand. But we mustn’t have the rehearsals interrupted in this way, positively must NOT, darling! Mr. Isidore Behrmann, you know, he’s most strict, most strict—not like old Stick-in-the-Mud-gomery, you know.”

“Well, think no more of it, old boy, think no more of it!” entreated Mr. Valerian, dancing agonizedly in front of the outraged ballet-master.

“I’m sorry, I . . . I lost my temper,” blurted Mark. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Polidori.”

“Granted, dear old boy, granted as soon as asked,” said Mr. Valerian handsomely. “Who brought these beautiful flowers?” he continued with diplomatic tact, approaching his table, where one of the girls had rescued and placed them when the broil began.

“I . . . I did,” confessed Mark, crimsoning. “I brought them for Fan—for Miss Fawkes, if she’ll accept of them.”

The ballet, with a sense of possible favours to come, cooed admiration of gift and giver; while Mr. Valerian, uncovering his set of false teeth in a smile that would have done credit to a turnip-ghost, jerked out,

“An’t you a lucky little gel, Fan? You other ladies mustn’t be jealous, though! No! No! Naughty! Naughty!”

“You are a silly old darling, Mark,” said Fan, blushing and smiling divinely. “Did you like my show last night, then? You never came round to tell me so.”

“First-class, first-class!” affirmed Mr. Valerian. “They ate it up, simply ate it up, darling, believe me! Mr. Isidore Behrmann was distinctly impressed. He said, ‘Vell, vell, vell!’ and walked right up the O.P. wings and down again.”

“Are we going on with this b——y rehearsal, this week, next week, some time, never?” demanded Mr. Polidori, reappearing from the shades freshly spruced, with a girl hanging amorously on each arm. “If not, Valerian, I wish you’d say so, because my time’s too precious to hang about here all day, watching you carrying on with my young women.”

“But of course, Mr. Polidori, of course, this instant, sir! Clear, please, everybody clear! I’m surprised at you all!” added Mr. Valerian with the authority of an outraged rabbit. “You’re not wanted for this scene, you know, darling!” he called to Fan, waving her back against the slumbering footlights.

“No, Val,” she answered, “I’ll take my friend into the Green Room till I’m called.”

“Good day,” said Mr. Valerian shaking Mark warmly by the hand. “Hope to meet you again some time, old boy. Any friend of Fan’s always welcome as flowers in May—flowers in May, you know.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Mark, swelling with pride; and as Fan and he passed Mr. Polidori, who was leaning against a wing whistling while he thought out a point of figuration, he felt emboldened to approach and say, “Really, sir, I never meant . . .”

“Eh? What’s that?” Polidori snapped round on him. “Jonah’s Whale Toothpicks! it’s you again, is it?”

“Well, keep your fingers to blow your nose with next time. All right: shake hands!”

He extended his knotty fingers and great palm, grinning. Mark seized them heartily and the next moment gasped in the agony of the most fearful iron gripe he had ever experienced. Pains shot right up to his shoulder and drops sprang out on his forehead, but he contrived not to groan.

“Quite friends, now, ain’t we? That’s all right, then, that’s all right. S’long as you and I understand one another, boy.” He flung the gasping youth from him, and strode before the footlights clapping his hands as a signal to the ballet to begin.

“Shouldn’t have let old Poll-parrot give you the claw like that,” remonstrated Fan as Mark returned to her side, nursing his slender fingers. “He tries that on everyone who comes here new.”

“Oh, he was only roasting me,” declared Mark manfully. “I say, Fan, they’re a jolly lot here, an’t they? I wish I was a play-actor—all so friendly like.”

“Think so?” asked Fan as she led the way to a wide, fusty apartment near the stage, with tarnished gilt mirrors, a green carpet worn into holes, and broken-seated sofas.

“Well?” She lifted herself, gossamer-like, by her palms on to a table in the middle of the room, and sat swinging her sandalled heels while she studied him with her head to one side. “Well, what are you here for, playing hookey from your work, Master Mark?”

“Oh, I shall fit it in all right. They don’t expect me back in Mincing Lane till after dinner. I came because . . . because I thought you’d like the flowers, Fan.”

“I do. They’re simply lovely. I must find a vawse and water to put them in. What makes you so gallant all of a sudden?”

Mark most uncomfortably felt a blush beginning at his brow and creeping downwards.

“O-oh, I dunno . . . I just thought . . . I say, Fan, you were wonderful last night. . . . It didn’t seem you, somehow. . . . No, that’s not what I mean to say. But . . . but you were different, you know.”

“Yes, I know! It was my night, Mark, my first true and proper solo variation. I felt . . . I felt as if I’d kicked lead off my shoes. I thought Poll would be mad. . . . All his lessons went . . . fuff! So!” She blew through her lips. “Well, perhaps not quite all,” she relented. “He knows something, old Poll-parrot. But I felt free . . . free . . . free!” She threw out her arms dramatically, but ended the gesture in a feline stretch and yawn, self-mocking.

“You was best of the lot!” broke in Mark. “Don’t everyone in the theatre here say so?”

“They’re precious careful what they say in the theatre, my lad. ’Fear I should ask to be given a rise. ‘Vell, vell, vell!’ ” she mimicked.

“ ’Specially if clayver boys comes here to knock the ballet-master about, they will, I don’t think.”

“My temper. Yes, you’ve said so, severial times, and it looked rayther like it. Why are you such a little devil?”

“Not so little, Fan!” sulked Mark. “And I can’t help it nohow. It gets the better of me now and then.”

“I sometimes think you should have been sent to a prizefighter, not to a druggist, to learn your trade, Mark.”

“Gimini! Don’t I wish I had been! Oh no, not at all! Not by no manner of means . . .”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I’m glad you squeezed old Poll’s windpipe just a leetle. I’ve often longed to do it myself.”

“No. . . . Yes, I suppose so. . . . Oh, Fan! I’m making a fool of myself. . . . You don’t understand.”

Fan was holding his flowers up to her face and now gave him a curious look over the petals that brushed her chin. He thought he had never seen her eyes so blue or so hard.

“H’m,” she said. “You’re made of glass sometimes, dear boy. However, the swells have not arrived yet, if it gives you any pleasure to hear it.”

“Fan!” He caught suddenly at her strong wrist. “That feller that came to the shop and made you cry your eyes out. Years ago when I was a boy. Have you seen him again? Do you still think of him?”

“Riddle me, riddle me, ree!” hummed Fancy. “I wonder where . . . oh, where . . . my swell can be?” She hunched her shoulders pouncingly. “Mind, little boy!”

“Your own business, if you have any. . . . No, that’s rather unkind. After all you brought me these glorious flowers because you knew I’d love them . . . and weren’t all those cats jealous . . . even of a baby like you! I like you, Mark!”

“As much as you deserve. Or perhaps not quite as much . . . for the truth is I’m a bit of a cat myself. Yes, I am, I can’t help it. ‘ ’Tis the burden of me sex!’ as Lady Somebody-or-Other says in the tragedy. But look here, Mark! It an’t ladylike to ask, but how did you pay for all this?” She held out the bouquet anxiously.

“Piquet or écarté, m’lud? No: only pitch-and-toss? Still, this is serious.” She slid off the table with dancer’s lissomness. “Mark, dear, you’re making such a mistake. Something of the sort had to happen about now, I suppose, though you’re sprouting rather quickly, to be sure! But I do wish it hadn’t had to be me. Then I could have laughed at you both . . . though God knows, I can’t think what there is to laugh at in it really.”

“Fan, I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I only know that I . . .”

He felt her fingers on his lips for a butterfly’s second, and tried to kiss them as they were snatched away again.

“Don’t say it, Mark,” she went on gently. “Then you won’t ever be sorry. If I thought it was really me, I’d be sorry too. But I know I’m just the same as that little cracked bit of looking-glass you begged from me last month to make yourself look smart by, and weren’t you in love with what you saw there! Oh no! Not at all!”

“No, I’m being kind, dear. But please, Mark, don’t start gaming . . . if it is only pitch-and-toss. It’s not for people of our sort.”

“Oh, Sixpence, I suppose he must! Play and smoke and fight and make a tomfool of himself at the Eagle, or Cremorne if he can afford it! Else he wouldn’t be a man, would he? But Mark, dear, there’s one thing that frightens me about you.”

“When you do make a fool of yourself, it’ll be such a precious fool, such a mighty fool, Lord help you! You’re not like one of these pasty, lisping City clerks. You remind me sometimes of a little bull-dog, you do. Once get your teeth into a thing, and nothing on earth will make you let go.”

“Won’t you indeed, Towzer, I don’t think? Then you may kiss me. . . . No, only once!”

Mark arrived back at Hepplewhite Brothers whistling; threw his cap across the room on to a peg, narrowly missing Mr. Lytchett’s nose; and informed him in the coollest manner that he had called at every chemist’s shop in the City Road and Moorgate for orders, and that they had one and all replied, Come back to-morrow!

Beside the sleepy plash of the great fountain of many-coloured glass, Mr. Hepplewhite paused at last and took off his hat to mop his forehead. Despite the calico blinds drawn over the roof to keep out the July sun, the Crystal Palace was stiflingly hot. Mark, whose feet had never burned so, leaned against the rim of the basin trying to get some of the coolness of the fountain up on to his face, and listened drowsily to the hum about him. It was made up of the buzz of voices, the swish of skirts and shuffle of footfalls, the drip of water, the whirr of birds’ wings swooping about the tall trees imprisoned in the nave, the screeches of macaws and parrots on gilded perches, and a deeper, underlying pulse that Mark, straining his ears as his weighted eyelids sank, at length recognized as the voice of a distant organ.

His somnolence grew, intensified by the stuffiness of clothing, scent, mysterious spices, old carpets and banks of tropical flowers. How he longed for a tiny nap, even standing! But when he closed his eyes such a gorgeous phantasmagoria reeled past him that it kept him awake. He saw the vivid stretches of Oriental rugs and tapestries, the jet gleam of vast blocks of coal, the spinning tentacles of mighty machines, flat pictures of holy-looking men with gold plates behind their heads, past which Mr. Hepplewhite had bustled them with fretful murmurings, the sparkle of the colossal Koh-i-noor diamond between its police watchers, before which Mr. Hepplewhite had uncovered and let his voice sink as if he were in church. Then would rise the painted cases of organs and musical instruments from Germany, shining rows of mineral nuggets under glass; stalls adorned with brass birdcages and bright-coloured air balloons; the white heads of statues outlined aloft upon the green blades of palm-trees, especially the towering figures of the Queen and Prince Albert on pawing stone chargers, and the marvellous girl in her chemise proudly defying the tiger that was digging its claws into her rearing horse’s neck—just as Fan would do in a similar predicament!

And on top of that the throng of mixed and strange people would go drifting past, the yokels in smocks, the yellow-stockinged Bluecoat Boys, the Frenchmen with goatee beards, the incredible Chinaman in pigtail and orange jacket, the sailors in straw hats and fringes of whisker, and a mild old gentleman in polished riding-boots, a wig and a black silk apron whom Mr. Hepplewhite had pointed out with a sidelong sniff as the Archbishop of Canterbury. . . . Someone jolted Mark’s elbow and he woke to the sound of old Jawsticks’ voice, addressing his staff standing deeply ranked about him.

“. . . if you will all oblige by reassembling here in a quarter of an hour. It has been suggested that some of you might like to revisit the Art sections, though I frankly think that you working-men will be wasting your time to do so when you can pick up knowledge really useful to you in the Raw Materials and Machinery Sections. I believe, if you wish to purchase yourselves any refreshments, there are good and cheap tea and coffee stalls, though probably like everything else in this place, disgracefully overcrowded. Well: not later than a quarter to six here, everybody please, as our special omnibuses will be waiting at six.” He turned to the heads of the departments who were standing closest to him. “I hope,” he added, “that none of you, my friends, will leave this Great Exhibition without taking in the real significance of such a scene. I unhesitatingly affirm that by this sublime conception the Royal Consort has removed from the idea of princely rank the stigma it must always carry in the minds of freedom-loving Englishmen, especially when foreign. This enterprise is one at which tyrants tremble; the forces of superstition, Popery and Puseyism recoil; the last soldier cowers in his damned insanitary barrack, poor feller; and the nations are preparing to beat their swords into ploughshares—though I can’t think myself why the Bible is always so partial to the agricultural interest; the Hebrew Prophets, it’s very plain, didn’t live under the atrocious Corn Laws. Well, gentlemen, ponder well over what you have seen, and don’t be tempted to partake of any alcoholic refreshment.”

Mark refused the invitation of the other boys to return to see again the mechanical birds hopping round a tree in the French section. Instead, he joined himself on by permission to Mr. Lytchett, who, with Mr. Comper, the Chief Cashier, and his newly-appointed assistant, Roger Verinder, was seeking an empty table under the canopy of a tea-place. They were lucky enough to slip into one that another party was just vacating, and Mr. Lytchett, taking off his hat and rubbing his old legs with relief, remarked,

“It makes one proud to be an Englishman, that it does. Look at all these Mounseers and foreigners, Comper, come for to admire our achievement! England has long been the workshop of the world; now, as the Daily News remarked, we are the rendervoo of the globe as well.”

“The Church,” said Roger Verinder, “will be missing a heaven-sent opportunity if, with all these Chinese, Indians, niggers and other poor heathens crowding our streets, she don’t make a great missionary effort. It was truly distressing to see our Archbishop strolling about like that, bent simply on amusement, without even a train-bearer or a ceremoniarius to attend him. Now in the Middle Ages . . .”

“You couldn’t not,” interrupted Mr. Comper, “have seen a sight like this. No! I defy yer! What with all them robber barons and babes in the wood and knights on errands, and plague, pestilence and famine, it would ’a’ been madness to attempt it! I’m surprised at you, Roger, wishing to plunge us all back into the darkness of the Inquisition, as Mr. William was saying just now when we passed all them implements of torture.”

“They weren’t implements of torture, Mr. Comper!” squeaked the outraged Puseyite. “Mr. William doesn’t know; really, Mr. Comper, he don’t! They were a collection of liturgical accessories”—Mr. Lytchett’s eyes nearly popped out—“thuribles, aumbries, prickets, vestment-presses, and so on . . .”

“And so forth,” assented Mr. Comper. “It’s my opinion we’re well rid of the lot. Look at those toffs over there . . . the two lobsters, I mean.” He waved his hand to the effigies of a couple of armoured knights on horseback, which showed above a bank of evergreens. “ ’Ow, I ask you, could you ’ave peace or prosperity with such gentry a-charging in on you at any minute during office hours? One thing I frankly don’t understand—which is why our gracious little Queen, God bless her, still drives about with them chaps in cuirasses a-follerin her. It’s all empty show. Who’ll ever see a soldier needing a steel helmet any more? And, if you ask me, who’ll ever see soldiers a-fighting again at all?”

“Never, Mr. Comper?” asked Mark in a gloomy voice, turning his eyes from the armoured figures.

“Never, my boy,” affirmed Mr. Lytchett, “unless, of course, we get these damned Tories and Protectionists in power again. You’ve always got a lot of high-flown nonsense in your head, haven’t you? You’d do better to take to heart the lessons of what you’ve seen to-day. What’s made this magnificent affair possible? Why, the three ‘S’s’, as our Mr. William calls them— Sobriety, Steadiness and System. You stick to the three ‘S’s’, my lad, if you want to get on in the world.”

Mr. Comper, taking out his watch, suggested that it was time to be rejoining the rest of the party. But as they moved towards the centre aisle they found the crowd thickening so as to bar their progress while an excited murmur swelled louder and louder. “It can’t be THEM!” they heard a voice exclaim. “It is, though,” answered another. “They’ve paid many private visits like this.” “What, without any escort?” “Certainly, sir! What has she to be afraid of in the midst of her people, bless her bright eyes?”

Aided by Mark’s energetic elbows, the party of four was brought rapidly to the edge of a narrow lane through the crowd, held open by a handful of policemen wearing white gloves. “Hats off!” cried a voice; and as all the men uncovered like a wave of tumbling chimney-pots in a hurricane and the women in the front ranks curtsied according to their abilities, Mr. Lytchett gasped,

Behind a smart police official carrying his hat in his hand Mark saw a gentleman and lady walking slowly side by side. The gentleman was handsome and melancholy-looking, with a bald forehead and dark whiskers. The lady was short and round-faced, with blue eyes that protruded a little beneath her lace-lined bonnet. She was flushed and perspiring from the heat, but moved with a light-footed grace . . . “just like a dancer!” Mark thought at once.

Then came an unexpected commotion. Someone pushed violently through to the front on the other side of the human passage; a well-known white waistcoat gleamed; and Mr. Hepplewhite, frantically waving his hat, roared:

In a moment his shout was taken up, echoing resonantly to the curved glass roof overhead and sending the birds skimming in terrified circles round the red-swathed galleries, while a snowstorm of women’s handkerchiefs filled the air. Mark found himself roaring with the rest, and saw an irritated look come over the dark gentleman’s face. But the little lady smiled with her tiny white teeth and curtsied to right and left, as if she were paying instead of receiving the compliment, as she floated effortlessly on towards the doors. Then the crowd closed in behind them, and Mark and his party were carried along in the press towards the eastern entrance.

Out upon the steps the sunlight was for the moment dazzling. Then the splendid view showed plainly—the green sweeps of the Park stretching up on the left to the new stucco terraces of Tyburnia, Park Lane with its columns and balconies sparkling through the foliage in front, the grouped riders displaying their glossy silk-hats and flowing veils above the heads of the pedestrians on the edge of Rotten Row, the flags on the buildings rippling and the wide flower-beds blazing in the sunshine that poured from a golden furnace in the heart of the deep, receding July blue.

A handsome plain carriage with footmen in dark liveries and outriders in attendance, rolled away at a stately trot from the entrance amid renewed cheering, and Mr. Lytchett passed a fatherly arm round Mark’s shoulder.

“There, my boy,” he murmured with glistening eyes. “You’ve seen her gracious Majesty.”

“That the Queen!” exclaimed Mark. “It can’t have been! Where was her crown? Where were her robes? Where were her Lifeguards? Why, she’s only an ordinary little lady—and not even pretty!”

“Now, you take care what you’re saying,” admonished Mr. Lytchett. “An ordinary little lady she may seem to a foolish lad like you, but she’s the mistress of all that you see around you. What does she want with crowns and sceptres, breastplates and bayonets and all that foolishness, being as she is the ruler of a rich and happy and peaceful nation?”

As he stopped speaking a derisive laugh came from a knot of people at the foot of the steps. They were gathered round an eccentric-looking individual in shabby black with a disorderly white neckcloth, a crape-swathed hat and a Bible in his hand.

“Repent!” he was shouting. “Englishmen, repent and humiliate yourselves with fasting and sackcloth and ashes! You have all sinned in that you have worshipped the Golden Calf. Behold! I bring you a message from the Most High. Your wealth shall decay and your pride shall be changed to filthy rags, and the Angel of Death shall strike the first-born of your noble Houses. Turn you, turn you from your great glass idol yonder! Think you the Lord who sitteth above the water-floods cannot shatter it with one blast from His nostril? Lo! I see a cloud in the North, whose breath is an icicle and whose shape is an Eagle’s, the wings whereof shall overshadow the whole Earth with war and pestilence . . . Yet forty months, but forty months, people of England, and this, your Nineveh of pride, shall be destroyed!”

“Disgraceful!” exclaimed the heated voice of Mr. Hepplewhite in their ears. “Why don’t the police turn him out of the Park? These ranting field-preachers in the heart of the metropolis! It’s a shame on a civilized community!”

The atmosphere of concentrated work at Hepplewhite Brothers’ on the morrow of the visit to the Great Exhibition was peculiarly oppressive. It was even hotter than on the day before, and the warehouse, in which few of the windows could be made to open, seemed to Mark intolerable. The spectacle of the preceding afternoon, so far from heightening his devotion to the three “S’s,” had only served to add to his unrest. It had made him think not about the rewards of Sober, Steady and Systematic application to commerce, but rather about the largeness of the world outside the City of London, and the romance, not of figures correctly added, but of travel, sport and war. There was no day upon which he would more gladly have been left to pursue his dreams, and there had been no day upon which his superiors had seemed more irritably anxious to enforce upon him that he was a caged bird with no duty in life but to aid in piling up wealth that he would never share.

Everybody’s temper was on edge. About the middle of the morning Mark and Tim Mullins were perspiringly unpacking bales of pressed Tinnevelly senna-pods and leaves before picking them over for mites’ eggs or other decay, and throwing out the twigs, scraps of rags and broken native knife-blades that were apt to fall into the packages. Suddenly Jim Ballon came in from the bottling-shed openly wearing Mark’s best blue apron, and then the sparks flashed.

There was no doubt about the outrage, for Ballon was wearing Mark’s property inside out with his name showing on the tab. And his apron, which he had left, newly-washed and starched, on the peg at the end of the black passage where the boys hung their hats and coats, his precious apron was already lank, wet and defiled by many stains. He sprang forward and confronted Ballon, crying,

“Dear me!” fluted Ballon in imitation of an indignant spinster. “Won’t dear Mr. Lytchett be grieved to see his own pet’s favourite apron dirtied! Go and peach to him, toady, won’t you?”

Mark leapt straight upon him, trying to tear the apron from his neck, and they grappled in the dusty sunbeams shooting down from the high, round windows between the piled bales.

“Kool slop! you fools!” hissed Mullins from his corner, and the next minute Mr. Hepplewhite, with Mr. Lytchett at his heels, appeared in sober grey with a black necktie, his face austere and his whiskers drooping from the necessity of making up for yesterday’s dissipation.

“Please, sir, I was borrowing a knife from Ballon to cut the cord of this bale . . . the knot was wasting my time,” lied Mark glibly.

“Why have you got Woodrofe’s apron on, Ballon?” enquired the watchful Mr. Lytchett.

“Yes, why? And why are you so filthy and untidy and dishevelled, sir?” demanded Mr. Hepplewhite. “You’re a disgrace to any decent place of business, dash my wig! Look at your necktie! And how dare you come here in a collar that hasn’t been ironed for weeks? Where does the sweep’s boy put the soot, Master Ballon?”

Ballon lowered sulkily, for the query had a dreadful significance at Hepplewhite Brothers’.

“Yes, you’ll get it, never fear, one of these days,” said Mr. Hepplewhite with a menacing nod. “And from the way my corns shoot, I don’t think it’ll be long in coming. Get on with your tasks now, both of you; don’t stand gaping at me like Scotchmen outside a snuff-shop!”

After that the dinner-hour was made late by the same loudly-alleged necessity for repairing the ravages of yesterday’s idleness, and it was nearer four than three when the old cracked bell at last clanged through the sweltering rooms. The boys had latterly been trying to save their pence by instituting a kind of humble mess, which Roger Verinder had consented to join on the stipulation that grace should always be said before eating. Instead of wandering forth in quest of cook-shops or pie-stalls, they now clubbed their funds and sent one out in turn to buy and bring back provisions which they consumed in a corner of the warehouse, from long use undisturbed by the powdery odour of the dried Turkey rhubarb cakes festooned on strings all about them. And from this, too, came trouble to-day for Mark, the caterer of the week, for he lost several half-pence on his way to the shop, through a hole in his trouser-pocket about which he had not wanted to worry Fan and had been too lazy to worry himself; so that there was sharp recrimination as they settled down at last to their hurried meal. Roger Verinder smugly declared that Mark would never get a business head; a fine to-do there would be in the petty-cash if he had charge of it—and so forth. And then Jim Ballon, taking the tin cover off his smoking ham on its vegetable-bed—no cooling meal for a July day—wished that he had a hole of that precious convenient sort in his pocket, by G——!

“What might you mean by that?” enquired Mark, putting down his clasp-knife with deadly quietness.

“Well, it looks to me uncommon like you was savin’ up against a rainy day, practisin’ thrift, as old Jawsticks is always a-tellin’ good boys to do. Wisht you wouldn’t do it at my expense, though!”

“So you say I prigged your ha’pence, do you? . . . Answer, can’t you, you ——!”

It was a word that would have made Fan clap her hands over her ears and scream; but Tim Mullins only gave a shrill imitation of the Punch-and-Judy man’s pan-pipes to signalize his joy. Such language was a delicious novelty on the lips of the youngest and usually most taciturn of their band. Roger, however, admonished Mark to “keep a clean tongue in his head, if he expected decent folk to sit with him”—to which Mullins chanted a prolonged cathedral “A-a-a-men”, while Mark grinned across at him delightedly. There were surprising devils dancing in his eyes, and Tim reflected that there was no knowing wot was in a cove, no by jiminy there wasn’t, not until it came out. Roger, meanwhile, had got up and removed himself to a far corner, where he remained chewing with his hollow cheeks and reading in a Book of Hours.

Mark “took a sight” at him in derision, and then turned back to Ballon, who sat with the freckles showing harshly where his florid face had paled. Thrusting his own face close up to his insulter’s, Mark repeated that damning epithet in a clear voice. The blood poured through his veins and he felt such a release as he had not known for years. He was aware for the first time in this endless day of the blue outside the panes and the gold in the sunbeams.

“——!” he said a third time, “and if you don’t take back that I’m a thief, you yaller-faced mongrel, I’ll squeeze the breath out of your skinny carcase for good an’ all this time!”

Ballon indeed looked both yellow and shrunken at the moment; but his pale eyes were smouldering and he was thinking hard.

“You’d try to garrot me, Chawbacon, I dessay,” he said at length, “if you could get your pecker up to it. But you dursn’t mill by proper rules.”

“Don’t try it on here, my covies!” warned Tim. “ ’Fore you finished one round, ole Jawsticks’d heave the pair of you into the street to sing the ‘Bay of Biscay’ for yer living, pity a pore ole sailor!” He addressed Ballon. “Vy don’t you take him along to the Loriners’ Arms to-night and let Joe Burjoyce act as bottle-holder for you. Mebbe some o’ the sportin’ toffs there ’ud put up a little stake, too. I seen ’em afore now eggin’ on pups like you two to mill—for the fun o’ the thing.”

“Wuth tryin’. Anyvays they’ll keep the ring proper for yer, same as if yer wos riglar pugs or Corinthians. . . . Always supposin’ young Mark here means it serious.”

“I don’t believe he knows how to mill. Ever put your fists up in a ring, cly-faker?”

“P’raps you didn’t know we had Jem Cornell, the Sussex bantam, keeping the Plough outside Balcombe? Bill Roots, his nevvy, and me were always a-sparrin’ together. I an’t afraid of you, Jim Ballon . . . never have been, only I didn’t want Jawsticks to think me a disgrace. That’s what’s made me act soft-like all these years . . . a regular muff! But no longer, by G——! I’ll take you on to-night at the Loriners’ or anywhere else you like.”

“I don’t see,” said Tim Mullins gravely, “ ’ow you can back down now, no’ow, Jim. Not after he called you apples and custard. Wot’s more, if you make a match of it, I’m backing Mark at evens, I am.”

“Very good!” The memory of his careful lessons with the pug decided Ballon. “I’ll take him on to-night and clip his little coxcomb for him, ’strewth and I will. If Joe Burjoyce and his pals like to make a little purse, it’s so much in my pocket, I reckon, ’sides the pleasure o’ giving Chawbacon a jolly good hidin’.”

“Better keep yer breath to fight with,” cautioned Mullins. “You ain’t a-goin’ to knock this young pup out o’ time with yer jaw, I can tell yer!”

Mark went back to his work with a feeling of jubilation. At last . . . this very night . . . something was going to happen. Fighting in a pub! Well: he did not care what anyone might think about it, if they knew—not old Jawsticks; not the folk at Crocketts—supposing they ever remembered Mark Woodrofe at all; not Fan . . . no, least of all Fan! She did not care for him; ever since that morning when he had taken her the flowers at the theatre she had subtly changed towards him. He could not honestly say that she was less agreeable, witty or mothering; but she had set a distance between them. He had enough male instinct already to realize that he would not have minded that invisible barrier if it had protected some fear, some uneasiness. But he was only too cruelly sure that it signified just the calm resolution not to be embarrassed by the clumsy demonstrations of a boy in the pangs of calf-love. . . . Very well, then, why need he bother about Fan’s approval any longer? This last thought gave him a chill and desolate feeling at the pit of his stomach; but it did not destroy the sense of freedom newly won.

The news that the two lads whose antagonism had long been known were at last to settle their differences in a fashion likely to be equally satisfactory to the onlookers and to themselves ran round Hepplewhite Brothers’ like a prairie-fire during the last hours of the working-day, escaping somehow all those ears it was not intended to enter, but reaching all that could possibly be interested; so that it was quite a throng that accompanied the two champions round to the public-house when at last the warehouse closed. They made such a hubbub that it was some time before Joe Burjoyce, the red-haired, hammer-headed, lanthorn-jawed landlord, could make out what the game was; indeed he had to shout several times for silence as he listened in his shirt-sleeves while the flaring gas-globes lit up a spectral duplica of the scene in the dim, smeared mirrors behind the bar, and glinted on the brass caps of the beer-handles, the taps of the huge casks and the gilt-framed placards of Allsopp’s and Old Brandy.

There was a fair crowd already drinking on the sanded floor, and they applauded the idea of a fight between the two handsome boys with noisy excitement. A bookmaker took his cigar from under his curly black moustache to give out that he would put down “half a thick-un” as stakes, whereupon the landlord offered to add a florin from the house, and exhorted “you sportsmen to make it up to a suvverin for the little ’uns”. An influx of other guests from the bar-parlour and the billiard-room led to a hat being passed round and the sum named being collected amid cheers.

“But I don’t mean to fight for money!” protested Mark, as soon as he understood the meaning of the procedure.

“Win the stakes fust, young Gentleman Jackson, afore you decides what to do with the yenom,” advised the bookmaker huskily; and—

“You can always spend it on your friends, you know, for the good of the house,” Joe Burjoyce added. “Now where,” he ruminated, “shall we hold this mill so’s the Peelers don’t stick their long noses into it? Not that I’m allowing anything positively illegal; but they’re getting that pernickety these days, a man can’t hardly say he owns his licence. . . . I know! We’ll go upstairs to the Music Room and pile the chairs in a corner. That’ll leave a ring plenty big enough for these two bantams. Hulloa, Jack Cullen,” he broke off, “blessed if you ain’t just in time to referee a proper mill!”

“The parties’ names fust, their ages, and their weights,” demanded the professional pugilist, a squat man with a split lip, a twisted nose and a permanently enlarged crimson ear.

“Is he, by G——? Then jist you don’t ferget, Mister, what I tells yer abaht keeping spry on your right foot. Don’t you take root there like you does when sparrin’ with me, else you’ll find yerself ’ushed to bye-byes afore you know wot’s struck yer. ’Oo’s owdacious enough to take on Jack Cullen’s pupil? This yere shaver, is it? Hum . . . gives ’im nigh on a stone, I should say. . . . Well, I like a good ’art. I’ll stand referee, Joe Burjoyce; on’y gimme my four o’ sin fust.”

Presently they trooped upstairs to the long, boarded Music Room, which they cleared in a few seconds, making a “ring” by passing a rope through the backs of four chairs at the corners of it.

“Going at it proper with their maulies, no gloves, is that the tune of it?” The pug nodded approval. “ ’Oo are the seconds then?”

The landlord and Tim Mullins offered to act for Mark, while Ballon found support in the bookmaker and one of the drinkers from the bar. The place was lit by whistling gas-jets on cross-pieces, and their acrid heat beat upon the chattering crowd, which added its own exhalations of beer, spirits and tobacco. The uproar was terrific, and odds were being freely shouted as Mark, momentarily bewildered by the glare and the clamour, yet filled with a strange inner calm and lucidity, stepped over the rope into the ring, inside which a few handfuls of sawdust had been thrown upon the boards, and the regulation square yard chalked in the centre. He was stripped to the waist, with his trousers tied round by a string, and his lean brown body, tapering from the shoulders, contrasted with the whiteness of Jim Ballon’s skin when he in his turn appeared; but it looked more solid than the other’s, which was puffy in places and rippled softly round the stomach. Still, Ballon’s muscles made billiard-balls upon his arms, and his superior weight was palpable, shifting the odds at once in his favour. Joe Burjoyce declined with a shake of his head to bet upon his man. Ballon had lost his original nervousness and now looked simply watchful and wary.

“No handshakes!” cried the bookie to the referee with a wink. “My man says this ’ere’s a settling of a pussonal score.”

“No ’andshakes it is!” assented the bruiser. “On’y you two bantams unnerstand it’s P.R. Rules! No round to end without a gennywine fall; ’arf a minnit atween rounds; and the man ’oo don’t toe the line at the call o’ Time is AHT! No blows below the belt, no kickin’, and on’y fair ’olds and throws above the waist. Now, are yer ready? Seconds, bring your men to the square. . . . TIME!”

There was an abrupt silence in the room as the seconds fell back, leaving the fighters toe to toe on the chalk-lines in the centre of the ring.

Ballon, revolving slowly upon that torpid right leg of his as Mark circled about him, seemed disposed to keep the defensive till he should understand more of his opponent’s game—a procedure that Mark mistook for timidity. Accordingly, he dashed recklessly in with both arms swinging for a double punch, a mistake that cost him dear. Almost together he felt two heavy cracks—the first from Ballon, aiming at his nose, but catching him on the jaw as he threw his head back, the second from the boards upon which he hit his head stunningly as he went down. There was a roar, half appreciative, half derisive, as his seconds dragged him to his corner.

“That warn’t much of a first round, youngster!” remonstrated the landlord, waving a towel in front of him while the odds ran up loudly in Ballon’s favour. “You got to keep your eyes open with Jim Ballon. He knows a bit o’ ringcraft, don’t you ferget!”

Mark thoughtfully felt the back of his head. His fingers came away sticky, and he saw the referee sprinkling sawdust over a little red patch upon the floor.

“It’s nuffin,” Tim Mullins hastened to assure him, “on’y a bit o’ skin broken. I’d patch it in a jiffy if I ’ad some plaster. Don’t you go for to show the white feather along o’ that.”

Mark smiled grimly. Show the white feather at the sight of his own blood! How little they knew him! He began to feel a mounting exhilaration.

“Time!” called the referee, and Mark sprang towards the chalk-lines, inwardly amused at the satisfied smile on Ballon’s face. He knew he was going to wipe that off—but he was not going to be a fool again. He guarded himself with both arms held well up before his face this time, in the antiquated posture of defence taught him by his Sussex mentor, and resolved to let Ballon make the attack.

That, however, he did not seem anxious to do, and the two boys for a while moved round each other till the onlookers began to grow impatient.

“Order, gemmen! Order! Give ’em a chance!” exhorted the referee. “We got two werry cautious gents ’ere to-night. I knows one on ’em!”

This remark from his own teacher seemed to sting Ballon. He led with his left, which Mark guarded, at the same moment trying a right jab for counter that Ballon skilfully avoided by ducking. But he did not get back quick enough to escape a thump from Mark’s other fist over his heart. His breath whistled and he turned bluish.

“Another there! Give ’im another quick!” cried Joe Burjoyce; and Mark seeking to obey found himself clinched by Ballon. He could see the sweat pearling on his adversary’s skin and felt it dribbling into his own eyes as they wrestled. Lurching against the rope in their struggle, they overset a chair and drove back the audience, shouting and laughing.

“The ring, gemmen, keep the ring!” bellowed the referee, and shoved them back with his own fist so vigorously that he brought Mark to his knees, tearing his trousers against a nail-head in the boards. He could have had “Time” then if he had known more of ring-cunning; but instead he stumbled on to his feet again to receive a swinging crash upon his ear that brought him in earnest to the floor.

“Steady now! Steady!” said Joe Burjoyce as he guided him panting into his corner and sponged his face with an anxious air. “You want to look arter yourself more.” He took a mouthful of water and sprayed it through his teeth on to Mark. “You ’it ’im all right,” he proceeded, “when you do ’it, but you got to take more care of yourself.”

Mark remembered that during the next two rounds, in the course of which Ballon, encouraged by his successes and the cheering of the crowd, made short rushing attacks upon him, most of which he warded off with his old-fashioned stance—but not all, and those that got home were severe ones. Then they came again into a hold, and, trying each to throw the other, fell in a heap, but with Mark underneath. The weight of his opponent on top of him crushed the breath from his body and he staggered to his corner feeling dizzy.

“Your man going a bit groggy, ain’t he?” enquired the bookmaker over his shoulder as he flapped the towel before Ballon. “Three times down, while our cove ain’t been touched at all yet. Vy don’t you throw in the sponge, Joe?”

“Oh, our man’s game yet!” asserted the landlord, though with a shadow of doubt in his voice. But when time was called his doubt proved unjustified; for Mark was up on the word, and during this round got in his first effective face-blow, upon the arch of Ballon’s high nose, from which the blood spurted in a double stream over his chest, amid cries of “Serve the claret round, landlord, can’t you? . . . It’s well and truly tapped, Joe!”

But the joking soon died away, for there was ferocity now in the air. Round by round the feeling in the overheated room grew tenser, as in the morbid glare of all those savage and debauched eyes the two half-naked youths struck and guarded with their bleeding knuckles, wrestled and unclinched. Ballon’s fair skin was purple with bruises, and Mark’s arms were smeared with red to the elbows; the floor was covered with slippery patches, hastening falls. At last Ballon, with a clever round-arm right, knocked Mark over the rope. A spectator caught him and pushed him back into the ring, but he slid half senseless to the boards. This time he had to be lifted to his corner and Joe Burjoyce anxiously forced the brandy-bottle between his teeth. He came round within the half-minute, but the ring seemed unreal and dreamy to him as he stood, his arms mechanically raised in defence, while Ballon’s head, swollen to ogreish size, with its eyes blazing murderously above his battered organ, bobbed up and down in front of him. Little sickly shocks kept running through his frame, and he did not realize that these were ill-guarded blows. Then a piercing sound that had troubled him for hours, it seemed, took meaning as his seconds’ voices screeching: “Hit! Hit!” With a disabling effort he whirled an arm that had no weight, as Ballon’s face, still more enlarged, rushed down once more upon him. The giant mask changed to a silly expression, and disappeared; then everything went out.

A red-hot pang, stabbing him out of oblivion, brought back the flaming, wobbling gas-jets and the sea of heaving faces. He was lying back in his chair with Tim Mullins grinning horribly and shouting, “I offers apologies, cully, but there wos no other way to bring you round . . . I ’ad to bite it, and you don’t taste werry sweet, yer know!” In addition to Mark’s other pains, his ear, he found, was now burning him atrociously, and he almost retched as he gasped for the breeze from Joe Burjoyce’s busy towel. The landlord kept flipping him in the face, however, because his head was turned over his shoulder as he worked, looking hard at the opposite corner where the crowd was straining over the rope, and howling taunts and insults.

“TIME!” bawled Jack Cullen, and Mark’s seconds carried rather than led him to the square. But nobody came to meet him. He stared around him with vacant eyes and at last saw Jim Ballon’s legs limply outflung from his chair, and, as his seconds desisted at length from useless efforts, Ballon’s white face lolling over the rope behind.

“Ve can’t do nuffin, Jack!” said the bookmaker. “The beggar’s bin put out o’ business, and that by a man he’d got beat, blast ’im! Shake ’ands, young shaver!” he continued, stretching out his ringed and hairy paw with its ruby cufflinks, to Mark, as his seconds thrust a chair under his bending legs. “You got guts any’ow, though damme if I think you’ve any science yet! Still, they might make a pug some day out of a pup with your ’art.”

“You bin at it nigh on a hour and a quarter,” said Joe Burjoyce appreciatively to the victor, reviving him with a vigorous use of the sponge. “An’ with ’ard swiping too. I never thought you’d stay the course so long. What about that other chap now? Is he coming round yet?”

“Ve’re getting ’im into trim, Joe,” shouted Tim Mullins, who had gone across to assist by rubbing Ballon scientifically over the stomach. “ ’E opened vun eye just now.”

“ ’E’s ’ad an eye-opener, I reckon,” said the landlord. “All them lessons from you, Jack Cullen, and now to be put out o’ business by a bloomin’ amachewer like this yere. On’y think of it, jest!”

“Bah!” said the ex-referee, who had, without leave, ordered a glass of gin to be brought upstairs to him at the charges of the house. “You couldn’t never learn ’im, not you couldn’t, to move on that right leg of ’is. It was ’oppin’ about on that, ’stid o’ breakin’ back that got ’im the slam on the mark what rocked ’im in the cradle o’ the deep, so to speak. ’Sides, ’ee niver ’ad any ’art, arst me a thing or two. Still ’e ’ad your cove good as beat, which all goes to prove that the ways o’ Providence is uncommon queer—’specially in the ring. Get up, young ’opeful, and shake ’ands with a bloke wot’s ’ad more punches to ’is mug than you’ve ’ad days to yer life!”

Mark grinned feebly, but for a thousand pounds could not have got upon his feet.

“Wot, still groggy?” enquired Cullen. “Give the lad a good sup of brandy, Joe, to ’arten ’im like.”

Joe Burjoyce obeyed with a momentary excess of generosity, and it certainly did hearten Mark. He felt warm and cheerful in a moment, and began to laugh—he did not quite know what at. The room was still inclined to sway about; but this now only gave him a rich feeling of pleasure. He peered through the mists to see if Jim Ballon had come round yet, and a feeling of extraordinary affection for his old enemy came over him.

“Goo’ ole Jim!” he heard himself crying. “I didn’t wan’ to hurt ole Jim!”

Laughter answered this sally and filled him with rage. He had not won this great battle to be laughed at—not by nobody! He roared at them all to be quiet, and then somebody took the chair out of his hands—talking nonsense about his having threatened them with it.

“Didn’t mean no harm to you, genelmen,” he babbled, “shall never be said, never!” And all the time inside him another weary but more lucid Mark kept rebuking him for talking like that—only he could not check the talker.

“They’re both round and fit now,” proclaimed the bookmaker, “and my Missus’ll be wondering what’s become o’ me at ’ome. Let ’em shake hands and then pay over the stakes to the winner!”

“Divide ’em,” cried Mark, almost weeping with affection. “Divide ’em with ole Jim . . . shall never be said, never be said . . .”

This sportsmanship elicited a cheer, and Mullins announced that he would take Ballon home and see he wasn’t robbed of his share on the road.

“I’d go home too, my boy, if I was you. You fought a game battle: do you no good to stop here any longer.”

“Go ’ome?” whooped a seedy character in a canary waistcoat and burst gaiters. “Whoy, ’e’s goin’ fur to make a night of it, ain’t you, me noble Cap’en? You’re a-goin’ to invite your pals and backers, wot stood by you so ’andsome and risked their little all on you, to wet their whistles . . . that’s wot you’re a-goin’ to do. Whoy, I knows a gemman when I sees one, Lord-love-a-duck, I do!”

“Please yourself,” said Joe Burjoyce with indifference. “If you likes to stand these genelmen, which they certainly did their best for you, you’re very welcome. . . . Not that ’arf a suvverin’ll go far at drinks round.”

“Far as it’ll go!” cried the exuberant Mark, disregarding the counsels of the wiser spirit within him. “You genelmen very welcome to it all!”

“Come along down then to the bar; I’ll lend you a hand, if you’re stiff,” said Joe Burjoyce briskly. “You’re a slap-bang Corinthian, that I can see. You stand them all a round fust, and arterwards the house’ll stand you one.”

And when they had tumbled downstairs together and Mark had seen his hardly-won shillings vanish all into the landlord’s till (at which his still lucid but dying upper self said, “Fool! Fool! Fool!”) the house was as good as its word and stood him one. What was in it he could not tell—but it had a superb effect upon him. He was no longer two selves, but one only, a magnificent, wise fellow, the proper man to issue orders and offer sound advice to all around him. And advise them he did—propping himself against the bar, which was badly made, because it kept sliding away from under his elbow however furiously he cursed it—and exhorted them to observe the “three Eshes”—it was perfectly plain what he meant, though they pretended to misunderstand—the “three Eshes, Shobriety (loud cheers), Shteadiness an’ . . . an’ . . . what was the other? . . . Oh yes! Shixpence! . . .” Oh Sixpence! What would Fan think of him if she saw him now?

How he came to be playing billiards he could not afterwards remember; but there he was in a room with green-shaded lamps dancing above his head. And he could have taught them all a lesson in billiards, too . . . if the stoopid table hadn’t kept billowing up and down. It made him laugh . . . laugh . . . until to his horror he was immensely sick . . . not a thing to be before gentlemen!

Still, gentlemen would have taken no notice . . . and they kept jeering at him. . . . There was a feller with a small mouth and a white hat. . . . “ ’Tickularly annoying!” . . . Who smashed the swinging-lamp overhead? Not Mark! . . . It was the b——y fool who kept flourishing the billiard-cue and shouting, and he wasn’t Mark at all! Mark could explain if they wouldn’t all keep gliding away to the far end of the room, laughing at him. . . . Here they came sweeping up to him again! As they put their faces so close and clearly meant to bite him, he had to lash out at them. . . . Then a black curtain fell with a thud.

It was a policeman that roused a very sore, stiff and throbbing-headed boy who lay in the red gutter of Smithfield Market, just as the grey was deepening to summer-blue overhead.

“What are you doing ’ere?” he demanded. “Don’t you know it’s an offence to sleep out?”

“Don’t you give me any o’ your sauce, you young rip!” replied the policeman wrathfully. “You better tell me who you are, and sharp too! Else you’ll find yourself locked up in a twist!”

“Mark Woodrofe!” murmured the boy with an air of discovery. “Gawd! I feel bad!”

“Why, cully,” said the Peeler rather more gently as he examined him. “Somebody suttinly has man-handled of you! What’s come of your coat and weskit?”

Mark now perceived that he was in his shirt-sleeves and that the shirt was stained and evil-smelling from the garbage of the butchers’ market.

“And your money, too, I’ll lay, supposin’ you ’ad any,” added the officer, developing a professional interest of a new kind. “ ’Oo do you remember bein’ with last, before you was knocked out o’ time?”

“Knocked out!” The words brought a dim and sickly picture of the night before to Mark’s suffering head, and he realized that he must not peach on the gentlemen. He could not imagine what had befallen him after the battle: but there must be no peaching, certainly not to the slops, his natural enemies and those of all fine fellows! Not a word to this sinister blue figure with the lank whiskers and the Guy Fawkes lantern!

“O-o-oh! I was with my friends,” he said, helping himself to his feet by the aid of a post. “Then I . . . then I . . . sort o’ lost my way somehow.”

“You better tell me the trewth!” menaced the policeman. “Else I may be compelled to take yer up for drunk and incapable.”

“I an’t drunk, officer, and that you can see,” pleaded Mark with ironical humility. “And as for me being incapable,” he professed heroically, “why, I can walk right the way home any minute! Come to think of it now, I lent my coat and waistcoat to another boy; and then I think I must have slipped on some of this muck here and hurt my head. It pains me something fearful.”

“You been fighting, that’s what you been doing!” said the Peeler severely. “Yes, and drinking too . . . d’you think I can’t smell your breath? If you ask me, I’ll say someone hocussed your drink, and pretty powerfully too. You better clear off my beat now quick as you can step, and don’t let me catch you ’ere again. Think yerself lucky I don’t take you along to the station and charge yer. I would, only I know yer farver, the Viscount.” And with that caution he went on his way, peering up the still twilit alleys, looking under shuttered stalls and testing the iron grilles in front of shops.

Mark meanwhile considered earnestly how he was to follow the copper’s emphatic advice and move himself on. He certainly could not walk home all the way to Clerkenwell when he found it hard even to keep his feet as soon as he let go of the kindly post, nor dare he go to Hepplewhite Brothers’ in this condition. He must pay for a ride, and he clapped his hand to a non-existent breast-pocket. . . . Then the full horror burst over him. . . . It was gone . . . it was all gone . . . not only the stake-money, but the precious savings tied into a corner of his handkerchief . . . not even a penny for a bus left, though that was not what mattered most!

As he leaned annihilated against the post, he heard a trample of small hoofs, and, turning his heavy neck, saw a cart drawn by a donkey approaching. It was led by a figure wearing a ragged overcoat that brushed the stones, with a kind of sombre tiara upon its locks, that resolved itself, as he drew nearer, into a pile of three ancient hats. Under his other arm he carried a clock, of which from time to time he twanged the striker. As the dingy equipage, laden with old clo’, drew nearer, Mark read on a board over the wheel, “B. Simeon, Second-Hand Clothing, Umbrellas, Bottles, New River Head.” With despairing audacity he reeled towards its owner.

The old Jew, patriarchally bearded and with the nose of Michael Angelo’s Moses, regarded him steadfastly out of an eye like a black boot-button.

“Vy, vat’s that to you, young man?” he queried, after studying Mark’s bruised face, bloodshot eyes and filthy clothing. “Are you a schnorrer . . . beggar, I mean? If so, be off, or I’ll call a polizeidiener, hein?”

“I’m not a beggar,” protested Mark, “but I want to get to my home in Clerkenwell, and I hoped you might let me ride on the top of your cart. The truth is, I’ve been robbed. . . .”

“Of about . . . about . . . well, all I had, if you must know. . . . But I shall earn some more by the end of the week to pay you, sir, if you’ll help me now,” he hurried on to add, alarmed by the stony look that came into Mr. Simeon’s small eye at his confession of penury.

“Haven’t you a vipe?” And as Mark looked puzzled, Mr. Simeon illustrated with thumb and fingers the uses of a handkerchief.

“Everything I had’s been taken,” he answered, “by those thieves at the Lor . . .” He checked himself. No peaching!

“Vat can I do?” he wailed. “No monesh, no close, no vipe . . . young man, ’ow can I do pishness vith you at all?”

Mark collapsed on the kerbstone. Let the coppers take him to the station then, and have done with it.

“ ’Ere! ’Ere!” (Mark, though not abnormally fastidious in his present state, gulped at the historical odour that came from Mr. Simeon as he bent over him and shook his shoulder.) “Vat’s the matter? Are you ill?”

“I’m going to die, I think,” groaned Mark, and in his fresh access of retching he truly felt like it.

“But they von’t let you die here! No! No!” The Jew danced upon the pavement. “Oy-oy! Vat shall I do? The Gentile’s dying, and he hasn’t even a vipe to trade vith before he goes!”

Suddenly Mark was picked up in a pair of arms as strong as the odour of Mr. Simeon, and deposited on what seemed to him a delicious feather-bed, though it was only a heap of waistcoats upon the cart. He faintly heard the little hoofs clattering and had the blessed conviction that he was being carried home.

“Fancy vat?” enquired Mr. Simeon, turning round from the donkey’s head for a moment; but receiving no reply he resumed his slow way beside the creaking shafts.

After going about a quarter of a mile due north, however, he checked the donkey outside a small public-house in St. John Street, and leaving his cart with its pile of clothes and pile of unconscious boy beside the pavement, passed in through the swing-doors to find a matutinal barmaid in a mob-cap polishing beer-handles.

“If you please, nice young lady,” he whined, “I haf a poor boy outside very ill on my master’s cart. Could you give me joost a little drop of brandy to keep him alive till I get to the Christian hospital? I’m afraid,” he added, spreading out his palms and gazing into her pretty face with the resignation of Job, “ve are both too poor to pay you anything for it, but the Lord vill reward you!”

The barmaid had caught a glimpse through the window of Mark’s figure among the waistcoats, and now issued through the doors to investigate.

“Don’t go too near,” cautioned Mr. Simeon. “I’m afraid it’s the small-pox, and the vind it is blowing towards you!”

“Oh, my gracious to goodness!” squealed the girl, and retreated back through the doors again. “Pore feller! He’s handsome, isn’t he? But he does look reel bad, though! Well, I’ll give you a dram for ’im, if it’s sich a desprit case. . . . I don’t suppose the guv’nor’ll notice it.”

“Well, anyhow,” remarked the maiden, “I s’pose I can stand the racket. Look, I’ll pour it into this old, cracked tumbler for you . . . and don’t you bring it back ’ere after he’s touched it, for ’Eving’s sake!”

“No, ma tear,” Mr. Simeon promised her tenderly. “The blessings of the God of Abraham rest upon you, young virgin, for saving the life of the unhappy Gentile youth. Don’t come out again! The vind blows the infection.”

Alone upon the pavement once more, Mr. Simeon drank the brandy to the last drop with a look of pious ecstasy; after which he wrapped the tumbler carefully in some rags and led the donkey on its way.

Soon afterwards he stopped by a horse-trough, and, dragging Mark off the cart with his muscular arms, soused him thoroughly in the water.

“Feel better now?” he enquired; and when Mark agreed that the short sleep in comfort and the chilling douche had done him good, “Now, young nobleman,” he continued, “vere is it you live? I can’t cart you all over London, you see, for nottings; I’m a pishness man.”

Mark, looking about him, decided that they were near enough to Greensleeves Row for him to walk the rest of the way.

“Vell, never mind, never mind! Don’t talk about it!” cried the Jew as if a wasp had stung him. “I suppose,” he went on with a wild and roving eye, “you couldn’t spare your braces? No? Vell, never mind; but go avay, go avay kervickly, please!”

“Shalom aleikum! Peace be with you!” answered Mr. Simeon in sonorous tones—and had no idea what an optimist he was.

Mark did not knock on the door when he reached the house. He had heard the clock strike six as he staggered along, and he did not mean to disturb Fancy, however bad he might feel. Instead, he curled himself up on the steps with his shoulder against the peeling stucco pilaster of the door, and there uncomfortably tried to sleep again till the house should stir.

But he had forgotten the dog next door, which after about half an hour caught sight of him and began to yap. A window opened and shut above; and Mark suddenly woke to the glowering of Fancy’s eyes, rounded with consternation and anger, as she held the front door ajar.

She was bare-legged in a petticoat and shawl, and her frowning white forehead was enhaloed by curlpapers made from scraps of theatre-bills. Mark, wilting beneath her wrath, noticed with a dreadful tender pang, how the half-concealed curves of her bosom swelled with her anger.

“You disgusting little brat,” she whispered, “how dare you come home at this time . . . and in such a state? Faugh!” She wrinkled her nose and recoiled. “You’re simply sodden with brandy! Have you gone off your head, Mark Woodrofe?”

“D-don’t be cross, Fan!” stammered Mark despairingly. “I had to fight a man.”

“And yourself, it appears. Why, you’re smothered in filth, and . . . oh! . . . what’s that red stuff on your trousers? What have you been doing, Mark, for God’s sake tell me!”

“Don’t be frightened, Fan!” he reassured her hurriedly. “It’s only butchers’ garbage. They must have robbed me at the pub, and carried me to Smithfield.”

“Why,” hissed Fancy abruptly, “have you not been paying Father his rent for nearly two months?”

“Well, he couldn’t keep it from me. What were you holding that money back for?”

“I know. It was to gamble with. I warned you what would happen when you started playing pitch-and-toss with your carters.”

Mark was miserably silent. He could not tell her the truth. He had been trying, in fact, to save up two pounds to buy her a present, a beadwork bag with a silver clasp that he had seen one day while passing through the Pantheon Bazaar. An insane idea—but old Fawkes had given him the credit with such easy indifference as he sat with all his faculties bent on a sheet of Red Rover that he was colouring. Now all that Mark could falter was,

“Need it! Of course we need it, you little fool! We were short of our rent again this quarter . . . you know papa will not run his business sensibly . . . and with the butcher that had to be paid, I was at my wits’ end, especially as the landlords want to get rid of us, I believe. Father used to put your weekly half-crowns into the Dick Turpin mug on his mantelpiece, and when I took the hat off yesterday and found nothing, I nearly went down, my knees shook so.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Mark, racking his fevered head, “Mr. Hepplewhite would advance my wages . . .”

“Advance indeed! Oh yes, I don’t think! Mr. Hepplewhite’ll only have one thing to say to you. You won’t turn up to work to-day; you can’t as you are; so he’ll turn you off, and good riddance too; he’ll be right!”

Mark was silent, acknowledging inwardly the inevitability of what she foretold. If he and Ballon turned up at all—and Ballon was doubtless worse than he was—their condition would be noted; in any case they would never get through the long day of lifting and running; and when old Jawsticks ferreted out how they had behaved the very night after he had taken them to the Palace of Peace . . . well, there were no two guesses about what would follow. They would learn where the sweep’s boy puts the soot this time.

“Oh, Mark,” said Fancy bitterly, “to think you were such a nice little boy when you came to us . . . and now look at you, gambling, fighting, and robbing us! You’ve disappointed me worse than Alice Farwell. I’m ashamed of you . . . it hurts me!”

“Ashamed of me?” He drew himself up like a bow released. His eyes flashed a wounded defiance at her and a red spot throbbed on each cheekbone. “Then you won’t see any more of me; that’s all about it! I’m going, now. Keep what things I’ve got; it’ll make good part of my debt to your father, and if Jawsticks gives me the sack I’ll find other work, never fear, and pay back every farthing I owe you both.”

“Don’t be silly, Mark!” she cried in dismay. “I was only scolding you . . . I expect I can get a sub. from Mr. Behrmann to pay the rent.”

“To sea . . . to be a sweep’s boy . . . no, I’m too big for chimneys I s’pose . . . I’ll find something.”

“Don’t be a silly boy,” pleaded Fan maternally. “I wasn’t so cross as I made out to be. But I had a right to be furious with you.”

“Of course! Always a young boy! Jawsticks, too, always lecturing me like I was a Charity School kid! Well, I don’t feel a young boy any longer. If you cared in the way I need, you wouldn’t worry if I was young or old. But you don’t . . . and you can’t help that I suppose. So I’m going away from you all now, to find a man’s work. Good-bye!”

“You’ll be back to-night!” cried Fancy in exasperation; and at that moment, an early postman coming round the corner in scarlet coat and gold-braided hat, she remembered her bare legs and slammed the door with a little scream.

When she opened it only a minute later, she looked up and down the street in vain. It was empty save for the shimmering morning sun.

Mark sat upon a post on Tower Hill, letting his listless eyes rove over the wide space before the fortress, almost empty at this hour. One or two porters bent under bales were passing from a wharf to a warehouse, and round the curve of pale houses beyond the foliage of Trinity House garden a haycart grumbled its way across the cobbles, the mounting sun turning its crest to gold.

Mark wondered how he had managed to walk all that way. He supposed sleep and the Jew’s sluicing had done him good; the effects of the hocussed drink were wearing off. Anger, too, had borne him up when his knees were ready to give under him. . . . A gambler! A thief! A disgrace! He would make her sorry for saying those cruel and unjust things. . . . But at the moment he was chiefly conscious that he was being griped by the cruellest hunger he had known even in his hard life. Somewhere down by the Charterhouse he had noticed a loaf in the gutter and been tempted to snatch it. He had been too proud at the moment . . . but he would not be too proud now, if he had the chance again! A chill came over him, despite the warmth of the sunshine, as he reflected that it was by no means clear where his next meal was to come from at all. Go back and plead before Jawsticks? Never! But who was likely to offer work to an applicant without a coat, and (he looked down at his leg) with a trouser slashed nearly to the knee? He wished now that he had not been so generous in bequeathing his little property to Fan, who had only laughed at him for doing so. He wondered if he could with any dignity go back and ask at least for his Sunday trousers. . . .

A throbbing sound broke in upon his morose reverie. It came from within the courtyard of the Tower and resolved itself swiftly into the pulse of drums. A group of idlers ran together round the entrance to the castle and a Beefeater in blue Tudor tabard emerged from the shadow of the archway and motioned to them to stand clear. Mark slid off his post as he saw the flash of steel and the gleam of crimson and gold silk passing above the parapet of the inner drawbridge. A minute later a column of Footguards, marching by privilege through the City with bayonets fixed and colours flying, began to defile through the arch, while the music of “Annie Laurie” flooded the huge sloping square with a proud and mellow rhythm. Mark, who had started to run towards the Tower gates, paused as he saw the sunlit snake of scarlet winding across the expanse towards him. Rooted in fascination he stood as it drew near, absorbing every detail of the pageant.

In front of all strutted the Drum-Major twirling his gilt staff, followed by the wide lines of bandsmen with their brass pieces and the ranks of clean-washed, chubby drummer-boys. Then came the bearded sappers in their pipe-clayed aprons; and behind them the awesome Colonel on a black charger with a blue emblazoned saddle-cloth, his crested sabretache clicking against his sword as he rode. At his back rippled the companies, raised above mortal stature by their tailed coatees and bearskins and moving with the slow hip-swing of the Guards, in itself a menace of restrained force. The Queen’s and Regimental colours were in the midst, carried by Ensigns with boyish faces and shoulders artificially widened by their epaulettes, and guarded by crimson-sashed Sergeants, whose eyes glowered stolidly between their curled whiskers. The column was closed by the Second-in-Command mounted on a slim-legged pony that sidled and chafed against its bit.

Mark gazed as at a god upon this brown-faced, fierce-looking man, with his waist drawn slimly in by his silk sash, his hands elegantly gloved in white, the careful crease of his gold-striped trouser falling over the instep of his tiny spurred boot. He could not have believed such unimaginable splendour could be borne with such self-possession. . . . And suddenly a voice from just behind him spoke in his ear:

“They don’t look so bad, do they?” it said. “And yet they’re only mud-crushers—if they are the Guards! What you ought to see now is the Mercuries, that is the 24th ’Is Royal ’Ighness the ’Ereditary Prince of Saxe-Rothburg’s Own Hussars, galloping past in column of troop at Windsor Park reviews. That ’ud show you!”

For a moment Mark did not answer. He was craning his head after the last of the marching Guardsmen, who, in the cessation of the brass, were winding their way out of sight to an angry squeal of fifes, down a street of leaning brown-brick houses. How he envied their poise and power, their serene air of holding their appointed place in the frame of things. What a different state from his!

Then at last he turned with a sigh, and looked sideways and upwards into the smiling face of an enormously tall Sergeant with a pill-box forage cap adorned with fluttering ribbons over one ear, a mighty chest arching under a weight of gold loops and tassels, and long, straddling legs in crimson overalls. His spurs clinked on the stones as he stepped back to lay a fatherly hand on the boy’s shoulder.

For a moment Mark stared at him with a puzzled forehead. Then memory lit up, and he recalled, all those dim years ago, the little scene by the Monument—the hooting crowd and the drunken hussar. This was the very same uniform! A queer sense of something foreordained stole over him, and he waited as if under a spell for the big Sergeant’s next words.

“You seem a bit marked, comrade,” he said. “Looks a’most as if you’d been to the wars, too! What’s been goin’ forward? Had a fight?”

“I should say a Hell of a one!” chuckled the Sergeant, shifting the quid he was chewing up against his shiny chin-strap. “But never mind! You look the right sort of lad for me. Feeling hungry, eh?” He lunged sportively at the pit of Mark’s stomach with his long riding-whip, and Mark felt as if his hollowness would resound.

“There now! And I’ve not breakfasted either yet! Come across wi’ me to the Tiger yonder—it’s my headquarters just now—and we’ll see if they haven’t something ready to put a bit o’ heart into both of us!”

“I can’t,” he said hurriedly. “I’ve nothing to pay with. . . . Good day.”

“Here! here! here! Wait a minute, just a minute!” expostulated the tall hussar. “Who spoke about paying? Her Majesty, bless her pretty toes, pays for both of us!”

“I can’t take a meal from you or anyone,” he said shortly, “unless I earn it.”

“Oh, I’ll show you how to earn it all right, never fear,” the Sergeant replied.

“I’ll pledge you my stripes,” affirmed the other, “that you’ll have all the b——y work you want in your mortal days. There! Is that good enough?”

The Sergeant under his bushy red brows had deep brown eyes with a frosty sparkle; and though Mark divined a spice of mockery in their dancing depths, he could not but yield to the lure of them. He fell into step beside this new strange companion.

“I’m Sergeant Trant of the Mercuries, that’s who I am,” he boomed as they paced along to the musical tinkle of his long, double-rowelled spurs. “What did I tell you the Mercuries were, now?”

“The 24th, the Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Rothburg’s Own Hussars,” repeated Mark with a relish in the syllables.

“Right! You’re a bright lad I can see, and the sort that gets on fast, damme if you aren’t! That’s it: Prince Leopold’s Own; Regimental Motto: Velox et Acer, which means ‘Quicker nor Hell to the turn-up!’ What’s the regimental motto?”

“As you were!” thundered the Sergeant. “Ve-lox et Ac-er . . . say it after me now.”

“Very smart! And here we are at the Tiger, and I can smell our breakfast a-frizzling.”

But on the step Sergeant Trant stopped short, and seizing Mark by the shoulder said to him with a glance like a flash of steel,

“You tell me the truth now, or it’ll be wuss for you! You an’t in indentures, are you? You know what I mean! You an’t any man’s ’prentice?”

The Sergeant, with an immediate return of his geniality, clapped him on the back as they entered the sanded back-parlour of the little public-house together.

“That’s all right, then. Else I could ’a’ done nothing for you. And what a chance you’d ’a’ missed then, comrade! Are your parents living, by the way?”

“I’m not . . . I’m not rightly sure that I have any parents,” said Mark slowly.

“Oh, is that the way of it,” asked the Sergeant with indifference. “It don’t signify at all. Just let me run the tape over you. . . . Height, five six, good! . . . chest, thirty-four . . . leg, thirty-one . . . couldn’t be better . . . No, we don’t trouble over parents’ consent when you’re eighteen.”

The Sergeant wound his tape up with a whir; then walked whistling to a small hatch, which he lifted to shout through, “Polly, bring them ham and eggs, plenty for two, ma luv!” Then turning back to Mark he observed,

“My hearing an’t quite all it used to be, unfortnitly. But I understood you to say just now that you’d passed your eighteenth birthday. That’s very lucky. The Mercuries han’t no use for boys just at present, and I know’d a young chap missed his chance wi’ ’em altogether through saying he was under age. Had to ’list as a paltry drummer with a foot-slogging mob, and no bounty neither! Whereas another, a fine upstanding lad like yourself, ’ad the sense to say slap-out he was eighteen . . . and no questions was asked.”

“But do you mean,” cried Mark, his heart beginning to beat furiously, “that you want me to become a s . . .”

“Stand at haise!” interrupted the Sergeant pleasantly. “Here comes our breakfast. We can talk business arter that.”

The young woman came in bearing a smoking dish piled high with ham and fried eggs.

“Two pints, Polly!” the Sergeant ordered, as he motioned Mark to draw up to the table. “That’s the only breakfust tipple for a soldier.”

Mark made a prodigious meal, encouraged by Sergeant Trant, and drained his pewter pot manfully. It seemed to clear away the last traces of the preceding night’s disorder.

“That’s the kind o’ breakfust we has every day in the Mercuries, on’y our regimental cooks they fries ham a leetle bit more delicate-like. . . . Polly!” he shouted, “a clay pipe! I likes to smoke when I’m a-doing business. Now,” he continued when he had his churchwarden alight, “I take it, comrade, that you’re at a bit of a loose-end, eh?”

“I am,” groaned Mark, “I’ve lost my position . . . leastways, I’m pretty certain I have.”

“What kind of a position might that be?” enquired the Sergeant with a wary cock of his eye.

“Drugs!” he snorted, “for a chap like you! Running errands, I s’pose, at some old cripple’s call all the day! Never your own master for a minute! Can’t you think of a way of doing better for yourself than that? I’m ashamed of you . . . What’s your name, by the way? Mark? Well, if that isn’t odd! It was my younger brother’s name, and you remind me devilishly of him! Mark, if you was my brother now, I’d show you a better way than that.”

“Well, now, an’t it lucky, then, that I met you this morning? This arternoon would ’a’ been too late, for I had my eye on another boy, I will not deceive you, what lives by Hyde Park. He’s just got his discharge from Eton, and his parent—who’s a Markiss, that’s what he is—he says to me on’y last week, ‘Sergeant Trant,’ he says, ‘what hever am I to do with young Clarence?’ . . . But never mind, he’s lost ’is chance; you’ve got it; that’s the way of the world. I adwise you, Mark . . . but please yourself, we’ve plenty to pick from . . . I adwise you to enlist in the Mercuries.”

“The Mercuries, I said!” snapped the Sergeant. “Don’t you bother your ’ed about the b——y Army. Let the Army look arter itself! The Mercuries will be your family. You said you had no parents: well, the Colonel ’ull be your father, an’ the Regimental Sergeant-Major, he’ll be a mother to you!”

“Thanks!” exclaimed Mark with a twinge of resentful memory, “I’ve had enough of mothers!”

“Please yourself, my boy,” answered the Sergeant loftily, blowing clouds of smoke. “P’raps you don’t want to dress smart; have a horse of your own to ride where you like, and see the world? Look at me! I was in Burma last year, Cape Town the year afore that, India six years ago—every soldier can have two servants of his own in India to clean his accouterments, and kick ’em like dogs if they don’t do it proper. If that don’t attract you, with money in your pocket, too, shilling a day and a three pun bounty on joining; yes, and what’s more with a chance of rising Lootenant arter a year or two’s easy work, and mebbe Colonel afore you finished your time, say so. I’ve had two comrades become regimental commanders in my day, and should ’a’ done so, mos’ probably, myself—but I never had your eddication when a boy, which has sort o’ kept me back, you see. Well: it’s yes or no. ’Cept for this one vacancy our strength’s full in the Mercuries; it’ll be too late to-morrow!”

“But, of course, I want to join,” cried Mark with shining eyes. “I’ve always longed to be a soldier, but I thought I was too young . . . though I’m eighteen, of course!” he remembered to add. “Let’s start off at once! Where do we go to?”

“Wait for it! Wait for it!” growled the Sergeant. “One o’ the fust things you got to learn if you do join, my lad, is to move hon the word o’ command and not before it. . . . ’Owever,” he relaxed, “you ain’t in barricks yet. I was only giving you a wrinkle or two. No, all I’m asking of you for the moment is for to accept of this shilling . . . it’s a bright new one, that’s lucky, too! Will you take it, lad?”

Mark turned the shining coin over in his fingers with an enchanted air; then he sought for a pocket, and remembered his coatless and ragged condition.

“I think, sir,” he said, “I ought to call back at my home and try to get some cleaner clothes. Also,” he added with a first compunctious feeling, “I ought to give my employer notice that I’m bettering myself. Yes, I ought to do that. I’ll soon be back.”

He turned towards the door; but the Sergeant was before him and had his shoulders against it.

“None o’ that!” he said, laying a finger beside his great, hooked nose. “I been gammoned that way before. You won’t want any o’ those fine clothes o’ yours: it’s a crime for a soldier to be in possession of civilian clothing. If you want to look smart”—he detached a ribbon from the knot on his cap—“we’ll pin this on you to show you’ve taken the Queen’s shilling—and don’t you ferget it! As for your employer, if he wants you back, it’ll cost him a pretty penny now. No, my lad, you’re entitled to be billeted and arter twenty-four hours I takes you before the civil magistrate to be attested. Arter that, there’ll be an escort to wait on you, hand and foot, and take you down to our barricks at Ranalow, with every comfort and conwenience a gentleman can require. Till then, you may lay on it, I’m not going to let you out o’ my sight. Let me smoke my pipe out and we’ll step out for the recruit-billets—behind Wellington barricks they are—a tidy way from here. Mebbe, I’ll pick up one or two more likely lads as we go.”

“But you said,” remonstrated Mark in an injured tone, “that you were at full strength and that I was being given the last chance there was!”

“Ah!” said the Sergeant, shaking his head, “you’ll hear a lot of queer things in the Army. Shouldn’t believe too much of what you hear.”

But it was not in the fates that Mark should depart without a last interview with his employer. For, as they presently set out along Lower Thames Street together, the Sergeant accosting every idle or down-at-heels young fellow they passed, and ignoring with wooden indifference the affronts he frequently received, who should come hurrying through the stone arch of his wharf by the Custom House but Mr. Hepplewhite himself!

He seemed to pass at first without recognizing Mark; then stopped, turned his head and waved his neatly-rolled umbrella.

“What’s all this, sir?” he demanded as they came up with him. “Why aren’t you in the warehouse? What are you doing in the streets?” He stared. “And in that filthy condition, too? Lor’-bless-my-soul! What does it all mean? What are you doing in the company of this”—he glared askance at the Sergeant’s uniform—“this person? Run along sharp, now, to Mincing Lane—d’ye hear me?—and I’ll speak to you when I get back.”

“Beg pardon, sir,” he said, “but I’m afeard that can’t be, no’ow. This young man has taken the Queen’s shilling, and is in my charge.”

“It’s true, sir,” said Mark with swelling pride. “I’ve enlisted in the 24th Prince Leopold’s Own Hussars. I’m sorry, sir,” he went on with a manly ingenuousness, “to be leaving you so sudden like. But I had to take my chance while I could, and I was afraid you wouldn’t take me back after I’d fought Jim Ballon. I had to lick him, sir, or he’d ’a’ licked me.”

“How did you lick him?” asked Mr. Hepplewhite, twisting his whisker. “He could give you a stone, and six inches in the reach, too, I should say. How did you lick him, tell me that?”

Faltering and bewildered at first, but gathering eloquence as he saw Mr. Hepplewhite and the Sergeant listening with equal attention, Mark described his battle as well as he could, round by round, Mr. Hepplewhite from time to time putting in such interjections as “That was a mistake!” or “You should have hooked with your right!” or “Clinching and throwing aren’t science—to my mind!”

“So,” concluded Mark, “he was down and I was down, sir, but my second was kind enough to bite my ear.” (Mr. Hepplewhite gave a hiss of disgust.) “And I came to and he didn’t. That was all, sir.”

“All and enough, too, I should hope! Never let such an outrage occur again! I’ve seldom heard anything so barbarous and revolting.”

“It was a good set-to, I should say,” commented the Sergeant, “and it’s my belief this lad’ll make a fust-rate hussar!”

“That he certainly won’t, so don’t delude yourself on that score, my man!”

“I’m Sergeant Trant, of the 24th, if quite agreeable to you, sir,” corrected the soldier.

“It’s not at all agreeable to me!” objected Mr. Hepplewhite. “Surely, Sergeant, if that’s what you are—though your military mumbo-jumbo means nothing to me, I may tell you; I’m a member of the Peace Party and I’ll knock down any man on the spot who dares to say it’s a thing to be ashamed of!—surely, Sergeant, you must know you can’t kidnap children in our streets like this!”

“All done strictly according to regulations. The lad’s taken the shilling and that’s all there is to it.”

“Oh, your infernal shilling!” Mr. Hepplewhite felt in his trouser-pocket. “If that’s all there is to it, it can be settled between us two here and now. Here’s your shilling; go and buy beer with it!”

“Unfortnitly, sir, it’s not my shilling but her gracious Majesty’s. If you want to buy this recruit out now, you must appear before the magistrate to-morrow and pay twenty shillings smart money.”

“I’ll see you damned first, Sergeant Cant, or whatever your wretched name is!”

“And I hope you won’t think of it, sir!” broke in Mark. “For I an’t worth it, I know, and I mean to go. I think I should die if I wasn’t let to be a soldier after all!”

“My poor boy, you haven’t the least idea what you’re doing! To let you go would be to consign you to moral ruin”—the Sergeant coughed in mild deprecation—“though I’m certainly not going to pay a pound to have you back when I can fill your place this afternoon for nothing . . . that’s not economic. But think of the disgrace to Hepplewhite Brothers! What will they think of me in the Lane? What will they say to me at the next Mansion House banquet? I’ve had boys that ran off to sea and boys that embezzled the petty-cash and boys that were locked up for assaulting police officers. But a boy who did this thing I’ve never had in the warehouse before.”

“Begging your pardon again, sir,” said the Sergeant, “but I don’t see anything disgraceful in serving the Queen against her enemies. M’reover, it’s a fine roving life for a young feller.”

“Is it indeed? I beg to differ from you, my friend. I’d rather see this boy in a convict-transport than in the Army . . . Why? Because a convict can’t do any more harm, and a soldier can. That’s why!”

“If you took me back, sir,” interrupted Mark again firmly, “I’d only run away, I’m sure I should; I shouldn’t be able to help it.”

Mr. Hepplewhite wheeled round and looked at him for a long while in silence. Slowly his bright grey eyes dimmed and the corners of his sensitive mouth began to quiver.

“I’m sorry,” he said at last in a voice of sincere grief. “I’m sorry . . . I feel guilty, as if you were my own flesh and blood. . . . But it’s bred in the bone, I suppose, it’s bred in the bone! I might have known it before ever you came to us . . . I shouldn’t have let you come.”

“Well, good-bye, Mark,” he went on, holding out his hand. “I wish you luck, just the same. Do your duty in that state of life into which the Devil seems to have called you. If you must put on that accursed coat, keep it clean, keep it clean . . . and, as far as it’s possible, Mark, perform your military duties in the spirit of Peace. . . . Strictly, I could ask you for a week’s wages in lieu of notice, but I won’t . . . I won’t; and that’s as good as a present of nine and six to you. . . . Won’t you think better of it, though, boy, before it’s too late? Well, then, I can’t help it. You must lie on the bed you’ve made.”

“Well, there’s a fine old buffer!” declared the Sergeant heartily, as he watched Mr. Hepplewhite’s black broadcloth back bustling up Pudding Lane. “And now, my lad, quick march to Fortune!”

They made their way leisurely westwards, dropping into several public-houses and annexing on their course two more out-of-luck youths, one called Jim Benton (and it appeared that Sergeant Trant had another brother, named Jim) the other Harry Vale (and it appeared that Sergeant Trant had a nevvy named Harry). And so at last in the late afternoon they arrived footsore at the dingy lodgings in Westminster where the Sergeant handed them over to the care of a Corporal with the words, “See these gentlemen’s feather-beds are properly aired to-night, won’t you, Jeames!” He was turning to take his leave, when Mark darted out into the street again and seized him by his gold-striped sleeve.

“Please, sir,” he panted, “will you tell me something before you go? Now you know me, do you really think I have a chance of being made an officer?”

Sergeant Trant shifted his quid with deliberation from one cheek to the other. Then he looked up calculatingly at the chimney-pots and down again at the paving-stones.

“I should say, my lad,” he said at length with a winning frankness, “that it depends very much on whether you comes of a family of long-livers!”

Ranalow Cavalry Barracks have long since been pulled down and their site ploughed by the red lines of a spreading suburb. They stood on the western edge of the metropolis, a few miles beyond the village of Hammersmith. Close by, a bleak and gorse-grown common, suitable for the manœuvres of horse and guns, stretched in a sandy waste to the indefinite horizon, its monotony diversified only by black plantations of the newly-popular Scottish fir. The gaunt, rectangular barrack buildings of purple brick, picked out with salmon-pink at the arches of windows and lintels of doors, rose capped by duplicate square towers with rasping vanes and sombre-faced clocks, in the midst of a desolation half-rural, half-urban.

Round the barracks a squalid little town or swollen village had sprung up. There were streets of mean grey houses, spotted with beer-shops bearing signs like the Three Gunners, the Royal Hussar, the Marshal Blucher, the Prince Albert; a reeking slaughter-house whence rations were contracted for; and a funereal little station on a branch of the Great Western Railway, watched day and night by a uniformed patrol on the lookout for absentees without pass, or deserters. Further away towards London, over the dark heads of the coppices within a great private park that lined the road for miles with its flint-faced walls, there rose the chimneys of the Government small-arms factory to which a proportion of the dwellers in Ranalow made their way to work each day by an early train.

Over all Ranalow brooded a sense of strain and vigilance. Its roads were parcelled out and marked by boards:—OFFICERS’ RIDE ONLY—CLOSED TO CIVILIANS—SOLDIERS MUST KEEP TO THE RIGHT-HAND FOOTPATH. The civil police detachment was large and grim; military police with armlets stalked lynx-eyed to detect such crimes as unbuttoned great-coats, busbies awry or dulled spurs; at night the picket armed with sabres tramped slowly in single file through the ill-lit streets to maintain the deathly quiet.

There was neither mirth nor gaiety in Ranalow. Even the children seemed to hurry along as if in dread of the bark of reproof behind their backs. The beer-shops and public-houses were crammed after dark, but by a low-voiced throng raising and lowering its pots as if by numbers. On summer evenings, which themselves seemed to fall with a metallic dreariness in the streets of Ranalow, troopers lounging on benches outside the inns, with their chins forbiddenly drooping on their chests, rose and sank back mechanically in salute at the continual passage of officers riding and driving in uniform or fashionable mufti; then slipped furtively away down alleys or to the bushes fringing the common in chase of the young, raddled strumpets of the town. Drunkenness raged, and every night tottering or handcuffed men were dragged back to quarters by the picket; but there was no conviviality. Every few months the night would explode in savage brawls between hussar and dragoon, dragoon and gunner, fought out with fist and belt and artillery short-swords. Then trumpets would screech hysterically in the squares and immense guards fight their way down the streets through showers of stones and carbine-rods to quell the rioters. The following days the town saw through the iron bars of the barrack-squares aching gangs picking the grass-blades from between the stones with dinner-forks, or winced from the thud of whips on human flesh upon the parade-grounds at dawn. Never the thump of the football or click of the bat was to be heard on field or common; only the crunch of regulated feet, the trample of horse-hoofs and jarring of guns from year’s end to year’s end.

Besides the Mercuries a regiment of Dragoon Guards and two troops of Horse and a battery of Field Artillery were stationed at Ranalow at the date when Mark Woodrofe, with a mixed batch of recruits for all these units, got down upon the platform of the little station.

“Step along lively now, you devils: don’t limp like a set of bleeding cripples!” roared the Corporal who had been sent as escort with them from London, and Mark obeyed, already inured to the change of tone that had followed his attestation before the magistrate in the smelly Westminster Police Court. For no sooner had he kissed the Book and sworn that for the term of ten years he would “honestly and faithfully defend her Majesty, her heirs and successors in person, crown and dignity against all enemies”, and “observe and obey all orders of her Majesty, her heirs and successors, of all the Generals and officers set over me . . .” than the chaffing geniality of the recruiting staff gave place to black looks and oath-enforced commands. And this had continued all the way until now when they were being hurried through the streets with the Corporal marching aloof on the pavement and trying to look as if he were not connected with them.

Thus they came to the iron gates and railings of the 24th Hussars’ Barrack, with the guardroom just inside, and the splendid main-guard sentry standing by with flashing sabre. Across the square, beyond a small lawn enclosed by spiked chains and pillars, could be seen the façade and twin-towers of the officers’ mess, in front of which were ranged pyramids of cannon-balls and four brass French guns captured by the regiment in the rout of Salamanca. And suddenly Mark’s spirit leapt within him. For out of the guardroom there stepped with a swing a superb creature, with a youthful face beneath his crimson-plumed busby, his astrakhan-trimmed sling-jacket flung dashingly over his left shoulder and the collar of his jacket stiff with silver badges. Setting a trumpet to his lips he sent forth a call like a hurried heart-beat that pealed back in wild echoes from the stern purple walls behind him. Mark caught a glimpse of commotion round the barrack-room stairs and of horses being led through stable-doors; then the Corporal bustled them down a side alley behind a wing of the main buildings on the square and handed the recruits to the Mercuries over at the door of the Orderly Room to a non-commissioned officer of their own regiment who began to take down their names.

While this was being done Mark had time to gaze about him and an uneasy sense of imprisonment stole over him. Not far from where they stood, a twelve-foot wall, topped with ferocious spikes, parted the Mercuries’ barrack from the quarters of the Artillery. At its angle an arched gateway with thick wooden doors half-open gave on to a lane, and this was guarded by a picket in undress uniform. Behind the north wall of the Mess building was the south wall of the Dragoon Guards’ Mess, and beyond that the whole pattern of the Hussar barracks was duplicated, tower by tower and brick by brick. The name-taking was still going on amid annoyance caused by the differing pronunciations and wild ideas of spelling of the various recruits, when there issued slowly from the Orderly Room a tall, lean figure with legs like scythes, deep-sunk cheeks, one of them indented by a bullet scar like a star-fish, inky whiskers curling from the rim of his peaked forage-cap, and hollow, glazed eyes. He walked with jerky, even steps like a jointed marionette, and halting a few paces from the line of recruits seemed to stiffen into the rigidity of a perfect wooden soldier. Only the corner of his mouth below his damaged cheek twitched continually as though he were chewing and chewing some inexistent quid of tobacco.

At his appearance the Corporal taking the names got livelier and angrier and ended his task in a fusillade of curses. Then he turned, and, clicking his heels, cried,

The Sergeant-Major answered nothing, but, still chewing with his riding-whip tucked under his arm, paced slowly along the line. Mark felt a chill as the corpse-like eyes and drawn discontented mouth moved past him. He saw that the Sergeant-Major was old, very old and shrivelled; but that he disguised his failing powers by the dandyism of his dyed whiskers and his jaunty way of throwing out his brilliantly-polished boots and spurs as he walked.

His inspection ended, he returned to the middle of the line with thoughtful steps, and then, inflating his padded chest, spoke in a voice that had still the note of some great bell, though cracked and jarred by age.

“I never saw,” he cried, “a dirtier set of gutter-sweepings! Who told you, any of you, that you could make soldiers? You,” he continued, flashing an eye with green malevolence in it upon the youth who stood at the head of the line, “who told you you could join the Mercuries, you fish-wife’s by-blow?”

“Answer me, will you?” The Sergeant-Major’s voice rose to a scream. “Did I say you might join? . . . Did the Colonel? . . . Did the Adjutant? . . . No? . . . Then what the HELL do you mean by coming here to me?”

There was a dead silence into which he spat with long-drawn loading-action. Then,

“Corporal,” he pursued, “there’s at least two of ’em knock-kneed, all pot-bellies, and that greasy-pole there” (it was Vale) “hangs out all his . . .” But the Sergeant-Major’s further physiological discoveries will not bear printing. “And there,” he concluded, switching his livid glare on to Mark, “there’s a gentleman who isn’t listening to me at all! Waiting to be asked into the Officers’ Mess, no doubt! Come here, you. . . . Smarter than that! . . . Don’t double!”—as Mark broke into a run—“What’s your name?”

“I’m the Regimental-Sergeant-Major-and-you-call-me-Sergeant-Major; only officers entitled to be called ‘Sir’! Understand?”

“Well, you may not know Mrs. Godliman, my lad; but I’ll wager my stripes that before you’re many days older, you’ll know her son!” and with a smile of sinister joy he tapped himself with his white glove upon his hollow, arched chest. “Yes, you’ll know me!” he added. “Fall back into rank! Corporal, sweep these muckings out of my sight! Take ’em to Quarter-Master’s stores . . . HALT!”

The old man swung abruptly round and he and the Corporal stiffened like ramrods in salute.

Along the gravel path strolled a boy of about twenty, in elegant mufti riding-clothes, reading a newspaper and puffing at a cigar. As he passed, he acknowledged the veteran’s salute with a flick of his glove; then turned the corner and ran up the white stone steps to the Officers’ Mess. The N.C.O.s relaxed as though Deity had passed, and then fell upon the recruits.

“Don’t you know enough even to stand to attention properly when an officer passes you? . . . Keep your brains in your guts, do you? . . . We’ll teach you not to go to sleep standing up afore we’ve done with you . . . etc. . . . etc. . . . etc.” till Mark wondered where all the language flowed from.

They were marched along again past the tumble-down line of the married soldiers’ quarters, like a painfully-scrubbed slum, to the twilit Quarter-Master’s store, where, in a choking smell of cloth and camphor, pigeon-holes rose from floor to ceiling, stuffed with bundles of clothing, piles of forage-caps and busbies in round boxes, shelf-fuls of Wellington boots. At the same time an orderly arrived with a paper and shouted out the Troops to which the different recruits had been posted. “M. Woodrofe,” he called at length, “B Troop”; and Mark, approaching the desk where the fat Quarter-Master Sergeant sat with a stump of blue pencil behind his ear, learned to his stunned dismay that the whole of the £3 bounty that had been promised him by Recruiting-Sergeant Trant would be swallowed up in paying for various parts of his equipment.

It was, therefore, in a bewildered manner that he received from the shelves his brown busby and plume, round forage-cap, black satin stock, blue gold-barred jacket, astrakhan-edged sling-jacket or pelisse, worn with empty sleeves, cloak-wise, over the shoulder, white leather pouch-belt and sword-belt with black sabretache, a mysterious gold and crimson padded girdle with long loops, originally a defence against body-thrusts—(there seemed no end to the burdens piling up in his arms)—crimson overalls with straps to fasten under the instep, half-Wellington boots, elegantly cut with pointed toes, curved steel spurs and the screws to fasten them into the heels . . . “You better take care o’ them screws, d’you hear, you sleepy young hound, you’ll get no more if you lose them!”; then the Mercuries’ stable-jacket of white canvas trimmed with blue, then underclothing, three shirts and three pairs of socks; a razor, the mess-kit with knife, fork and spoon. . . . Mark for a moment felt rich, and forgot to worry over how to pay Fancy his debt.

The Quarter-Master Sergeant’s orderly superintended the recruits’ fumbling attempts to attire themselves, and swiftly rolled up and confiscated their civilian clothing. “You hadn’t anything in these pockets, had you?” he said briskly to Mark, and disappeared with the bundle before Mark remembered that fourpence out of his recruiting shilling, and his clasp-knive, were in a trouser-pocket; but it was then too late to protest.

Once dressed the recruits were paraded before the Quarter-Master Sergeant, who attended closely to any misfit that was noticeable to the eye.

“Please these boots are too big, Sergeant, and this white jacket too tight round the throat; it throttles me, like,” Mark felt encouraged by this to complain, and at once drew down on himself a storm.

“Think this is Savile Row, you——?” demanded the Sergeant. “You find out how to make ’em do, or there’ll be trouble.”

“And this regiment,” suddenly said a deep voice that thrilled Mark to the core, “used to be known in the Service as Conyham’s Dandies, wasn’t it?”

A tall man with a Sergeant’s stripes and a crown on his arm was standing in the shadows just inside the door, and to him the Quarter-Master Sergeant turned in hot protest.

“What’s wrong, then, Pup?” he asked. “Where will you find another regiment that provides every man with white kid gloves for review order, and every Warrant Officer and Sergeant with a real osprey plume for his busby—all out of the pockets of the Mess? We an’t any less smart than when Lord Conyham was commanding only it stands to reason a Colonel’s got to save on something unless he’s to make a flat loss on the clothing. S’pose we do run a bit short on fatigue dress sometimes, what of it? I don’t suppose that our Colonel makes a hundred a year out o’ the whole clothing contract . . . and we know how Infantry Colonels get rich, don’t we, Pup?”

“And is this what I’ve got to lick into shape?” demanded the other, stepping into a ray of light from a small overhead window, and Mark, as he looked at him, felt a sudden lightening of his depressed spirit.

Regimental Staff Sergeant-Major Philip Jarman, the chief drill-instructor of the Mercuries, tall and lithe of frame, inspired a singular confidence by his open, ruddy face, framed in a measured three inches of dark whisker beside the ear and with a thin line of moustache shadowing his firm lips. His black eyes were lively and intelligent, and a spark of sarcastic humour played continually about them. He had won distinction and a nickname in the Sikh War, where during a charge at Firozshah he had captured an Indian banner; guiding his horse with his knees alone, he had actually torn the silk from the haft with his strong white teeth, while strangling the bearer with his left hand and killing two armoured lancers who sought to rescue the flag with his sabre. “Hold fast, pup!” his sporting Troop leader had roared exultantly as he saw the conflict, and “Holdfast” or “Pup”, Jarman had remained in the regiment from that day. The blood-rusted banner hung in the Officers’ Mess.

He had been for five years now drill-instructor to the Mercuries, and it was recognized that by the clearness of his teaching, the force of his personality, and a certain infectious vivacity of soul, he made better work of his recruits than more mechanical teachers. Lord Conyham had not approved the rumours that reached him of a relative leniency that Jarman showed towards worried but well-meaning beginners, and the Regimental Sergeant-Major Godliman lost no opportunity of supplying the harshness which he judged the drill-instructor to neglect; but on the whole the officers agreed that “Pup’s” material gave less trouble when it joined the Troop than did the product of more brutalizing methods.

Jarman was now running his keen eye over the dejected-looking boys in their strange uniform.

“Well, lads,” he said, “you and I are going to know each other better. You’re a likely-looking lot on the whole, and I hope you’ll prove a credit to the Mercuries. If there’s any of you here that doesn’t mean to be that, then by G——” his mellow voice suddenly hardened to the smack of a whip, “he’ll curse his mother for bearing him, and wish his own funeral-party was parading. Think that over, lads, before to-morrow afternoon!”—and he clanked out of the store with an easy jingle of his spurs.

The recruits stood gaping after him, and as they stood, there rose from the distant Square a burst of plaintive and heart-searching music. It was the assembled trumpets sounding “Stables”. Like every cavalry regiment the Mercuries had their own elaborately harmonized variation of this summons, incorporating their famous “Salamanca call” based on the snatch from a popular song of Peninsular days which the Trumpet-Major of the 24th was said to have played derisively as Anson’s Light Cavalry Brigade chased Maucune’s infantry in flying splinters from their ridge in the sweltering, dusty sunset of July 22nd. As Mark listened, his fibres tautened; his sense of confinement and the humiliation of his reception in barracks flowed away from him; and he felt a secret assurance that he had freed himself for ever from the drabness and triviality of the life he had left behind him. Again the proud figure of the young trumpeter he had seen at the gates rose before him, and a daring thought sprang into his mind. Might not he some day be no longer a listener only, but one of the company that made this magic music? How did a recruit become a trumpeter? He must wait and find out: it did not do, he had learned already, to ask questions of Sergeants.

Meanwhile he had been taken over with four other recruits posted to the same Troop, Vale, Benton, a cockney youth named Appleyard, and a silent Scotsman, McBean, to the Troop office, warned again that he had better be a credit, this time to B Troop, and put in his barrack-room, a low-roofed loft over the stables, reached by crazy wooden stairs from the outside, where forty rope-work cots without mattresses were crammed together so as to leave a bare six inches between each. Two brown blankets apiece were thrown to the recruits, and they were told that there were no bolsters to spare. On the iron rim of his bed he sat uncomfortably, wondering, until there came an inrush of the men of his Troop returned from stables. They were young fellows for the most part, looking older than their ages by reason of their whiskers and heavy moustaches, and they greeted the recruits with a rough kindliness, addressing them as “Rookie!”, enquiring if they came from “the Smoke” (that is London), and vying in offers to show them the way to the canteen for a mug of “pig’s ear”, until Mark explained blushing that he, at any rate, was penniless, when they transferred their interest to the burnishing of pieces of their accoutrements, until “dinner up” sounded from the Cookhouse. Then a board and trestles were dragged into the narrow alley between the lines of cots, and, perched on the foot of their beds, they waited for the cookhouse orderlies to arrive with the great tins of beef and potatoes. And didn’t they smell strong! Oh no! not at all, not by no stretch of imaginashun! reflected Mark wryly as he struggled to stab his black potato with a fork, and listened to his more experienced comrades begging for more “gippo”—the greasy gravy that covered with its flavour some at least of the sins of the contractors.

It was not till the following afternoon that, with the eight other recruits collected from the different Troops, Mark found himself on the Square under the blazing July sun facing the piercing eye of the drill sergeant.

“Now the first thing I can see,” began Jarman, “is that not one of you knows how to stand to attention properly. I don’t want to be seen marching about with a set of cripples, desprit cases, and I won’t, that I can tell you! Now stand up smartly, looking straight to your front, the chin up, the shoulders back, the hands down the centre seam of the trousers. . . . Hollow your backs; why, you remind me of a lot of old men out of one of ’Ogarth’s pictures! That’s a little better. . . . Now on the command, ‘Stand at haise’ . . .” he explained, and at the end of his demonstration they duly attempted to come to the old-fashioned “easy” with hands clasped in front of them; but the noise they made, he complained, was like “skirmishing fire”. “Those hands of yours,” he pursued, “would look like a shower of sleet if you had your white gloves on, and one day you’ll be wearing ’em, you know! Now attend to me carefully—I’m not telling you stories for to amuse you, but so’s you can understand the spirit of the regiment—just listen and I’ll explain to you why the Mercuries allus wear white kid gloves in review order.”

And he told them briefly, pungently, of the night at Brussels before the march-out to Quatre Bras, and how a detachment of the Mercuries—“Light Dragoons, not Hussars, we then was”—had furnished stewards and a guard of honour for the Duke of Wellington at the Duchess of Richmond’s famous ball. “All of ’em issued with white kid gloves, they was, to make the party smart. Regimental Sergeant-Major he was there and he remembers. And when the assembly sounded, our chaps had to ride out in such a hurry to join the rest of the regiment, that was acting advance-guard to the leading column, that they still had their party gloves on. But they got there, jumping dykes and hedges as they went, and was present when we lambasted Kellermann’s cuirassiers. The Colonel thanked ’em for their march, and they asked leave to wear their gloves the next day at Waterloo. Since when the Mercuries have always been served with white kid gloves for all full-dress p’rades. Why? Not simply to look pretty, that I can tell you; but so’s we shall remember. Those men remembered our motto, Velox et Acer, Swift and Sharp, and so we remember them. When you lads go into action—as you will some day, for there’s no peace for an army that’s got the globe to take care of—when you go into action you’ll remember, too, that you’re not just a mob of trained cavalry soldiers; no, you’re the Mercuries, which makes the Hell of a difference. You’re the Mercuries; and you can take it from me that behind them clouds up over your heads—don’t stare about there, attend to what I’m saying!—the Mercuries that died at Dettingen, at Talavera and Albuera and Salamanca, at Quater Bras and Mudki and Firozshah is looking down at you, relying on you not to disgrace ’em! And I reckon they’d bob behind the sky again in ’orror at the way you come to attention and stand at aise. It ’ud make ’em blush! So try and do better, else there’ll be trouble for you! Party! . . . wait for it, that’s the cautionary word, I tell you . . . Party! ’Shun!”

There was a noticeable difference in crispness as the recruits straightened their knees and slapped their hands back to their trouser-seams. Jarman marched them to and fro over the Square, teaching them to swing their arms high, and practising them in turning and bringing their heels together without catching their feet in their unfamiliar spurs. Once the passage of some men on horseback distracted their attention, and he sternly bade them look straight to the front.

“It’ll be a long while afore any of you, as far as I can see, will be fit to be allowed to touch a horse! You work hard at your foot-drill and learn to walk like soldiers before you think of riding! I’ll make Mercuries of you,” he concluded before dismissing them, “or break you to bits!”

. . . And sometimes it really seemed to Mark in the weeks that followed that it would mean breaking to bits—if not for him, at any rate for some of his less sturdy companions. They were all kept ceaselessly to foot-drill and dismounted sword-exercise. Upon the black, beaten-earth surface of the Square they were for ever forming and re-forming, quick marching and slow marching, wheeling and turning about, till their heads spun and they went all ways at once when suddenly ordered to find their “front”. Whereat their instructor blistered them with sarcasms.

But this was little compared to the numbing torment of the first sword-exercises. None of the nine, except Mark, who had been inured to lifting bales at Hepplewhite Brothers’ (ages ago it seemed now), and two country boys who had come from the plough, had the muscle to hold the heavy weapon straight at the “front-point”, with arm extended and wrist turned, for the long moments (hours they appeared) during which the Sergeant ruthlessly demanded that they should keep the position. Once even Mark’s fingers, utterly numbed, refused their office and let the sword fall to the ground, at which Jarman, suddenly transformed into a bellowing demon with eyes of flame, awarded him two back-breaking hours of extra fatigue when the day’s drill was over, carrying corn sacks up a ladder into a loft over the forage store.

Perhaps the exhaustion and tedium of the endless drill and scouring of equipment would not, as it did, have worn down the nerves even of the least sensitive had there been any relief in the scanty times of leisure. But these had mostly to be passed in the stuffy and cramped room over the stables, where a man could hardly squeeze in to reach his cot, his only seat; and where, despite perpetual scrubbing, washing and sawdusting, the smell was fearful—odours of perspiring human bodies, of insufficiently-aired clothing, of steaming meals blending with the penetrating reek from the crowded stables below; to which at night was added the stench of the two great urine tubs that, washed out hurriedly, had to serve as baths and basins at dawn.

Mark, after Fancy’s dainty cooking and the run he had been used to have of the pie-stalls and cheap sugar-bakers of the City, felt at first that he could never subsist on the meals. For breakfast a lump of hard, greyish bread, barrack-baked, and a mug of coarse tea. For dinner, day after day without exception, boiled beef or the broth of it with blackened potatoes. From dinner-time in the early afternoon till the next morning, there was no food at all except what meagre supper the men could buy for themselves out of their own pay. Even the savage hunger produced by strenuous physical work often failed to make the nauseating diet palatable; until after some time Mark suddenly found that he had no more interest in food and could consume tastelessly whatever was splashed down in front of him. Then he no longer felt resentment when his share turned out to be all bone or all gristle—somebody had to have this portion in the rigid weighing out of rations.

But as he ceased to care for food he discovered that he began to care for drink. He had resolved to put aside every farthing of his pay not already stopped for articles of equipment or alleged damages to his clothing or for necessary cleaning materials such as soap and blacking and brick-dust for spurs, in order to refund old Fawkes that borrowed rent. This prevented him from going out of barracks much, since there were temptations to spend outside; but it did not save him from the fiercer temptation of the canteen within the walls. Sometimes for the sake of good fellowship, sometimes because he felt he would go crazy lying on his hard cot staring at the great horse-flies that hummed round the ceiling, and wondering what Fancy was doing, whether she was making love to some swell, he would dissipate all his laborious hoard in a night upon beer or the fiery raw spirit (sometimes doped with vitriol or other malignant admixtures) supplied by the canteen contractors. One night, after such a stupefying draught, he was caught fighting the opinionated Appleyard by the Sergeant of his room, and put under arrest for drunkenness. The Adjutant in the Orderly Room the next morning told him it was a bad beginning to his military life, and threatened him with the severest penalties for the next offence. Mark, “confined to barracks”, joined the painful gardeners engaged with forks in eradicating grass-blades from between the paving-stones round the square, and remembered, while thus employed, the old story of the drunken soldier. He resolved that he would not fall into that snare, and he straightened his back in his determination. But he had fallen into another in so doing; the Corporal in charge accused him of idling and took his name for a further day’s “C.B.”

Mark bowed his back again unmurmuring. Already in four weeks he had acquired a touch of that wooden passivity under ill-usage that in the older soldiers amounted to a sort of mental hebetude or fakir-like insensibility.

But Mark’s comrades were not all as malleable as he; and when, September bringing a heat-wave, the meat began to come up green and foul-smelling, some of the more famished among them resolved to take advantage of the hurried dinner-time visit of the Officer of the Day, to state their grievance. He was a thin, languid-looking youth, who held his white gloves to his nose as he hastened from room to room; for such drainage as the barracks possessed seemed also in revolt during the drought, and he barely halted at the head of the table to whine through his impromptu respirator,

“Same as usual, sir!” answered the Corporal, scandalized at the “Rookie’s” effrontery in raising his voice.

“Then take that man’s name for making a frivolous complaint,” said the lieutenant, and clashed out of the room to seek the Mess, where he unhooked his sword and declared to his brother officers present as he poured out a stiff “B. and S.” for himself,

“The men’s quarters are fragrant enough in this weather, by G——, without waiting to listen to their precious nonsense. What did they join the army for if they wanted the chef from White’s to cook for ’em?”

A newspaper rustled in a secluded window-seat and Captain Bobsleigh Shotter, the Adjutant, rose unexpectedly from behind it.

“And why the devil didn’t you? Don’t you know your duties as Officer of the Day? Go back at once and do so!”

Lieutenant de Vallencey snatched up his sword and went out with a sullen expression.

“That was a bit harsh, Bubbles, wasn’t it?” asked a fat, elderly Captain, who was puffing over a billiard table at the far end of the room. “Makes him look a fool before his men. . . . ’Sides, which of us would have done it, in his place?”

“Then you ought all to be dam’ well ashamed of yourselves!” retorted Shotter. “And while I’m Adjutant of this regiment I’ll have the officers do their work as well as the men.”

“I always thought, sir, that it was the N.C.O.’s business to attend to all that sort of thing,” pleaded a young Cornet with a puzzled expression.

“And that belief, Strangways,” replied Captain Shotter, “is precisely what would make the British Army, if war broke out to-morrow, unfit to take the field.”

“Oh! come, sir! Surely we’re hired, to fight, not to do house maid’s work!”

“The fact is, Bubbles,” wheezed Captain Wetherby, coming from the billiard table to chalk his cue, “that these Windsor ideas of yours will make a living skeleton of me soon. You’ll be making us give the word of command in German next!”

“You fellows,” said the Adjutant, standing on the hearthrug and rocking restlessly on his heels, “find Prince Albert a joke of unending freshness, don’t you? It’s a pity more of you haven’t talked to him as I have, that’s all. Some day you may realize the debt the Army owes him. . . .”

“Hoch! Prosit! Mahlzeit!” declaimed Wetherby, shaking his plump sides. “There’s all the German I know!” He turned suddenly to the door. “Hulloa, Ralph! You back again? Any sport?”

A young man, mid-way between twenty and thirty, had entered the room. He was in mufti, with shooting-gaiters and his bag still slung over his shoulder.

“Sport?” he drawled in a voice that had a curious virility beneath its elaborate languor. “Depends upon what you choose to call sport. Two or three bunnies? I fancy that’s the contents of my bag after five hours’ tramping. I don’t believe the proprietor of Ranalow Park—damn him for a retired tea-merchant—has a partridge in all his wretched coverts, and I’m sorry I accepted his invitation to shoot over them.”

“Then it’s a pity,” said the Adjutant sharply, “that you had to take two men off their duties to act as beaters for you!”

Shelter wheeled round towards the mantelpiece and there was a momentary silence, broken at length by the wheezy chuckle of Captain Wetherby.

The sportsman flung his shooting-bag into a corner and ordered sherry from the mess-waiter.

“By the way, you fellows,” he drawled as he sipped it, “what’s wrong with de Vallencey?”

“A flea in his ear, I should say,” replied Wetherby. “Did you meet him?”

The other smiled and his twisted brown face with its jutting scarlet lower lip was irradiated by an agreeable gleam of humour.

“I saw him,” he said, “as I came in, leaning against the staircase of one of the barrack-rooms, supported by the Orderly Corporal, and . . . being extremely unwell.”

Such a hoot of joy went up at this tidings that the uniformed mess-waiters came clustering round the door to spy out what had happened, and even Shotter’s grim expression relaxed.

“That’ll teach de Vallencey,” he said, “to make sure what the men are eating.”

“Will it?” laughed the witness. “It would only make me take extraordinarily good care to notice nothing at all about their stinking food.”

A waiter at that moment brought him on a salver a handful of letters that his servant had carried over from his rooms, and he began to open them while the other officers drifted across to the dining-room for luncheon.

Shotter alone stayed behind, watching him as he flicked open envelopes and flung crumpled sheets into the grate and around it with bored expression.

“You know, Ralph,” he said at last, not unkindly, “you’re a real disappointment to me.”

“Am I?” Ralph looked up at him with a friendly quizzicality in his large brown eyes that now shone clearly, now clouded over with curious streaks like agate-stones. “I’m so sorry, Bubbles. . . . I wonder why the devil we call you Bubbles,” he continued, lighting a cigar and stretching himself languidly on a sofa with his eyes closed. “You’re about as effervescent as a hatchet. Who christened you Bobsleigh? It was infanticide, flinging you into the font with a mill-stone round your neck.”

“Never mind about my name!” interrupted Shotter, drawing himself up stiffly. “You’ll find plenty of Bobsleigh Shotters in my part of the country if you care to go and look for ’em.”

“My name?” The other raised his heavy eyelids in bewilderment. “Gracious Heavens, am I in for a sermon—on the responsibilities of rank?”

“When you joined us, I hoped you were going to help me pull up this regiment.”

“What on earth made you hope anything so wild? And d’you think, by the way, that the Mercuries need pulling up—by me, or even, be it said with all respect, by you, Adjutant? I think the suggestion shows nerve! Let war break out to-morrow, and I suppose we shall give the Frenchmen the hell of a drubbing. What else matters?”

“That’s just what makes me mad!” The Adjutant struck his fist on the mantelshelf. “You’re all alike! Never mind the elementary duties of your profession! Put a sword in your hand and set you on a good horse and you’ll capture the enemy’s fleet, if you’re asked to, won’t you?”

“Cavalry have done queerer things, I’m told. But look here, Bubbles, if you must preach, do, for God’s sake, go and preach to the fellows in there at lunch!”

“Well: you never went to a public school, which was a damned bad thing for you; or to Sandhurst, which would have worked some of the fat off your soul. . . . But still, I’ve had hopes of you . . . because, after all, you are old Lord Blackwater’s son, and his heir.”

“You’ve read in Gurdon’s book what the Duke said about him in his Talavera despatch.”

“Good God, Ralph! You don’t mean seriously to tell me you don’t know that?”

“ ’Pon honour! One of the Foot-Guards battalions, I know. Coldstream, was it? Or Grenadiers? Everyone knows my mother lived apart from him almost from the day I was born until his death—he in Sussex, we down in Wales; and we didn’t talk much about him. I chiefly remember the old boy’s portrait in Blackwater Castle, an uncommonly nice bit of paint by Lawrence, in his full-dress uniform. . . . Bubbles, why don’t we wear white breeches and Hessians instead of our slovenly overalls? We’d make much more romantic portraits.”

“How am I to take that? As the dawn of a professional interest, at any rate in our uniform?”

“On the contrary,” was the cool reply. “You may take it as the expression of my boredom with the whole, damned, drab, monotonous, useless military machine.”

“And would take six more if I could find a kindly physician to perjure himself for me.”

“If you feel as badly as that, Blackwater, why the devil don’t you cut the Service?”

“If you argue as sharply as that, Bubbles, why the devil don’t you go to the Bar? Who cares a curse for consistency? I might as well be wasting time at Ranalow, I suppose, as wasting it at Blackwater trying to understand Welsh peasants, or in Sussex trying to shoot English pheasants. The Mercuries aren’t a bad club, a little less tedious than the Athenæum, I fancy; we have only one Bishop,” he grinned. “Then the commission’s an investment. If I sold out I should probably squander the price on some nonsense that would bore me equally in the end. And now that Peel and Cobden have ruined the landowner, £3,225—I believe that’s what a cavalry Captain’s quoted at to-day—£3,225 in the safest of Funds is not to be sneezed at.”

“I hope you never will! I like to be able to pass a group of children at a cottage door or playing in the street at home without wondering whether there may not be one or two of mine in the band. . . . Pray don’t look so scandalized, Bubbles; I’ve no reason to feel filial towards the old Turk. He made my mother’s life a pretty hell upon earth—and she was the gentlest of women, to me—until she had the courage to demand a separation; for which I’d murder him if he were alive still. To me he left the title, a sheaf of mortgages—some of which I’m paying off, however—and something else.”

“Certainly. The realization that the Church, which let such a man appoint to a handful of its livings, is cant; the State, which made him a hereditary legislator, is cant; the Service, where he got to the top of the tree by favouritism and brainless, bull-dog courage, is cant; the law, which let him pledge his estates and my future for not a twentieth part of their value, is cant into the bargain; and society, a damned scramble for titles and money—I wish I could lay hands on a sackful or two, though—society is the most sickening cant of all! Credo! . . . Now, you’ve made me as hot as Macready in Macbeth with ranting!” He ran his ringed hand peevishly through his curly reddish-chestnut locks, glossy with macassar-oil, and wiped the palm on his bandanna handkerchief. “Go and lunch and leave me in peace, do!”

“Oh, possibly, possibly! There’s at least half a dozen men in each one of us. What of it?”

“Well, you said just now, for instance, that you had paid off part of your mortgages. I should never have suspected you of a head for business.”

“I’ve an intense dislike,” answered Blackwater, with a narrowing and streaking of his eyes and a dogged protrusion of his ugly, crooked chin, “of being swindled over money; and if anything could give me real pleasure it would be to score off a Jew. . . . And I can when I want to!”

“Wonder on wonders! I give you up!” declared Shotter. He turned to the onyx clock with its silver Hussar supporters on the mantelpiece. “By Jove, I’ve only time for a sandwich before riding out on the common!”

“To put C Troop through dismounted skirmishing practice. Their carbine-drill is paralytic.”

“How do you find time to notice all these things? Anyhow, why not let the Troop Sergeant-Major get on to their backs? What’s he paid for?”

“Oh, call it my hobby! Come with me, though! A rattling gallop is just what you need; you look liverish.”

“And feel it. All the same, galloping through flying sand under this sweltering sun is not the cure that tempts me. An iced drink and Byron’s ‘Don Juan’ will see me through till Mess time very nicely, thank you!”

“Surely, Bubbles, you forget the example of General Wolfe at Quebec!” interrupted Blackwater with his pleasant grin. “I agree with General Wolfe. Of! with you, Adjutant, and squint down the barrels of dirty carbines if that’s your ideal of felicity! . . . And, I say, throw me one of your cigars before you go; my case is empty.”

Lieutenant de Vallencey did not appear at Mess that night, and the silvery-haired Colonel Merivale took the Adjutant aside after dinner and urged him mildly “not to drive the young officers too hard”. “They’ll find their feet in time, Shotter, you know, in time! They’re gallant boys, one and all, and I want them to feel the regiment is a family. That’s always been the spirit of the Mercuries.”

In consequence of that day the Quarter-Master had a dressing-down, and the meat improved for a few months. But the drainage did not, since the drought continued; and two recruits in C Troop, over-strained and under-fed, sickened of typhus and were taken to hospital, where one of them died. The remaining seven still held good—the two ex-plough-boys; Mark; the sallow Cockney Appleyard; the Highlander MacBean; Harry Vale, who had fled, he said, from the pusillanimity of life as a linen-draper’s assistant, though actually it had been after a raid upon the petty-cash box for the sake of a milliner’s girl; and the most unfortunate of the group, Benton, a nervous and weak youth, who had been left a foundling in Mecklenburgh Square, and whom barrack-room rumour, ever as confident as it was undocumented, proclaimed to be the love-child of a famous actress.

Mark, when he had time to think about it, pitied this Benton. His mind was slow at drill, his fingers clumsy at kit-cleaning. He had worn out the patience even of Jarman. He and the other N.C.O.s at length decided that Benton was a skrimshanker for whom the proper cure was relentless bullying. The only result was that he became permanently cowed, and developed a nervous trembling as soon as he reached the Square for drill, which still further intensified his incompetence.

One broiling afternoon when the recruits, after their dinner of steaming beef and porter, were in the centre of the parade-ground, with the sun stabbing their necks from which all the hair had been clipped, and gasping their way through sword-exercise, the Regimental Sergeant-Major Godliman came stumping towards them, fiercely chewing his imaginary quid and throwing out his withered legs with their usual jerky movement.

After watching the drill for a few minutes he exclaimed in his cracked-bell tones,

The drill sergeant made the shaking youth fall out and marched him up to Godliman, while the rest of the squad waited painfully at attention. The Sergeant-Major then began to put Benton through the sword-exercise alone, holding him for agonizing periods at the point, and screeching mingled threats and obscenities whenever he saw him wavering. Next he marched him up and down the Square at a quick step, and then put him to the double. The other recruits could see from the uneasy way in which Jarman paced to and fro behind the Sergeant-Major’s back that he was troubled by these proceedings, but discipline held him silent.

At length Benton, after running two or three blind and staggering paces, gave a horrible choked scream and fell with a crash upon the ground, where he lay twitching and foaming.

“Get up, blast you, get up!” squawked the Sergeant-Major. “Let him alone, Jarman! The beggar’s malingering, I tell you!”

But as the youth only lay moaning and tossing in spite of all execrations, the Sergeant-Major turned about and walked off the Square, leaving the drill sergeant to deal with the case.

Jarman had Benton’s tight collar loosened; and then ordered him to be carried back to his room and water to be thrown over him. But since he still lay upon his cot, purple, and breathing stertorously, the Surgeon was at last sent for, who arrived from his quarters grumbling, with a cheroot in his mouth.

After a glance at the boy he cursed, and, taking a case of lancets from under his arm, grabbed Benton’s wrist and ripped a wound through which the blood spurted into the urine tub, which had been rolled to the bedside from an anxious care for the barrack-room floor.

“Bad cess to him,” growled the Surgeon, a blunt-featured, red-nosed Irish terrier. “Will he not have his arteries where ahl Christians kape theirs? Here, for Jasus’ sake! gimme that rag and rod you are clanin’ your carbine with, to make a tourniquet; or its blade to his end the obstinate pig will!”

Benton was carted to the hospital ward, and the next day his arm was amputated with dressings of boiling tar just in time to save his life.

Vale, the ex-linen-draper, had been the man mechanically engaged in cleaning his dirty carbine, when the Surgeon performed his blood-letting operation; and he found himself left alone with Mark in the foul-smelling, low-raftered room when the Surgeon went out, with the others helping, to carry Benton to the hospital.

“This is more’n I can stand, cully,” he whispered, “more’n I can stand! I’m finished. I got to get away from this.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Mark admonished him. “You can’t get away, no matter how much you want to.”

“The rest of us, my Gawd! This makes three done for a’ready! ’Sides, I can’t abear to see sich sights! Oh Lord! If I could on’y hear ole Jennings swearin’ at me agen for mixin’ up the ribbons!”

“You enlisted for War, didn’t you, Vale? You’ll see plenty sights as bad there, and worse too, I reckon.”

“Yes, but in hot blood, cully! . . . Sich sickening, callous cruelty! Haven’t you got a heart?”

Vale began to whimper hysterically, when a Corporal came in with an order and stopped their talk.

Yet a night or two later Vale, to Mark’s amazement, actually made good his threat. With the other recruits he had just successfully faced the test of “passing out on the Square” in the presence of the Regimental Sergeant-Major and the Adjutant. It was voted that Jarman had done his work well, and the old soldiers who had watched the test from the borders of the Square clapped hands and stood the recruits drink when it was over.

They were now ready to start Riding-School; and it was probably dread of this fresh ordeal, the terrors of which were magnified by the older soldiers in the barrack-room, that spurred Vale to desertion. He carried through the perilous enterprise with the skill of a brilliant tactician; for except that he was present at roll-call and Lights Out one night and gone by reveille the next morning, not a soul could trace his movements. How he had eluded the Sergeant who slept in his room, passed the main-guard unchallenged, apparently in his uniform, and got away from Ranalow without a pass, and so far as his comrades knew without money, baffled everybody.

Colonel Merivale, who dreaded above all things anything about his command appearing in the newspapers, and who was just engaged in the delicate task of getting Surgeon O’Keefe transferred to a Line Regiment, broke into one of his petulant furies. He caused the Sergeant in charge of Vale’s room to be reduced, put the guards on duty during the night of the escape under arrest, and had the remaining recruits paraded before himself for a lecture and a warning. But all this did not bring Vale back. Mounted patrols scoured the country in vain, and the civil police and the railway detectives were equally at a loss for clues to this calico Monte Cristo’s escape.

“Oh, they’ll cop ’im sure enough sooner-later, Scotchie; and ven they does, they’ll charge ’im wiv theft s’well as desertion, for valkin’ off in ’is uniform. Werry thoughtful of ’em, I don’t fink. I s’pose he ought to a gone out in the suit ’is mother stitched ’im for ’is birthday.”

“If you mean he would have been wise to go naked,” objected MacBean, “it would have made him varra noticeable.”

“Vell, at least ’ee ’ad the sense to cut ’is lucky before Ridin’-School. I lay the rest of us ’as some sore places this time to-morrer night.”

“I’m a peppery man, that’s wot I am,” the Rough-Rider-Sergeant informed the recruits in a husky wheeze when he met them the next morning in the long gaunt manège with its thick smell of tan, and squinted with his small fiery-red eyes along the ridge of a badly-broken nose. “If you make me lose my patience,” he continued, “and I ’aven’t much to spare, I warns you, you’ll only ’ave yerselves to thank for what comes acrost yer. It ain’t no b——y treat to me to ’ave to make horsemen out of you tailors and crossing-sweepers, so don’t you think you’ve come ’ere for any picnic.”

That was not an illusion that beset his pupils as they jogged, stirrupless and with arms crossed, endlessly round and round the School, while the Rough-Rider-Sergeant standing in the centre with the lunging whip, occupied himself in accidentally flicking their bare hands or other tender parts and in making their horses kick up at the corners; varying his objections to “sacks of coal” and “roly-poly puddens” with the parrot-croak, “Who gave you leave to dismount, you —— ——?”

He was even more formidable when he got on horseback himself to pursue his instructions. For when the novices, mounted some on recalcitrant horses and most on horses with mouths hardened to insensibility by the cruel long curb bits, failed to reproduce with accuracy and speed the motions he demonstrated on his own perfectly-trained animal, he would come galloping in among them, roaring and oversetting them right and left. Covered with saddle-boils, with the insides of their knees worn raw and their thigh-muscles aching as if with slow fire, with their faces and uniforms in addition streaked all over with the tan amid which they were kept rolling, the learners were a pitiable spectacle.

“I’ll teach you to ride!” was the dubious consolation their instructor offered. “I’ll teach you to ride if I have to break every one of your —— necks”; and he ordered out the hurdles for jumping.

Gradually, however, their riding-muscles gained power, and shattering experiences taught them balance. Then the differences in natural aptitude began to reveal themselves. Oddly enough, it was the two country-bred lads who seemed clumsiest and slowest, while the Cockney Appleyard and Mark, both town-products, began to show the makings of fine horsemen.

Mark especially, when his first agonies abated, began to feel riding as something he was not so much learning as remembering. In spite of the stiff, long-legged poise on the stirrups and fork which was still the regulation cavalry-seat, designed to give weight in sabre-charges, he would catch the rhythm of any horse he was set upon in a few moments, and his slender body had a natural suppleness that served him well when they came to the higher and harder jumps. Not that his improvement seemed to give the Rough-Rider-Sergeant any joy. He appeared rather to resent it and frequently demanded of Mark with husky sarcasm, “You think you can ride, you little beggar, do you? You think you can ride?” And he would send for horses of known bad character to tease and baffle the pupil who presumed to advance too quickly—horses that would rear and fall over backwards, and one with an iron jaw that bolted out of the School and cracked Mark’s skull against a low doorway which he took for the passage to his stable. And for this Mark had “C.B.” as well as his bandaged head, for the Riding-Master, the officer theoretically in charge of the recruits’ equitation, had unluckily happened to come in for the first time during this lesson, and made a loud exercise of his authority, cursing the Rough-Rider-Sergeant for being “soft” with his men.

They passed out of Riding-School at last, however, at the beginning of December, and in the presence of Colonel Merivale, who, being a splendid horseman and keen rider to hounds, always stirred himself to take some interest in this part of the recruits’ training. On the present occasion he rejected two of the candidates and sent them back with stoppages of pay for a further course; but he audibly showed satisfaction with Mark and ordered him to repeat his in-and-out-jump with sword-cut at the Turk’s head, for an example to the less successful rider who went before him.

Mark, momentarily exalted by this honour, quickly felt that he would be made to suffer for it; and sure enough, as they were leading their horses back to stables the Rough-Rider-Sergeant, who had loathed him ever since the Riding-Master’s rebuke incurred on his account, came after him, and had him put in the book for coming to the pass-out (so he said) with dirt in the hilt of his sword.

Inured as he was by now to the petty injustices of discipline, Mark could not quench an inward flame of revolt at this bit of spite. He was passing, on his way back to his room, the windows of the Band School, and paused at the sound of the trumpeters concluding their practice. He remembered the ambition that had seized him on his first day in barracks, and reflected that if he could get admission into their ranks he would be largely free from the weapon that had brought him into his unmerited trouble, besides enjoying the prestige accorded to trumpeters, whom the N.C.O.s rarely harassed with their bullying.

As he stood turning these things over in his mind, the Trumpet-Major came out of the Band Room and asked him why he was loitering there.

Mark replied that he had been listening to the trumpeters practising, and the tone of his voice as he said it caused the lank, dark-chinned Trumpet-Major, with his sucked-in cheeks and moustaches carefully clipped away from his lips, to run a meditative eye over the boy’s slim figure.

“H’m.” The other prodded a sore tooth and withdrew his thumb from his mouth with a dissatisfied air. “I was watching you with the others from the gallery of the Riding-School jus’ now. I usually look at the recruits passing out to see if there’s any lad worth his salt to me. A trumpeter, Woodrofe, must ride jus’ twice as well as a man in the troop. He’s got to think only of his officer and his calls and be able to manage his horse in his sleep.”

“You didn’t do so bad,” conceded the Trumpet-Major, “though your hand wants a lot of lightening yet. But let’s look at your mouth.”

He thrust his thumbs between Mark’s lips for all the world as if he were examining a horse for its age, and ran his eye keenly along Mark’s fine white teeth.

He led the way into the Band Room, and, handing Mark a trumpet, ordered him to “blow up the chord!”

Mark rounded his lips on the silver mouthpiece and swelled out his cheeks to bursting; but to his humiliation no sound at all emerged.

Mark obeyed and at length produced a blurting sound that moved the Trumpet-Major to a gross comparison.

“However,” he said, hanging the trumpet up again, “if you reelly want to be a trumpeter, we got a place vacant, and I’ll put your name down for it.” Again he pressed his decayed front tooth sourly. “Take care of your teeth!” he admonished Mark, “or back you go to the troop, double quick time!”

The Adjutant the next morning assented to Mark’s having a fortnight’s trial under the Trumpet-Major; and he worked with such desperate earnestness, rubbing alum on his lips to harden them, buying a toothbrush even, and tootling the notes of calls in his sleep until a boot was thrown at him from a neighbouring cot, that a day or two before Christmas he was definitely given the grade and pay of a trumpeter.

“This boy is one of the best of the latest batch to join us, sir—only one crime against him and that the canteen contractors’ fault,” remarked the Adjutant, after recording the transfer in the books, to the Colonel who happened to be in Orderly Room that morning signing papers.

“That’s the man, sir, Woodrofe.” Captain Shotter glanced at another buff slip on his table. “I see he’s on the list recommended for Christmas furlough by his Troop Leader.”

“Certainly, Shotter, certainly. Oh, and that reminds me. Here’s Lord Blackwater sends in a doctor’s certificate to the effect that he needs six months’ leave to recover his strength after having a carbuncle on his neck removed.”

“Why! He’s only a month or two back from leave, sir!” remonstrated the Adjutant.

“I know, I know: you don’t need to tell me, Shotter, thank you! But on the previous occasion, you seem to have forgotten, his mother required him to go down into Wales to attend to some important family business connected with their land there. They have very big estates in different parts of the country and the care of them is a heavy responsibility for one of the youngest peers, as Lord Blackwater is. This, on the other hand, Shotter, is a request for sick-leave.”

“If you ask my opinion, sir,” replied Shotter boldly, “I think that some early rising and hard riding with his Troop on the common would do Lord Blackwater’s health more good than six months dodging about the Haymarket and Evans’s.”

“On that subject,” said the Colonel, “we are bound to prefer the doctor’s opinion.”

“But he must be back, if possible, in July for Salamanca Day; make that very clear. I like us to turn out full strength always for the Salamanca parade.”

There came a knock on the Orderly Room door, and the Regimental Sergeant-Major Godliman stalked in and saluted with a portentous expression.

“A message has just come from Inspector Wallace of Basingstoke, sir,” he said to the Colonel. “The civil police have captured our deserter, H. P. Vale; serving in a draper’s shop in the town they found him, sir. He’ll be charged at the police-court there to-morrow morning at ten, and they ask for an escort to bring him back to Ranalow afterwards.”

“See to it, Sergeant-Major. As soon as they get the rascal back to barracks, cut his hair and put him in irons.”

“I suppose it is, sir.” The Adjutant stabbed a quill at his desk with a gloomy expression. “It means a regimental Court Martial, I suppose.”

“Immediately. If the scoundrel’s brought back to-morrow I’ll sit on Thursday to deal with the case. It’s no use, Shotter,” he went on, with his mouth drooping at the corners and his old eyes rounding peevishly, “to be lenient in cases of desertion. We must make an example of this man to teach the other young soldiers. . . . I had the deuce and all of a worry to keep that business out of the newspapers, too.”

The grey dusk of Christmas Eve, cheerless as every evening in Ranalow, was filling the small station, where a porter was engaged in lighting the feeble oil-lamps, when Mark, carrying his kit-bag, presented his pass to the military policeman in the tiny booking-hall and took his ticket for London.

He had Christmas leave from this afternoon till the evening of Boxing Day. Forty-eight hours of release from kit-cleaning and parading and blowing till his chest ached under the pungent direction of the Trumpet-Major! Forty-eight hours without bullying or cursing, a little space in which to forget foul food and nauseous smells . . . and also, if he could, what he had seen this morning!

The little, green-painted engine came puffing round a curve and for a moment Mark’s thoughts were distracted by the necessity of stowing himself and his kit into a third-class compartment with a narrow bench and an insufficient luggage-net overhead. But as the train began to move away from Ranalow, memory rushed over him again overpoweringly, and he was led once more by some unpitying mental finger through every detail of the morning’s business.

The whole regiment had paraded, dismounted, at earliest daylight, and been marched off to the space in front of the Riding-School. Here they were formed up in three sides of a hollow square fronting the wall of the School, in which, about six feet from the ground, two large iron rings were fixed. The new Regimental Surgeon stood by, examining them with listless curiosity.

The livid dawn had grown plainer, sharpening the outlines of shoulder and busby to dark cardboard silhouettes, when the clock in the Square at the back indifferently clanged its harsh quarter, and the small, bent-legged figure of Colonel Merivale appeared on parade, attended by the Second-in-Command, the taciturn, walnut-faced Major Blacombe, and the Adjutant, and called the regiment to attention. At the same moment the sound of tramping feet was heard, and round the corner from the direction of the Guard Room came the Regimental Sergeant-Major, heading an escort with drawn sabres, in the midst of which marched Vale, wearing his crimson uniform overalls, but naked from the waist. Behind followed the Farrier-Sergeant with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, and a steel-lined cavalry whip in his hand.

The escort halted in the centre of the open space, and at a nod from the Colonel, the Adjutant read out the sentence of the Court Martial upon the deserter. His face was drawn, and his voice carried only faintly across the ranks to where Mark had been fallen in with the rest of B Troop. But presently there was a stir, and Mark saw Vale being marched up to the wall and tied to the rings by his wrists. His bare back showed bluish in the bitter cold.

Mark had vowed that he would try to keep his eyes upon the ground, but now he found that he could not take them from the half-naked figure spread-eagled against the red and purple brick. A deathly hush had fallen in which the rumble of a far-away train could be heard. Then abruptly a harsh voice cried “One!”; a hiss like a blast of wind cut the air, and the whip descended on Vale’s shoulders with a thud that echoed back hollowly from the surrounding buildings. “Two!” cried the voice; the Farrier-Sergeant’s clean shirt-sleeve flashed up again, and this time a shriek broke from the prisoner, twisting on his bound wrists. Mark peered forward and saw two long weals making a ragged scarlet cross upon the shrinking blue back. Monotonously the voice went on numbering; the shrieks and entreaties rose louder, half-drowning the plunk of the whip, and Mark, with his stomach heaving, saw the victim’s flesh rise in a map of red ridges and turn slowly to a quivering mass the colour of raw liver. . . . All around in the dull light the ranked Hussars stood stock-still as sombre statues.

On a sudden the outcry ceased, and the whistle and sodden thump of the steel whip swelled out louder for the silence. A senseless form, looking like one of the dummies used for practising sabre-thrusts, swayed from the rigid arms tied to the rings above its head. Violent retching came from a man in the rank in front who was savagely told to fall out by his Sergeant. The next minute one of the young recruits near him went down with a crash, his busby rolling away between the lines of stiff spurred feet. . . .

Abruptly the Surgeon threw up his hands, and the Farrier-Sergeant paused with his whip uplifted over his shoulder. Mark in shuddering relief watched the Doctor listening to Vale’s heart and feeling for a pulse among the ropes swathed round his wrists. But the Surgeon fell back again, nodding to the executioner, and the last eleven strokes of the maximum sentence of fifty were implacably carried out upon the dangling puppet with head lolling back so as to display its white face and open mouth nearly upside down to the view of the regiment. . . .

It was over at last. Vale lay stretched upon the ground with the Surgeon and the Sergeant of the Guard stooping over him.

“What are they doing?” asked Mark in a strained whisper of the next man. “Reviving him?”

And then Mark, straining to see between the heads in front, perceived that the Sergeant of the Guard was jabbing a needle fixed in a cork into Vale’s shoulder to tattoo it permanently with the initial letter of the word “Deserter”.

But the Colonel’s thin voice was piping out the accustomed word of command: “The 24th, Prince Leopold’s Own Hussars, form . . .” and a chorus of orders from the Troop Leaders surged up, as the hollow square was broken and wheeled back into a column that marched briskly away from the scene of the flogging. As they were dismissed in the barrack Square, Mark overheard fat Captain Wetherby saying in agitated tones to Lieutenant de Vallencey,

“Cruel . . . too damned cruel, that’s what it is! They’ve shortened Rainbow to a beggarly three to one. . . . If she goes down to-day I’ll have to sell my commission!”

An hour later, heralded by a fairy-like fanfare, and with the piebald drum-horse pacing with stately steps at its head, the regiment passed through the barrack-gates to a march that lit the black morning with its lilt. The standards gleamed upon the silver kettle-drums of the band; the officers’ shabracks upon their saddles displayed the winged Mercury of the regimental crest, dating from the eighteenth century; and the squadrons, in a ripple of sleek flanks and combed manes, splashed the mean streets of Ranalow with the splendour of their crimson busby-bags draped on brown fur and their bobbing gold-barred pelisses.

Within a quarter of an hour they were performing evolutions upon the common; sweeping and swinging in exquisitely-ordered lines among the gorse, each man lithe and firm in his saddle, each troop and squadron answering to the Amazon voices of the trumpets, like limbs of a single dragon furnished with a thousand fire-breathing nostrils. When they returned, warm and hungry, with their horses blasting and whinnying in rapture, to stables and dinner, they had (as the Adjutant had planned) for the most part overcome the depression of that gruesome scene at dawn.

But Mark, as he now sat staring through the windows of his railway-carriage at the deserted and darkening landscape, still could not expel from his imagination the limp body of the deserter flung upon the gravel at the foot of the flogging-rings, while the regiment flowed past in its colour and melody.

The train reached the station in Paddington soon after five o’clock; and, feeling both hungry and thirsty, for he had not loved his dinner, Mark stepped into a small public-house near Hyde Park for bread and cheese and beer.

“No sojers here!” cried the barmaid sharply as he passed through the swing-doors, and the landlord came out from the parlour to enforce her refusal to serve him.

In a flame of anger Mark was on the point of challenging them to put him out, when suddenly he remembered that spectacle of the civil police arresting a Mercury which he had seen in his childhood, and he resolved that he would not incur the same disgrace.

He left the house and carried his kit-bag into the Bayswater Road, where he tried to get on one of the stream of omnibuses passing eastwards; but the “cad,” high on his round perch beside the door, shouted “No luggage!” Mark perceived that it was his uniform again. Luckily the “cad” of a rival line was glad to hail him, kit-bag and all, and to take his pennies for Snow Hill; but inside the omnibus an old lady clutched a small girl to her bosom and moved into the seat next the door so as to be ready for instant flight. Mark was glad at last to get down and make his way on foot up through Smithfield into St. John Street; but became conscious presently of padded footsteps following him, and turning round found himself confronting a Peeler, who gruffly demanded to see his pass and told him to “Move on sharp out o’ here to wherever you’re goin’.” Mark went on, feeling resentfully that the legends of goodwill displayed amid the Christmas decorations in the shops all around were not intended to apply to soldiers, and so knocked in some depression at Mr. Fawkes’s closed door.

His heart warmed a little, however, at the well-known shuffling step crossing the floor inside, and he was almost ready to embrace the old man when, after a start of surprise at the Hussar uniform, he recognized him and patted him on the shoulder with the familiar, fat, slow smile.

“You’re not a customer come to knock me up!” sighed O. Fawkes with relief. “Come in, Shaw the Lifeguardsman, come in and welcome!” His voice, thought Mark, was more muffled and uncertain than it used to sound, and his hair beneath the hanging-lamp in the shop, decidedly greyer. (“Yet I haven’t been away six months!” Mark reflected.)

“Come into the workroom,” Mr. Fawkes was meanwhile mumbling. “Things are very quiet, so, as you see, I closed early this afternoon!”

“Why, sir,” exclaimed Mark as he followed, “Christmas used to be our busiest time! I’ve known when you kept open till midnight on Christmas Eve, and had no sleep for two nights before, getting orders away by the post!”

“I know, I know!” answered Fawkes with a cunning glance, as he sank into the old armchair from which an even longer strip of loose stuffing than before seemed to hang down. “It’s not like that in these days, Heaven be thanked! To be deafened hour after hour by brats, pushing and squalling and snatching and tearing, and to see your best sheets melting away like snowflakes . . . no, I’m very glad that’s all over and done with! Hardly anybody comes here at all now from Sunday to Sunday, and one has a little privacy at last. And the postal business has dwindled very much too. Just enough to give me something to do with my time. I like it better so.”

“Fancy? Oh, she’s doing very well, thank you, General Woodrofe, very well indeed. Did you know she is to be Columbine in the pantomime this year? Quite a surprise! Harlequin-Jack-the-Giant-Killer, or Blunderbore’s Blunderbuss Blunders, the title is. Ingenious, eh? I’m sure I don’t know how they think of these drolleries, fresh each year, do you? Of course,” his voice sank into a tremulous bass, “if me cheeyild had followed the family tradition she would have come out, rather, as Lady Macbeth; but as I told her, ‘It isn’t your fault, my dear, that you haven’t your father’s gift for tragedy.’ Would you believe it, General Woodrofe, the memory of the public, yes, and of the players too, is amazingly short! Here’s old Mr. Polidori at the Ionic, doddering old fellow, falling into his second childhood in my opinion, positively pretends never to have heard of my Shylock or my Dane. . . . He’s not like Mr. Belper now, our Mr. Belper, so free from petty jealousy! ‘Mr. Fawkes,’ he told me lately, ‘I never had the pleasure of seeing your interpretations, but if I had, sir, if I had, I’m sure they would have astonished me’ . . . But it worries me very much, this forgetfulness, General!”

“That’s it!” Mr. Fawkes rose rather totteringly from his chair. “Don’t prompt me, I know the words:

That’s how it goes, eh? eh? Henry V for one night only, by Mr. Oliver Fawkes, for his Benefit. Of course, you remember the occasion. . . . Where was it? The Olympic? Or the Surrey? I think it must have been the Lane, myself.” He struck his forehead. “That’s distressing, very distressing! If I forget, you see, they’ll all forget . . . and then I shall believe that I’ve really spent my whole life cutting out these stupid little figures. And that’s not true, you know. . . . It would be too hard on me if it were! Shall I tell you who it is muddles up my brains? That fellow over there!” He extended a shaking finger towards Mr. Grimaldi, the red gash of whose grin was alone visible in the light of the single candle upon the workroom table. “The troublesome wretch!” said Mr. Fawkes fretfully. “He takes all the good ideas out of my head and locks them up in his; then puts all his nonsensical notions into mine. Bah! I’ve always hated pantomime, General Woodrofe, a nasty vulgar business, not an art!”

“Fancy doesn’t hate it, I think, Mr. Fawkes. Tell me about her for a little while.”

“Fan? She’s a good girl, of course, of course. But pantomime won’t bring her any luck, mark my words! She’ll be sorry one day that she condescended to it. . . . Hush! She’s coming now!”

Mark pricked his ears. The streets outside seemed full of distant footsteps, but it was beyond his powers to pick out Fancy’s amongst them. Then Mr. Fawkes seized upon him with a snatch that made him jump.

“We’ll play a fine trick,” he whispered. “You shall be disguised. Yes, you shall. In this!” He put out his hand for the harlequin’s mask on the wall and withdrew it again. “No,” he declared, letting his wild gaze rove round the room. “In this! In my muffler . . . yes, yes, you must put it on, and my hat and cloak!”

Disregarding Mark’s stammered protests against the sacrilege to his uniform, Mr. Fawkes wrapped him up to the tip of his nose in his old black scarf; then pulled off his forage-cap and substituted his own rusty stove-pipe hat; and finally hid the glint of his gold-braided jacket in the voluminous cloak, chuckling all the while like a delighted child.

“Now, into the cupboard with you, till I bid you come forth! Yes, yes, just to please me . . . it will startle her so! Quick! Quick! She’s at the door!”

Mark, wondering how he could let himself be made such a fool, found himself shut into a dark closet smelling of paste, with the door shut upon him so that only a crack of yellow lamp-light showed. He was wondering whether he should force his way out again, when the lock of the street door grated with a sound so filled with memories of the past that he hesitated, and stood overcome by his old shy dread of the beloved one, while his heart thumped against his concealed uniform.

“Tired of waiting about, that’s all!” Fancy’s clear voice stabbed the listener in the cupboard. “Would you believe it, papa? Poll had everybody dressed and ready for the Comic Business at two, and they hadn’t even reached the Transformation when they broke off! Rehearsing the ballet again and again and again—and a set of ninnies they have, these days, who can’t remember the simplest movement. I was fairly itching to get back into my place and show them how to do it; but I’m not going to be familiar with the hussies now I’m Columbine! Flo Grimes used to laugh at Fancy Fawkes and say that would never be. How she squints down that long nose of hers to-day when she goes past me in her row . . . not that my own nose is what I want my young man to see first. . . . Ah, well! I’m glad you remembered to put the kettle on, papa, though you shouldn’t have cut all that bread, it’s wasteful! . . . I know my dances and business for Boxing Night; but, mark my words, if Poll-parrot don’t rehearse the Harlequinade all to-morrow—Christmas though it be—Patchy’ll be flopping about the stage like a wet shirt blown off the line—and then won’t the gallery just give it to us! Oh no! Not a murmur! And nobody’s ever seen a ginger-beer bottle, Mr. Ferguson!”

“It’ll be his fault if it’s a frost!” Mark heard Mr. Fawkes crying. “He’s got a grudge against this family! Jealousy! He means to ruin us!”

“Him on the wall there! Grinning at us all the time with his white face . . .”

“Now, father!” Fancy’s voice came through the crack of the cupboard shrilly, and, as it seemed to the eavesdropper, with a note of fear. “I’ve told you not to keep staring at that wall, and never to talk like that, haven’t I? I shall take the picture down if you go on being silly!”

“Don’t do that, my dear!” replied her father submissively. “It’ll make such an ugly patch on the paper. I don’t mean what I say . . . at least I don’t think I do.”

“Haven’t you any news to tell me, father? Think, while I go and fetch the teapot!”

“News, of course!” cried Fawkes excitedly. “I’d forgotten all about it. There’s a gentleman here to see you!”

“Yes!” The old man chuckled like a skeleton clicking its jaws. “A General, my love! A regular swell! Here in the house now!”

“I’ll soon show you what I mean!” He clapped his hands twice and stamped. “Within, I say, come forth!”

Mark awkwardly pushed open the cupboard-door and stepped out, still wearing the old man’s tall hat and with the black silk muffler still hiding his face from nose to chin. Fancy, who was standing with her back to the cupboard, with her bonnet slung from its ribbons upon her arm, whisked round at the noise, and, on seeing him gave a loud scream and tottered back against the table with her hand on her side.

“I’m sorry, Fan!” exclaimed Mark, tearing his disguise off. “It was a stupid trick to play!”

“No, she don’t! She’s not been well enough brought up to do that!” gasped Fancy, gallantly straightening her drooping head. “But what a fright you two gave me, after a long and empty day!” She lifted her blue eyes, still wide with distress, and surveyed Mark with a bewildered expression. “And is it really just old Mark?” she murmured. “How did you manage to look like that?”

“Oh, never mind. I’m seeing visions, I suppose! There you are standing . . . and, oh Sixpence! an’t you smart? . . . without a word of welcome. Come and kiss me, child!”

“Quite sure, Fan, that I am welcome?” asked Mark rather sternly. “I didn’t ask leave to come back.”

“Heavens! What a man he’s grown into!” She curtsied with the ballet-dancer’s elaborately-withdrawn and turned-out foot, and Mark grinned with happiness at the memory of old days. “We bid you to our home—and yours, Mr. Woodrofe!”

“Quiet, father! Now, Mark, come here!” She flung her arms round him and kissed him heartily on both cheeks. “Now, do you know you’re at home? . . . Oh, papa, only look at his whiskers! They’re blooming bee-utifully. What do you put on them to make them grow?”

In a few minutes she was making the toast and Mark was handing the slices to her just as he had done the first night he came to Greensleeves Row.

“Now tell me!” she cried, “all about the sojering! You black disgrace! Whatever did Mr. Hepplewhite say?”

“He wouldn’t leave me alone for a long while,” confessed Mark. “He wrote three or four times to me in barracks, saying I hadn’t been lawfully enlisted at my age and what had I done with the troy-weight scales from the pill-room? As if I’d taken them with me into the Army! And he said he should have the matter raised in the Houses of Parliament. That scared me, I can tell you. What would Regimental Sergeant-Major have said if the Parliament had come interfering? So I wrote back at last and asked Mr. Hepplewhite if I might come and explain to him when I got my furlough; but he answered he wouldn’t have a soldier hanging about his place of business to get it a bad name, particularly a soldier that had robbed him; and the compliments of the season and he enclosed ten shillings as a Christmas Box and kindly acknowledge receipt of same!”

“Gospel! Else I’d never have been able to do what I’m glad to do now, Fan,” he fumbled underneath his jacket, “and that is pay back what I owe you.” He passed a tiny packet to her. “Every penny’s there,” he said.

“We’ll talk about that later. Be quick, now, and butter the toast, while I fill the teapot. . . . Sixpence! Aren’t we careful not to soil our smart uniform! Would they grumble if you spotted it with grease?”

“They might look grieved,” admitted Mark. “But Fan, I’ve used up all the butter there is on the plate already. I knew you used to like it spread thick on your pieces.”

“Oh! never mind!” replied Fan quickly. “I’m not hungry and shan’t take any toast. Are you coming to see me, Mark, on Boxing Night?”

“What a pity! See if I don’t knock ’em as Columbine! See if I don’t!” She struck her hand with a burlesque flourish upon her heart. “I feel, weak woman though I be, that all my nature summons me to mighty deeds! Yes, it’s the turning-point! Fate waits for your obedient on Boxing Night! . . . The tea draws nicely now, so come along. . . . Father! What are you doing over there?”

O. Fawkes, with his back to both of them, stood muttering and shaking his fist at Mr. Grimaldi.

Later that evening, when O. Fawkes, in his armchair, had sunk into one of the thick dozes that beset him nowadays, Mark and Fancy sat together talking over a tiny fire that just warmed them, though not the rest of the large workroom.

“It’s not the Yule-tide log, is it, Mark?” confessed Fancy ruefully, “but we have to be so careful with everything nowadays.”

“After our barrack-room in winter,” Mark assured her, “this is like being toasted.”

“Your barrack-room!” She caught him up eagerly. “Now tell me all about it, your officers and your comrades and your life . . . everything!”

“Well.” Mark rubbed his black curls. “My officers? . . . I hardly ever see them. My comrades? . . . the best fellows in the world, and wonderfully kind the old soldiers are to us youngsters, really. My life? . . . it satisfies me.”

“It’s not all a bed of roses, if what one hears is true. Be honest, Mark!”

“I’ll tell you about the horses. There’s a wonderful comfort in those critturs. The hour and a half in stables is the best of the day to my thinking. I love to see their coats shine under the brush; I love the contented noise of their munching. There’s very few that have a bad eye; in most it’s large and gentle, and they look round at you when you come in to them, like children. They rely on you to keep them warm and feed them. Take ’em to a strange place, and they’ll prick their ears up at your step and call out to you. There’s a grey we have that we call Dainty, No. 268. One of the other trumpeters rides him now, but I mean to have him for mine some day. Yes, I love the horses.”

“Then there’s something you don’t love,” said Fancy shrewdly, as she bit off the thread of her sewing.

“Plenty; and about that side of it, Fan, I’ll tell you . . . just nothing at all.”

“You’ve your own troubles; and, see here, Fan, if they are a bit hard sometimes on us poor fellows that are doing our best for the most part, and aren’t too bright, some of us, still, to me, that’s not what counts. I’ve felt a sort of rest in belonging to the regiment; it’s bigger than me, you see, and somehow it makes me feel big. Yes, though they do turn me off the buses for being a sojer, I wouldn’t be a civilian again, thank you! When I came away from Ranalow this afternoon I thought that the one thing I wanted was never to hear the words Sergeant and Corporal again; never to handle a boot-brush or a button-stick, never, no never, to have to see again . . . what I won’t tell you about. And yet, do you know what I’m thinking at this minute? I’m thinking that Last Post will be about sounding on the Square, and I’m homesick to hear it. I’ll be happier still when I’m let parade with the other trumpeters to sound the Salamanca Call.”

“Maybe. But it’s not all that. I’m only a number in the regiment, 5037, that’s me on the Cavalry Roll; but it means I needn’t trouble about Master Mark Woodrofe any more. He was a troublesome lad to me, sometimes, as well as to you, Fan! No. 5037, well, he’ll draw his rations without worrying where they’re to come from; and if things are rough, pretty well all the time, still it works out to a kind of rough justice in the end. Better the devilries of old Godliman—that’s our Regimental Sergeant-Major—than the smugness of Hepplewhite’s with the young clerks in their stiff collars toadying to Jawsticks. It’s all that, and . . . and . . . it’s the Army. I was made for it . . . I dunno how or why. . . . It’s me. All I hope is we go to war soon.”

Mark remembered the Nelson chapel in St. Paul’s. He remembered the sacrificial figures of General Abercromby and General Moore in the transept, whose Death-clouded brows he had often crept in to peer at, with an inexplicable thrill at the roots of his being, during his dinner-hours at Hepplewhite’s. He remembered, and again he was silent.

“Mark, how you’ve changed! You used to be so rebellious! Now you’re silent and submissive, somehow . . . and yet I could almost be afraid of you. I can’t understand you any more at all since you’ve become a sojer!”

“Anyhow,” he chaffed her, “what would there be for me in civil life? You won’t look at me!”

“Don’t you be stupid now!” She blushed a little, for it was a young man and no longer a boy who challenged her.

“Don’t trouble yourself. I can have the pick of the nuss-maids whenever I come to town.”

“Must fill in the time somehow!” he taunted her, enjoying the light sparkle of jealousy in her eyes, though his heart held a sting. “Columbines are above poor sojer-boys, an’t they?”

“Don’t scoff at Columbine, Mark dear. Think I care for a success? Well, I do a bit; I do wildly, to be honest. . . . I feel three days prouder than Punch about it. But what I care for most is six pounds a week until Easter. Well, look at the place! Look at father! Don’t we need it?”

“In the head? No! You’re not to say that!” She bent towards him with her hands anxiously clasped. “Please don’t say that, Mark! It’s only his humour! You know his joking way . . . he’s got more fixed in it since that day he flew into a terrible rage with Mr. Jollops who was pestering him for his bill, just after you left. And he’s getting an old man, and wilful. The shop’s a farce now, and that’s the truth; the business is a ruin and how we hang on in the old house at all I don’t rightly know. I wouldn’t go on struggling, but that I suspect father would go really queer if we were turned out of it. So, you see, I need every penny I can scrape from anywhere . . . and that, and that alone, Mark, is why I’m tempted to take this two pounds you’ve brought back to us.”

“Nothing easier! I don’t want so many things as the other fellows. I do without beer, which is good for me, and without ’bacca, for I don’t smoke, and without sugar, for I never had a sweet tooth.”

“You’re good at going without, child, aren’t you? No, don’t look at me like that, Mark, I can’t bear it . . . and I can’t help it either.”

“I know you can’t, Fan dear! And I don’t know what came over me just then. . . . Good Lord, I thought the Army had given me a face stiff enough to hide my feelings!”

“Tell me, Fan, just tell me this. That other chap, long, long ago, that swell who talked to you in the shop one night, has he ever come again, do you still remember him? But last time I asked you that, I remember, you were cross.”

“Tell me!” he insisted, but she only shrugged her shoulders and sat without looking at him, hunched and old-looking in her grey shawl, over the dead coals.

Outside in the street a band of carol-singers broke suddenly into clear-voiced melody:—

The old man muttered and shifted, dreaming, in his armchair. Mark rose and stood with folded arms, his shoulders militarily squared, looking down upon Fancy, who did not stir.

Fancy could hear the hum of the Boxing Night audience the moment she stepped inside the stage-door at nine o’clock. The tragedy, which was Douglas, had just ended, and in the wings she encountered Mr. Belper in a very short kilt on his way to his dressing-room. A flight of pink-bodiced and gauze-winged fairies, pattering down from an iron spiral staircase, parted to let him through and curtsied respectfully as he passed. He was coughing terribly in the icy draughts of the passages, and some gaunt grey hairs were escaping from under the false forehead crowned with Young Norval’s luscious black curls. Mrs. Belper, in a sealskin jacket and a bonnet with nodding plumes, was pursuing him with a pair of trousers in her hand.

Although Mr. Belper had known for forty years that no Boxing Night audience ever listened to a word of the frontpiece, he nevertheless every Christmas fretted himself into a feverish chill over the affront to his dignity implied by the shouting, singing and cat-calls of a gallery that had come exclusively to see the pantomime. This year they had indulged their joy in life to the point of dropping a kicking boy out of the gallery on to the backs of the indignant pit. Ladies in the boxes had swooned, and refused to be brought round again, even though the victim had risen immediately to continue his shrill objurgations of his ex-associates aloft; and this addition to the hullabaloo had given the final upset to Mr. Belper’s equanimity. It was lucky that only the actors on the stage with him had heard him speak thirty-two lines from Macbeth in his agitation.

Fancy, going to her youthful triumph, felt sorry for the drawn old man as he shambled past, winking violently through a nervous trick that mastered him when overwrought; and which had not escaped the notice of his tormentors, so that the famous speech, “My name is Norval; on the Grampian heights . . .” had gone to a full-throated chorus of, “Wink to me only with thine eyes!”

“My dear, here’s our little Columbine for to-night!” said Mrs. Belper, seeking to distract him as a stumping procession of Giants with glaring eyeballs and dangling wooden hands for the moment stopped his way.

“I wish you luck, my chahld!” he said with hoarse condescension, “though you’ve an audience of brutes . . . that’s what they are, a crew of patches, rude mechanicals! I never let Mrs. Belper appear on Boxing Night at all.”

The Giants had gone on their way now, and Mr. Belper disappeared into the flames of a Magic Cauldron that was being tested for the last time by a horde of Demon Imps.

Columbine was called about an hour later; and after a last satisfied look in the glass at her well-turned leg in expensive new tights and sandals, she smoothed out her blue gauze skirts, gave a touch to the spangled ribbon in her hair, and ran down the spiral stairway to take her place with Harlequin ready for the Transformation.

But at the foot she was checked by a group of visitors in evening-dress with opera-hats crushed under their arms, as alike as a row of pins with their long, weeping whiskers, lackadaisical eyes and laboured air of boredom. The red-haired Mr. Montgomery had brought them behind, in token of his favour, and there were still others lounging in the distance, adding grievously to the difficulties of the sweating scene-shifters and the confusion of the dancers and supers who were thronging round the wings waiting for their cues.

“Stop just a moment, Fancy, m’dear!” said the manager affably. “You’ve plenty of time. Let me present our dainty little Columbine, m’lord. Miss Fancy Fawkes . . . Lord Uffington, Mr. Ramiro, Major Telscombe.”

The swells thus introduced made stiff little bows, and studied Fancy with glaucous, predatory looks, pulling at their silken whiskers. Before Mr. Montgomery could make further presentations to the rest of the starched and be-diamonded crowd, Fancy, with perfunctory curtsies, asked leave to go to her place beneath the stage as her cue was drawing near. Mr. Montgomery graciously assented, adding, “These gentlemen will like to see you again afterwards, m’dear,” and Fancy, saying rude things under her breath, rushed down the wooden stair to the dank crypt under the stage.

Here Mr. Polidori was already waiting in all the splendour of his Clown’s panoply, looking exactly like the portrait on the wall at home with his peaked comb of blue hair, his red crescents shining on either side of his artificially-elongated grin, his flower-embroidered tunic and red-hemmed Elizabethan trunks. He was fuming at her delay, while old Rainey the Pantaloon wagged his white beard at him in chattering reassurance. “Patchy,” the Harlequin, glittered like a great scaled fish in his spangled multi-coloured tights, and nervously practised pirouettes, while the stage-hands with fatigued faces clustered round the ropes of the trap-doors. Chinks of light showed through the boarding of the stage and the feet passing overhead made a noise like muttering thunder. They could hear the actors speaking and the surge of laughter from the house.

“Take your positions, you two! Damn you, take your positions!” hissed Polidori as the beginning of the Fairy Queen’s “transformation” speech floated down through the cracks in the boards and a little bell tinkled from a wire in the Prompter’s Box above as a signal for the trapmen.

“Eet will be a fearful frost!” whispered Signor Bolossi, the Harlequin, to Fancy as he took her hand in a clammy gripe and placed her beside him on the narrow trap. “Zey ’ave not rehearse properly, and zat uomo cattivo, Belper, ’ee did quote Macbet’.”

“Not in a dressing-room!” Fancy hurriedly reassured the trembling foreigner.

“Eet is jos’ as bad,” murmured the Harlequin. “ ’Ee trow ze Bad Eye, too!” He made averting horns with the fingers of his left hand, while his bat quivered in his right. “O Madonna mia, misericordia!”

It would have been better if Patchy had been listening, as Fancy was, for the Fairy Queen’s words addressed to Jack the Giant Killer and the Princess:—

The cue and the jerk of the little bell took him by surprise while he muttered his supplications; and as the trap, with its weights released, rushed swiftly upwards, he lurched against Columbine, who was standing on one toe, and upset her balance. In another moment they had shot out into the blinding furnace of the triple-rowed gas footlights, with the crudely-daubed scenery flaring all above them, and a confused vision of pink faces mounting to the ceiling behind the shadow-barred shirt-front of the conductor.

But Fan had not recovered herself after the shock of the Harlequin’s lurch; and before he could catch her hand again to steady her, she fell forward on her knees upon the stage. At that instant the trap-door swung to and gripped her foot.

Bolossi had at least the presence of mind to stamp twice upon the boards as a signal to the men below to release the trap; and as Fancy, freed from its jaws, writhed forward on her hands with a numbing ankle shot through by red-hot pangs, he gathered her up in his strong arms and spun round with her as if in a dance. At the front of the stage Polidori was shrieking out jocosities, and cuffing the “Old ’Un,” whom he struck down and picked up again by the seat of his pantaloons; and in this fashion, paralysed and half-swooning with agony, Fancy made her appearance as Columbine on Boxing Night.

The green baize curtain came swishing down with a thump of its heavy wooden roller; and, while the scene-shifters rushed forward with pieces of a mimic Margate Jetty for the first scene of the Harlequinade, Bolossi carried Fancy off into the wings. Polidori came bounding after, sobbing and cursing with antic grimaces.

“Oh! my Curls and Tweezers, what in ’ELL ’ave you done? Ruined the show! Oh! What a Boxing Night! Set her down somevere, anyveres, you Eyetalian organ-monkey! We got to keep it going some’ow without a Columbine! Here, YOU!”— he seized on a frightened ballet-girl in a group that had rushed to aid Fancy—“get on to the stage, d’you hear? Don’t goggle at me! Get on that b——y stage! Dance! Do anything you know, anything!”

He gave her a savage push, and, fumbling desperately with her feet, Flo Grimes glided on as an improvised Columbine with the Harlequin dancing rings round her to hide her as much as he could from the audience.

He had set Fancy down upon the nearest seat he could find, a property barrel needed for a trick change; and there, deserted by her other helpers, who had had to leave her to take up their own cues, she collapsed with her head against the greasy wall, while stage-hands staggered past with set-pieces and “tricks”, and the noise of Polidori’s piercing voice, punctuated by thwacks, gunshots, and shouts of children’s laughter, drifted through the wings.

Mr. Valerian, the little Prompter, his face as white as a ghost’s, kept popping in and out of his box, crying,

“I’ll be with you in a minute, darling, in a minute! Be brave, there’s a good girl, be brave!”

But he had no time, if he was to keep the Harlequinade alive with its series of quick scene-changes and mechanical tricks, to attend to the groaning girl; and presently two scene-shifters came along, and saying gruffly, “Sorry, Miss, but we must ’ave this barrel!” dumped her upon the floor and left her lying crumpled there, with her head throbbing feverishly to the spring of the trampled boards. Shutting her eyes and biting her lips hard, she tried to roll a little further out of the way so that she might not give trouble and impede the running of the show.

She heard Polidori’s well-known foot bounce off the stage again, and his panting voice, “A Harlequinade without a Columbine! Little Blue Angels on Toast! Little Blue Angels on Toast!”; and then Flo Grimes and Patchy quarrelling hysterically together. “But you mos’ do zomesing! You mos’ dance, anyzing!” and the girl sobbing, “But they’ll pelt me, you devil, they will, I know!”

“Go on, Flo! Don’t be a coward! Do pas basque, anything, to save the Show!”

Then a swarm of supers, dressed as soldiers, police, fishwives, nurses, image-sellers, piemen, swells and bakers’ boys, streamed past her for the “Spill and Pelt”, and again the place where she lay was deserted.

She was feeling light-headed when she heard a quick step come along the side of the wings towards her and a voice exclaim,

“Is that you, Mark, come back?” she babbled; and then opening her pain-glazed eyes, gave a scream, “My swell!”

“Hush, dear,” said the newcomer, “you’re ill!” He turned round and called to Mr. Valerian who was peeping round the corner of his box. “You, sir, come here, will you? Here’s one of your ladies needing assistance.”

“A moment, sir, a moment!” squeaked Mr. Valerian, awed by the sight of a white shirt-front and a velvet-collared cloak. “I’m coming in one moment, sir!”

“Well, come now, can’t you? Don’t let her lie here like a bundle of rubbish! Confound the fellow, he’s off! Here, child, let me see what’s wrong.” He stooped over her and, at the sight of the jagged rip in the ankle of her silk tights made by the falling trap-door, he gave a sensitive hiss. “Lord! what a nasty foot! Let me try to undo this sandal. I’ll be gentle. . . . Why, the ribbon must be cutting into that swelling like a knife!”

Very softly his hands brushed against her bare flesh over the tear in the tights, and she felt a swift relief as the sandal was drawn delicately off. But she could only keep gazing up at him and murmuring,

“Yes, I’m me!” answered the young man, smiling, “though who you think in that poor little wandering head of yours that I am, I can’t guess.”

“What? But what does it matter? The thing is to get you out of this riot at once. . . . You two fellows over there, come and help me!”

“Sorry, sir!” called the stage-carpenter from the wings, “but we’ve our work. After the Show!”

“No, now!” the young man snapped out, and as they reluctantly obeyed, “Smarter than that, d’you hear? Bring me that board thing for a stretcher!”

“Dunno, I’m sure, what Mr. Polidori’ll say,” growled one of the men. “This here’s the lid of the Oak Chest Trick for Scene Twelve!”

“You can tell Mr. Polidori and all the rest of your crew of blue-chins,” retorted the energetic young man, “to go . . .” and he completed a crisp and warm message.

“That’ll do, sir!” chuckled the stage-carpenter as he took the head of the improvised stretcher. “Anyone can see you’re a puffick genelman. Where shall we take the young lady, sir?”

“Nowhere, like that! Lift gently, can’t you? Now get her round to the stage-door and call a hackney-cab!”

It was no easy task to transfer Fancy painlessly to the hackney-carriage when it came; but the strange gentleman contrived it with a wonderful care, wrapping his well-lined opera-cloak round her bedraggled blue skirts to shield her against the frosty night outside the overheated theatre.

“What’s her address?” he demanded of the doorkeeper of the Ionic, and drove off, after hearing it, without tipping anybody, in spite of their servile wishes for the New Year.

The cabman, who had been bidden to keep to a walk, drove slowly along, and by the spreading and diminishing fans of light from the gas-lamps as they jolted past them, Fan’s rescuer attentively scanned her white face upon which the artificial bloom of her rouge stood out in bleak patches. There seemed to be less suffering in the blue eyes, which were open and regarding him trustfully. She was pillowing her head upon his shoulder, apparently without noticing what supported her.

“Is that so, my dear? I don’t want to bother you, but I’m afraid you must be still a little light-headed. You’ve never met me before really, you know.”

“What shop, child? But hadn’t you better not talk until we can get you comfortable and fetch a sawbones”—he bit his lip—“a doctor, I mean.”

“In father’s shop,” she persisted. “You bought the Miller, Blind Boy, Silver Palace . . . oh, I forget the rest, though I used to say them over every night till I could get to sleep.”

“You don’t mean the toy-theatre shop? Old Fawkes’s? But, of course, that’s the address! Heavens, child, are you the little wolf that served me that night? Impossible! But yes, I begin to see you coming through the theatre-paint! Odd! I haven’t once thought of you this five years! Yet you seem to have thought a lot about me!”

“You said,” Fancy reminded him with a brave attempt at a smile, “w-wasn’t I for sale with the other things in the shop?”

“Did I?” He shot a swift glance at her. “I can see I was wrong . . . though you are only a ballet-girl!”

“Columbine!” sobbed Fancy; and then, twisting and clinging to the worn leather arm-strap of the cab, in an abrupt spasm,

“What does it matter now? My dancing’s finished, I know. What’s to become of father?”

“Your foot may not be so bad as it feels,” he soothed her. “I’ll drive round for the doctor as soon as you’re safe in bed. Isn’t this your father’s place? I seem to recall it. Why wasn’t he in the theatre to see you to-night?”

“You can’t get orders on Boxing Night,” murmured Fan, turning suddenly ghastly. “Oh, how it burns! As if someone was biting with red-hot teeth into the ankle! I shall faint, I think!”

It was an entirely bewildered and shaking old man who opened the door to them and seemed barely capable of lighting the way upstairs while the strange gentleman and the cabman between them supported Fancy and laid her on her bed.

“Now, old gentleman,” said the stranger, when this was achieved, “tell us the name of your doctor . . . any doctor, then! You must know one!”

“And he’s probably dead, or worse, doddering, by now. Come, old friend, can’t you do better than this? Your daughter’s in dire pain, you know!”

“Dr. McTavish, sir, we sometimes go to,” whispered Fan from the bed. “No. 12 Myddelton Square.”

“No, stop with me, please!” She clutched his wrist, writhing in a new access of pain. “Please don’t leave me . . . yet!”

“As you wish, child.” His voice trembled a little. “The cabman can take the message. And tell the doctor to try and bring a nurse with him,” he added to the man, “for you’ve no woman here to tend her, have you, Mr. Fawkes? Hurry, cabby! Meanwhile, Mr. Fawkes, let us wrap this blanket round her to keep her warm. . . . Be careful! Don’t let it touch that foot! I’ve had a broken ankle and know what it feels like.”

“Fan!” exclaimed Mr. Fawkes, catching sight of her bare, white-powdered bosom in the low-necked bodice of her dancing-dress, as he drew the coverlet up over her, “weren’t you to appear as Columbine to-night? You’ll be late if you don’t start for the theatre at once!”

“Hush, old gentleman,” the stranger admonished him. “But she seems to have fainted away, so she didn’t hear you. I’m glad she didn’t, for I fear she’s done with Columbine, and for ever . . . poor, poor little wolf!”

After a long wait, as it seemed, the rumble of the hackney-carriage was heard again, and the young gentleman sped downstairs and opened the front door just wide enough to see a grim top-hat crowning a pair of fiery whiskers.

“Pray, doctor,” he said politely through the crack, “would you be good enough to spell pharmacopœia for me?”

“Excellent!” said the young man, throwing the door wide. “You must excuse my precaution, sir; but I once had a broken ankle set by a medico of your nation who had just been seeing the New Year in at St. Paul’s—and once was enough.”

“Ye should have waited till he was compos,” replied Dr. McTavish, “forby that this is no New Yearr’s Eve. And, man, you’re looking fine! What for did ye gar me bring a nurrse to ye? Ye’ll have to pay her for turning out, ye ken!”

“Your patient’s upstairs, doctor, and don’t let’s waste more time here. Where’s this woman you say you’ve brought with you?”

“In the cab. But she’s a leddy, ye’ll mind, though rejuiced, Mrs. Tankerman! Widdy of a Quarter-Master in the West India Regiment.”

“Good Lord!” muttered the other, as he watched the doctor help down a tall figure in widow’s weeds with a swaying bonnet drowned in waterfalls of crape. “Good Lord! Did the fellow think she was wanted for a laying-out?”

He bowed to this veiled and funereal presence as it slowly ascended the steps; then led the way upstairs, and remained on the landing with O. Fawkes while the doctor and his assistant began their examination of Fancy.

The old man peeped out of the window at the moon scudding behind impish tin chimney-pots, and remarked with a sigh,

“Not such a very merry Christmas this year, I’m afraid, sir! It’s odd that Mr. Grimaldi, such a kind-hearted fellow in his earthly days, should be so exceedingly malicious now that he divides his time between my workroom wall and his throne of glory up yonder!”

“Damn that sawbones!” he exclaimed. “Must he hurt her so, poor little waif?”

The next minute the door opened and Mrs. Tankerman appeared with the veil thrown back from her face—which was no improvement.

“First the mute, then the corpse,” muttered the young man with regrettable clearness. “Well, ma’am, what is it?”

“Could we procure some hot water?” enquired the nurse in a rasping whisper. “The doctor ordains immediate hot fomentations.”

“Seek the kitchen, ma’am, seek the kitchen!” answered the stranger impatiently. “And, hark ye, when you come back ask the doctor not to hurt the child more than he can help. I know your Edinburgh sawbones and his rough paws!”

“The pain that’s sent us, sir, we must bear,” reproved Mrs. Tankerman; and, opening her black reticule, she pressed a leaflet into his hand before gliding away ghost-like down the stairs.

The young man looked stupefied for a moment at the tract, which bore the title, “Through Suffering to Salvation: the Kitchen Maid’s Story,” and then, twisting it up, took a light from the lamp on the window-sill and kindled a cigar, muttering as he did so,

Presently the doctor came out of the patient’s room in his shirt-sleeves and remarked,

“Smoking, eh? I ken the quality of a fine cigar mysel’.” But, as the hint proved vain, he went on, “Yon’s a sorry business. I’d see a daughter o’ mine in her grave rather than let her turn play-actress. ’Tis a taking lassie, too, were she no pented to the eyes like Jezebel!”

“Her foot? Och! Ay! Her ankle, ye would say! ’Tis a bad compound, I’m thinking. But I canna think o’ setting till I rejuice the swelling. I’d be glad of a word with you, sir,” he went on, addressing the young gentleman. “Would ye go in, Mr. Fawkes, and bide a wee with your daughter?”

“Now, sir,” he said to the young man when they were alone. “I ken Mr. Fawkes weel. He’s no in a poseetion to pay for the nurrse, forby I may need to ca’ in a surgeon, not to speak of the other expenses of the case. Had the young woman no better be ta’en to the Hospital?”

“No,” answered the young man abruptly. “Those stinking wards are no place for her.”

“I will—for all that’s necessary. But I’m not a rich man, so play the tune softly, if you please.”

“Is that necessary?” The young man drummed his white-gloved fingers on the window-pane.

“I must know who I’ve to deal with. I understand weel ye’ve reasons for desiring privacy,” he added grimly.

“I’m gled to hear it. You can be sure we’ll do a’ that’s fit and proper for her, Mr. Pargeter.” He was turning back to the bedroom when doleful cries from the bottom of the house announced that the nurse had been assaulted by cockroaches.

“I must go see after Mrs. Tankerman,” said the doctor anxiously. “She’s a daft body, but a leddy, ye ken, though rejuiced.”

When the pair had returned with the hot fomentations and finished all that they meant to do for the night, Mr. Pargeter asked to speak to the patient for a moment after the doctor’s departure.

He found Mrs. Tankerman sitting in a corner of the bedroom with a candle, her crape bonnet exchanged for a frilled night-cap, and reading her Bible with moving lips in complete absorption.

He approached the bed where Fancy’s blue eyes looked up at him from the pillow with feverish brightness. As he stooped over her to say something comforting, she caught hold of his hand and pressed it fervently to her lips.

“Little enough for thanks, my dear, God knows!” he said. “Have you given her a sleeping-draught, Mrs. What’s-your-name?”

“No, sir!” replied Mrs. Tankerman severely. “Dr. McTavish would think that highly deleterious for a young person. It forms a habit, sir!”

“Oh Lord! Aren’t we all creatures of habit, ma’am? Why not have given her a night’s rest without pain?”

“You’ll come to see me again?” pleaded Fancy. “Oh, I know I’ve no right to ask it, but you will come and see me again?”

“Will you get better more quickly if I do, little wolf?” He was looking down at her with a fatherly smile.

“I shall die if you don’t!” There was such a world of forlornness in her face as she said it that he could not suspect her of coquetry.

“The young person,” interrupted Mrs. Tankerman, “is more likely to obtain the requisite sleep if you would kindly cease from disturbing her with your conversation, sir.”

“Well, that’s true,” conceded Mr. Pargeter. “Sleep well, my dear, if you can!”

As the young man shut the front door of the house behind him a few minutes later, his demeanour changed a little.

“Wake up, cabby!” he said sharply to the drowsing driver. “Set me down at the top of the Haymarket, and whip up that horse of yours going! I want to get there before morning, if you please!”

When Mr. Pargeter paid off his coach at the top of the Haymarket and mixed himself in the throng that was parading the great highway of London pleasure, he became almost immediately unidentifiable in a swarm of well-dressed young men in crush-hats and opera-cloaks exactly like his own. These were making hilarious merriment in and out among the wheels of the jingling hansoms and the cabs and coaches that were still bearing family parties home from belated pantomimes at the Lane and Covent Garden. Some thronged about the entrances to the brilliantly lit coffee-houses, the gaudy oyster-bars and mysteriously glowing cigar-divans. Others swept the width of the street, arm linked to arm, chanting choruses and exchanging jests with the thickly rouged prostitutes in feathers and silks who slowly patrolled the pavements. Near the foot of the Opera House a red-faced sporting peer had rolled a keg of spirits from an adjacent public-house out into the middle of the way and was lavishly treating the loafers and beggars of the neighbourhood.

From the sinister courts round Panton Street and Coventry Street there darted out figures with the mien of prize-fighters, jockeys and cab-runners, who hoarsely whispered invitations to sports and pleasures that dared not flaunt their claims upon the façade of the main thoroughfare. These worthies kept a sharp eye at every corner for the police, but hardly needed to do so to-night; for the Peelers meticulously avoided the Haymarket on festive occasions like the present, when their leathern top-hats would have roused a halloo, like the glimpse of a fox, among the young men about town, officers, barristers, collegians, medical students, stockbrokers’ clerks, who were one and all spoiling for a good fight to wind up their evening’s entertainment.

The uproar was increasing every minute and the horseplay growing more insistent and more violent, when a surge of the bellowing and singing crowd drove a small knot of gentlemen almost into one another’s arms upon the mat of a splendid coffee-house that showed a vista of gilding and milky gas-globes through its doors.

“Hulloa, de Vallencey!” exclaimed fat Captain Wetherby, “well-met, man! Let me introduce . . . Mr. de Vallencey of Ours, Lord Ducas of the Blues, Captain Loyal of the 42nd, Mr. de Burgh . . .”

“We’ve had a box at Covent Garden,” pursued Wetherby. “Never saw anything so dummy and dull. What’s become of the good old-fashioned pantomimes?”

“Were you looking for supper in this place?” enquired de Vallencey. “It’s as crowded as the Black Hole!”

“Worse still, I’m afwaid,” said Lord Ducas. “Let’s hail a couple of hansoms and dwive to Evans’s in Covent Garden.”

“I rather think,” put in the Squire, “that I can take you somewhere more lively than Epitaux’ or Evans’s dreary glee-singers. It’s only a hundred yards or so from here.”

He led the way at a brisk pace through Panton Street (where it was not too safe to loiter) amid shrieks and choruses from the dazzlingly lit upper windows of the gambling-hells on either side, until they emerged into Leicester Square, above which the fleeing moon gleamed on the metallic dome of Wyld’s Great Globe, which blocked the central enclosure. Here he stopped at a solid and decorous mansion in brown brick, and rang a bell that hung between flambeaux of twisted iron. The door was immediately answered by a grey-haired butler of reverend aspect, who, however, only opened it about a foot on a chain.

“It’s all right, Murcher,” said the Squire. “I’ll answer for these gentlemen. I’ve no doubt Mrs. Ramage is at home to-night.”

They were immediately admitted into a large hall, turkey-carpeted and oak-panelled, with oil-paintings in gilt frames and dark velvet hangings. Subdued dance-music sounded from somewhere at the back of the house, as the butler solemnly preceded them up a staircase wide enough for a coach, with heavy, carved balustrades. Thence he led them into a brightly lit drawing-room filled with a crowd of men in evening-dress, and lovely young women gowned with quiet elegance. There was a hum of well-bred conversation while flunkeys carried champagne round to the guests.

“I must introduce you to our hostess,” said de Burgh, and led the way to a dais at the far end of the room, where, upon a gilded armchair sat an enormously fat woman in wine-coloured velvet, with a necklace of rubies heaving on the ample powdered bosom below her quadruple chin. Dyed curls were piled fantastically high upon her head and her eyebrows heavily blackened with pencil; but below all pretence at make-up ceased, and the face of a male bull-dog, lit by shrewd and humorous little black eyes, looked out.

Mrs. Ramage received the presentation of the young officers with a ceremony that contrasted oddly with her thick husky voice; then, following the ritual, the Squire ordered champagne, which the hostess was good enough to share with them.

“Now,” she said, wiping her lips with a lace handkerchief, “I mustn’t keep all you handsome men from your pleasure to dangle after an old woman like me. Have you come for dancing or for play?”

The five men looked at one another for a second or two, hesitating; then Wetherby, whose eyes had been wandering excitedly round the room, declared with a laugh,

“I’m just in the mood for a quadrille or a waltz . . . that is, if Mrs. Ramage can find me a partner?”

“Of course,” answered the hostess, and turning her head, “Kate!” she called.

A slim, dark girl, with an air of modest refinement, rustled obedient towards her, studying the fat Captain from under her downcast lids with eyes as sharp as a ferret’s. Wetherby, perspiring delightedly, took her away on his arm towards the ballroom downstairs.

“And now,” pursued Mrs. Ramage, “what can I do to pleasure the rest of you?”

“Is the ball spinning, Mrs. Ramage?” enquired Mr. de Burgh after a moment’s pause.

“Of course it is, Squire! You know we always have roulette, rouge et noir, vingt-et-un . . . any game you like, in the Blue Room. But young gentlemen”—she beamed at the officers—“usually prefer the ladies!”

“Not to-night, I think, Mrs. Ramage,” said de Vallencey. “Squire, shall we try a spin?”

“And I,” said Ducas, “will ask Mrs. Wamage to find me a partner to match the one that lucky dog Wetherby has just cawwied off!”

So they separated, and the Squire and de Vallencey walked off through a draped archway into a long room with a blue paper studded by gold stars and a golden moon on the ceiling.

It was closely shuttered as well as protected by thick window-curtains against any possible outside observation, and was in consequence stuffy and heady with cigar-fumes, for every man in the place seemed to be smoking and the gas-globes loomed through a bluish-grey murk. A French croupier with a low monotonous voice controlled the roulette table which ran down the centre, and was fully occupied, nearly every chair having one or more intending gamesters waiting behind it ready to pounce on it as soon as it was vacated. There were green tables for card-players at the farther end of the apartment, and round the walls ran a ledge carrying armchairs and tiny tables where onlookers could sit and drink.

“We must keep our eyes open for a place,” said the young Lieutenant, his eyes beginning to glisten with gambler’s fever. “Look, Squire, the old fellow next to the croupier’s getting up! One of us might slip in!”

“Wait a bit!” de Burgh caught his arm. “I’ve changed my mind. I see that old Mother Devil’s-Dam has engaged Gustave of Wiesbaden as croupier, and I advise you, Mr. de Vallencey, not to plunge; the man is too notorious.” He gave a quick glance round the room. “I’m sorry, after all, that I brought you here; the place has deteriorated sadly. Look at those ‘Greeks’ whispering in the corner—well-dressed decoys scattered all over the Haymarket to bring in pigeons for plucking—enough to damn any establishment; I thought Mrs. Ramage had more sense.”

“Oh, surely,” remonstrated de Vallencey, “things must be on the square here. There’s the old Duke of Downshire raking in his stakes!”

He turned away as de Vallencey took up station behind one of the chairs, and as he did so almost ran into a very tall young man, well over six foot, with pale regular features that would have been handsome as a statue’s but for a curious sunken look, as if they had been lightly rubbed over by an eraser.

“Ambassador and Secretary cannot take leave simultaneously, my dear Squire,” answered the young Russian cordially, in faultless English.

“They say,” retorted de Burgh with a shrewd glance, “that when you are at the Embassy the Ambassador is at home, and when you are away the Ambassador is on leave!”

“And what are you doing as guest of Mother Devil’s-Dam? But I forgot. If half I hear is true, this place should be one of your best recruiting-grounds.”

“I don’t understand you in the least!” Paulof’s great, dark eyes, like sleeping rock-pools, betrayed no feeling.

“Well: buona robas, broken officers, ruined men of fashion—there are far too many of ’em here to-night—aren’t they the bait you fish with?”

“You are perfectly wise. I also have had too much experience of their tripotage at Aix and Baden and Toganrog and Bucharest and Ispahan and Simla and Constantinople to be caught napping in a low hell like this.”

“H’m! I should like to know what military duties a Russian Light Cavalry Colonel can have at Constantinople, for instance!”

“What do you say to a pint of champagne? Do you know there is news from Constantinople and it’s not good? Look! Here’s a table! Waiter! A magnum of Moët!”

“Never knew a Russki cavalryman yet who hadn’t. What’s all this about Constantinople?”

“Trouble brewing. This new little Napoleon, Mr. Bonaparte, President of the French Republic by vote of grapeshot, is stirring up the Latin monks in the Holy Land to make mischief against my Church.”

“That mummery? Something about a star and a key? What has diplomacy to do with the squabbles of unwashed monks?” Mr. de Burgh sipped his champagne.

“How thoroughly British you are, Squire! Squabbles of unwashed monks, indeed! Clashes of Empires! Sooner or later you will be drawn into this Turkish quarrel.”

“Pauloff! If you’re going to start boring me again with your nightmare of a world to be divided between Britain and Russia, I tell you frankly I’m not in the mood. I prefer even Mrs. Ramage’s roulette table.”

“Rather severe, Squire! Why do all you educated English distrust Russia so implacably?”

“Measure the length of your Army List,” replied Mr. de Burgh between sips. “Look up your census of population. . . . Count up the square miles of territory you’ve annexed in Europe and Asia since the beginning of this century. . . .”

“Would you like me to tell you what was said in my hearing at Lord Palmerston’s last Tuesday?”

“Very much indeed.” Pauloff’s voice had tightened; his eyes had become cat’s-slits.

“Yes, I guessed you would,” replied Mr. de Burgh imperturbably. “Shall I refill your glass for you? I feel more and more convinced of one thing. . . .”

“That we were wise to keep away from the tables this evening. Some of those faces over there are a study. . . . Ah! I’m sorry to see that!”

“Is that Lord Blackwater of the Mercuries?” asked Pauloff with a quick shifting of interest. “Point him out to me, my dear Squire, I beg of you! Third from the croupier, on his left? Yes, I see. You’re right, Squire! That man has had a blow; look at the way he twists his handkerchief between his palms! But fancy playing with Gustave!”

“Cardigan had Gustave thrown out of Flinck’s rooms behind the Quadrant last season. He’s a branded cogger.”

“I didn’t know he was your friend!” said de Burgh looking straight at the Russian.

“Oh, I meet everybody sooner or later,” answered Pauloff carelessly. “By the way, is Cardigan really resigning the command of his regiment?”

“You’re inimitable, Squire! I know I must seem impertinent, but—que voulez-vous?—the British Army is my foible. It’s the finest service in the world—excepting one! But, see, isn’t this Lord Blackwater coming towards us?”

“Good evening, Squire,” said Blackwater, pausing in front of them. “This is a pretty sort of flash crib for a man to be planted in! I wish I could pick out the agreeable young gentleman in evening-dress who brought me here! I’ve been plucked to the breast-bone!” He was biting his moustache, and there were drops on his forehead.

“Let me, Ralph,” said de Burgh with a faint note of warning in his voice, “introduce to you Colonel Alexei Pauloff, late of the Duke of Leuchtenburg’s Hussars, at present Secretary to the Russian Embassy in London.”

“Gustave?” asked Pauloff. “Undoubtedly, Lord Blackwater. The sums he takes from Mrs. Ramage’s guests are prodigious. I don’t know how he and the old She-devil divide the spoils, but they are enormous.”

“I imagine,” said Blackwater, gnawing his nails, “that they offer prayers for this hell in all the synagogues.”

“Probably!” laughed Pauloff. “Won’t you take a glass of champagne, Lord Blackwater? You look warm: it’s very oppressive in here. I wonder why gentlemen in difficulties always resort to the Jews.”

“Where the devil should we . . . should they . . . go?” snapped the young lord. “Do you suppose bankers make loans on the security of the roulette ball?”

“Improbably! But one can borrow and yet meet with Christian dealing. I always send my friends to a Russian gentleman now living in London—a man of family, though he has been led into commerce—and they have been very well satisfied, very well. What do you say, Squire, shall I introduce you?”

“And the rich need not trouble, eh, Lord Blackwater? Do you know it gives me an extraordinary pleasure to meet an officer of the Mercuries. Your Riding-School and your drill are talked of in every cavalry barracks in Europe, especially among the Leuchtenburg Hussars. Did you know, by any chance, a Captain Lewis Nolan?”

“I think so, Squire. I met him in India. We played polo together once and argued. I told him I thought the English Light Cavalry were too heavily equipped. He would not believe me when I said, ‘The Cossacks will slip through your fingers like eels!’ ”

“Oh, but it’s true,” repeated the Russian, nodding and smiling dreamily to himself, “for I have seen you nearly all. I said it to Nolan. The Cossacks will slip through your fingers like eels!”

“No. It has been one of my ambitions ever since I came to England, to see the Mercuries on parade, or, better still, at field-work.”

“I’m sure,” said Blackwater carelessly, “that Colonel Merivale would welcome you as guest of the Mess at any time. And if you want to see our rivals, the ‘cherry-pickers’, I’m sure de Burgh would introduce you to Lord Cardigan, their Colonel.”

“I don’t think that Lord Cardigan looks upon his regiment as a form of public entertainment,” suggested Mr. de Burgh in a dry tone.

“Well, you ought to know the mind of the lion,” he said brutally, and turning on his heel, strode away towards the drawing-room.

As he entered the sumptuous saloon, however, his ears were deafened by an appalling clamour. Mrs. Ramage, erect on her dais, with her face empurpled by fury, was shouting coarse menaces, while the flower-like young women, screaming with the accents of St. Giles’s and Houndsditch, were some of them standing on chairs with their flounces drawn over their pretty ankles, some clawing at the faces of a fresh rout of revellers. And in the midst of the room the moon-faced peer who had been earlier in the evening distributing raw spirits in the Haymarket, was shaking out of a sack a clotted mass of squealing sewer rats which tumbled about leaving streaks of viscid slime on the bees-waxed parquet.

Blackwater swung round with an ejaculation of disgust, and found Pauloff behind him, the friendliest of smiles on his face.

“Let’s get out of this,” said the Englishman. “What about finishing off at the Cyder Cellars? Have you heard Ross sing ‘Sam Hall, the Chimney-Sweep’? No? Oh, you shouldn’t miss that! It will throw a new light on our national character for you! ‘Oh, the Sheriff he’ll come too,’ ” he hummed, as they descended the broad staircase arm in arm,

By the way,” he broke off, “could you tell me the name of your Russian friend you spoke of upstairs? I don’t see why I shouldn’t admit to you—what I didn’t wish Cardigan’s jackal to hear—that I plunged deeper than was wise to-night, and had to sign drafts on my bankers larger than Mr. Coutts will be pleased to receive. I presume that my name . . .?”

“My dear friend, your name is gold. With your permission I will take you myself to-morrow morning to call on M. Timothieff.”

M. Timothieff, it appeared, when Lord Blackwater and Colonel Pauloff drove to his house together the next morning in the latter’s private hansom, lived in considerable state in Seamore Place. On the way the young lord enquired how he had made his fortune, to which Pauloff replied frankly that he did not very well know. He believed that Timothieff had traded grains from Odessa and that he owned mines somewhere in the Caucasus . . . Pauloff was not sure where. Now, half-retired, Timothieff amused himself with his investments and made loans on reasonable terms, where the security was good. No, his home was not in England, though he was a frequent visitor here; had large interests, probably, in this country; and he usually took a furnished house for the period of his stay.

He took a handsome one, Blackwater reflected, as a groom-of-the-chambers led them across a vast marbled hall into a sitting-room with a view over the Park. Here presently M. Timothieff came to them, an affable, high-shouldered old gentleman, with mild eyes of a pale blue colouring, and white moustaches. He seemed enchanted to meet Lord Blackwater and in no hurry to begin upon business. Instead, he insisted that they should try Russian tea from a samovar and Russian cigarettes from a jewelled box, while he chatted to them about the differing customs of England and Russia, showing—no doubt out of compliment to his visitor—a special interest in military matters.

“The Guards of your English Queen are magnificent fellows,” he declared enthusiastically in his excellent English. “Of course, even a cosmopolitan money-merchant doesn’t quite forget his patriotism, so if you ask me whether they are finer men than our own Preobrajensky Guards . . . well!” he smiled and shrugged apologetically. “But I imagine they are heavier. Exactly what does their equipment weigh, Lord Blackwater?”

“I understand,” then said M. Timothieff, “that they are about to be re-armed with a new breech-loading rifle on Captain Minié’s model. Have you seen any tests with it?”

Lord Blackwater replied briefly and impatiently that he damned all musketry and believed only in the arme blanche. Colonel Pauloff thereupon reminded his friend that Lord Blackwater was a cavalryman, upon which the merchant of grains pleasantly opined that his lordship would doubtless find himself on some General’s staff when the day came for the old Allies, England and Russia, to put a stop to the boasting of that new pinchbeck Napoleon.

Lord Blackwater answered to this that the day couldn’t come too soon for his tastes. He was infernally tired of peacetime soldiering. It meant sheer idleness, with the result that you simply drifted from one scrape into another—and, in fact, it was about one of these that he had come to consult M. Timothieff.

The grain-trader listened with the air of a family physician. Was it, perhaps, a question of accommodation? Lord Blackwater, whose eyes had been taking keen stock of the luxury of the room and its appointments, said diffidently,

“Yes, rather a large accommodation.” The fact was that he had been thinking his situation over—all last night, that is, he added, for one never could sleep with these cursed figures dancing up and down before one’s mind—and he had come to the conclusion that he must make a broad settlement, at any rate of his more urgent liabilities, and not go on from hand to mouth, paying this debt and asking time for paying the other. But he supposed that M. Timothieff might find . . . say £10,000, rather a stiff order?

M. Timothieff looked immensely relieved. Really he had quite feared, for a few moments, that Lord Blackwater was going to name some great sum, and he was no Rothschild, did not pretend to be.

Lord Blackwater suggested a mortgage on certain estates of his, which he was beginning to describe when M. Timothieff cut him short. Between gentlemen a simple letter of acknowledgment was surely ample security. M. Timothieff, at any rate, had no fear of being cheated! So that all seemed settled on the most agreeable basis, and the grain-merchant announced that he would like his guests’ opinion on one of half a dozen bottles of genuine Tokay (so he believed) which he had been lucky enough to buy at the sale of a Russian nobleman’s effects after his death.

“I suppose,” he remarked, as they all three sipped the wine with satisfaction, “that you never heard, Lord Blackwater, of the Revue Internationale des Affaires Militaires?”

Lord Blackwater answered emphatically that he would rather read Shelley any day than that technical stuff. At this M. Timothieff laughed and owned that he was almost of Lord Blackwater’s opinion. But he had lately become proprietor of this international organ of information by one of those odd accidents of business you never could foresee . . . he who knew as much about military affairs really as a child! . . . and he was inclined on the whole to think that the Revue did good. It enabled military men of all nationalities to exchange views and profit by one another’s experiences; it fostered the spirit of brotherhood-in-arms among those who had been allies yesterday and might be allies again to-morrow; and thus indirectly in its small way did something to promote international understanding and fraternity.

Lord Blackwater, suppressing a yawn and gazing out a little hungrily at the sunlit sward of the Park, agreed that it seemed an estimable project.

Well, then, proceeded M. Timothieff, who was encouraged, he confessed, by his friend’s approval, what the Revue most needed at the moment was a competent correspondent in England, who could keep its readers informed of the latest developments, changes of cadre and formation, new tactical methods, improvements in arms and so forth, in the British Army. They would not necessarily publish all the information they received, but would use it perhaps as a basis for editorial articles; and for many obvious and innocent reasons they respected the incognito of their contributors. For a fully qualified correspondent they would pay as large a retaining fee as £2,000 per annum . . .

“What was that?” asked Lord Blackwater, turning his eyes sharply from the window. “£2,000 per annum? For what?”

M. Timothieff laughed and said he was sure he had been boring Lord Blackwater. He must not keep him from the Park. They could discuss that matter another time if Lord Blackwater was interested. The immediate point was that M. Timothieff would be very glad to write an order on his bankers without delay for the sum Lord Blackwater was doing him the honour to borrow—the Bank rate of interest would satisfy him perfectly in this instance.

Lord Blackwater opened his eyes a little at this generosity; but listened in silence while M. Timothieff suggested that, as a pure matter of form and a safeguard against accidents, his friend might write the little letter that had been mentioned, acknowledging the loan.

“You will find all you want at the table beside you,” he said, “paper, pens . . . and here is ink.”

With obsequious courtesy he stooped over to lift the heavy inkstand of veined stone and put it before Blackwater, who was selecting a pen. But as he did so, he caught his cuff on a corner of the marble base, which pushed his sleeve back over his wrist. Blackwater, who was also bending over the table testing his quill, noticed that across the white flesh of the Russian’s lower arm there stretched a jagged red scar. On the instant his brain flew back to his boyhood, and he saw the figure of Thomas MacWathen, a brawny ghillie in the Highland deer-forest they had then possessed. MacWathen was an ex-sergeant of the 92nd who had fought with Picton at Waterloo, and received a sabre-stroke on his arm from a French cuirassier. Blackwater had often peered at the scar in his youth—and the disfigurement he now saw on the arm of the merchant of grains was almost exactly the double of it.

The young lord laid down his pen and sat back in the chair from which he had risen. There was a tense silence in the lofty gilded room filled with winter sunbeams. Blackwater was studying the mildly surprised face of his host; and as he looked the high shoulders, in his imagination, seemed to square for the weight of epaulettes, the jaw to harden, the white moustaches to twist upwards and bristle, the pale blue eyes to gleam with a frosty sternness.

“M. Timothieff,” he said slowly, rising to his feet, “I am grateful for your consideration, but I have just remembered an excellent maxim of our family lawyer’s: ‘Always sleep on an important bit of business!’ With your permission I mean to follow it on the present occasion, and I’ll wish you and your friend good day.”

Out in the hall, as the front door closed, the two Russians surveyed one another glumly.

“Don’t worry, General!” answered Pauloff, breaking at length into an amused laugh. “I’ll find a means to hook the big fish again. He has too many weaknesses not to be caught by one of them. I’ve another very useful friend I’m throwing across his way. Come now and show me the drawing of the new Minié that the pretty nursemaid says was sold to her by the Guards’ Musketry Instructor.”

Outside in Park Lane Blackwater stood gnawing his moustache and irresolutely swinging his stick. Then he lifted it to a drifting hansom. The driver touched his hat with his whip in effusive salute as the horse clapped up to the kerb, and Blackwater’s face lightened agreeably.

“It’s you, Storks, you old scoundrel, is it?” he said as he climbed in. “I haven’t been driven by you since the night you got me clear of the Peelers outside Cremorne. How’s the missus and the kids?”

“Nastily, Storks. Neither a merry Christmas nor what looks like a happy New Year. I want you to drive me to the Commercial Road, a good way down, to a shop with the name Isidore Behrmann, place where they sell wild beasts—stuffed and alive, I believe.”

“Yes,” replied Blackwater moodily, as he settled back on the cushions of the hansom. “I require several monkeys.”

They had hardly reached Piccadilly Circus before the trap-door in the cab-roof was thrust up by a stick, and a voice from within called up,

“Storks, you villain, what would you do if they wanted to buy your honour for £10,000 down, and Bank rate of interest only?”

“Well, my lord,” answered the driver in regretful tones from his perch, “I’m afeard a cabby’s honour an’t wuth anything like an offer like that. No, I’m afeard I’ll never get sich a chance!”

There was a chuckle inside as the hansom clacked eastwards by Coventry Street and Long Acre.

Wilfred Pargeter looked up from his painting with a groan. Then he smiled as his eyes fell on Fancy’s figure stretched on the red cushions at the far end of the moored punt. The April day was mild and scented by a gentle breeze, and all around Bisham Abbey the young greenery was thrusting and clouding the stems.

murmured the young man. “But it’s no use! I can’t get the tones right! Nor do I understand how on the sunniest day that old, haunted house contrives to stay grey and cold and menacing.” He began to wash his brushes in the stream. “But if I can’t paint grey stone, how shall I paint your colour, Fancy?”

“Sixpence! Wait till I’m better,” answered Fan, playing with a broken-off reed in the river and watching the cattle tearing foliage above the pink loosestrife on the dream-landscape of flat meadows opposite. “I’m pale and I’m thin and I’m haggard . . .”

“Come, dear! You haven’t made such a bad recovery in three months! Hopping about . . .”

“Like a saucy little sparrow! Before we know it you’ll be ready to dance again.”

“I wish it was five minutes after, Wilfred! Mr. Polidori was very encouraging when I spoke to him last week about getting my place back. Oh yes, I don’t think!”

“You’re welcome to, Wilfred. Twice round and with the ends tucked in, for all I care. But damning pays no baker’s bills.”

“Do you think?” asked Wilfred, making a fresh start upon his water-colour, “that you need start bothering about money again—at any rate yet?”

“Think what I owe you already for my illness,” murmured Fancy in a low, troubled voice. She turned over a little stiffly on her side and gazed downstream at the bright new spire of Marlow, but found no counsel there. “Where did you learn to paint so well?” she asked at length, turning her eyes back into the boat.

“So badly, you mean! Nowhere! That’s just the devil of it. Picked it up here and there, and not enough of it anywhere.”

“Not if you don’t want to tell me. But I’m sometimes curious, and lie awake wondering.”

“A woman’s curiosity is a devilish dangerous thing! Don’t you trust me then, Fan?”

“And I’ll stop painting. The light’s going. My picture is a failure—curse it!—I’d throw the wretched thing in the river if you didn’t always keep my temper sweet, Fan—and the Bisham ghost’ll be out in a little while making faces at us. Come, Columbine, I’ll pole you back to Marlow, and we’ll see if that little dinner’s ready at the Crown.”

On their way Wilfred, to avoid the wash of a string of barges, drove the punt close into the Bucks shore; and Fancy, leaning overboard, plucked a long stem of the loosestrife and began to strip the blossoms, murmuring,

“Tinker—tailor—soldier—sailor—gentleman—merchant—ploughboy . . .”

“Yes, a thief, Wilfred,” she murmured, with her eyes bent on the streaming green water.

“Here! Only a small piece! Old Mr. Fawkes’s daughter—and what will you do with her?”

“Do I, Mr. Sure?” She sent a tantalizing flash of blue through long lowered lashes. “Then what am I going to do?”

“What your nature tells you. We all do that. Some of us invent noble reasons to justify our desires. The rest of us are brave enough to grasp the apple we want.”

She looked up at him with a troubled glance, and remained in thought till the boat grated against the Marlow landing-stage.

A clear moon had risen when the hostler, after their dinner in a dark parlour of the Crown, brought round the tandem in which they had come from London. Wilfred, handling the reins decisively, held the horses, lively after their rest and oats, to a steady trot up the long hill out of Marlow leading to the common. But a few hundred yards beyond the end of the climbing village street they came upon a thatched cottage standing within a garden wall upon which a tangle of clematis spread. The fantastic gables and tall brick chimneys (for the cottage was of Tudor date) enchanted Fancy and she demanded that they should stop to admire them.

Wilfred, after a little trouble, brought his horses to a standstill, and slipped his arm round her waist as she sat gazing at the moon-silvered outline of the roof and the dark mass of the orchard behind the wall. The place seemed incredibly still and remote, the last cottages of Marlow hidden below the hill-crest, and all around fields and little distant woods among which faint scarves of mist were trailing. An owl cried once or twice from a lonely coppice and was silent again.

“Oh, what a heavenly place!” she sighed, clasping her hands together. “How still and peaceful! There’s not a sound. I wonder where all the people are?”

“There are no people, little silly!” answered Wilfred. “Don’t you see the windows are all shuttered? The place is to let.”

“Well then,”—he suddenly tightened the arm he held round her waist—“you could live there, my darling! Why not let me take it for you? What a home, Fan for you—and for our love!”

“Listen! Listen! Just fancy yourself reigning there among the honeysuckle and the June roses! Some old woman from the village to look after you, when I was away, too deaf to hear what we didn’t want her to, and too stupid to be curious about us. You can’t really want to go back to that smelly dusty theatre and its crowd of third-rate blue-chins! Fan! You may as well face the bitter truth like a brave little girl. That ankle of yours will never be strong enough again for dancing . . . for stage-dancing, I mean.”

“I know it, I know it, Wilfred. Why are you so unkind, to remind me just now when I was happy?”

“Oh, don’t cry! For God’s sake don’t cry! Do you think I mean to be unkind to you? But face the facts, pray do! What’s going to become of you?”

“Oh, Sixpence!” Fancy bravely wiped her eyes. “I shall make a living for one old man and myself somehow. Do sewing for a Jew, I suppose. Will you give me a machine?”

“Yes, and worth something better than . . . than what you want to make of me, Wilfred—though I’m not angry with you, because I know you men don’t understand.”

She gave him a reproachful glance in the bright moonshine which set his veins on fire. He pressed her violently to him, while the restless horses fidgeted and struggled in vain, and, as he found out her clinging mouth, he felt her thrilling all over.

“What are you waiting for, lovely, adorable child?” he whispered. “Waiting till we both get old and the fire has gone to cinders? You needn’t worry about what your father might think; the poor old man is past understanding anything that goes on around him. And your secret will be safe here. You just take the name of Mrs. Pargeter.”

“But do you really think a parson and a book can add anything to the sacredness of a love like ours? Fan, do you understand what you’ve come to be in my life? My thirst for you? This miracle of tenderness? Do you mean to drive me out again into the cold . . . and break your own loyal little heart that I can feel beating so wildly now under my hand—and all for the sake of a church service?”

“Oh, I can’t argue with you. You’re educated and far, far too clever for poor Fancy! But that thing I’ll never, never do! I’ve always held my head high. No one’s ever been able to whisper things about Fancy Fawkes at the theatre. I never spoke again to Alice Farwell after she went gay. I did what none of the other girls would have dared to do, resisted Mr. Montgomery!”

“Well, I should hope you did! The idea of disgracing yourself with a greasy barber’s block like him!”

“There’s no resemblance between the two cases! A low-bred snob like that!”

His arm fell away from her waist and he touched the horses to a sharp trot. They passed over the brow of the common, out of sight of the cottage and the little riverside town, and swung round in silence to join the main London road.

He made no answer until she repeated the words as a question. Then he said gruffly,

“I think you’re being silly and destroying our happiness for nothing. As I said before, don’t you trust me?”

“I’ve gone too far,” was her reply, “for it to matter whether I trust you or not now”; and casting a quick glance at her as he drove, he saw the tears glistening on her face in the pale light. “I told you in the boat that I belonged to you . . . and I expect . . . yes, I know . . . that if you will have it this way in the end I shall give you what you want. But, oh, it makes me cold with fright to think of it!”

His eyes blazed with quick triumph for an instant; then immediately the flame died out and compunction transfigured his face.

“What a brute I am!” he cried. “Of course it would be natural for you to be frightened! And, Fan, don’t think I fail to realize what a little brick you are for repressing your curiosity about me.”

“I know you’re not, dearest. You take things as they come without questioning.”

“I try to. Besides, as you warned me on the river to-day, some things are too good to be questioned. They might disappear like the palace in the pantomime if one started poking at them.”

“Listen now! I’ll put a stop to your wondering. I’ll tell you . . . all that it’s possible to tell. I have work that would from time to time take me away from the one I love. And she would have to trust that I would, sooner or later, come back to her.”

“You little trump!” Again he disengaged an arm from his driving to clasp her, and again she seemed to melt into him as their lips clung together. “And then,” he continued, after a minute, “she would not have to ask where I was going, or why.”

“Nor peer into drawers for papers or into desks for letters that might give a clue?”

“She’d have better things to do, keeping the cottage and the garden neat and sweet for the day he came back to her.”

Again she made no answer, but something about the meek droop of her head as she turned it away again softened him.

And for a long while he drove swiftly and silently, pausing twice to light cigars with Fancy’s help, while he restrained the horses, doubly eager now for the smell of their stables. Nor did he speak of anything serious after they had left the tandem at a West London livery stables and taken a cab to Greensleeves Row.

There, instead of leaving Fancy at the door, as he usually did after such outings, Mr. Pargeter followed her into the workroom, where O. Fawkes raised his now permanently perplexed eyes from a sheet of figures he was colouring with unsalable extravagance, and looked at him as at a stranger. Fan, too, as she sank into the armchair beneath the portrait of Mr. Grimaldi, tracing idle patterns with her supporting stick among the rubbish on the now seldom-swept floor, looked sidelong at her lover with puzzled eyes.

“Mr. Fawkes,” said Wilfred, going up to the edge of the table and trying to fix the old man’s wandering gaze. “May I ask for your close attention a few moments? I have a very important request to make of you.”

O. Fawkes looked evasively into all corners of the room; shot a nervous glance at Mr. Grimaldi over his daughter’s head; and at last came to rest, held by the other’s firm gaze as though his dim, horny eyes were being drawn upwards by a magnet.

“Well then, Mr. Fawkes, if you are attending to me, will you give me the honour of your daughter’s hand in marriage?”

O. Fawkes twisted round in his chair and eyed Fancy with a stealthy, triumphant look.

“Her foot?” The young man seemed at sea. “Why, I hope it’s as good as cured by now. But what has that to do . . .”

“Then it does fit? I thought so. I couldn’t understand for a long while, sir, all the talk there’s been in this place; Lady Douglas, the widow, her female attendant, and the surgeon with his appliances, always so attentive! So you’ve made it fit at last, have you?”

“Mr. Fawkes, to be frank with you, I can’t follow a single word you’re saying.”

“Tut, tut, sir! You grow dull! Why, the slipper, of course, the crystal slipper. She can wear it now, eh? And she shall be your bride at the palace, eh? eh?”

“That’s perfectly right, father!” broke in Fancy with a shrill laugh. “It’s all a game, and you’ve seen through it at the very first words—clever papa! Wilfred and I were playing Cinderella, as we drove home. And now the game’s finished . . . Wilfred, it’s late and father should be in bed. Thank you for a lovely drive, a lovely day. We’ll . . . we’ll not arrange another meeting . . . it will be best.”

“But he shall marry you!” exclaimed Fawkes, springing up and smiting the table with his fist. “There’s the Proclamation! What are you, sir? A trifler? A seducer, ha?”

“Father, hush! He’s an honourable gentleman, but he can’t marry me. A man of family! It would be ruin to him!”

“Are you an honourable gentleman?” Fawkes wheeled round upon Pargeter. “What is your family? How will you support my child?”

“Very fair questions, Mr. Fawkes. If we may all sit down again quietly, I’ll do my best to answer them. The Pargeters come of decent stock, I assure you, though I’ve been left poor enough. I’m a painter with a studio, and I do some other work, not of my own choice by any means. If your daughter marries me I can give her comfort—in return for trust. The wedding must be very private, just ourselves and the minister, for I’ve an old Uncle—shall I say?—whose good favour I don’t want to lose; it would spell bankruptcy, if I did. Everything will be well—if you keep your pledge, Fan, and don’t grow curious.”

He looked towards O. Fawkes, who had subsided absently at his table again and taken up his brushes afresh.

“You see!” said Wilfred with a compassionate shrug. “It’s not the least use bringing him into our counsels.”

“I knew you wouldn’t. Perhaps that’s what made me decide to do it. . . . That and the fact that I’m silly, but I can’t bear to see tears in those eyes.”

“You’ll never see them there again. . . . How wonderful it all is! Everything changed in an hour . . . and life’s going to be so heavenly!”

“Yes,” said Mr. Fawkes abruptly, as if answering a question, and at the same time making great whirls of coloured flame upon his sheet,

The may was shining over the edge of the garden wall when Wilfred Pargeter brought his bride and her father back to the cottage for their honeymoon.

“Are you contented now?” he asked her tenderly, as she stood removing her bonnet and shawl in the dark little panelled parlour.

“You didn’t miss the bridesmaids, the ceremony and all the rest of the fuss?”

“Oh, Sixpence! What does that matter? Fancy Fawkes was never one for shows! And I’ve no friends I wanted to invite. . . . I didn’t like your clergyman, though.”

“Edge Daryngton? No, he’s a queer card. I’ve known him a long time. Too fond of song-and-supper Cellars for the cloth. But he was a friend I could trust.”

“He was drunk, Wilfred, when he was marrying us without his surplice in that dark corner of the church.”

“You thought so? I’m very sorry. But he was sober enough to read the service over us with all proper formality, and that, I suppose, is what matters. And he wrote out your lines for you, didn’t he?”

“Yes, Wilfred?” She put her hand to her bosom and drew out the folded paper. “Now, you keep them for me, will you?”

He took the blotted certificate in its straggly writing from her with a wondering look.

“Why trust by halves? And, Wilfred, I know you don’t trust me yet. Now perhaps you will!”

He caught her to him, kissed her passionately, and held her head against his breast, stroking the soft brown hair into easy disorder. So they stood for a moment with his face hidden from her; then he said,

“You must keep your own lines, of course.” He walked to a little writing-desk in a corner. “Put them in this envelope for safety,” he told her, “and we’ll seal it with my ring.”

She watched him with a childish interest as he lit a taper and pressed the soft red wax down with his intaglio.

“What a funny little man with feathers round his shoes and a wand!” she exclaimed looking at the imprint. “Is he a magician?”

“Why, yes, I suppose so. There!” he handed her the envelope, “keep this in your little pearwood chest with your earrings and other treasures. And now let us see if that old woman has our supper ready as I ordered. Your father will be tired; he needs some food.”

“Wilfred,” she caught him by the lapel, “you don’t mind father being with us . . . on our honeymoon, I mean?”

“Poor old gentleman! Do you think he is with us, in any sense that matters? We certainly couldn’t have left him in London, and as the shop is to be given up when the lease expires it’s as well to let him forget about it.”

The next morning, as the sunshine from the garden flecked the polished oak table at which they were breakfasting, Wilfred asked Fancy what they should do with their day; Mr. Fawkes was to be left to rest, but should they go on the river or for a sketching ramble?

“They’ll be fit. They look after them well at the Wheatsheaves. We’ll drive out and dine somewhere lonely.”

It was a delicious drive through early summer radiance and clouds of blossom. They dined lazily at about three and gave the team a long rest at Stoke Poges, where Wilfred sketched some gravestones in the churchyard while his wife satiated her lust for buttercups.

“Home now?” he asked her, but the mellowing afternoon light lay seductively on the landscape and she begged to be taken farther.

“Well, we don’t want to get quite back to London smoke, do we?” he said as he took up the reins again. However, he drove forward again by sidetracks and winding lanes, with overhanging flowery hedges, till the warm sun and rhythm of hoofs seemed to hypnotize them out of the sense of distance.

Suddenly at a turning the lush scenery disappeared. In front of them there spread out a desolate common with some tiny bleak-looking buildings on its far rim.

At the sight Wilfred, who had been driving with his whip in its socket and one arm round her waist, seemed to wake up.

“A wrong turning!” he said and turned aside into a maze of secluded lanes. But he seemed to have miscalculated; for they emerged again upon the very edge of the common, and Fan, for the first time since she had known him, heard Wilfred utter an oath; she felt like fining him a halfpenny. He had once more turned directly about, and now entered upon a road that ran between high hedges, mounting and falling like a switchback. They were descending a steep slope, with a bridge at the bottom and the road climbing beyond like a white ribbon to an elm-crowned ridge, and Fan was watching two little black dots descending from the farther crest when the tandem came to a stop.

“It’s very absurd, Fan,” he said to her easily, “but my nose is going to bleed. It smarts atrociously. I must get down and lie on my back in the field there. You must mind the horses for a few minutes; don’t be afraid, I’ll wind the reins tight round the brake.”

Fancy climbed down and, as he directed, stood by the leader’s head, while Wilfred, with his handkerchief to his nose, pushed open a white gate and disappeared behind a hedge.

The next moment horse-hoofs down by the bridge broke on her ears, and looking round she saw that the two travelling black dots had resolved themselves into a pair of horsemen in uniform, who came trotting briskly up the incline towards the stationary dog-cart. As they drew near, Fan saw that they were an officer and a trumpeter, both in brown Hussar busbies, and for a second she had a wild thought—could that second one be Mark Woodrofe?

But the next moment she saw that it was an older, whiskered man, who stared hard at the sight of a tandem standing in the road with only a pretty girl in attendance. As he slackened his pace a little, the officer, who had ridden on ahead without looking at her, called back in a sulky voice,

“Don’t loiter there, Trumpeter! We’ve got to find this infernal Squadron!” and the two rode briskly up the hill towards the common.

“Are you better, Wilfred?” called Fan as the dancing plumes of the busbies disappeared over a rise in the road, and a muffled shout was followed by her husband’s reappearance.

He came towards her and held out—needlessly, she thought with a little grimace—his handkerchief spotted with blood.

“It was bad,” he said, “but it’s over. Now climb in and off we go like lamp-lighters for Marlow.”

But all the long drive home, while the blue darkened overhead and the moon changed from a hoop of pencil-scrawled paper to a globe of black-veined silver, Fancy’s thoughts, after that unexpected meeting, were running on her former charge and playmate; sometimes she seemed to hear his voice in her ears. Wilfred rallied her good-humouredly on her distraction during their supper of bread and cheese and cider, alone by the light of two candles, for old Fawkes had long since gone to his bed. And she was still haunted by the trumpeter Mark Woodrofe while she brought Wilfred his soft morocco slippers and made him comfortable in his armchair for an hour’s reading before coming to bed; and when she sat down, yawning from the long day in the fresh air, in front of the blurry rustic mirror in her bedroom, to comb out her hair by a rush-light, her speculations about his state and prospects melted into dreams of him; and she woke with a jump to see his eyes looking at her from behind her head in the mirror. Starting to her feet she saw the ghost disappear and the surface of the glass go black. She stood for a moment with thumping heart, but the house was completely still. Only a rat gnawed and pattered behind the bedroom wall. Then she ran out into the dark landing and called to Wilfred. A cheery hail answered her from below, and hurrying down the corkscrew stair she threw herself on her husband where he sat with his book open on his knee.

“Neither this nor any other house, my darling. There are no ghosts”; and he soothed her till she laughed at herself and went upstairs again to finish her undressing.

When she re-entered the bedroom she noticed that the little pearwood chest lay open on its table near the door. Silly girl! Had she actually left it like that when she took out her cameo brooch before going out to drive . . . she was always so untidy! But such carelessness would not do now she had something worth treasuring in it—the proof of her happiness and her husband’s loyalty.

There was splendour in the Officers’ Mess of the 24th Hussars on Salamanca Day. Upon the lofty walls hung the portraits of the bygone commanders of the regiment. Francis Duke of Brinsington, its eighteenth-century founder, who had raised “Brinsington’s Dragoons” in 1715 to resist the Chevalier and had endowed them with his own family crest of the winged Mercury, caracoled in periwig and ponderous jack-boots upon his white horse. Next to him, Leopold, Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Rothburg, their honorary Colonel during the Napoleonic Wars, displayed the conical bearskin with red side-plume, the white breeches and tasselled Hessians worn by the 24th Light Dragoons on the ever-glorious day of Salamanca. The Marquis of Conyham, who had led the kid-gloved Squadrons at Waterloo and earned for the Mercuries the nickname of “Conyham’s Dandies”, was attired in the gaudily beribboned shako and gold-frogged scarlet tunic of Regency man-millinery. In 1835 the regiment had received the dress and title of Hussars, and Colonel Merivale’s predecessor, just over his head at the Mess table, wore the brown busby, pelisse and crimson overalls of their present uniform.

On the table glittered the gold-plate, only brought into use on special occasions, and all the trophies and statuettes of their history, flashing in the rays of the twisted gold candelabra upon the blue and silver brocade strip laid down the centre of the board. Sherry, claret and champagne flowed freely throughout the long banquet, which had begun with turtle soup and proceeded, course after course, with freshwater trout and royal sturgeon and truffles and asparagus and sirloins and saddle of mutton and York hams and capons and trifles and wine-jellies to a dessert of peaches and pine-apples, nectarines and piled strawberries, which was laid upon the gleaming mahogany as soon as the cloth had been stripped. Hidden behind ferns in an adjacent conservatory of yellow and purple glass, the regimental band made mellow music.

Voices grew loud and hilarious as the dishes were handed round and the wine-glasses filled and refilled; but the conversation seemed always to be led by the strident tones of the personage with the heavy, drooping moustache, the fierce aquiline nose and the hard, blue hawk’s-eyes over sagging pouches, who sat at the head of the table on the Colonel’s right hand, with the silent Major Blacombe on his other side. In a curious way for so slow and lymphatic a man he dominated the company; even the ornate chandeliers overhead appeared to suspend their brazen foliage to catch the echo of his interminable anecdotes with their unvarying opening,—“When I, Colonel Me’vale . . .” This was Lord Cardigan, the guest of honour, being the senior of the three colonels commanding cavalry regiments that had fought side by side with the Mercuries at Salamanca who were invited each year by custom to attend their celebrations on the day of the battle.

At length came the moment when Colonel Merivale turned his head and nodded to where Mark Woodrofe stood with the other trumpeters in full review order, white-gloved and with his collar stiff with silver embroidery, behind the Commanding Officer’s chair. On the signal they set their trumpets to their lips, and the Salamanca Call of the Mercuries shrilled down the gorgeous, high-roofed dining-room, waking responsive rings from glass and crystal and beating on the deaf ears of the grim-faced dead commanders on the walls. There was a scrape of chairs and clink of spurs, as all rose for the health of the Queen, followed by a fairy tinkling, as every officer broke the stem of the wineglass in which he had drunk it.

They were resettling themselves into their seats, when suddenly Mark was conscious of Cardigan’s cold, blue eye piercing into him, his overhanging brows frowning as if in an effort of recollection. Mark went crimson, while the peer turned to Colonel Merivale and put a question. Mark saw the Colonel’s lips framing the syllables of his name—it was one of the few among the men’s that the Colonel always remembered—then, on a signal of dismissal he saluted and marched out of the mess-room with the rest, feeling Cardigan’s eye still boring into his back.

He returned to his quarters with a troubled mind. It was a bit of real bad luck that the great man, by some fluke of memory, should actually have identified the small boy whom he had questioned for a moment when hunting in Sussex so many years ago now. Surely, Mark thought, he must have changed in face and general looks since then. Of course, he understood by now all that that long-ago conversation had implied; and though at first he had felt a burning shame, he had seen no reason, after thinking it over, why he should blush. He had done nothing disgraceful—could not help his birth.

But again to-night he felt the fear that had come upon him when a week or two ago a young officer, hitherto unknown to him, had appeared on parade in command of B Troop, of which Mark was now Trumpeter, and an old soldier in the rank just behind had whispered, “Blackwater, the Flyin’ Dutchman, back agen!” B Troop had been a state of chaos at that drill, and afterwards the Troop Sergeant-Major had cursed Mark for not giving the proper calls in disregard of “his lordship’s” blunders. Blackwater had shown no recognition of his illegitimate brother, nor was there any reason why he should, since they had never met before; and at the special ceremonial parade to-day Mark had done his very best to cover up his Troop Leader’s inefficiency—but not wholly successfully, for there had been one sorry confusion, requiring Colonel Merivale to give the “As you Were” in the presence of the distinguished guests who were looking on. Perhaps that unfortunate incident had riveted Lord Cardigan’s attention upon the Trumpeter, and again Mark felt cold tremors. What if it now leaked out that he had enlisted, however innocently, into the very regiment in which his noble half-brother was serving? It might seem like a challenge, a monstrous piece of impudence. What would they do to him if he were discovered?

A great deal of heavy port had been drunk on top of the other wines when the Mess finally broke up and Lord Cardigan and the other visiting officers took a formal leave of Colonel Merivale, whose old lips had been patiently stifling yawns for the last three-quarters of an hour.

It was just after midnight and Lord Cardigan, cigar in hand, with his long legs in their dark trousers apart like sable scissors and his cherry-coloured Mess jacket gleaming, stood for a moment on the steps leading down to the anteroom, studying its occupants, who were sitting about talking, drinking unnecessary brandies-and-sodas to finish off the banquet, and—some of the younger Cornets—indulging in a little mild horseplay.

Suddenly Cardigan’s eyes glistened. “Ah! Wetherby!” he said, as the fat Captain rose respectfully, “when are you going to give me my wevenge at écarté? You know you never would have beat me that night in Bwighton last Febuawy but for my infernal toothache. I pulled the molar out myself with a stwing and a slam of the door half an hour after you left, and, said I to myself, ‘If Wetherby were here now, by gad, I’d teach him écarté!’ ”

“The cards are in my room . . . if your lordship cared to consider . . . would be doing me a great honour I’m sure, . . .” suggested Wetherby with hesitating deference.

“Good for you, Wetherby! You’re a thowough-paced sportsman. What do you say to a wubber or two? Now who will you bwing?”

“Plenty of sound players here, sir. The Adjutant perhaps? Will you join us, Bubbles?”

“I’ll ask Lord Cardigan to excuse me. I’ve two good hours work before reveillé.”

“Well then, sir, there’s Captain Townley, Captain Rutherford . . . and Mr. de Vallencey, I’m sure, would be only too delighted. Mr. Strangways here, too, has a very long head with the cards, if your lordship will permit?” Cardigan bowed graciously at the presentation and the young Cornet flushed with pleasure. “Who was that with you, Strangways, over in the window a minute ago? Blackwater? Capital! That’ll make a party, sir, with plenty of changes of partner if we wish.”

Wetherby, puffing with self-importance, proceeded to make the necessary introductions. Cardigan shook hands with the officers one by one with a manner of genial frankness. But when it came to Lord Blackwater’s turn, he let his hand fall, and bowing with a face like a frozen mask, said briefly, “I knew your father, my lord.”

“What the devil did he mean by that?” exclaimed Blackwater excitedly, as Cardigan, piloted by Wetherby, stalked before them towards the Captain’s rooms.

“Steady, Ralph!” said Strangways, who in spite of his juniority, had been given many of the privileges of friendship by the young peer.

“Don’t be wild, old man!” The Cornet laughed nervously. “You really shouldn’t have tried that Indian mixture. Brandy in champagne! Faugh!”

“You did, but I don’t know how. I couldn’t have kept to that line on the carpet. I’d have gone down like a log.”

“Well, then, I’m not too hazed, am I, to miss seeing that this fellow means to be insulting!”

They were scrambling up the staircase behind the rest of the party, Blackwater hauling himself up by the banisters and Strangways pulling at his other arm to restrain him. “Look here, Ralph,” he said earnestly, “I suppose as a subaltern I shouldn’t say this to you, but you know our Colonel was infernally hipped this afternoon when your troop inclined left on that ‘Right front form!’ Don’t get across one of his guests on top of it, old man!”

“Oh, that d——d nonsense again—” said Blackwater more subduedly, and they entered Wetherby’s room together.

It was a place of wealthy comfort, with a pile carpet, velvet window-curtains, sporting cups and trophies on the marble mantelpiece, and Alken hunting-prints on the walls, varied by a stand of Indian mail-armour and scimitars. Already a card-party of four had been formed at a green table near the leopard-skin hearthrug—Lord Cardigan, the host, Captain Rutherford and de Vallencey. Townley and Strangways proceeded to amuse themselves with a bagatelle-board in a farther corner, while Blackwater threw himself upon a long sofa with his back to the card-party, and letting his head sink down almost out of sight on a cushion, tried with drooping eyelids to watch the first few bagatelle-strokes. Captain Wetherby’s soldier-servant set out decanters and cigars, before withdrawing from the room.

The card-game proceeded noisily, for Cardigan was in luck and his boastful voice filled the room. The two officers who had not been included left the bagatelle-board after a while and crossed over to stand watching behind the card-players. Blackwater was motionless, stretched at full length upon the sofa, and they did not try to wake him. The brandy decanter passed round regularly; soda and seltzer-water bottles popped as their necks were wrung; partners were changed to give a game to those who had not yet played; and as the time went by the swirling cloud of blue cigar-smoke thickened till it made wraiths of the figures round the table.

At length Cardigan rose with an enormous, jubilant “Haw! Haw! Haw!” and stretched himself with his back to the mantelpiece. There was a clinking of sovereigns, a rustling of bank-notes, and both Wetherby and Strangways went to a writing-table and wrote bankers’ drafts with rueful jests. The pile accumulated in front of Lord Cardigan’s empty chair.

“Well,” he said at length with a yawn that displayed his fine white teeth. “I’ve seen to-day thwee things such as I never witnessed in my life before—and I’ve to thank you gentlemen of the Mercuwies for all of them.”

“What are they, if one may ask, my lord?” enquired Wetherby, filling Cardigan’s glass from the sinking decanter of cut-crystal.

Cardigan drank and thoughtfully wiped the drops from his festoon of moustache. “Well, the first is two men, mere amateurs, like my fwiend and myself, taking a sum like that,” he pointed to the pile of gold and notes before his place, “off a tip-top, pwofessional card-sharp like Wetherby.”

“The splendid sight,” said Cardigan seriously, “of your thwee squadwons on horses of matched colour. First bays, then gways, then black. I wish we could manage it. We can’t yet, though I don’t mind what I spend on horseflesh for the Eleventh.”

“That’s a compliment, sir,” said Captain Townley. “Wetherby, do you remember that Lord Lucan made some objection to the arrangement at his visit last year?”

“Lucan!” Lord Cardigan’s drooping mask had stiffened on the word to a contemptuous antagonism. “Well, I venture to maintain my own standards, even if less popular at the Horse Guards than my Lord Lucan’s.”

“And what, my lord,” asked Wetherby, “was the third experience we were lucky—or was it unlucky?—enough to provide?”

Cardigan thoughtfully clipped off the end of a fresh cigar and lit it at a little flame-holder on the mantelpiece. Then he turned round again and blew two whorls through his curved nostrils. “The third,” he said slowly, “was the spectacle of a Captain belonging to one of the first families of the land commanding his Twoop—and his own bwother at his side acting as Twumpeter for him!”

There was a dead silence. The officers stared at one another in blank perplexity.

“You seem puzzled?” Lord Cardigan smiled maliciously. “Perhaps you haven’t my eye for likenesses? But I never forget a face—or an injuwy. The late Earl of Blackwater was no fwiend of mine. I wanted to call him out in ’thirty-thwee for intwiguing against me at the Horse Guards and slande’ing me atwociously to the Duke of Wellington. And now one of his many indiscwetions dwifts into the Mercuwies beside his heir. Vewy odd! I suppose it was an accident? The situation amuses me.”

At the sight of Blackwater, risen from the couch, his reddish curls tumbled, his swart eyebrows drawn together in a menacing “v”, his brown agate-eyes streaked with passion, Lord Cardigan’s jaw dropped. He had never dreamed of the young officer’s presence, having neither seen him enter the room nor observed him lying buried among the sofa-cushions. For a moment he looked a stupid man ashamed of himself; his high cheek-ridges were suffused with a mottled flush. Then he drew himself up with a savage hauteur.

“Whatever my father was,” continued Blackwater in a low growl, “we’re not to be insulted by you, you twopenny Hyde Park martinet!”

“Be quiet, Blackwater!” hissed Wetherby, while the other officers gathered round the young lord to restrain him. “He’s not himself, sir, I beg you to believe. He doesn’t understand what he’s babbling about!”

Cardigan’s eyes were stabbing blue flames. “I venture to disagwee, Captain Wetherby. Like his father, Lord Blackwater seems able to expwess his meaning vewy clearly, even when dwunk!”

“I know what I’m saying!” roared Blackwater, bursting through the arms of his friends. “And, Colonel or no Colonel, if you say I’m drunk, you can drink . . . that!” His hand flew to a tumbler on the table, half filled with brandy. Strangways, uttering a cry, sprang in front of him and received the raw spirit on his Mess jacket and in his eyes. He reeled away, groaning and feeling for his handkerchief.

“That will do,” said Cardigan icily. “Who is the senior officer pwesent?”

“Place Captain Lord Blackwater under awwests for assaulting his supewior officer.”

“Blackwater,” said Wetherby, “you’re under arrest at Lord Cardigan’s orders. Now, for God’s sake, hold your tongue!” He turned back to Cardigan. “What am I to report to Colonel Merivale, my lord, concerning this unhappy business?”

“What I tell you, Wetherby! Dammit! He thwew bwandy all over me. Do you pwetend you didn’t see it?”

“With submission, my lord, no. There’s not a drop of brandy, fortunately, on your lordship’s uniform.”

“No, at me!” came a voice of pain from the window-seat. The young Cornet was sitting, still gasping, with his handkerchief to his eyes, while de Vallencey bent over him. “It was stupid horseplay, sir . . . unworthy . . . but only a jest—from a Captain to his subaltern!”

Cardigan bared his gleaming teeth in a snarl. “Who’ll believe this nonsensical story at the Court Martial?”

“And I,” said de Vallencey, adding unblushingly, “they were quarrelling and chaffing one another all the way up the stairs, before they came in, sir.”

“You all heard,” exploded Cardigan, “that he called me, his supewior Officer, a ‘twopenny Hyde Park martinet’!”

“With the greatest submission again, my lord,” interjected Wetherby, “ ‘the martinet’ is a thoroughly well-known nickname we give to Strangways in the Mess. I venture to suggest, if I may, sir, that there’s been misunderstanding all round. Lord Blackwater seems to have fancied that Strangways . . . or I . . . or somebody . . . was actually casting aspersions on his family. He must have dozed off on that sofa and been dreaming. We’re all gentlemen here, I believe, and you’ll agree that such a thing simply couldn’t happen, my lord!”

The fat little man, with his bull-dog chin thrust forward, confronted with a disciplined dignity the tall, furious peer and met his glare unwinking.

Abruptly from the Square outside came the piercing cry of a trumpet. The officers started and turned towards the windows. De Vallencey, plucking at a cord, drew back the heavy curtains and a stream of summer sunshine poured into the room, cleaving the murk of the cigar-smoke with dancing shafts. “Open the window, somebody!” said Wetherby, and the last notes of reveille came blowing in with the keen, fresh breeze of dawn. Out on the gold-flooded Square stood the wakeful trumpeter giving his warning; in the barrack-rooms the men were tumbling uncomplainingly from their hard cots to begin the day’s harsh toil. The officers, haggard with want of sleep, feverish with wine, their Mess uniforms disordered by the late struggle, looked one at the other without uttering a word.

At length, “We shall all be hellish late on parade!” murmured de Vallencey inspiredly.

Cardigan pulled himself together and nodded. “Welease your pwisoner, Wetherby,” he commanded, “and go to your duties, gentlemen. But . . . officers of the Mercuwies . . . I shall wemember!”

“Thank you, my lord!” said Wetherby. “Blackwater, you’re free from arrests, go along now!”

The brilliance of the June dawn was delusive. The day clouded as B Troop went out for their morning drill, and when they returned for stables a first spatter of rain upon the windows presaged a heavy downpour.

The men worked hard at their grooming, sizzling and occasionally calling to their horses to come up or come over. Mark, like the rest, in shirt-sleeves with his braces hanging over the tops of his crimson overalls, was attending to Dainty, the dapple-grey, whom he had at last secured for his own mount when he became Troop Trumpeter. As he was one of the most careful grooms in the regiment, and, moreover, loved Dainty as a brother, he felt no anxiety when he saw, raising his bowed head for a second, his Troop Leader standing outside Dainty’s stall watching him.

Suddenly, however, a harsh voice called, “Woodrofe!” He straightened up and marched over to his Captain, still holding the cloth with which he was giving Dainty’s sleek coat a final rub.

As he came to attention in front of Blackwater he knew at once that he was in for trouble. He had received enough menacing looks in his military life, but never seen such an intense personal hatred as now flared in his brother’s queer brown eyes. As they stood face to face, their points of likeness were eclipsed by the differences, which might easily have led a casual onlooker, challenged to name the gentleman, to pick out the wrong man. To Mark the refined mouth and wistful pointed chin; to Blackwater the coarse jutting lip and sinister crooked jaw.

“Let me see how you’ve done it.” Blackwater strode into the stall and passed his white glove over Dainty’s back—it was a familiar officer’s trick.

“Look at that!” he cried in a furious voice, holding the unfilmed kid in front of Mark’s nose. “What does that look like?”

“Black as a chimney-sweep, isn’t it?” Again Mark standing respectfully at attention made no answer.

Blackwater raised his silver-chased riding-whip and slashed him across the cheek. “That’s for ‘dumb insolence’!” he said.

The continuing rain was so heavy that the men of B Troop heard with incredulous blasphemy during dinner that they were to be paraded again in the afternoon for exercise on the Common. “Gawd!” muttered one of the older men, “it’ll take us half a day to get clean agen if they take us out in all this muck. If the orficers had to come with us now. . . .”

“I bet the Flyin’ Dutchman stays in the Mess,” whispered another, nudging Mark’s elbow. The Trumpeter, eating his dinner with difficulty owing to his bruised face, made no reply.

The men were mistaken however. When the Troop paraded in the wet, Blackwater appeared on a fiery little black mare of his and led them a pretty scamper over the Common through the splashing puddles and beating sheets of rain.

At length they drew up, wrapped in their soaked pelisses, with their sodden busbies dripping and their scabbards crusted in mud, at a place where hurdles, bars and a steep and dangerous bank-jump had been erected, with sacks on poles and wooden Turk’s Heads for cutting and thrusting practice. The men, sitting moodily on their horses, which were breeched in slime up to the girths, thought of the hours of extra cleaning and grooming that this unprecedented whim of their Captain’s was entailing for them. Already they had had two horses down while galloping across country, and the two men involved had been promised punishment and sent back to barracks coated in filth as no longer fit to stay on parade. Now, halted on the edge of the jumping-field, the Troop eyed the muddied and swampy expanse with sulky distaste. They felt that more was being asked of them than was, even by Army standards, fair.

“The usual round, one by one, Sergeant-Major, Carry on!” said Blackwater briefly. “Well, what’s the matter? Didn’t you hear what I said?”

“Ground’s very bad for the horses at the bank, sir,” suggested the Troop Sergeant-Major deferentially. “Shall we leave that out?”

“Leave it out? No! What the devil for? Do you think that when you’re on service they’ll postpone the battle for you till the rain stops?”

The other without a word rode off and began to send the men round the jumps one by one. Besides the slippery going underfoot, the thick rain driving in their faces made it hard for them to do their ride with precision. A good many of them missed their strokes at the Turk’s Heads, and one or two left their swords in the stuffed sacks.

“This is damned disgraceful!” roared Blackwater. “You shall go on till you do it properly.” He was watching with sharp eyes, and noticed how all but the most sure-footed of the horses slipped more or less as they changed leg on the treacly black surface that had once been turf on top of the high bank. Suddenly he saw a man pull up after taking one of the hurdles. “What’s the matter?” he shouted. The horse had overreached badly, and slithering through the slush, had cut a deep gash on its fetlock. Its rider was ordered to lead it back to barracks, and Blackwater’s face grew more thunderous. The Adjutant was not agreeable to officers who sent back injured horses from parade.

“What did I tell you?” he said at length, as the last man completed the course without further mishaps. “It’s as easy as Rotten Row, if you know how to control your horses.” He paused and turned round deliberately to Mark who was sitting the dapple-grey behind him. “Now then, Trumpeter,” he said, “you’re not going to shirk it there behind my back. Sling your trumpet and draw your sword! Now you go round!”

Mark obeyed. The grey was a swift horse, and his lithe well-balanced riding facilitated its course. One or two of the old soldiers watched his graceful round with admiration. The Turk’s Heads clopped into the mud as his sword flashed at them, and he turned in his saddle for the thrust at the dummy-bags and withdrew his sword again with easy precision. Unluckily Dainty took fright on the top of the bank and tried to jump down again on the side he had come from. Mark wrenched him round in an instant; but Blackwater shouted curses across the field, and when he had finished told him to do the course again “and jump down the side you’re ordered to, damn you!”

Mark rode again, the clots flying and spotting his face and uniform, and again arrived back before his Captain without accident. But Dainty was panting from nervousness and effort as he halted. “Now,” said Blackwater, grinding out his syllables with a slow relish. “You go round just once again, Trumpeter! Perhaps that’ll fix in your mind that when I order an exercise it’s to be done properly the first time.” Behind his back the Troop Sergeant-Major permitted himself a faint cough, but the Captain disregarded him.

The rain was even increasing in fury, so that the farther side of the field was dim in mist. But all could see that the grey was going slower and taking the hurdles with difficulty. “Faster!” bellowed Blackwater, “I didn’t tell you to trot! Did I say trot?” he appealed to the Troop Sergeant-Major.

Mark spurred Dainty, and at the next fence he pecked and would have gone on his head but for skilful handling. “Damn the clumsy lout!” said Blackwater. “Attend to what you’re doing! Now the bank! Don’t shirk!” he shouted.

Dainty, with neck wearily extended, scrambled rather than leaped up; changed leg, and was checking when Mark desperately drove in his spurs again. The horse slid forward; its forefeet slipped over the edge; and it turned a complete somersault, disappearing in a flounder of legs with a sodden thump into the mist.

Dainty struggled to his feet, and stood with drooping head, blowing out his nostrils. The boy did not rise and they could not see where he had fallen.

The Troop Sergeant-Major had galloped over and helped another Sergeant to secure the riderless horse, and look it over for injuries. This done, he walked across and stooped over to examine the man. Presently he signalled to the other Sergeant and to a Corporal to come as well. The rain thinning a little for the moment, the Troop could see the three of them kneeling down in the wet grass. After a few minutes the Troop Sergeant-Major remounted and galloped back to Blackwater, who had not stirred. “We shall need an ambulance, sir,” he said. “This is surgeon’s work. The lad’s been rolled upon right over the body. His busby’s as flat as a pancake and his sword bent into a hook—like that! We can’t bring him round. I . . . I don’t like the look of him, sir.”

“He’s not killed?” said Blackwater in a very queer voice, sitting motionless in the saddle and staring between his horse’s ears.

“No, sir, he’s not killed yet!” replied the man with a note in his voice that made Blackwater turn sharply and challenge his eyes.

“Send for the ambulance at once then! What are you lingering for?” The Sergeant-Major saluted and turned away, and at the same moment Blackwater suddenly wheeled his horse and galloped towards the waiting Troop. Arrived at the centre of the line, he stood up in his stirrups and looked squarely at the row of sullen mouths thrusting against the chin-straps and glowering eyes half-hidden by the damp fringes of the busbies.

“I know what you men are thinking!” he declared loudly. “You think that because the ground is bad and the rain thick it wasn’t possible to make the round. But I’ll show you that it isn’t bad weather but bad horsemanship that makes casualties. Watch me!”

He drew his sword and made straight at the nearest jump. The wooden head fell with a click and the clever little mare raced forward. She completed the round of hurdles; then turned in to finish at the bank, skated along the crest, and jumped down sideways with a stagger on landing that lifted Blackwater half out of the saddle. But she did not fall, and he galloped back to the line, to meet an atmosphere that had perceptibly changed.

“You see!” he told them, “I order you to do nothing that I’m not ready to do myself. Remember that next time! Now, Sergeant-Major, take them back to barracks. For to-day I’m satisfied.”

“You’re a surly chap, Woodrofe, for sure!” complained the gunner, leaning on a crutch, with his slippered foot, over which a limber had passed some weeks before, held up in a sling.

“I keep telling you, Mills, that I can’t hold a hand of cards and play it with only one arm! If this hand were out of the sling it would be different.”

“Try, comrade!” said a young Dragoon Guard, pale and pinched with colics. “We mus’ do something to pass the time in this blasted jug!”

“It ain’t no manner of use moping, my lad,” added Recketts, an elderly trooper of C Troop, the Mercuries. “We all know in the regiment you didn’t ’ave a fair deal. But what of it? We’re jus’ dirt, and we got to lie down nice and quiet like dirt, whenever an aristocratic orf’cer ’as the indigestion from over-eatin’. Think I’d ’a’ had two months in this smelly rat-’ole they calls a General ’Orspital with a broken rib if Mister Captain Wetherby ’adn’t known too b——y well that horse o’ mine could be trimmed without being thrown and tied fust? We all get it in turn.”

“Did I say I hadn’t had a fair deal?” asked Mark, turning smouldering eyes out of a white face upon his comrade.

“No, but you b——y well let us feel ’ow you’re taking it,” said Mills the artilleryman. “In course I don’t want to introode into the affeckshunate relations atween you gemmen of the Mercuries; but when you bin in the Army as long as I ’ave you’ll learn it don’t do no good fer to brood over injustices. You’ll spoil your rations in your own sour belly—that’s all about it.”

“Gawd,” interjected the Dragoon Guard, “these ’orspital rations don’t need no more spoilin’.”

“Well, you two beggars ain’t still on thin grooel and the water wot the beef’s bin boiled in, are you?” said the man of the Mercuries.

“Why, wot in ’Ell’s the use of a lump of gristle and a bone fer dinner to a chap wi va stummick like mine?” whined the Dragoon.

“There y’are,” the gunner pointed out. “Everyone’s got their own trouble in this world. And a boy like you ought to throw yours off all the lighter!”

“Strewth!” murmured the colic-stricken dragoon, as they made their painful way to the further end of the long, bleak hospital room, where a minute fire had been lit as an indulgence to the invalids, for the September nights were chilling in the damp ward, “Strewth, you can’t call it light what that boy copped! ’Ee was nigh broke to bits. I ’ear the Surgeon said ’ee musta bin uncommon obstinate ’s well as tough to pull round the road ’ee ’as done.”

“Well, let ’im be obstinit now,” growled Recketts, “and push ’is chin out. Why keep on goin’ over and over it like in ’is mind?”

“What was it ezactly happened?” enquired Mills curiously. “One o’ your orf’cers played some extry dirty trick on ’im or one o’ your famous Sergeants?”

“You leave our orf’cers and Sergeants alone!” retorted Recketts hotly. “There ain’t no dirty tricks among us!”

“Come now!” remonstrated the gunner. “You yourse’f said on’y jes’ a minnit agone, ’ee ’adn’t ’ad a square deal.”

“Did I, Gunner? Which I shouldn’t ’a’ said it, then. ‘No names, no pack-drill’ as our frien’s the infantry ’ave it.”

“You got a pipe?” asked Mills. The room having no chair, they were perched uncomfortably together and with care not to disorder it, on the cot nearest the tiny fire, which puffed sulky and suffocating smoke at them out of a clogged chimney.

“ ’Ave I got a pipe?” repeated Recketts. “Yus I ’ave, but noth’n to put in it.”

“Well,” the gunner unrolled a scrap of newspaper from the pocket of his blue hospital coat. “I’ve a twist o’ shag ’ere sent me by my mother’s sister’s daughter’s ’usband, if you understand me, out o’ pity for my sad condition. ’Ee’s a nice lad in the ’am-and-beef line, wot admires the uniform, which precious few do to-day, more’s the pity! ’Ee says, this chap wot married my mother’s sister’s daughter—”

“Well,” said the gunner cautiously, “I prefers to do this part of the exercise by numbers till I learn ’ow she loads and rams. There’s the hell of a peck o’ trouble comes along o’ claimin’ fam’ly relationships imprudent like.”

“You can dress by that!” assented Recketts precipitately. “It was all along o’ that reelly that Mark ’ere got ’is bones cracked for ’im.”

“You don’t say?” The gunner opened guileless eyes. “Who ever would ’a’ thought it? Now s’pose you fill up your ole clay, and this lobster here fills his’n with the fragments wot remain; and then you tip us the whole yarn, comf’table like. We’re all friends here and won’t peach—’sides, I’m a gunner, I am, and ’aven’t time fer to compose the fratry-cydal strifes o’ the cavalry. If you ’ad guns to keep clean you’d be a deal more peaceful likeywise. Tip us the yarn, now, cully!” He lit his pipe.

“Ole Dot-an’-go-One? Not ’ee. ’Ee’s a good friend o’ mine. Well . . . the word is with you, Brother!”

Recketts kicked hesitatingly at a spluttering slate in the fire; winced, as he caught his rib; and then fell. “ ’Ow I come to know of it,” he explained, “is along o’ having a friend ’oo is orf’cer’s servant to that Cap’en Wetherby I’ve to thank for this yere hagreeable furlough. ’Im and Mr. Strangways they talks and talks, and never thinks o’ Ben in the bedroom be’ind, cleanin’ up and listenin’ as if ’ee ’ad three ears. So Ben gathers,” the speaker lowered his voice and shot a glance to the far end of the room at the immobile figure looking out upon the darkening common, “ ’ee gathers all about this young chap Woodrofe being activelly brother on the wrong side o’ the patchwork to our Lord Blackwater.”

“Fac’, I do assure you. And now, whenever I looks at ’em together, I can see it. . . . Not that Mark ’as Blackwater’s ugly chops. Well, nex’ thing is, this Ben goes an’ leaks the whole story to a pertickler friend o’ his’n in B Troop, which ’ee cut the tip of his ear off las’ year with a razor in a turn-up over Ranalow Rosie at the Duke of Brunswick Arms, fer a start to closer acquaintance. ’Ee leaks to ’im and then the b——y fat wos in the fire.”

“Wy, don’t you see? B Troop bein’ Mister Lord Blackheart Blackwater’s command, and every man-jack in it knowin’ ’ee’d tried to smash the boy up at jumpin’-practice that day (stric’ly speakin’ ’ee wasn’t entitled, Mark bein’ Troop Trumpeter, to send ’im round shyin’ at the coker-nuts at all), an’ everyone knowin’ that Shotter the Adjutant ’ad fair blown ’is curly, sneerin’ ’ed off for ’im in Orderly Room arterwards and good as called ’im murderer, still the lads didn’t know jes’ why ’ee done it. M’reover, Blackwater doin’ the round ’isself, it appears, immejitly arter the spill, and doin’ it not ’arf bad for an orf’cer, they do say, it sort of quieted them down. And they was ready to put it down to Mess-room mornin’-arter feeling; for there warn’t an orf’cer on parade for two days arter Lord Haw-Haw’s visit wot didn’t look black and yellow like a wopse, with temper to match. But when this story went round that it was all along o’ spite, and that the Flyin’ Dutchman was trying to smash the lad up fer to get rid of ’im from the regiment, then the Troop jes’ went mad and there was no doing nuffin’ with them.”

“Mutiny? No! ’Oo’s sich a blasted fool as to try mutiny with the Sergeants ready to mark off the ringleaders and get ’em tied up for fifty soon as sneezin’? No! It wasn’t arranged; they jes’ got so’s you couldn’t handle ’em. Slow on to parade . . . dirty accouterments . . . and so on. If they put a whole troop in the book the Adjutant ’ee nacherally arsks for why the N.C.O.s can’t do their duty better. Then the Troop ’ud act stupid like at drill; and Lord Blackwater knowin’ none of it ’imself, of course, gets flustered, and the Adjutant, ’oo don’t love ’im no longer, calls ’im over one bright morning before the ’ole regiment, and even the Colonel, wot sez ’is prayers to a Lord, looks peevish.”

“I dunno what you may mean by angry feelin’s. There’s always a lot o’ grudges about; and when you get a bad spirit going, some one’ll try to pay his’n off for sure. So somebody—they couldn’t never prove ’oo—took a shot at old Godliman our Reg’mental Sergeant-Major down by the butts one day at carbine practice. Missed him, unfortnitly, but scared the old paralytic proper. Arter that—this is where Ben ’ears a bit more, while pullin’ corks in the passage outside Wetherby’s room—arter that Shotter ’ee goes to the Colonel and says Blackwater’s making B Troop as foul a set o’ blackguards as the Army contains (that wos ’is words, the cheeky devil, as foul a set o’ blackguards as the Army contains) and so the Flyin’ Dutchman ’ad better go off on leave agen for a bit. Which I understand ’ee ’as done since; and Shotter, by G——, ’ee give gates of ’Ell to them sweeps of B Troop!”

“Well,” the gunner leaned back against the wall, puffing at his pipe. “It’s my verdick that the lad (as you says yourself) did not get a fair deal.”

“No, ’ee got what we call an artillery-deal. Shelled from the rear while advancin’ to ’is duty!”

“None o’ that now, busby-bag! I mean as ’ee’d be justified in my eyes in cuttin’ ’is pole.”

“Desertin’? Shut yer ’ash-trap! On’y a mug tries that game. Look what Vale got!”

“ ’Oo was ’ee? Another ’o your scand’lus examples. I mus’ say the Mercuries an’t no credit to ’Er Majesty.”

“Well, Recketts,” said the Dragoon Guard, shaking his head dismally. “On your own showin’ you do ’ave some orf’cers an’ all! Reminds me some’ow, your mob does, o’ the Jedge and Jury Show in Bow Street—scandals in ’Igh Life, if you know wot I mean.”

“Same everyveres in the cavalry,” commented the artilleryman. “You hussies, and you lobsters too, ’aven’t enough work to do. That makes you all slack and querulous.”

“Querulous, is it?” stormed Recketts, aghast and furious at his own indiscretions. “I’ll soon show you—” He tottered to his feet and picked up the solitary broken stool the room contained.

“Nah then! Nah then! Wot’s all this? Put down the ’orspital comforts will yer?” commanded the Sick Orderly, stumping into the room on his wooden leg. “I see yer at it!”

“ ’Ave you brought our tea, Nuss?” enquired the Dragoon Guard plaintively.

“When would you like it? Now or when you get it? You needn’t think about your tea for a hour yet. Doctor’s making rounds and I’m sent on to see you ain’t too filthy to be looked at. Look alive, my lad!” he shouted down the room to Mark, who was still in the same dejected posture on his cot. “And you others brisk up a bit, can’t yer? and answer cheerfully when ’ee questions yer. Dr. Scarr ’ates to see men lookin’ ill under ’is charge. He’ll put you all down for double dose o’ castor oil, if yer do!”

The men groaned and began to line themselves up for inspection, tidying their hospital slops, as best they could, with painful movements.

“And I’ve a bit o’ news for yer, too,” added the wooden-legged Nurse. “The old Dock’s dead up in his Castle at Walmer.”

Mark, as he came out of the old shop in Greensleeves Row, his arm in a light black sling, his face still haggard beneath his careful shaving, saw the man again, obviously lurking in wait for him on the opposite pavement. . . .

But for the moment his mind was too stunned to consider the matter. He had felt as lost as if he had looked up Ludgate Hill and seen no St. Paul’s when he had read over the window the words BENBOW AND SONS, CORSET MANUFACTURERS, and staring through the little leaden panes, always agleam in his memory with tinselled fairies, romantic woods, Oriental processions and cavalry combats, had discerned only a dusty stretch of drab panelling, background for a dozen pallid pink pairs of Benbow and Sons’ products. Inside the shop they had been very short, not anticipating that a hussar in uniform had come to buy corsets and plainly not wishing any other dealings with him. They had no knowledge at all of what had become of the late tenants, knew no address to which letters were to be forwarded. Was there anything else they could do for him? If not . . .

So Mark now stood on the doorstep wondering where to turn next. These were the friends he had told the Adjutant he could go to if he were granted a fortnight’s furlough for convalescence. He had been considerably surprised at the boon, until he overheard Captain Shotter, while writing out his pass, say in a lowered voice to Mr. de Vallencey, who was temporarily commanding B Troop, “. . . when Lord Blackwater returns on Friday.” It looked as if they wanted to get him out of the way, at any rate for the moment, while they found a solution to the problem that his presence in the regiment presented. . . . Get him out of the way! If he could follow his own will now! . . . Some ugly words of Mills, the lamed artilleryman, spoken to him just before he was discharged from the General Hospital, as fit for light duty, at the beginning of November, hissed in his ears like vipers. “You better cut your lucky if you gits half a chance! You’ll be murdered some day, if you don’t, and that’s wuss than being tied up for fifty.” Well . . . There was the man again, with his eyes fixed on him. He was certain he had seen him outside the station at Paddington; he must have followed him. He would soon find out why!

“I on’y took the libutty of follerin’ you, Trumpeter,” said the fellow humbly in answer to his interrogations, “in case you should be in vants of a night’s lodging, cheap and clean. I offen brings sojers to our place from Paddin’ton Station.”

“Where is your place?” enquired Mark hesitating, for he was not an inviting ruffian.

“Tom Ruffles’s, the Nigger’s Head, Ratcliff Highway—special tariff for sojers,” he added, in would-be ingratiating tones.

Mark shrugged his shoulders. Somewhere he must lodge after this desolating disappointment. He bade the tout show him the way.

It was a long and confusing journey, ending with a zig-zag walk through a labyrinth of mud, water and warehouse wall, with the grim dock-police peering out at them suspiciously from the high wooden gates of the Yards. At last, after crossing an iron bridge above a sinister cut filled with black swirling water, they came in the yellow November twilight into a wide street in which almost everybody appeared to be drunk, either soporifically on the pavements or furiously in the middle of the causeway, where groups of merchant-sailors were chasing women up and down and dragging their bonnets off, while lascars slunk about with gleaming teeth and negroes chattered in groups round the doors of public-houses and gin-palaces.

A mob of children pursued Mark, singing and jeering at his uniform; but his guide led him straight on till they reached the Nigger’s Head, a large public-house and saloon, already flaring with naked gas-jets and resounding with fiddles and concertinas. Mark’s guide led him round behind the bar and by a winding wooden stair into an upper parlour with rude pictures of cock-fights and boxing matches on the walls. Here presently Tom Ruffles the landlord came to him, lank-cheeked and bristly, with a lower lip that stuck up prodigiously, so that it gave a permanent expression of pursy and dissatisfied scepticism to a face that was not made more alluring by eyelids that drooped over his eyes till they existed only as a fugitive gleam.

“Trumpeter Mark Woodrofe of the 24th?” he asked, as he came in and listened for a moment at the crack of the door after latching it.

“Never mind! It’s all on the square!” answered the landlord, tapping one of Mark’s bright breast-buttons with his black nail. “You don’t need to arst no kervestions. I know wot you come for.”

“Nacherally. ’Till we can get it all fixed—on the square. You lie low here, and nobody won’t come pokin’ their b——y nobs into wot don’t consarn ’em, sutt’nly not the Peelers. They got wot for las’ week, tryin’ fer to recover the mate of a Swedish freighter wot was lyin’ up ’ere for ’is ’elth, and I lay they won’t come agen for months. So it’s all safe and snug. You got very good friends behind you, you know, Trumpeter,” Mark was bewildered by the look of respect that came into the yellowish slit of his eye, “and you can trust me through and through. Least said, soonest mended—it’s all on the square. What’ll you ’ave now for the good of the ’ouse?”

Fumbling for his small store of coins, Mark ordered drink. His head spun with amazement at the landlord’s allusions and behaviour; but he was too much worn out and worried by the Fawkes’s disappearance to puzzle further, and decided to let time unfold their meaning. Nor did he brood deeply over the mystery that night, lying on the rag-bed with a dirty rug that Mr. Ruffles assigned to him. For first he had to mobilize all his forces to resist the concerted attack of the denizens of Mr. Ruffles’s bed; and then after midnight Mr. Ruffles’s other lodgers—male and female invited he them—began to roll upstairs and occupy the other little garrets along the passage and even the passage itself. Mark very soon discovered that there had been nothing in barrack-life at its very coarsest to prepare him for the sounds he heard and the glimpses he saw—for his bedroom door was too warped to shut properly— of the ways of the Ratcliff Highway.

About four o’clock (for Mark heard the sweet-toned chime of St. George’s-in-the-East) Tom Ruffles bellowed up the stairs for quiet, and there ensued a relative calm. Awaking in the dim dawn from a few hours’ unrefreshing slumber, Mark found a couple lying undressed upon the floor of his room, and gathering up such parts of his uniform as he had deemed it safe to remove, he set off on tiptoe down the stairway. But on the floor below a door suddenly opened and the landlord and another fellow came out with drawn faces carrying the limp form of a man in sea-boots with a red cap on his dangling head. From his side—Mark saw it clearly in the dingy sunlight struggling through a cobweb-shrouded window-pane,—there protruded the haft of a knife. “Look t’other way!” exclaimed Tom Ruffles in a snarling whisper at the unexpected sight of his military guest. “It’s all on the square,” and noiselessly the two disappeared with their burden down the stairs.

Mark found his way into the parlour where he had been received the night before, and decided that he would not continue to accept Mr. Ruffles’s hospitality. He judged however that it would call for diplomacy to get safely away from the house, and so waited quietly till Tom Ruffles himself brought him up his breakfast, which was an ample and appetizing dish of ham and eggs with excellent coffee.

“You better wait in,” said Mr. Ruffles, “till we can get you some civilian duds. ’Sides, I believe the Guv’nor’s comin’ to see you this mornin’.”

Mark, filled with a fresh curiosity, decided to wait; and in less than an hour he heard steps stumbling up the staircase and into the room burst—Mr. Isidore Behrmann, whom he had met when a boy behind the scenes at the Ionic, Mr. Isidore Behrmann with the old carved smile and the old fixed glitter of his beady eyes.

“Goot morning!” he opened. “You have had a goot night hein, and not cost you a penny? You are getting excellent food too, all free!”

“I didn’t understand that was so, Mr. Behrmann,” interrupted Mark. “I’m ready to pay my way, but there seems to be some mystery here. I don’t much care for this place. . . . I’m very much surprised to find you in it . . . and I’d be glad if you’d explain what’s going on here?”

“You don’t much care for the place? Vy, vat’s the matter vith it? Anyhow, you don’t need to stay here long. Ve’ll find a ship for you before the end of the veek!”

Mr. Behrmann laid a curved claw upon his black sling. “Don’t you undershtand? I am acting for frients of yours, very goot frients, who wish you vell. You can’t shtop in the Army. They haf marked you down. . . . You have jos’ got to get avay. Make a fresh shtart overseas! Your frients vill pay everyt’ing through me. Tom Ruffles he vill get you abroad. He has helped many soldiers desert.”

“Vell? Are you meshugga? Don’t you vant to get avay and shtart proshperous farmer in Australia?”

“Come back!” commanded the Jew. “Some copper’s nark, he may see your uniform!”

Mark recoiled, and felt that by the gesture he had compromised himself. A wild yearning for freedom, choked by a sense of deadly shame and guilt, coursed through him, and gasping he plucked the tight black satin stock from his throat. “The first step!” said a voice like a funeral bell inside him.

The Jew shrugged. “Goot frients!” was his laconic reply. Mark let a mad thought take possession of his brain. “Is it,” he said, “old Mr. Fawkes and his daughter?”

“I am not to say, but,” Behrmann looked cunning, “if you are clever you can guess.”

Mark beat down the doubt that shouted in his ears. . . . Behrmann was the manager of the Ionic. . . . Fan had always wished him out of the Army! . . . Where was she now? Had she had some stroke of fortune; was she waiting in the place to which Mark was being directed? Surely, surely her hand must be in this, and surely he could trust her to give him good counsel. What but disaster had ever come of disobeying her? Gambling . . . and fighting . . . and debt . . . then that madness of enlistment . . . and which of them, after all, had been right about the Army? Only last Christmas Eve he had told her that the Army was stern but even-handed . . . b——y mug he had been! Again the artilleryman’s hoarse whisper penetrated him, “You better cut your lucky if you gits half a chance. You’ll be murdered some day, if you don’t!”

“Vell?” Mr. Behrmann interrupted his musings. “I can’t shtop here all day vaiting for you to make your mind up. Do you vant to go back vere they’ll show you you ain’t vanted, or . . . vill you go avay?”

Mark’s face abruptly blackened. His heavy brows drew together in a lowering line. “I’ll go!” he said, “and . . . and I’m very grateful to Miss Fancy.”

“It is goot thing to be grateful, young man,” answered Mr. Behrmann impassively.

Later on Tom Ruffles reappeared and explained the whole plan to Mark. He was to embark the next week upon a tramp cargo-boat—no complaisant skipper was leaving the Port of London before then—and papers would be found for him under the name of Ramsay. He would be apprenticed to a farmer in New South Wales on arrival. . . . Mr. Ruffles was vague about these ulterior details, but assured Mark that it was all on the square and he would learn everything on board. A suit of civilian clothes would be ready for him the following day; Mr. Ruffles expected a cove in of about his size to-night with whom he could do an easy deal.

So all that day Mark lurked in hiding at the Nigger’s Head, trying to amuse himself with the game of darts or pacing up and down the dirty little parlour. At such times indecision tore him with iron talons, leaving him exhausted and perspiring. Now he boiled with resentment against his brother, against the Mercuries and against the whole Army; now he measured the risks he ran as a deserter if he should be taken. He had not forgotten Vale, still serving his prison sentence after his flogging, and at the thought he clutched at his shoulder, as if he felt the imprint of the “D” already burning him; then, very small and far away, he saw the figure of a trumpeter blowing the Salamanca Call on the Square and throwing all the pride of his regiment into the gay notes. Was that Mark Woodrofe . . . or was this?

Night fell, and it was a recapitulation of the one before, though Mark this time found means to wedge his door against intruders. He was awakened when he dozed off by the noise of a fearful conflict below, with curses, pistol-shots and the smashing of glass; which all died away however into sinister silence, and gave him cause to reflect that there was at any rate little danger of police interference with anybody’s doings in the Ratcliff Highway.

At daybreak Tom Ruffles brought him a suit of civilian clothing—made up of a seaman’s blue jersey, a pair of ragged-edged grey trousers and a check cap with a peak. Mark, he declared, must face the risk of wearing his Army boots. Mark handled the evil-smelling rags with disgust; the jersey, he felt sure, was that he had seen on the body that was carried downstairs the night before last, and feeling with his thumbs, he found, he believed, the knife-cut in its left side. However, there was no use drawing back now; and discarding his unneeded sling, he dressed himself in Mr. Ruffles’s slops; then, turning round, saw the landlord rolling up his uniform and thrusting it into a sack.

“We must hide these for the present, cully,” he said, squinting at Mark; and, shoving back the table, he prised up a couple of planks in the floor with a knife and slid the sack into the slimy black hole disclosed.

“I reckon that’s my affair,” retorted Tom Ruffles. “They’re my perkissit, I rayther think. Anyways, you won’t ’ave no furder use for ’em, young shaver, will you now?”

Once protected against police curiosity by his civilian disguise, Mark felt an overpowering need of fresh air. Eluding the notice of the people of the house, he slipped out into the Highway and walked rapidly westwards in an agony of despairing thoughts. So closely did the phantoms of his mind, Disgrace, Dishonour, Vengefulness, Peril of Murder, Peril of Arrest, Weariness of Life, hem him in that he never noticed how he had come into the mighty crowd. He only realized its presence when it brought his footsteps nearly to a standstill. Then, for the first time lifting his eyes, he saw shuttered shops with broad black boards down the middle of their windows, balconies swathed in crape and flags flying at half-mast. In the gutters stood men and women selling inky-edged broadsheets announcing “Order of the Funeral Procession to St. Paul’s.” Suddenly he remembered what day it was, November 18, and guessed into what august ceremony his feet, wandering by unconsidered byways, must have led him. A few minutes later the sight of a draped portrait-medallion outside a print shop, displaying the grey head with scanty whisker, the gaunt, domineering nose and tight lips well known to every man in the Queen’s service, confirmed his supposition.

The thickening crowd bore him forward inch by inch, as if upon the current of a sluggish dusky river. Presently at the end of a vista closed by a cold blue autumnal sky, the curve of St. Paul’s cupola and its black and white towers appeared in delicacy of outline. A cordon of police top-hats turned the throng aside at this corner, and Mark followed its flow round the apse of the cathedral until again he was brought to a more closely-packed check behind a row of bearskins that protected the circular space at the top of Ludgate Hill. A few yards behind him a stream of mourning-coaches was with difficulty depositing guests with tickets at a side-door of the cathedral; and happening to turn his head he saw an old gentleman in General’s uniform, with a row of medals on his scarlet coat, step down from one of them on to the pavement saying, “Come along, Emily! We had better walk the rest of the way; the horses will never get through!”

Somebody inside the coach appeared to remonstrate, for Mark heard the General say impatiently, “Nonsense! You’ll both be perfectly safe! D’you suppose I won’t take care of you? And there are plenty of police.”

There however the General was mistaken. The few policemen at this point were busily engaged trying to get free passage for the momentarily blocked line of coaches; and when the General helped down out of his carriage two ladies in mourning veils, his wife and daughter apparently, he found himself in a moment cut off from his servants by a jostling and none too reassuring-looking swarm. Mark with a sure instinct perceived that these gentlefolks were in danger. He heard whispers and saw hands waved in signal around him. The next minute a trampling onset of roughs flung him forward against the little group; there was roaring, and he saw a lean, grimy hand dart out from the press and rip off a handful of the General’s medals. He struck straight at the nearest face above it; it was the wrong one, but its owner, falling back, brought the thief to the ground; the medals gleamed on the pavement amid the surge of excited feet, and Mark, snatching them up, butted his way to the General’s side.

“Thanks, thanks, my lad!” panted the veteran, as with starting eyes he hit out vigorously in contempt of his snowy gloves; his fists added to Mark’s swiftly opened a way for all four of them to the line of Guardsmen, who at sight of the General’s coat, opened to let them through. They found themselves in the cleared space at the cathedral front, just by the great black awning stretched tent-like over the steps to receive the coffin when it should be dismounted from the funeral car.

“Stay here, boy!” commanded the General, “and help support milady will you? She’s taken faint, and no wonder!” There was no prospect of forcing a way through the great West doors, which were blocked by a dense mass of choir and clergy; and so they stood huddled together in the roaring November wind that swept up Ludgate Hill, while the younger lady found her smelling-salts to revive her mother.

Suddenly the clamorous murmur of the crowd on the pavements and at the windows died away, and in the hush a distant plaintive sound could be heard—a thin rise and fall of brass punctuated by the thud of muffled drums. Orders came in the high scream of the Guards from the officers lining the churchyard, and the reversed muskets of their men clattered against the stones. The long lines of bearskins, like a field of dark thistles in a breeze, bent forward and grew rigid again, as the ranks inclined their eyes upon the ground.

The Dead March pealed louder, as the bands advanced up the slope, the explosions of the drums blending with the reverberant tramp of slow-marching feet, sounds that seemed to emphasize rather than violate the tense silence. The wind piped furiously through the opening in the black-curtained draperies over the steps, fluttering the surplices of the waiting clergy, who stood statuesque with clasped hands and faces empurpled by the cold. Behind Mark some woman was sobbing gently into her handkerchief.

Up the hill, in the wake of the bands, moved like a crawling hedge, the sombre green mass of the Rifle Brigade that headed the procession. Then, behind the scarlet of giant marching Guardsmen there appeared—sending a hot stroke followed by a deadly chill through Mark’s veins—the pennons of Lancers and the busby-plumes of Hussars. The trampling cascade of horse-hoofs rose louder than the marching feet, drowning the moan of the brass and deadening still more the pulse of the muffled drums. Looking strange and distant in Mark’s eyes, the selected detachment of the Mercuries went by, led by the impassive Major Blacombe; and dreading to be recognized, Mark shrank back behind the General’s two ladies.

Now fresh bands approached, playing a different March, this time with a swell of restrained triumph in it; and the space in front of the awning was filled with ancient Chelsea pensioners in their long red coats and black shakos. Very weary they all looked and footsore, many of them hobbling and propping themselves on their sticks. They crawled up the steps with difficulty, confounded themselves with the throng of clergy, and ebbed away into the shadowy interior of the cathedral.

A long line of State-carriages, the Lord Mayor’s gilded coach prominent among them, now stretched away in a line to the foot of the hill, where already the immense funeral car bearing the coffin had sailed into view. It resembled some ponderous Plutonic galley, with its twisted columns of gloomy bronze, its mournful canopy and silver-spangled pall, its figured bas-reliefs of weapons and victories. Its heavy, wrought-bronze wheels revolved slowly, as the twelve powerful black horses that drew it strained at the ascent of the hill; alongside paced mounted Field-Marshals, glittering with stars and bearing banners in their hands; and grotesquely round the wheels fussed a horde of undertaker’s mutes, black-gloved with crape streamers flowing from their top-hats and beery noses raw in the biting blast. More troops in variegated uniforms pressed solidly on behind, as far as eye could see, reminding Mark, with a superstitious thrill, of the hosts gathered for the great battle at the end of the Bible about which Mr. Woodrofe used to read to them on Saturday nights at the cottage.

There was a lull in the wild music of the dirge, and the sound of the ornately-spoked wheels grinding upon the stones was like a thunder of ghostly artillery from long-ago battles. “Busaco! Albuera! Salamanca! Vittoria! Waterloo!” they seemed to be muttering in tones from the Pit; and the agitated shouting of the undertakers’ men when the canopy swayed round the curve as the car drew up at the steps, rose feebly in the chill air, as it were the wraiths of dead infantry cheering on Spanish ridges. There was a rush of these grotesque puppets to dismount the coffin, while Mark, who should have seized the moment to make his escape, stood staring, his eyes filled with tears, at the dead Chief’s charger, saddled and with empty boots reversed and strapped into the stirrups. Halted behind the pompous car, it stood turning large, puzzled eyes from side to side, with a little jingle of its bits, making Mark for some reason see a picture of a little village church, like that at Balcombe, and imagine a simple funeral held there with a handful of mourners, genuinely weeping, as he was now with no sense of shame.

Then a hand fell on his shoulder and he started in terror. But it was only the fussy old General, who insisted that he should follow him into the cathedral. “You’ve a strapping pair of shoulders, drilled somewhere I should say, and you can help keep some of this crush off milady till we find our places.” There was no help for it, and Mark in his soiled rags, found himself, despite the outraged remonstrances of vergers who were peremptorily silenced by the General, moving slowly forward amid splendid uniforms, furred gowns and hoods, rustling silk skirts and bonnets flowing with fine crape, into the gloomy cavern of the interior. To right and left crowded tiers of wooden seats mounted half-way up the vast pilasters; and, where the nave spread out beneath the dome, a huge amphitheatre, crowded with mourners, rose on both sides till it met the towering organ-screen, itself loaded also with spectators. The Windows were veiled and the whole edifice sparkled in the sombre yellow flame of innumerable gas-jets which, running round the rim of the dome, woke Thornhill’s grandiose and sooty frescoes overhead to wavering life.

There was a burst of exquisite boys’ voices in a chant, as the General and his party found standing-room in the nave, and peering on tiptoe Mark could just see the splendid pallbearers standing bare-headed with their plumed Field-Marshals’ hats in their hands round the coffin on its sable pedestal, immediately beneath the centre of the dome. A faint, mellow voice of a rare quality was to be heard reciting prayers.

Then, with an imposing crash, the massed military bands, the organ and the ranked choirs broke into the farewell anthem. Mark was stripped to the soul by the searching melodies, and conscious, though they were hidden now from his view, of the mournful, questioning looks of those stone warriors grouped round the walls on which his childish gaze had so often lingered. And, as he listened, passionately interrogating his conscience, the coffin, slowly and noiselessly, began to sink into the crypt below, leaving a shadowy gulf in the midst of the marble floor where it had rested.

The music ceased, and from the midst of the shining knot of Heralds, the Garter King-at-Arms, his whiskered Victorian face contrasting oddly with his medieval blazonries, stepped forward to the brink of the grave. A black-clad personage handed him a white wand; and, lifting it in his hands, he broke it with a snap that sounded through the listening cathedral, and flung the pieces into the pit. Then, unfurling a scroll that crackled in the profound silence, he began to read the titles of the dead in a shrill, elderly voice.

“Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington, Marquis of Douro, Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo, Duke of Vittoria, Marquis of Torres Vedras, Count Vimiera, a Knight of the Garter, a General Commander of the Bath, a Companion of the Golden Fleece, Lord High Constable of England, Master-General of Ordnance, the Warden of the Cinque Ports, the Chancellor of the University of Oxford. . . .”

The drab dusk was sheeting the mean and crazy houses of the Ratcliff Highway, when Mark, with the General’s crown-piece, reluctantly accepted, in his pocket, burst into the Nigger’s Head. It was the lull between the day’s work in ship and dock and the orgies of the evening. In the bar-room, when Mark pushed open the battered swing-doors, there was only one Norwegian sailor snoring, head on elbows in a corner, and Tom Ruffles behind the bar poring over the Police News.

He looked sharply up at Mark. “Where you bin?” he growled. “It ain’t a safe game to play, you know, swaggerin’ about the streets jes’ now.”

“You want what?” Tom Ruffles actually opened both his eyes wide for the moment.

“My uniform, I tell you! This little scheme of yours! It’s all off! I’ve changed my mind.”

“Got scared, eh? Well, you can’t back down now, you bleedin’ little muff. You are a deserter a’ready. Look at you!”

“I’m not a deserter! My furlough lasts till lights-out to-morrow, November 19. My only crime is wearing this stinking civilian suit of slops, and I’ll soon get clear of that.”

“Don’t you be so sure! Think we’ll let you wriggle out now, arter all the trouble we’ve took for your sake—on the square?”

“Who’s we? That’s what I’d like to hear you tell me. Why was Mr. Isidore Behrmann so precious concerned to help a poor boy like me?”

“My best friends!” Mark threw back his head with a brief, furious laugh. “I know now who my good friend is—could ’a’ known before only I wanted to deceive myself. Someone very near but not dear to me! The blackguard! This was his last stroke when he failed to kill me! G——! man, do you think we don’t know in the Mercuries that the officers go to Behrmann of the Commercial Road in their difficulties? That’s enough, now! My uniform!”

“Not if I know it! Think we’ll let you go to peach on us, arter wormin’ into all our secrets, you——nark! That ain’t square!”

Mark vaulted over the bar, and they both broke for the stairs at the same moment. Mark had the start and sprang on to a higher step than the landlord. Ruffles, following him up, clutched at his jacket. Mark turned and dealt him a swinging blow that knocked his head against the banisters. Tom Ruffles collapsed and slid in a heap to the foot of the staircase, while Mark dashed up into the parlour above. The stupefied sailor still snored in his corner.

Upstairs Mark shoved aside the heavy table, clawed at the planks and fished up the bundle containing his uniform. He brushed the clothes with feverish hands, and was just passing the strap of his forage-cap over his chin as he finished dressing, when a female scream and broken mutterings at the foot of the stair suggested that Tom Ruffles had found aid and returning consciousness.

Mark dashed down the staircase again with fists ready doubled. The landlord had risen and was leaning over the bar cursing, with his head in his hands, while one of his frowsy barmaids sought to tend him. The Norwegian still slumbered sound. At sound and sight of the soldier in his uniform clattering down the stairs, Ruffles turned and yelled to the maid, “Stop him! Stop the——!”

With a courage Mark could not but admire the Amazon leapt upon him screaming and tore at his face with her filthy finger-nails. He felt an angry smart, as he thrust her aside with a minimum of violence, and escaped into the darkling street, still to the music of the sailor-man’s snores. Then he put his fingers to his cheek and traced two bleeding scars. “Lucky to have got off so light!” he chuckled to himself, as he hurried away from the region of ships and their temptations—it was the first time he had laughed freely for months.

And it was with the two scars still showing red that he reported himself for duty the next day at Ranalow Barracks. To the Sergeant of his room he explained that he had cut himself shaving with an Army razor—an excuse that passed without comment or surprise.

The same evening Mark heard some news that took a load from his chest. The unobtrusive Major Blacombe, the Second-in-Command, was going on half-pay at the end of the month, and Captain Wetherby had purchased the Majority. This had meant a shuffle in the lower Commands. Mr. de Vallencey was posted to B Troop and Lord Blackwater was attached to Regimental Head Quarters,—in what undefined capacity hardly troubled the men of the Mercuries.

“I hope, ma’am,” said the pleasant-spoken young farmer at the back-door of Ferne Cottage, “that you mean to give us the order for your Christmas turkey, same as you did last year”; and Fancy, after telling him that she would “speak to Mr. Pargeter when he comes home to-night”, wandered slowly back to the apple-log fire which was glimmering upon the dark panels of the parlour and sat down again in her armchair, wondering at the thought that this would be the second Christmas she and Wilfred would be spending together. Although there had been a whistling patter of rain out of a black sky just as she went to the door to see the farmer, and the garden-paths were desolate with the death of November and stray yellow leaves like little withered corpses from time to time tapped the pane as they fell, there was no autumn in her soul, but only contentment and hope.

A year and a half she had now lived in this country seclusion and had never sighed for the lights of the theatres and the geniality of London. Her little short-lived flare of professional ambition had died out with the shock of her accident, and she had quickly resumed her settled view of the dancer’s life as a drudgery without prospects. For occupation now the care of the cottage’s rugged but dignified beauty, which penetrated her without her being able to express it, together with cooking, gardening and the charge of a handful of chickens sufficed; for company the old man, who had himself grown into a passionate gardener with his seeming-clumsy but delicate fingers that had been used to handle so daintily the tiny figures of the Juvenile Drama—she could hear his vigorous broom upon a nearby path at the moment—for company the one old man fully sufficed, when Wilfred was absent. Only once had she asked Wilfred to take her back for a brief taste of the old town-life, about this very time last year it had been, when her first experience of the deathliness of late autumn in the country had frightened her just a little. He had agreed after twirling his moustache doubtfully for a moment—he always did agree to any earnest wish of hers—and they had stayed, for a gay and satisfying fortnight, at his studio off Fitzroy Square, a bare place smelling pungently of oil-paints and full of daubs and black tracings of outlines—she had wondered how Wilfred sold pictures when he never seemed to finish any. They had gone about to theatres—in the pit, which was good enough for her, though it seemed to amuse Wilfred,—to suppers at oyster-bars in secluded streets; but he would not indulge her whim for a stroll through Hyde Park, and when they had gone to the Zoo one day, where he had scribbled sketches of yawning tigers with delight, he turned abruptly aside as they were going down Albany Street, just past the Colosseum, at the corner by the Horse Guards barracks. Some idle spirit had put into her mouth the words, “I believe you’re afraid of soldiers, Wilfred,” and she had been in her turn quite frightened at the darkening of his face as he answered, “They bring me no pleasant thoughts, I assure you.”

But she had exhausted London, she felt, on that visit; small and dirty and noisy it, astonishingly, seemed to her. Ferne Cottage was better—even when Wilfred was away. He was away a great deal, but, remembering her pledge, she had schooled herself to bear that. At first she had sought to discover some rhythm in his comings and goings, but soon gave it up. He might come for months or for three or four days or in a hurried rush, avid for love, arriving late some afternoon and rising before daylight to scamper off in his tandem. It did not matter; he was enough—and that was her contentment.

Beyond that there was hope. Just before or after Christmas she reckoned, as she rested dreamily on her cushions, staring into the innocuous blue and golden flames of the wood-fire that spared her brooding eyes, just before or after Christmas, her child would be born. Just a little faint pang she had because Wilfred seemed so much more filled with anxiety on her account than elated at the thought of the baby—but that was only his sensitive tenderness for her. She had been stupid enough at first, remembering the way in which the women at the theatre used to talk about their husbands and lovers, to fear that her present state might bring some coolness into their relations, some trace of weariness into his attitude when he was with her—but her husband was not like that. . . . She looked towards the window and saw him walking rapidly past in his fur-cuffed coat to reach the front door. He had arrived a month earlier than he promised!

“Be careful, darling!” he exclaimed, as she took a few hurried steps towards his arms.

“It’s all right, Wilfred!” she soothed him, as she lay with her soft brown hair brushing against his neck and reached up for his lips. “I’ve no pain, and very little weakness. I feel so healthy living here.”

“You said I must never be surprised. And anyhow, when you come a month earlier than you promised—I didn’t expect you till Christmas Eve—I’m too happy to feel anything else!”

“Come along! Nestle up to me on the sofa here. . . . Wait, I’ll fetch the cushions from your chair. . . . Are you warm enough? This room strikes damp to me!”

“Oh! Sixpence! I’ll be cold if you don’t put your arms round me this minute!”

They reclined together in silence on the sofa, while the merry little fire danced over their faces as the room darkened in the gloaming. Fancy, watching Wilfred in a tranquil ecstasy, suddenly fancied she saw a shade of anxiety stealing over his features . . . or was it the play of shadow from the fireplace?

The back-door jarred, as old Mr. Fawkes came in from his gardening; they heard his besom brushing along the back-passage. Wilfred seemed to shake off his preoccupation at the sound. “The old gentleman! How does he keep? I passed him on the path, sweeping violently and reciting to himself. I think he must know every line of Shakespeare by heart. I doubt if he recognized me at all.”

“His memory is going,” said Fancy shaking her head rather sadly. “I wish now, Wilfred, we hadn’t agreed to his bringing the portrait of Mr. Grimaldi from London to hang in his bedroom here. It makes his fancies worse, I think.”

“Don’t turn that little face gloomy! Isn’t he to be envied, on the whole, for his fancies? To have created an imaginary world of his own and to reign in it as unquestioned King! To have a dream the world can’t shatter! To live in an earthly Paradise of unreality from which no cruel hand can ever drive him!” Again the shadow came over Wilfred’s face, this time beyond any doubting.

He rose and with deliberate fingers took lucifers from his pocket and lit the brass candlesticks on the narrow mantelshelf. Then turning round on the rag-rug before the fire he said, “Have you been driving out much lately, Fancy?”

“In Mr. Medlicot’s donkey-chair? Yes, dear, every day it’s been fine and warm enough for it. Was I wrong? Have I been extravagant?”

“Of course not, angel!” He smiled for a moment lovingly; then returned to his obsessed look. “I suppose, Fan, you have got to know most of the people who pass and repass, walking or riding, on the roads round Marlow?”

“Very few at this time of year, dearest—not that I’ve felt lonely except for missing you.”

“That makes it simpler, then. Think well now, will you? I’ve a reason for asking. Have you noticed at any time a light phaeton of an odd sort rather, black wheels picked out with gold, upon these roads. Does anybody in the neighbourhood, do you think, any eccentric gentleman, sport such a turn-out?”

“I should think so! Why, it would be as good as a pantomime in these parts! We should hear of nothing else—like the gondola the lady from Italy keeps down at Bourne End.”

“Yes at once! To-morrow morning early! It should be to-night, if I thought it safe to bustle you.”

“But I don’t understand. To leave Ferne Cottage.” Her eyes filled suddenly with the facile tears of her condition. “For how long?”

“I do. You mustn’t try to understand; remember your pledge, remember it now more than ever!”

“I will.” She wiped her eyes submissively. “This is just weakness. . . . I’m not always quite mistress of myself at present, dear. I must see to packing.”

“He had better go for a little while to the Medlicots, as he did last time we went to London. He at any rate is safer than silence, even.”

The next morning, as Wilfred had ordered, they rose early; and taking leave of Fancy’s father, who seemed undisturbed by their departure, where he sat in his little room below the portrait of Mr. Grimaldi, commencing Act III of a tragedy in his flowing copperplate hand, now growing erratic and spidery, they passed out into the garden. Wilfred carried a valise with all that he was allowing her to take, and he had asked her to walk on his arm the short distance down to the Wheatsheaves where he had put up his horses—“No need,” he had said rather evasively, “to have the tandem waiting outside our door.”

Now he paused for a moment, looking round the dank lawn and stripped trees, dimly outlined against a smoky November dawn streaked with blood-red spots that seemed to drip from the black twigs towards the east. “Good-bye, Ferne Cottage!” he murmured with a catch in his voice. “I’ve been happy here . . . where else I wonder?”

It was still bolted, and for a moment his hand fumbled with the fastening. Then he swung it open, and stepped back with a queer sound in his throat.

In the road, watching the house, was a very tall gentleman with a pale, still face. He was standing by the head of a horse attached to a light phaeton with black wheels picked out in gold. Fancy looked at her husband’s face and a shock ran through her with a physical pain. He seemed in a flash to have become another man, tense and polished, but with an expression of hatred on his face that appalled her. All he said to the stranger, however, was, “Odd! I didn’t hear your horse come up.” Then turning to her, “Go inside, Fancy,” he said in the same easy polished tone, “and wait for me. I’ll come to you soon.”

She felt a strange awe of him at this moment, almost as though she were some servant-girl he was blandly but decisively commanding. A tiny spark of resentment flashed in her bosom, but she forced a smile. “Don’t keep your wife waiting too long!” she answered; and as she spoke she noticed the stranger turn his head quickly towards her and fix a chilling pair of black eyes filled with speculation upon her. Then she turned and slowly re-traversed the garden-path towards the cottage. Behind her the door closed with a rattle.

Waiting shivering in the panelled parlour where no fire had been lit, she heard Wilfred’s step in the passage sooner than she had expected.

“Our plans are changed, Fancy,” he said, setting down the valise upon the floor, and still speaking from behind that elusive barrier which had risen between them from the moment of the strange man’s appearance with the black-wheeled phaeton. “You will stay here; in fact you may unpack; I doubt if there is any longer any point in your leaving the cottage. I must be off to town at once without you.”

He took a swift step back, as she approached him holding out her hands imploringly.

“Pray don’t make a scene, Fancy! You shall hear from me as soon as is possible. Now I must positively leave you.”

A forlorn jealousy drowned her in its bitterness. “He takes you from me when I need you. How could you leave me now . . . like this, Wilfred?”

His set expression broke up, and for a moment in his trembling face she saw the familiar lineaments of her husband. “It can’t be helped,” he murmured thickly, “for the moment I am in his hands.”

“He’s bad,” she cried with a dart of intuition, recalling the furtive, effaced look on the handsome face she had seen through the brick arch of the garden door. “What have you done, Wilfred, to be in the hands of such a man?”

“We pay for our mistakes, Fan!” he answered, raising tortured eyes from the dark, knotted floor-boards. “This time, I wish to God I could pay alone!”

A mist fell over her sight, hiding his form; she tried to cry after him, but her throat was choked and uttered no sound; through the cataracts in her ears she dreamed she heard a tattoo of quick hoofs and the spin of light wheels passing up the hill outside the cottage.

The bells of Westminster Abbey broke into the first peal for Evensong as the lawyer shifted in his chair and spoke again. His room, dingy and grisly, with the usual array of tin boxes bearing the titles of noble houses, looked out through a wire-blind upon Dean’s Yard, where in the fast gathering dusk one or two Westminster scholars played hide and seek in and out the cloisters until a gowned master appeared and swept them under a Gothic archway. The lawyer spoke hesitatingly, keeping a watchful eye upon his client, sunk in a faded armchair. “I suppose,” he said, “it is absolutely impossible for you to disclose to me the identity of this man?”

“Absolutely, haven’t I told you, Meiklejohn?” retorted Lord Blackwater impatiently.

“They say, you know,” the solicitor went on with a bleak smile, “that there are three persons with whom half-confidences are worse than none—the priest, the doctor, and the lawyer.”

Mr. Meiklejohn shrugged his shoulders. “It all seems very sudden,” he murmured, playing with an inky quill on his table. “As if this man, whoever he may be, had come upon you out of the blue.”

“Not too strong, if you understood. . . . But I daresay you’ve had experience of something of this sort. A casual acquaintance rashly made . . . a little play in a place where you ought to have known better than to go . . . you resolve to have done with that sort of thing . . . and you find you haven’t. Then you realize, too late, it’s a gang working together—for ends of their own.”

“Yes,” said the lawyer with almost soundless irony. “I have had experience of something of that sort—more than once. But then I have also had the confidence of my clients, you see.”

“For Heaven’s sake don’t keep harping on that, man! Can’t you suggest anything? The money’s got to be found—or much worse will follow. I’m not a painfully family sort of man, as you have perhaps come to realize by now, but ours is an ancient House. It would make the devil of a smell if I went down publicly.”

“It would be—a calamity!” Mr. Meiklejohn spoke almost in a whisper, and there seemed a genuine touch of emotion in his manner.

The family solicitor sat in silence, tapping his delicate white finger-tips softly together. “If only,” he said at length, “you had let me go thoroughly into your affairs sooner, Lord Blackwater! But I know enough to be able to tell you that it is quite impossible for us to raise such a sum as you have named within the time that your mysterious creditor has fixed. . . . Are you sure I couldn’t see him to bargain for a little breathing-space? No? Well, the only unencumbered estates you have would not bring in half what you need.”

The lawyer stared sombrely at his desk. “I am afraid the only advice I can offer is the unpalatable one of yielding gracefully to the inevitable—the Gazette.”

“Three thousand pounds—a drop in the bucket! It will be swallowed up anyhow in the proceedings. You can’t stay in the Army after you’ve been posted.”

“Another nice thought! I was as good as promised, you know, a place on the Commander-in-Chief’s Staff if, as seems probable, we drift into war in the East in the spring. I’d be thankful to be quit of the Mercuries on any terms. Now that, it seems, goes up in smoke as well!”

“Come now, Meiklejohn, I’ll wager you got my father out of worse scrapes!”

The lawyer shook his fine white poll. “The late Earl had his head screwed on the right way.”

“Meaning, my lord, to be perfectly candid, that he made the retrievable mistakes, you the irretrievable ones.”

“Yet I’m not totally without a business head! You yourself praised me for the way I recovered those estates you speak so slightingly of just now from their mortgages. G——! If I could handle the money to deal with a certain cat’s-paw!”

He fell silent again, glowering at the fire. The music of the Abbey bells rocked the darkening room. A last pale glimmer of daylight fell upon the thin, rather formidable line of the lawyer’s clean-shaven mouth. And suddenly he spoke again. “I see just one chance,” he said. “My lord, you can marry.”

“Marry?” The young lord wheeled round sharply in his chair. “And how would that help?”

Mr. Meiklejohn laughed with a delicately grating sound. “Very substantially, if you made the right match.”

“This is hardly the moment, is it, to be indulging a bachelor prejudice—which I fully share?”

Blackwater fixed brooding brows upon the palpitating little hell in the heart of the black coals on the grate. “That would be a matter of time,” he fenced. “We need quick remedies.”

“The moment the news appears in the Morning Post that ‘a marriage has been arranged’ and I am able to give assurances that satisfactory settlements are being drawn up in this office, you will find no difficulty in raising any sum you require.”

Blackwater took out his silk handkerchief and drew it across his forehead. “I should have to make a cavalry attack!” he said with a harsh laugh.

“I dined last Tuesday at the Clancarries’; Lady Mary was there. There was some talk of you; I have eyes that can see beyond drafts and wills sometimes, you know.”

“It looks to me as if London society didn’t know what a skeleton they ask to the feast when they invite a lawyer to dine! This is shabby, Meiklejohn! Lady Mary’s a charming girl. I wouldn’t play such a trick on a woman!”

“Now I fear I fail to understand you. Where is the trick? It is a love-match—”

“It is a great deal in these days if it is a love-match on one side”; again the silvery grating sound came from the lawyer’s throat. “She allies herself to one of the greatest names in England, and with the Clancarry money behind you, for old Clancarry will certainly make her his heir, as he has no son to inherit, we could in a few years rebuild the fortunes of Blackwater.” An unexpected tremor came into his even voice. “I beseech you, my lord, to consider whether that is not a worthy aim. I owe everything I am to the Blackwaters. My grandfather, you probably know, was an attorney in a little Welsh town, where your grandfather was gracious enough to put some of his business in his hands. If Meiklejohn and Wesley are to-day a firm of the highest standing in London, with a social connection I may without boasting call unrivalled, we owe it all in the first instance to the Blackwater patronage. If I could have the satisfaction, now, of placing the House to which I owe so much on a firm and unassailable footing, after the long period of your father’s imprudences. . . .”

“And my own, eh? Damme, Meiklejohn, I had no notion a lawyer had feelings like this! But you’re a Jesuit, you know! You think the end justifies the means. . . . It’s a comforting doctrine, by gad, and I’m likely to need the support of it.”

Blackwater with bowed head crossed the lamp-lit yard, and was about to step into Storks’s hansom which was waiting for him at the foot of the Abbey towers when a newsboy offered him an evening paper. Opening it, as the cab began to clatter up Parliament Street, he read the headline, THE SINOPE MASSACRE, above a flaming article demanding that England and France take condign vengeance on the Tsar for his “stroke of treachery” in destroying the Turkish Black Sea squadron almost under the very guns of the Allied Fleet guarding the Bosphorus. “We shall be at war before the New Year!” thought Blackwater, ruthlessly crumpling upon his knee the column of smudged rhetoric about “our ancient ally,” “the Muscovite threat to Constantinople,” “defending the gates of India”; and as he passed the Horse Guards the brightly-lit windows seemed to his excited fancy to reflect an unwonted bustle of preparation.

The moment was crowded with golden temptations, a new military career at a position of vantage, to wipe out past negligences and the unpopularity of which he was conscious in the Mercuries, a fresh fortune poured into his lap to rebuild the prosperity of his House. . . . Freedom from the ugly consequences of one at least of his follies, and a reptile to strike down who had dared to trick him! He clenched his teeth and his cloudy brown eyes blazed in murderous streaks at an inoffensive omnibus cad, who was jolting on his perch just ahead of the hansom in the traffic and wondered what he could have done to annoy the topping swell behind: “Ve’re jist makin’ room, Captain!” he shouted, touching his battered bowler.

Blackwater, without regarding him, thrust his stick through the trap of the hansom and bade Storks go slowly round the outside of the Park and back on the North edge to his house in Manchester Square. “By Jove,” he muttered, as he resettled himself on the cushions, “most fellows would think me precious soft for hesitating!” He sat, as the hansom horse clopped wearily through Knightsbridge, in a tense concentration of thought, his lemon-gloved hand gripping the ledge of the doors; and did not stir till they turned up by Kensington Gore and crossed a small stream, gleaming jet in the light of the cab-lamps. Then he shook himself violently, like a shaggy brown dog getting rid of muddy water, and uttered a hard, reckless laugh.

“Storks,” he cried up through the trap, “do you know the name of that river we just crossed?”

Fancy was peeling a handful of potatoes at the sink of the little kitchen at twilight when she heard her father’s wavering step back in the cottage again.

Mr. Fawkes put his white locks and long frosted chin round the door; then admitted himself by slow degrees into the room, his crazy old top-hat in his hand, and shut the door behind him.

“Well, no, my dear; I’m afraid that Mr. Groves sent a most uncivil message. He said that until his last bill was paid he would send no more chops to Ferne Cottage.”

“Uncivil, eh? I said to him. ‘You are a most uncivil fellow.’ He told me, I regret to say, to . . . to be off for a shabby old sponger. Fan, my dear, I surely don’t look like that!”

“Then what is all the trouble about? Tradespeople have always been glad to serve us, haven’t they? What does it all mean?”

“It means, father dear, that you will have to be satisfied to-night with a dinner of potatoes and cabbage.”

“But that is not enough for you, Fan! In your delicate condition you should have careful meals! Besides, we have no turkey for to-morrow; I see no plum-pudding; this is the most dismal Christmas Eve I can remember.”

Fan turned suddenly pale and took an unsteady step or two towards a rickety wicker chair. The old man crept over the red-paved floor towards her with solicitude.

“I know as much as you do, father . . . and no more. He has secret work to do and we must ask no questions.”

“Secret service!” The old man relished the dramatic syllables on his tongue for a moment, and then shook his head. “No! This prolonged absence at such a time . . . an interesting event cannot be long delayed now . . . it is not delicate . . . it is not gallant . . . it is not the part of a gentleman. And to leave us in penury, too!”

“Hush, father, you don’t understand. Wilfred was called away suddenly on urgent business. . . . You know he always pays for everything that is due when he comes, and leaves money behind as well. This time he had other things to think of . . . and forgot. But he will be back soon . . . and we shall all be care-free and happy again. Only have a little patience, darling, a little trust.”

“You mustn’t let yourself be frightened by fancies, darling! Come, pull that chair up beside me and tell me what it is worrying you. Is it Mr. Grimaldi again?”

“Oh, Sixpence! Father, are dreams worth worrying about? Butchers and bakers who will send no more food, a landlord who gives us a month’s notice to quit unless he gets his last quarter . . . there, I’ve let that out, I shouldn’t have done! . . . an empty purse. . . . Father, if it’s any use to worry, let us worry about these things.”

“Well, but you can clear up all these troubles for me! You have always been so practical. It is the dreams that frighten me! The noise of the cannonade! The horses screaming and rushing!”

“Oh, dearest, what nonsense! You’ve simply been dreaming about one of your old plays—The Battle of Waterloo, or what not!”

“I know!” said Fancy. “You have been hearing people talking down in the village about this war that they all say must happen now between us and the Russians. I don’t know what we have to fight them for, I’m sure. But that’s what’s been giving you bad nights.”

“But why,” persisted Fawkes, in a whisper, “why does your husband look so white in my dreams? Can it be his fault, this slaughter? What has he on his conscience? Why are those lips so cold?”

“Father, stop! I can’t bear it . . . not now . . . oh, please!” she gasped, sinking back in the armchair, suddenly faint. “Open that window! I must have . . . air!”

The old man shuffled agitatedly across the bricks, and fumblingly undid the catch of the lattice-paned window. A cold current swept in, reviving Fan, so that the room ceased to swim, and grew still again in its bareness and shadow.

Suddenly she heard her father give a startled exclamation, and saw him retreat from the window, twisting his fingers together.

“I think,” he muttered, “it is the weakness of mine eyes that shapes this monstrous apparition! Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned . . .”

Feebly she sought to check him, supposing him ridden by yet another of his waking nightmares. But suddenly there was the scrape of a lucifer, and a yellow flame showed a face peering in at the window. Fancy uttered a cry; then the flame settling down to burn steadily showed the features of the strange man who had once before come to Ferne Cottage for ill-luck.

“Are you alone?” asked Colonel Pauloff, scanning the room through the window. “Yes, I perceive you are. Permit me to pay a visit then.”

He disappeared, and his foot scraped along the path. Then, before Fancy could rise to prevent him, he had clicked open the latch of the unfastened scullery-door. He stepped across the threshold like a great cat and looked about him, especially at the empty shelves of an opened cupboard, with his dark eyes as keen as pin-points. Then he let his gaze fall upon Fancy, and to her burning confusion contemplated her condition.

“Mademoiselle!” he said in a soft, condoling tone, “I see you are in great trouble.”

“Why do you call me that?” asked Fancy haughtily. “Do you think I don’t understand French words? I am Mrs. Wilfred Pargeter.”

Fancy repeated her husband’s name, and suddenly a light broke over his sunken marble face. He seemed irrepressibly diverted and looked, Fancy thought, even more odious in his enjoyment than before.

“Clever!” he murmured, as if hugging himself. “Clever! . . . Or is it so clever, after all?” and he fell into a deep abstraction from which she roused him by enquiring for what purpose he had come.

“Who should know if not you?” answered Fancy, looking him straight in the eye. “You took him away with you!”

“Qu’est ce que vous me chantez là?” asked Pauloff with a smile of contemptuous incredulity. “Or did he tell you to say that as well as that you were his wife?”

“Not yet,” said the Russian, thrusting his hands coolly into his trousers. “I want a little information first. I shall pay if it is worth while, and you two”—he cast a scornful look round the hungry kitchen as he clinked gold in his pockets—“will be, I imagine, very glad to receive what I shall give. First, my dear, where did he pick you up?”

“Will you go?” cried Fan again. “I have nothing to tell you; I want nothing to do with you. You are not my husband’s friend or you would not come here to insult his wife. I shall answer no questions . . . and as for your money, you fine gentleman, I wouldn’t touch it if I were starving!”

“We certainly haven’t had a good dinner for a very long time, Fan,” put in Mr. Fawkes in a quavering voice.

“Aha! old gentleman!” Pauloff turned to him with a grin. “I see you have your wits about you. And have you no authority, then, over your daughter, to make her speak when it is to your interest?”

“My daughter, sir,” answered Fawkes loftily, “has never disobeyed her father in her life. What is it you wish to know . . . and . . . hum . . . ha . . . what is the scale of remuneration that you offer?”

“Father!” Fancy struggled, white and shaking, out of the chair, “I forbid you to talk to him! Do you hear—I forbid you!”

“Forbid me?” thundered Fawkes, hollowly, taking stage across the kitchen floor and back again. “How now, Cordelia, mend your speech a little, lest it may mar your fortune!”

“Attend, old man!” interrupted the Russian. “I apprehend that your daughter’s honour is dear to you?”

“Then what if I told you she has been made the victim of a notorious seducer?”

Fancy’s plaintive cry mingled with her father’s hoarse mutter as he declared,

“No! Certainly not! A proper clergyman performed the rite. I remember his name.”

“You shall not be insulted, my child! The Reverend Eginhard Daryngton.” He rolled out the syllables with pompous delight. “Quite a name for the romantic drama, don’t you think, sir? The Rev. Eginhard Daryngton!”

The stranger had produced a little morocco pocket-book and was writing down the name.

“If this is true . . .” he said, tapping his pencil speculatively against his teeth.

“Why should you doubt it?” Fancy had fallen back into her chair again; but she seemed to have recovered her calmness. Her voice was shrill with defiance.

“I doubt it . . . frankly, my dear . . . because for Mr. Pargeter”—he emphasized the name—“to go through the form of marriage to you with a real clergyman, seems to me imprudent.”

“Since my father has told you so much,”—she held her head pathetically high—“I will not sit here to be maligned by you. You shall know that we are telling you the truth. You shall see the proof of my marriage.”

“Father,” said Fancy, “go up to my bedroom and bring me down the little pearwood box on my dressing-table. You know the one . . . I made you mend the lock for me that day this summer when Wilfred told me I must be less careless and not leave it about any longer unfastened.”

The old man nodded with an abstracted expression and crept away up the stairs; they heard the shuffle of his feet across the floor overhead.

“Did I give you permission to smoke, sir?” she asked. “Aren’t you being a little too soon in deciding that I’m one of your sort of woman?”

Pauloff pressed his cigar on the ledge of the sink and ground out the burning end.

The sound of Fawkes’s steps was heard returning, and he placed the little wooden box upon his daughter’s lap.

“Before I open it, will you not tell me why you have come here, really, and . . . and where my husband is? Oh, I know I ought not to ask!” The tears fell fast down her face. “I know it is disloyal. . . . But I have borne too much, I think, and I must have news . . . I think I have earned it by now.”

“Bargain for bargain!” answered Pauloff. “If I knew you were his wife, I could tell you something very important for you to know. If you withhold the proof, I do not think you will ever see him again.”

Fancy’s blue eyes blazed a furious challenge as she jerked up a thin silver chain she wore round her neck; there was a tiny key on the end of it. She carefully unlocked the box and threw back the lid. There was a little clinking while she shifted her two or three poor pieces of jewellery; then she drew out a closed envelope and was about to break it open when Pauloff intervened.

She let him examine it, and he smiled again with the same blend of amusement and triumph that had angered her before.

“You don’t understand that seal,” he said. “But it was very imprudent of . . . Mr. Pargeter to use it.”

Darting a cold look at him, Fancy broke the seal with a snap and unfolded the envelope. It was empty.

Even Pauloff showed a moment’s pity as he saw her face break up into the bewildered appeal of a child who has been struck without understanding why. Then it went grey; she uttered a gasp of pain, caught at her bodice, and slid to the floor, where she lay moaning and quivering in a heap upon the stones.

“Villain!” he screamed at Pauloff. “Smiling, damnèd villain! You have killed her!” He collapsed upon his knees and tried with his feeble withered arms to raise her head from the floor. “A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all!” he gabbled. “I might have saved her! Now she’s gone for ever!”

“Stay with her!” murmured the Russian shamefacedly. “I’ll find some woman. Here!” He flung a couple of sovereigns down upon the bricks and hurried from the house.

In the road outside, lit by a watery half-moon, he was relieved to find a woman standing listening.

“Is anything wrong, sir?” she asked. “I’m from the cottage yonder, and we thought we heard crying; it couldn’t be the Waits!”

“Yes, yes,” answered Pauloff, gripping her arm. “Be so good as to run in at once! There’s a woman inside needs your help instantly.”

She ran past Pauloff in at the open garden door. And at that moment there arose an appalling shrill clamour from the top storey of the cottage within. A light flickered wildly at a window; then came a tinkle of falling glass as the casement was pushed violently open; and some heavy body fell hurtling out and crashed in the road at the Russian’s feet.

Pauloff leapt back a pace and found himself staring bewildered at the wreckage of a large picture, depicting, he saw, as he stooped over it, a man in a fantastic clown’s costume. The face had been roughly slashed across with a knife.

“Mad!” ejaculated the Russian, turning away with a shrug down the hill. He pulled out his cigar-case, and found it empty. Swearing, he recalled that he had left his last cigar unsmoked upon the ledge of the cottage-sink. Sullenly he went on his way, ruminating over what had passed.

“No evidence!” he muttered, “no evidence! Whatever proof she had he stole from her and re-made the seal again with his own signet. I have only a name . . . the Reverend Eginhard Daryngton.”

Just two months later Colonel Pauloff sat in his discreet chambers in Duke Street, St. James’s, studying, and apparently without satisfaction, an illustrated weekly journal. His room bore all the signs of recent dismantling; pictures and trophies removed from the walls; a fine carpet pulled up and rolled into a bale in the corner; several trunks and heavily padlocked tin cases standing ready corded in the adjacent bedroom, the door of which was propped open by a bundle of rugs, canes and single-sticks, also ready for travel.

The policeman on his beat below kept a watchful eye on the house where the Russian Secretary of Legation lived, and a Sergeant of the small new Detective Department at Scotland Yard had also been spared to keep the place under observation—not wholly to protect it against possible outbursts of popular anger, though feeling had run high against Russia ever since the “Massacre of Sinope” at the end of last November. His instructions were rather to see who came and who went, and for what purpose; for Colonel Pauloff’s ceaseless activities, in supplement of the Russian Military Attaché’s more regular proceedings, had for some time stirred disquiet at the Home Office. The date was February 21st, 1854, and at any minute the Tsar’s Ambassador expected to receive his passports. Few people in England believed that War could be delayed for many more weeks now.

Pauloff laid down the paper he had been reading, and with a morose air puffed cigarette smoke through his delicately cut nostrils. At that moment there came a loud peal at his doorbell. His servant was out, sent to buy early editions of the evening newspapers, and he rose and went out into the little lobby to open the door himself.

On the threshold stood Mr. Isidore Behrmann, rumpled and gasping, his hat nearly falling off the back of his head, his forehead grimily runnelled with perspiration, his beady eyes minute points of terror.

“Colonel, Excellency!” The Jew salaamed in the doorway. “I haf come all the vay from Commercial Road in a cab!”

“Then you’d better get back into it and drive home again. I’ve no more dealings with your sort in England—thank God!” He was closing the door when the Jew, with staggering audacity, thrust his enormous boot into the slit and held it open.

“What do you mean by this?” raged the Russian, his face hardening like real marble.

“Is it part of de Secretary of Legation’s duty to have stolen de plans for de new Chatham Dockyard?”

“Don’t shout like that!” Pauloff reluctantly opened the door. “I will give you ten minutes before I go to the Ambassador.”

Once inside the sitting-room, Behrmann turned and faced Pauloff with his hands jerking convulsively under his coattails.

“That will be good news to many poor Christians, and I don’t feel disposed, Behrmann, to shed one single tear!”

“Vait a bit! Do you know it has all happened in t’ree veeks? First four of my best debts, bringing me in t’ousands a year, goot interest—paid off!”

“Ah! But dat’s not it! Last Friday I am dismissed from my post at de Ionic. Somebody he has brought in new capital, de Board inform me, and he insists he appoint his own manager. Oy! oy!”

“What can it signify to you, you golden reptile, if you lose a position in a baraque de banlieue?”

“Ah! But dat’s not it!” The Jew danced upon the uncarpeted boards. “I haf been shpeculating big in de shares of de Trans-Cambrian Railvay (Projected)—I vas de promoter really. Some one, mit a fortune to play vith, he has been bearing de market. Dey put statements in de papers—vorse dan falsehoods—dat ve shall nefer lay a foot of de line. Dis somebody den he start unloading: he sell, sell, eferybody sell. De shares dey are jost vaste paper to-day! And my old frient, Angus MacGregor, him dat was formerly chozzan at Warsaw, he refuse to renew my big loan!”

“I lost my head. I thought dis January I had a fortune in de Trans-Cambrian Railvay (Projected). So I plonged! Now I am finish’. Ah! my poor Rachel! Vat’s to become of us?”

“I neither know nor care! You are clearly a fool in speculation. Better keep to your shop in future!”

“Mein SHOP!” Mr. Behrmann squealed so shrilly that the Detective-Sergeant in the street below paused on his patrol and squeezed into the porch opposite to observe the second-floor windows. “I haf lost mein shop, too! De landlort he write he haf sold de property, and de new proprietor he pull it down at de end of my lease next quarter.”

“Do you know who he is?” The Jew’s wildly revolving eyes fell upon the paper lying open upon a table at an illustration of a fashionable marriage. He screamed, and pounced upon it with his dusky claws. “Him!”

“I know! I haf worked like de devil and all his angels, and I haf found it all out. It is Blackwater working through his brokers and his men of business.”

“Here!” The Jew again tapped the picture of bride and bridegroom. “You don’t know Lort Clancarry is vorth over a million? He haf gifen for dowry mit his daughter von half of his possessions! A round quarter of a million, Blackwater has to his own cheek, and he has spent over eighty t’ousand in ruining a poor man like me—and de vorst is he vill get back most of it too, because he can afford to vait, and de Trans-Cambrian Railvay (Projected) it is bound to succeed some day! Oh! he is a devil mi tout any bowels. Oh! vat a partner he vould be for a man like me! Oh! Vy did I efer leave de fur-mantle business? I vould kiss de moths, if I could see dem again . . .”

“Is this song finished? If so, perhaps you will kindly tell me what it all has to do with me, you miserable ghetto-fly?”

“Vid you? Eferyt’ing! You haf brought it all on me! You ask me to vatch for paper on de market vid Blackwater’s signature! You ask me to send him my proshpectus! Den he come to me as you plan, and borrow; and you buy de debt to put your own schrew on him, and he nefer forgif me. He vant his broder to desert from de regiment, and his broder von’t desert and he hate me vorse still, and dat’s all through you! Now he has paid you, hein? . . . Yes, I can see it in your face! He has broken through your clever veb, and he has ruined me, and you haf got to save me!”

“How can I save you? Don’t be absurd! The Ambassador will almost certainly receive his passports to-day, and I can’t stay behind in England, can I?”

“Ah! Den at least it is war! War with Holy Russia! De French mit de English, dey overthrow your Emperor! It is de day of liberation for my people! In efery ghetto in Russia, in Poland, it is de day of rejoicing, de day of consolation of de Lort! I gif every golden sovereign I possess for dis righteous war, dis sanctified war!”

“You are not so penniless then, after all? Always a hoard hidden somewhere, eh, Behrmann?”

With his dejected brows, his streaming tears and the triumphant curve of his smile, Mr. Behrmann was a truly curious spectacle. He tried to speak but could only gulp and nod.

There was the sound of a discreet latch-key in the door, and Pauloff’s ex-soldier servant slipped into the room. He spoke to his master in Russian, and Behrmann listened with equal eagerness, for he understood the language.

“You are goin’ den?” he exclaimed with the same triumphant look at Pauloff.

“And den from England by de night-boat from Harwich; you haf your passports . . . I understood vat he said!”

“Come back here at four, Behrmann, and I’ll speak to you again. I’ll do what I can for you—if you’ll hold your tongue, for both our sakes!”

The Jew, after a moment’s reflection, nodded distrustfully, and the two passed downstairs together. On the threshold Pauloff hailed a hansom and drove off. The Jew stayed behind with his brows bent on the doorstep, meditating.

Suddenly a person coming in lurched against him and apologized in a thick voice. Behrmann, looking up, was surprised to find that it was a clergyman evidently the worse for drink.

“Could you, sir,” he murmured confusedly, “I mean is thish Mr. Paul’s apartment?”

“Mr. Paul? You mean Colonel Pauloff. It’s upstairs,” said the Jew, fastening his piercing beads upon him. “But de Colonel’s just gone out.”

“Oh!” The creature seemed taken aback, and swayed to and fro. “Most unfortunate! I called in answer to an advertisement in the papers, ‘the Rev. Eginhard Daryngton, to hear of something to his advantage, Mr. Paul, 27b Duke Street’ . . . I . . I”—he looked vacantly down at a paper he was carrying in his tremulous hand.

Behrmann followed his glance and observed with surprise that it was the very periodical he had seen upstairs, and open at the very same picture of Lord Blackwater’s wedding to Lady Mary Clancarry.

“Yes, . . .” pursued the clergyman, staring dully at it. “Thish also . . . it’s very unfortunate . . . very unfortunate.”

The face of Mr. Isidore Behrmann beneath his seedy top-hat looked as fierce as the face of Joab, waiting to smite Abner under the fifth rib, as on a March day some weeks later, he stood in a crowd below the Royal Exchange, while the stream of omnibuses and vans roared by and the pavements were thronged as usual with jostling men of business. Presently a small group of wigged and furred City dignitaries came out upon the steps, escorting the Sergeant-at-Arms. To the fringe of spectators below, the Sergeant read aloud in a voice halfdrowned by the jolting of heavy traffic, her Majesty’s Declaration of War against Russia.

The September sunset out of a dun and dusty sky was glowing dull red upon the panes of a small street within sight of the Obelisk in St. George’s Circus, Southwark. The creaking jolt of heavy horse-lorries and the smack of hoofs upon the hard paving, mingled with the mournful cry of a peddler of brooms and pans, filled the exhausted air of the dying autumn day. The noise outside prevented Mrs. Vulliamy from hearing the first timid knock upon her front door; and when it was repeated, believing it was the boy with the evening beer, she cried shrilly up the area railings,

But the quiet, persistent knocking went on, and Mrs. Vulliamy came grumbling up from the basement, where she had been cleaning broken-handled knives, and opened the door with her hand pressed remonstrantly upon her tightly-buttoned bust. At sight, however, of a veiled lady with a baby in her arms upon the steps, accompanied by a strange old man in a worn stove-pipe hat, with a shepherd’s plaid shawl drawn over his mouth in spite of the stuffiness of the weather, her large black-pencilled eyes, that once had been those of a chorus-beauty, goggled with astonishment.

“I believe, ma’am, that you have rooms to let,” said the lady in a subdued voice from behind her veil.

“Well, I don’t know,” answered Mrs. Vulliamy suspiciously, “as I’m quite prepared . . .”

“Mr. Dulantey of the Surrey Theatre, ma’am, gave us this address as professional lodgings.”

“Oh, if it’s for the pro’s . . .” The landlady melted, and her chin bulged amiably beneath the blackened saw-edge of her teeth. “We ’ave two nice rooms, first-pair front. Might you come from the Surrey, then, dearie?”

The lady threw back her veil, and Mrs. Vulliamy, closely scrutinizing her pale face and sunken blue eyes, opined inwardly that “she’s ’ad a peck o’ trouble, pore dear!”

“I have just been engaged as needlewoman in the wardrobe at the Surrey,” the visitor explained. “We’ve had such a weary tramp all over London to-day. First I went to the Ionic, where I used to be in the ballet and Columbine. They sent me to the Marylebone, but they’d just cast their autumn piece. The manager was obliging, though, and gave me a note to the Coburg. But there were no places there except in the ballet; and when they asked me to dance for them they were dissatisfied, and I had to explain that I’d had an accident to my ankle . . .”

“Then I tried the Surrey in despair, without any recommendation . . . and I thought myself very lucky. So if your terms are not too high, ma’am . . . my father’s very tired with all this walking . . . What are you staring at, dear?”

“Fan!” he asked, wondering. “Whatever is that magnificent palace with the great dome over yonder?”

“Why, Bethlehem Hospital, of course!” answered the landlady. “Fancy the old gentleman not knowing that! Do you hear, sir? Bedlam!”

A terrible change came over the old man. He shook and clung to his daughter with tears in his eyes.

“No! no!” he implored, “you haven’t brought me to this place to leave me there, have you? . . . They would chain me up, whip me like a wild beast! . . . I used to go with your mother on Sunday afternoons to look at them. How the crowd laughed when they drenched them with icy water!”

“You’d better bring him inside,” said Mrs. Vulliamy hospitably, opening the door wide. “I was just makin’ a nice cup o’ tea. Over terms we shan’t quarrel if you’re one o’ the Surrey ladies. . . . Gracious to goodness! Whatever has come over the old gentleman now?”

Down on the edge of the pavement Mr. Fawkes in a state of joyous excitement was shouldering his umbrella, presenting arms with it, and shouting words of command.

“Why, I do declare it’s the band!” chuckled Mrs. Vulliamy indulgently. “More of them pore sojers marching off to the Waterloo Road station for the War! ’Ark at ’em playin’ ‘The Red, White and Blue’! ‘Oh! Britannia, the Pride of the Ocean’,” she sang, marking time with her feet and swinging her left arm from the shoulder in the accepted style of the chorus.

“Pray don’t excite him, ma’am!” pleaded Fancy, as the baby broke into a feeble wail and the old man down in the street shouted in a tremulous falsetto,

“Fix baggonets! Pre-sent firelocks! Front rank kneel! Fire by your sections from the centre!”

“There! Never mind him, dear!” said Mrs. Vulliamy soothingly. “The band’s passing! Listen! There it goes, right away, at the far end of the street . . .”

. . . But the tune was swelling out louder from a band in the front of the Light Division, halted just out of sight behind a knoll of the smooth, wave-like downland across which the leading troop of the Mercuries, strung out as an extended line of skirmishers, was slowly moving beneath an unclouded sky. A trumpet from the main body cried “Halt!” and was answered in the ranks of the tall-shakoed Light Dragoons on the left.

“Trumpeter, sound Halt!” said Major Wetherby, in command of the advance-guard, wearily to Mark Woodrofe, who, as Trumpeter to the advanced troop, was riding behind him on the dapple-grey horse Dainty, and the line of scattered Hussars pulled up.

“What are we waiting for now?” groaned Wetherby, chewing at the strap of his plumed busby. He was perspiring under the hot September sun, and impatiently twitched the weight of his furred and gold-laced pelisse back from his shoulder. “De Vallencey!” he called to the Troop Leader, “what’s the matter with ’em behind there?”

“Waiting for the Guards to be wheeled up in their bath-chairs?” he hazarded.

Wetherby swore, and pulled his horse round to face the rear. Mark duly conformed to his officer’s movement, and beheld, spread out before him, the pageant of the Allied Armies on the Crimean peninsula.

Far away to his left, below the cliffs, the sea spread in a wrinkled sheet of blue satin till it merged in the golden dazzle of the autumn morning, and across its bosom glided the long hulls of the fleets, streaked with the white lines and round black blots of their broadside batteries, their paddle-boxes and spidery funnels breaking the symmetry of the old-fashioned rigging they still carried for canvas. A stream of gay bunting, as Mark stared, broke from the mast of the British flagship in signal to the forces on shore; and turning his gaze again inland, he saw the crawling blue caterpillars of the French columns, and, dimly massed behind these, the brick-red of Turkish fezzes.

Then he looked back again to his right. Beyond the dark-green British riflemen, resting on their arms in extended order, while the sunrays glinted dully on their black head-dresses and their whiskered faces scowled as they gazed about them to understand the reason for the check, the scarlet masses of the Light and Second Divisions, crowned by their tufted brass-adorned “Albert” shakoes, spread in oblongs on the turf, the gold-fringed epaulettes and silk sashes of the officers gleaming and the splendid crimson of the colours stirring faintly on the staffs in the breeze from the sea. In the farther distance, minute but distinct like toy-soldiers, the Guards showed line upon line of dusky bearskins, relieved by the white flecks of Highlanders’ spats and their tartans. The red columns were divided as with marginal lines by the sombre strokes of artillery batteries; the snowy plumes of Generals’ hats offered a mark for hostile gunners; galloping aides buzzed like irritated wasps up and down the gaps between the regiments; and behind the nearby hillock the hidden band continued to peal forth its strains.

“Hell and my Aunt!” grumbled Major Wetherby, and turned his horse to the front again. Mark once more conformed, and now discerned for the first time, far, far away through a dip in the undulations of the chalky, grey-green plateau, a dim pile of mist-shadowed heights, more like a ghost than a substance. For a moment they glimmered pearly, and then he wondered if his eyes had been tricked by a play of horizon-clouds. Behind him, where he sat in his saddle, the buzz and stir of the invading multitude filled the warm air and blended with the heartening music; in front the countryside swept deserted and lifeless into the swelling distances. Then once again he seemed to see those shapes like giant sentinels.

There came the swish of a horse galloping through long grass, and a staff-officer in tightly-buttoned blue frock and cocked-hat drew up in front of the Major.

“Lord Raglan wishes to know why the advance-guard has halted. . . . Hulloa, Wetherby! Is it you?”

“Yes, here we are, Blackwater,” answered Wetherby coldly. “We aren’t the cause of this check; they halted us from our rear. When are we going to get on?”

Blackwater did not answer. He was staring with rigid face and narrowed eyes at the Troop Trumpeter, and Mark, with his blood drumming in his ears, glowered down at the worn silver mouthpiece of his trumpet to avoid meeting his brother’s eyes.

Blackwater came to himself with a jerk; but before he could reply there was a clink of bits and sabres, the thud of several horses’ feet, and a tall officer in cherry-coloured overalls and a Hussar’s gold-embroidered pelisse and busby rode up with a trumpeter and several attendants.

“Pway, sir?” he asked fiercely, “why are you pwesuming to give orders to my command?”

“If you have a message from the Commander-in-Chief, why don’t you bwing it to me, the Bwigadier-General? I’ve a vewy good mind to place you under awwests, sir!”

“Lord Raglan’s urgent message, my lord . . .” began Blackwater again in a deferential tone.

“Pway, sir, answer my question first! Why did you pwesume to stand here gossiping with a subordinate instead of . . .”

“What’s all this? What’s all this?” interrupted a harsh dry voice, and a General with elegant white gloves and brilliant plumes waving, spurred violently into the group, nearly colliding with Wetherby’s horse.

“Very good, Lord Cardigan. I’ll go into that later. What’s your message, sir?”

Cardigan withdrew into sullen silence as his Divisional Commander turned a fiery eye on the staff-officer.

“Lord Raglan, my lord, sent me to find out why the advance-guard had halted.”

“And how the devil should I know, sir?” Lucan’s moustaches bristled, and his cheek twitched irritably behind them. “The infantry set the pace for us here! Sir George Brown despatched a messenger to say halt, and we halted. That’s all I can tell you!”

“Lord Raglan, my lord, is very anxious there should be no unnecessary delay in the advance.”

“Well, sir, well!” Lord Lucan plucked at his chin-tuft with quivering fingers. “If you can persuade Sir George to collect his stragglers, perhaps we shall be able to move. My orders are to cover the advance of the Army, not to gallop on alone into Sebastopol.”

Faint bugles echoed from the extreme rear, and the call was taken up by the leading columns. The red blocks began to glide forward again to the crashing of fresh bands, this time from the distant Brigade of Guards, and a scarlet-coated officer from the Light Division galloped up to the skirmishing line of Hussars.

“Sir George Brown’s compliments, my lord,” he panted, “and he wishes to know if your lordship desires his Division to march through the line of your cavalry?”

“By G——! This is more than I can endure! By G——! it is! The Commander-in-Chief shall know of it, at once! Follow me, Lord Blackwater! You heard what was said!”

“Trot!” cried Major Wetherby, hearing the sound of marching infantry closing up behind. . . . There was a sudden cessation of the music and a deep sigh, the rustle of thousands of feet pressing through flowers and grass, went up into the sunshine. From the crushed and bruised herbage a keen, aromatic scent assailed the soldiers’ noses.

“Dress by the right! Don’t straggle there!” called an angry voice. “Take that man to the rear, then! It’s cholera, I think!”

As the sun swung round to the south and the shadows of the toiling columns dwindled and fell away behind them like wearied stragglers, silence fell upon the labouring Army, wrung and wasted by the diseases it had picked up in its months of waiting by the swamps of Varna. It was as though one listened to the panting of a single distressed giant crawling painfully across the endless green plain. The bands were silent, the instruments tucked under their dust-covers and the big-drums swung each between two weary bearers. Occasionally fifes squealed for a short time, and far away to the left the pipes of the Highland Brigade shrilled tirelessly their blood-cry; but presently this, too, faded away behind a roll of the down, and only the swishing feet and sobbing breath of the exhausted troops was heard. Despite the warmth of the sun and the gaiety of the sky, it was as though a chill shade crept over the soldiers who marched, marched slowly forward by ridge and valley towards that southern horizon on which by glimpses now the huddle of watching blue heights more plainly appeared.

“Can’t you get your fellows to sing?” enquired a shrivelled Brigadier testily of a regimental Commander as he rode along the line.

“I’m afraid, sir, they need all their breath for marching,” was the reply, given with a gloomy shake of the Colonel’s head.

“Good Gad!” The Brigadier drew a pair of spectacles carefully from a shagreen case and, hooking them on his gaunt nose, peered discontentedly at his men. He marked the slough of stragglers hobbling at the tail of the Division, the figures scattered about the grass, some sitting with their heads in their hands, others lying flat and twitching, with fingers that tore at the tussocks in the convulsions of cholera. He saw men in the ranks supported by their comrades, others too weak to carry their own muskets, which they had resigned to friends; and in the depleted files of the Guards behind he marked a crop of bare polls whose owners could not endure even the weight of their towering bearskins.

“Fine stuff!” he snorted. “We should have done well in the Peninsula, by Gad! if we’d had to fight the French with these! Half of them ought to be in hospital and t’other half being birched in their dames’-schools! We’ve let ’em give up their stocks; we’ve put their packs in the waggons; and damme they can’t even carry their arms!”

A savage fit of coughing suddenly stifled him; his eyes started; he turned blue and rocked in his saddle. One of his aides offered him a bottle of drops.

“No, no, no!” he gasped valiantly, fanning his empurpled bald scalp with his feathered hat. “What do you take me for? An invalid, or an old man?”

Once again the chain of cavalry vedettes halted upon a rise, while the officers swept their glasses round. Below, the ground dipped into a deep valley, through the middle of which wound a narrow stream, sending silver flashes up to the afternoon sun from between the black reed-banks that fringed it. Mark, glancing backwards from the knoll on which they stood, could see the wriggling snakes of the great Army spread over a long saddleback curve below. It seemed to show its anguish by the shapelessness of its outlines, dissolving into a spray of red dots. He could now see also to the rear of the Third Division the baggage-train, a chaos of white-tilted waggons, open country carts, Tartar arabas drawn by oxen, pack-laden mules, and with his keen eyes could even make out the coloured shawls and sun-bonnets of the soldiers’ wives tramping in clusters alongside the vehicles. It repelled his military instincts that an army should have to cart this disorderly, semi-civilian mess about with it wherever it went—nay, should actually have to depend upon it for its very life. The thought was quite a new one to him, and he sat pondering upon it with a disconcerted mien.

He was roused by a blare of strange bugles, and turning his head towards the sea, perceived a battalion of French Zouaves, brought into touch with the English right by accidents of ground, pouring over a little ridge. Mark was amazed by their baggy African trousers and wide sashes, their beards and glistening earrings, the incredible speed and spring of their quick-step; and even more utterly by the spectacle of a young woman in uniform leading them on a haggard, ginger-coloured horse. Round her shoulders was slung a small barrel with a tap; her dark ringlets streamed from beneath her crimson fez; her voluminous trousers were tucked into a smart pair of high-heeled riding-boots with silver spurs—an irregularly acquired legacy from a young cavalry officer who had died of fever in her arms at Varna. As she rode she shouted encouragements and jests to her “children”, now kicking a foot from the stirrup to give the strap to a tired youth for support, now stooping over the tawdry peak of her Turkish saddle to slap the face of a grizzled brown Corporal for some Gallic thrust at her expense.

“ ‘Vive-and-dears’, they calls ’em,” said one of the men of the Mercuries with a relish to Mark, as the cavalry squadrons descended jingling into the valley. “Ho! I don’t fink! They believe it makes ’em fight better to have a lovely ’ooman watching ’em. Sometimes I a’most wishes I was a Froggy myse’f!”

“Look!” exclaimed the Major suddenly, as he stood in his stirrups peering through his glasses. “Russkies!”

All eyes were raised to the high ridge opposite, on the slope of which a grey shadow wheeled and flitted over the sunlit turf, and then suddenly shot out a cloud of dark specks in front of it.

“Cossacks!” declared Wetherby, and indeed, as the moving dots came nearer, the long overcoats and fur-caps became visible, the lances forming a chain of glittering pin-points.

“There’s more behind, Major!” exclaimed de Vallencey. “Look at that black block on the top of the hill. Aren’t those bayonets shining? If they’ve guns as well . . .”

“Fall back your skirmishers on the Squadron, de Vallencey!” ordered the Major, turning his horse. “I’ll warn the Colonel and bring up the Horse Artillery troop.”

The next moment the hill-side opposite purled into curling blue smoke, and a reverberating roar leapt across the valley and beat back from the slopes behind the English. . . .

As the noise of the brief cannonade died away, and the English cavalry, retiring by alternate squadrons at the walk, recrossed the little River Bulganak, easily and precisely, as if on review in Hyde Park, an old gentleman in a plain blue frock-coat with his right sleeve pinned across his breast, rode forward out of the midst of a glittering staff, and greeted Colonel Merivale.

“Capital, Colonel, capital!” he said in a pleasant, well-bred voice. “A very orderly movement! You couldn’t have done better!”

At the sight of the British ridge now tipped with the red tunics and flashing bayonets of Sir George Brown’s Division, the Russian mass could be seen gliding backwards again up the far hill-side. Lord Raglan, the Commander-in-Chief, shook out a spy-glass deftly in his single hand, and watched their helmets glinting brassily in the westering sun. Down in the valley lay several horses still or kicking, while their dismounted riders moved among them.

“I shall camp here to-night,” he said. “Lord Lucan, advance your men again and occupy the ridge opposite!”

The two squadrons of the Mercuries were halted down by the white posting-house close to the stream. To them came riding from the scene of the skirmish one of their sergeants, who asked for the Surgeon.

The man coolly turned his horse and exhibited his left leg. At the ankle his crimson overall ended in a bloody tatter and stump.

“A round shot, eh?” said the Surgeon, hurrying to help him from his horse. “No use trying to save that leg! You must have it off at once, my man, at the knee. Mr. Strangways!” he called, “lend a hand here, will you? Hold this man down for me while I amputate.”

The Cornet blenched as the Doctor went to his horse and took a saw from a case tied to his saddle.

“Isn’t there,” he stammered, “isn’t there an ambulance, Doctor, to take him to the rear?”

“You know,” said the Surgeon impatiently, “that they chucked all our ambulances overboard to lighten the baggage on the voyage here. Don’t keep me waiting till it gets too dark to see!”

“Help him, Strangways!” ordered Captain Townley, commanding the Second Squadron. “It isn’t good for the men to stand by—yet; it sickens them too badly. Here, Doctor, take my flask. Fill the poor devil up with brandy first, at any rate!”

Trumpets rang sweetly through the falling dew across the valley, and the Squadron trotted off to recross the stream and join the advance.

Up on the farther ridge the air was pure and cold. From its eminence could be seen to the south a range of tall heights purpling into evening. In the centre of the view rose a lofty rounded peak, with another, a little lower, to its right, crowned by a thin tower like a grey needle. Between the two the white ribbon of the post-road to Sebastopol ran up sharp in the gathering twilight. A word was uttered and gained swift currency among the watching soldiery—ALMA!

The fleets at anchor were already beginning to glow with red and green riding-lights like fairy-lamps, and their bells chimed musically across the water in the evening stillness. Then from the banks of the stream below uprose a ferocious clamour, as the parched troops broke discipline at sight of the water and swarmed down to drink. This too was silenced at last; camp-fires began to flicker and a few tents set up for officers amid the bivouac shone palely in the dusk of the valley. From the French lines along the shore came a triumphant outburst of drums and bugles in harmony. Then, after another pause, the British bugles sent through the chill dark the wail of the Last Post. And all night long, another sound disturbed the soldiers’ sleep: the cries of the stragglers coming into camp and shouting the numbers of their regiments. . . .

. . . Confused cries that rang in Fancy’s sleep-laden head, till, as she opened her eyes in the misty September dawn, they spaced themselves out into the yawp of the milkman, bearing his twin-pails on a shoulder-yoke down the street, and the matutinal chant of a rabbit-skin merchant borne fitfully over the soot-smeared chimney-pots.

She dressed herself as quickly as she could; and, leaving Mrs. Vulliamy to make her father’s breakfast, hurried off to the address that the landlady had given her last night of the good woman who looked after babies.

Mrs. Maskill lived in Mitre Lane, Lambeth, in the network of squalid streets surrounding the Archbishop’s splendid palace. A narrow alley of cobbles by the river’s edge it was, closed in at each end with rotting wooden posts and broken links of chain. No. 13, Mrs. Maskill’s house, with all the odd numbers, was on the side abutting the Thames, and actually overhung the water, propped on greenish timber piles. It looked so sordid, neglected and secretive, that Fancy, with little Will in her arms, recoiled for a moment before knocking on its blistered door. However, there was no help for it; Will must be minded during her long hours in the Surrey Theatre workroom, where they were busy preparing for the new autumn piece; and since it was a condition of her engagement that she should also “walk on” in the crowd during the evening performances, the only course seemed to be to put him out to nurse altogether for the present.

So she stood rapping on the door with her knuckles, till suddenly she was aware of being watched by a pair of eyes through a side-window. Immediately they disappeared and the door was swung open noiselessly upon a dark passage where she found the same eyes again regarding her out of the shadow. Fan blinked and slowly made out the lines of a yellow face, hollow-cheeked, and broadening out into an irregular heavy jaw below an almost invisible slit of mouth.

Certainly Mrs. Maskill must have spoken, for Fan had not imagined the words; yet her lips had not moved nor her dank eyes, like stagnant puddles on a wharf, shown any gleam of expression.

The indistinct figure shifted farther back into the gloom and the opening of the door widened. Fan found herself standing in a passage as damp and chill as if it ran under the river, with glistening streaks, like snails’-tracks, on its brick walls. Little Will woke and began to cry; and Fancy, clutching him tighter, faltered,

Footsteps flapped past her like the beating of a bat’s wing, and suddenly, in the dingy ray from a hidden window at the end of the passage, she saw Mrs. Maskill standing and motioning with her head. The light fell on her unwinking eyes, but cut off her chin as though by the slash of a knife. Fancy groped her way along the passage, and followed her into a paved kitchen, with a tiny fire in its grate. From here a ladder mounted to a loft with rotten timber flooring; and from this loft came a faint stir, a choking and coughing, and then a feeble wail to which little Will lustily responded.

“Lots do. It would cost you ten pounds, but I’d take payment out of your wages, so much a week. Are you a servant?”

“Minding’s very expensive. One and sixpence a week I shall have to charge you.”

“Fever!” cried Fan, appalled. “I’m sure there must be terrible vapours in this house! The river seems to run right under your window.”

“Runs right under the floor, if you want to know,” answered Mrs. Maskill slowly. “We draw up our water straight through a well-hole in the scullery back yonder. But it’s not damp. My children are all very healthy. Can’t help fever now and then; the mothers bring the infection in with them.”

“Well, ma’am,” said Fan irresolutely, “I will leave my baby here, I think—at any rate for the present. I have to be at the Surrey Theatre by eight. Pray keep him warm, Mrs. Maskill,” and she took off her own shawl and added it to the baby’s wrappings.

“He can stop in front of the fire to-day,” Mrs. Maskill conceded, and propelled a rude wooden cradle forward with her foot.

Fancy kissed her child and went with a dead heart down the dark little passage towards the door again. As she fumbled unseeingly for the handle, she turned round to speak again to the woman and bid her be very careful, wiping her eyes as she did so.

Mrs. Maskill was standing as before in the dirty grey light from the concealed window. As before, only her head was visible, now bent ruminatively to one side upon her hunched shoulder. And this time Fancy had a most disagreeable shock. For there dangled from a beam just above Mrs. Maskill a tag of cord, outlined in the same pallid ray which, seeming to fall behind her neck, gave her the oddest look of being suspended from a rope.

As Fancy stared shivering, there broke again from above the kitchen the moaning sound of distress she had heard before. . . .

. . . A moaning sound, rising and falling, multiplied a thousand-fold, and commingled with groans, curses, choking sobs, death-rattles and the swish of disabled men seeking to drag themselves through the grass to some place of relief. It filled the valley of the Alma, with its rushing stream and trampled vineyards, while the westering sun struggled in placid glory with the salt fumes of black powder and the sable smoke-pall from the burning village of Bourliouk.

Improvised ambulance-parties, made up of bandsmen in gay braiding and leopard-skins, surgeons and distraught civilians attached to the various staffs—military lawyers, secretaries, men-of-letters—moved up and down upon the stricken slopes with stretchers. They passed amid a litter of broken drums, abandoned muskets, shakoes, helmets, bitten cartridge-cases, split haversacks with their rations of bread and sausage trampled into a bloody slush, cast-off shoes and gaiters, treasured letters defiled with chalk and mud—an immense jumble-sale of Death, amid which pointing hands and clutching fingers stood up stiff in catalepsy, appealing to the first few stars that trembled in the faint dome overhead through rents torn in the poisonous drifting smoke.

As the steps of the untrained litter-bearers slithered over the blood-soaked grass, their hands shook at the cries that rose on all sides from the ghastly heaving mats of mixed red and grey, British and Russian piled together. “For Pity’s sake come ’ere, sir!” . . . “Water! Water! Damn your guts, bring me some water!” . . . “Lift this man off me, please, Surgeon; he’s dead.” . . . “Can’t you hear? Can’t you come? For God’s sake, help me! For God’s sake . . .” “God! Where is God? What is He doing?” . . . “Never mind, sir! I can walk if you’ll lift me up. Go to that poor chap from the Rifles. He’s in dreadful pain.” . . . “Fancy you coming all the way to find me, Bessie! Let’s get into the boat together! I can row, but I’ve got a funny pain under the armpit.” . . . “That Russki’s mortal bad, sir. I can’t understand what ’ee says, but ’ee’s been spitting blood over me this hour and more.” . . .

. . . the sea, the sea!” . . . “Sections right! Double! You damned skulkers, come up from under that river-bank or I’ll have you all shot! Left! Left! Left! Who’s first in that battery, Eighty-Eighth?” . . . “No keel me, Gospodin! No keel me! I spik Anglish! Je me rends! Comprenez? Je me rends!” . . . “On’y a moment, sir. I’m not hurt bad, but ’ave we licked ’em? ’Ave we? Yes? ’Ooray! Tell Lord Raglan Private Sims of the Seventh congratulates ’im, and ’opes ’ee’ll be made a Dook for this day’s work.”

High up on the conquered southern slopes above the rushing river, Lord Raglan sat in a small tent, writing with his left hand and at the same time dictating to a secretary. He raised his head as a litter was borne past the tent-opening.

“Captain Rupert Grahame, my lord, of the Scots Fusilier Guards,” a voice answered. “Badly hit in both legs, and a bullet in the lung.”

The Commander-in-Chief rose swiftly from his camp-table and stepped out into the indistinct evening that was veiling the pale hills.

“Why, Rupe! I’m sorry to see you like this.” His voice sounded sharp in the chill of the rising mist. “Very much pain?” he asked.

There was no answer; a grey shade was sweeping over the wounded officer’s face. Lord Raglan walked quietly back into his tent and in a passionless voice resumed his dictation.

The stretcher-bearers had gone a few paces farther, when the Surgeon accompanying them bent forward and thrust his hand inside the torn scarlet tunic.

“Halt!” he commanded, pulling the blanket over the Guardsman’s face. “Lift him out! We need this litter for the living.”

At a short distance from the Commander-in-Chief’s tent a group of his staff-officers stood conversing with a strained hilarity, passing round flasks and sandwiches.

“What are you staring at, Blackwater?” asked one of them, detaching himself from the group and crossing over to where the young lord stood with his glasses levelled on the debris of the great Russian Battery below, surrounded, as it seemed in the gloaming, by tumbled heaps of cast-off clothing. “They got their guns off safely, damn them! What is interesting you, man?”

“Don’t be a fool, Lander!” Blackwater fell into a prolonged dry chuckle. “He’s cold mutton!”

“So he is! How devilish queer! I’d have taken my oath he was alive! He’s pointing with his musket still. Well, what is it?”

“He hasn’t any! Fancy being stared at by a man without a face!” He shook with silent laughter.

“Pull yourself together, Blackwater! What’ll they think of you? Come and take a peg! Morrison’s got a large flask, bless him!”

“There shouldn’t be wars, you know, Lander,” declared Blackwater as they turned away.

“Don’t look into it, then. Hulloa, you fellows, what’s all the argument about?”

They had rejoined the cluster of officers, the centre of which was now held by a handsome man in undress cavalry uniform, with clear-cut, quivering features, a darting eye and bushy curls escaping from the tight strap of his pill-box forage-cap.

“Lewis Nolan!” exclaimed Lander, “and as usual with a grievance! What’s the matter now, Nolan? Cardigan and Lucan at cat-and-dog again?”

“Oh! all the time! Why ask?” answered the newcomer contemptuously. “They were wrangling at the Bulganak and they haven’t stopped since. But that’s not my point! What I say is, we’ve had three hours of daylight, now as good as gone, since we thrashed the enemy out of this position, and devil a horse, devil a man, devil a dirty little trumpeter-boy has been launched in pursuit. We should have tumbled them all into the sea by now, yes, and galloped into the streets of Sebastopol, by G——! . . . But not my Lord ‘Look-on’! Oh no! He finds it more urgent to get his horse curry-combed and his spurs polished.”

“It’s not Lucan’s fault, Nolan. The Chief can’t pursue; the French won’t support and our men are exhausted.”

“Well, I’m not sorry, myself,” said a Staff-Major, rubbing his thighs. “I feel as if we’d been galloping for about fourteen hours. I will say the Chief’s a first-flight man!”

“Some people might say,” put in another officer in a low cautious voice, “that a battlefield isn’t a stretch of hunting-country. Can you imagine Wellington turning up alone with his Staff behind the enemy’s lines?”

“Oh, if you begin to ask questions, Sandeman,” interrupted Major Gough impatiently, “there’s no end. Why, of the two Generals that were set to lead the assault, one can only see with spectacles and won’t wear them, and t’other can’t see even when he has his spectacles on!”

“What does it matter?” asked Lander. “Our men pulled us through—no thanks to the Froggies!”

“Yes, the stout fellows; they always will.” Major Gough glanced towards the Commander-in-Chief’s tent. “I suppose there’ll be a shower of falling stars, ribbons and mentions after this affair. One of us’ll have to take the despatch back to England. Won’t he be feted! Champagne, turtle soup, all the pretty girls hanging on his lips, decoration, too, most likely. . . .”

“Hope I’m not picked for it, just as things are getting interesting here.”

“Did any of you fellows,” enquired Sandeman after a pause, “hear old Colin Campbell cursing the Guards when the Scots Fusilier battalion broke in front of the Great Battery? ‘Are ye runnin’ after your nurrse-maids, ye lanky poltroons?’ he was bellowing. He’s got his knife into the Brigade, has Sir Colin!”

“Well, he was unfair for once, then!” cried Lander. “Did you see the Coldstream and the Grenadiers after they came scrambling through the river soaked to their armpits? Threw out Battalion markers on the bank, by G——!, and spent a good ten minutes dressing and re-dressing the ranks as if they’d been by the Serpentine ’stead of the Alma! All that with a mass of Russkies in brass helmets standing just above them and pouring lead into them like hail! And when they did go forward at last . . . well, I never hope to see a grander sight than that wall of black and scarlet moving up the hill with drums and colours as if it were the Queen’s birthday!” He stopped, out of breath, and blushing a little.

“Oh, the Guards always come out on the top side!” murmured Sandeman. “It was the Light Division that was sacrificed!”

“Bad for the men to get those notions into their thick skulls—even if they are true!”

“I’d like to know,” asked Lander, “why those fellows scuttled out of the Great Battery again after they’d captured it. That was what broke the Fusilier Guards for the moment—the men of the Light Division tumbling downhill into their ranks as they marched up.”

“Can you blame ’em?” demanded Major Gough. “The Nineteenth, I mean? They were given a clear order to retire. I heard the bugles myself, as clearly as if I’d been on the Square at home.”

“Nonsense!” affirmed Lander. “I was with him at the moment, and it was the only time he lost his coolness all through the fight.”

“Could it have come from the General of Division, then?” suggested Sandeman.

“Sir George was right up in the battery, they say, blinking his old bat’s eyes and roaring, ‘Rally, you —— ——, rally!’ They all agree there was a Staff-Officer present, a man not known to any of ’em, and that it was he gave the order.”

“Well, I’ve my own idea,” said Major Gough slowly. “Perhaps you men will think me crazy . . . but I don’t believe that Staff-Officer ever travelled with us from England.”

There was an incredulous buzz: “Impossible, surely!” . . . “How could he get among us?” . . . “Where did he get the uniform?” . . . “He couldn’t talk our lingo!”

“Nothing easier!” maintained the Major. “Look here, as I’ve said so much I’ll be a little franker still. I’ve seen service in Burma, and I’m amazed, yes, sir, amazed at the way this Army marches. We never send out a scout, we never make a serious reconnaissance. We never sent forward a troop to explore this very strong position of the Russians before we butted our heads against it.”

“That’s precisely what I keep saying, sir! The cavalry are wrapped in a bandbox all the time!”

“Don’t start off again, Nolan, there’s a good chap! Let’s hear, Major!”

“Did we post vedettes on our flank during the march here? I didn’t see them. We’re the only army I ever heard of that possesses no gendarmerie to search the villages through which we pass for deserters and spies.”

“It’s true we’re a damned sight too slack!” came the angry voice of a young officer. “Look at that scribbling fellow from The Times, how he rides about here, there and everywhere, as if the Army belonged to him! Something new, by Gad! Who wants to be written about in the papers, anyway?”

“Well,” said Major Gough, “it only goes to prove what I say, that there’s nothing easier than for the enemy to introduce his agents among us. Suppose the Cossacks pick up only one of those broken-down arabas the baggage-trains had to abandon all along the line of march. They’d find as likely as not officers’ kit among the plunder, and given a daring man to dress himself in it . . .”

“But he’d have to speak English uncommonly well,” objected Lord Blackwater.

“And that’s true, Major!” declared Nolan suddenly. “I met one of them at Simla, played polo with him one afternoon; he took me in completely.”

“Captain Blackwater!” called the Chief’s clear voice from within the tent.

“Ride at once to the outposts! Tell them to throw out strong pickets and keep on the alert all night. Mind, that is my special order! The enemy are beaten; they are not disbanded. Nothing more dangerous than false security the night after a successful engagement!”

“The night after a great victory, sir!” protested a voice at the door, and General Airey, the Quartermaster-General, came in smiling with a flash of lantern-light.

From the French encampment by the shore came a huge flourish and roll of trumpets and drums, followed by tumultuous cheering and a multitude of voices beating the majestic pulse of Partant pour la Syrie.

“Confound those fellows!” grumbled Raglan. “There they go again with their infernal too-too-tooing—the only thing they ever do! Have you got the reserve ammunition-train well up, Airey?” He turned sharply to Blackwater. “You have your orders, sir!”

“A wounded man, my lord! It’s a Russian private! I can’t think how he managed to crawl all this way, sir!”

“Poor creature! Help him inside, Lord Blackwater.” He stripped off the warm cloak he had wrapped round himself against the chilling evening mists. “Here, lay him down gently in the corner on this! Pray, Airey, have a surgeon sent for to attend to this poor fellow!” He resumed his seat and spoke to his Secretary. “Are you ready?

“To his Grace the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State

for War and the Colonies:

“Your Grace,

“I have the honour to announce to Your Grace and to Her Majesty’s Government, that by the gallantry of all branches of the service concerned, we have to-day, upon the banks of the stream known locally as the Alma, captured a strong fortified position of the French . . .”

The Secretary started and looked up at the bland, unconscious features of Wellington’s old lieutenant on the fields of the Peninsula and Waterloo. Then, biting his lip, he struck out the word “French”, and made the necessary correction.

As Blackwater mounted his horse outside the General’s tent he could see below him the yellow dance of lanterns all over the slopes and valley, where the search for the wounded still continued in a darkness broken by the flicker of burning houses and stacks, which grinned in the night-currents like crimson fangs. The rumbling of supply-waggons coming up the congested road from the bridge was borne distinctly to his ears, and a scattered shooting as the soldiers broke up the abandoned Russian muskets, many of them still loaded, to make firewood of their stocks.

He turned his horse about and trotted up the road between the vast, mist-enshrouded shoulders of the downs, streaked with the ruby lines of camp-fires, and flinging their summits up to meet the trooping stars that now glittered coldly overhead. He had soon to leave the encumbered road and take to the turf at its side. Two or three times he was challenged by infantry pickets, and once a panic-struck sentry sent a bullet through his hat; but he crossed the ridge without serious hindrance, and saw far away across the plains a murky glare against the sky, the fires of the beaten Russian Army licking its wounds beyond the barrier of the Katcha.

It took him till past midnight to visit and inspect the chain of advanced posts on the reverse slope of the Alma ridge, ending with the cavalry pickets on the British left, pushed well out on to the plain below. At last he came to a fire where a picket consisting of a half-troop of the Mercuries was established with watchful vedettes patrolling in advance. The voice of Major Wetherby hailed him; and, as soon as he made himself known, the Major and Captain de Vallencey, forgetting past coldnesses, invited him to share the small ration of biscuit and pork which they had with them, and to rest his exhausted horse.

Blackwater gladly accepted, and decided to pass the remainder of the dark hours by their fire before returning to headquarters at dawn. Presently Major Wetherby returned to the lines of the main body of the Hussars, some half-mile to the rear, and de Vallencey was left in charge of the picket with Blackwater as his companion. The officers’ fire had been built in a dip of the plain, some fifty yards behind the little knoll on the farther side of which the central post of the picket watched, with outposts at a quarter of a mile to right and left.

The night grew colder as the small hours advanced; the raw saline mist made the two officers choke as they tried to engage in desultory talk; and at length de Vallencey, summoning a Sergeant from the front, turned over the command to him before wrapping himself in his pelisse and lying down a few yards from the fire for a couple of hours’ sleep. The Sergeant saluted and disappeared again over the little knoll; and then silence gathered like a cloak round the circle of light cast by the red embers, only a faint clinking of bits and an occasional whinny from the troop-horses tethered by the picket blending with Blackwater’s thoughts as he too drifted off to sleep where he sat, his hat pulled over his eyes and his face muffled in the upturned collar of his horseman’s mantle.

He woke with a start of all his members to see a tall Staff-Officer in a uniform the exact replica of his own sitting looking at him on the opposite side of the fire.

“Good evening, Captain!” said the stranger, spreading out his hands in front of his face to catch the warmth of the fire, which he had evidently just replenished. “I was waiting for you to wake.”

“Major Birchington, from Sir George Cathcart’s staff,” answered the other smoothly.

“What do you mean? Sir George Cathcart was in reserve all yesterday. He hadn’t crossed the river by nightfall.”

“Quite right!” There was no quaver in the Staff-Officer’s voice. “I was sent forward.”

“To arrange for our taking over the position of the Light Division at daybreak . . . I had to reconnoitre the ground.”

Blackwater complied, and the other gave a little laugh that he recognized with a disgusted thrill.

“Lord Blackwater! Well, I’m in luck!” The strange officer let his hands fall away from his face, palms upward, and chuckled again.

“Don’t stir! Don’t rouse your weary friend over yonder from his well-earned dreams!”

The ring of a revolver-mouth gleamed bluish in a tongue of the fire. There was a moment’s silence, except for de Vallencey’s heavy snoring.

“Do you really think?” enquired Blackwater, “that I shall be deterred from giving the alarm because you will shoot me if I do?”

“No, Lord Blackwater. I think better of your patriotism. But nevertheless, you had better give no alarm!”

“Won’t you do my patriotism as much justice as I do yours? Somebody has to undertake this kind of work in every war, for choice the man best fitted for it . . . though I made a bad mistake about Sir George Cathcart just now.”

“Was it you, you blackguard, who gave our men the false order to retire in the Great Battery to-day?”

“Sorry I can’t oblige you! You’re not married, are you, Pauloff? You haven’t a wife or children . . . That’s lucky for you.”

A spur chinked and the Sergeant loomed out of the mist, with cold drops on the rim of his busby. He saluted.

“This officer, sir! Seems he passed one of our vedettes, Private Hackett, without giving the countersign. Hackett said he thought Staff uniform made it all right. I’ve placed the man under arrest.”

There was a pause. The strange Staff-Officer, with entire coolness, threw some brushwood on the fire.

“It’s all right, Sergeant,” said Blackwater slowly at last. “But stand by within call. I may want you.”

“That was very clever of you,” said Pauloff amiably, as the Sergeant saluted with a troubled face and walked away. “Cleverer, I think, if you’ll allow me to say so, than what you did when you married that girl under your family name, concealing your title from her . . . though I think I can read your motives, your very mixed character! Ralph Wilfred Pargeter, Earl of Blackwater and Desnair, no, he could not marry a ballet-girl. But the Earl of Blackwater, he was still too much the gentleman—then—to delude her with a mere brutal mock-marriage. I sympathize a little . . . she has a trusting face. So ‘Mr. Wilfred Pargeter’ marries—with a loophole in case of need. And when the beautiful Lady Mary Clancarry came along—with her fortune, well, the loophole was needed. Isn’t that very near the truth?”

“Unfortunately, perhaps, what you have said is not the truth, Pauloff. That marriage ceremony with Fancy Fawkes was mere mummery. It counts for nothing in law.”

“The clergyman who married you doesn’t think so. He holds you a bigamist to-day.”

“How did you get hold of that rascal? . . . But what does it matter? It is as I said. It was a brutal jest and nothing more.”

“The Reverend Daryngton protected himself. He made you furnish him with a licence.”

“A tissue of lies sworn to under my false name before an old fool in a cellar at Doctors’ Commons! What validity has that?”

“Well, Pauloff; if this is an attempt at blackmail it comes too late for your purposes. You’ll face the firing-squad at dawn before you can prove anything.”

“I shall not be shot without being granted the consolations of a minister of religion—one of your Army chaplains, I suppose. To him I shall confess the secret that lies heavy on my conscience, and hand him the Reverend Daryngton’s confession, written out for me in exchange for the means to fly from your country. They were going to unfrock him for some further offence. He is a bad hat, your reverend friend.”

“Do you think at this game I can afford to throw away any card? I was busy in England, and I carry with me everywhere several things that may get me out of a tight hole like this one.”

“I think I’ll see what you’ve got in your pocket-book, then, my friend!”

“I think you won’t! I shall shoot you before you lay a hand on me, however quick your men come running to the sound!”

Blackwater sat down again, frowning heavily at the red cavern of the fire just as months before he had sat frowning heavily at the red hell in the lawyer’s grate in Dean’s Yard.

“I need a horse,” Pauloff went on in his easy, half-whispering tone. “Mine was shot by one of your blundering sentinels; I was surprised to find him awake! If I were on a horse, I should hand you the Reverend Daryngton’s confession before I said good-bye. Isn’t it better for me to hand it to you than for it to be passed on to Lord Raglan? He was Lady Blackwater’s godfather, I believe, when she was the little Lady Mary Clancarry, and he loves her. . . . Why shouldn’t you lend your horse to an English Staff-Officer bearing an urgent message? Why should you ever have suspected me?” . . .

“What the devil was that?” cried de Vallencey, struggling out of his thick sleep of exhaustion. He gaped at Lord Blackwater who was tearing up some shreds of paper and dropping them into the blaze of the fire. “What are you doing? Didn’t you hear a shot?”

“I’ve sent a man to find out, sir. . . . Seemed to me to come from away to our right. The cherry-pickers . . . the 11th Hussars, I mean, sir, have a vedette over yonder.” He looked round. “Where’s the other gentleman?”

“Sir George Cathcart’s Officer?” enquired Lord Blackwater. “He couldn’t stay. He had an urgent message, he said, de Vallencey, to Light Division Headquarters, and I lent him my horse as his had broken down somewhere out there.” He made a vague gesture towards the foggy darkness. “You’ll have to lend me a trooper to get back.”

“Carry on, Sergeant,” said the Captain incuriously. He came forward and knelt by the fire, shivering. “Half-past four,” he said, consulting his watch by the firelight. “I wonder what’s doing in the Haymarket at this minute. Better fun than this, I’ll wager. But you, Blackwater, those days are ended for you, I suppose. You’ve become the perfect Benedick, I hear, and I suppose we shall soon have to congratulate you.”

Fancy, as soon as she left the theatre that October evening, made straight for Mrs. Maskill’s house in Mitre Lane. It was the one bright spot in the situation that she now could—now must—have little Will back again. Sacked, after five weeks, because she was not strong enough to carry out her duties! She knew that was a lying excuse, even if she had once, and only once, fainted in the workroom from sheer hunger. There was not much left from her tiny wage to buy her own food, after she had paid Mrs. Vulliamy’s rent, and paid Mrs. Maskill for minding the baby, and paid Mr. Humphreys’ sister, who had the cottage at Highgate, for taking her father in. She had had to go to that last further expense, since Mrs. Vulliamy refused to keep him any longer with his queer ways, and he was getting worse through always shivering and quavering at the sight of the dome of Bedlam near by. When Mr. Humphreys, the stage-manager, suggested sending the old man to his sister at Highgate, Fancy thought he was doing it out of kindness; later she had learned better. Mr. Humphreys wanted her father well out of the way in order that he might make her his mistress, a design he had announced with incredible fatuity and brutality one day while lunching on bottled beer and chewing beef sandwiches in an interval of rehearsal. After she had slapped his face she knew what must follow, and her dismissal had been handed her at the end of her sewing to-day, with a statement that no wages were due in lieu of notice as she had incurred fines on various frivolous pretexts that were enumerated.

Where to turn next she could not at the moment imagine; but at any rate she would get her child back again and try to take care of her father herself. So thinking, she made her way down Mitre Lane by the flicker of its single oil-lamp and knocked upon Mrs. Maskill’s door. It opened at once, which was unusual, and as she stepped inside, shut at once behind her. Then a lantern flashed on her face, and in a second or two she made out with consternation the tall hat and belted greatcoat of a policeman.

A man in plain clothes came out of the kitchen at the back and stared hard at Fan, as the constable again bent his lantern full on her face. Then he turned his head and called,

A heavy step sounded in the kitchen and a tall, portly man in a sleek top-hat came out, and in his turn studied her by the lantern-rays, fingering his bush of black whisker and thrusting up the heavy fringe of his moustache.

“And what might your business here be, ma’am?” he asked at length, civilly enough.

“I came to fetch my child away, sir,” faltered Fancy, with a heart that beat as if it would turn her sick.

“Yes, sir. Oh! I hope there’s nothing wrong. Where is Mrs. Maskill, please?”

“We had to take the woman away to the station in a cab; she was fighting and clawing so. You’d better come along here, if you will.”

“Now, ma’am, please!” said the Detective-Sergeant sharply as she hesitated, and she followed.

“I was hardly ever free from my work in the theatre, sir, and Mrs. Maskill kept all the mothers strictly to what she called her visitors’ hours. I couldn’t get away during them.”

“I think,” said the Inspector, “you had better go upstairs first and see if you can identify your baby among the ones there. I hope you can, that’s all I can say.”

The Sergeant, taking a lantern from another constable in the kitchen, helped Fan’s tottering steps up the ladder into the cold loft, where she desperately examined the five thin and wretched infants wrapped in filthy rags in their misshapen cradles put together out of odd pieces of wood. Then she broke into dreadful crying and the Sergeant brought her down the ladder again with difficulty.

“Not there, eh?” asked the Inspector. “Hers may be the one, you know. She’ll have to come with us to the mortuary to identify, if so be.”

“It can’t be, it can’t be!” sobbed Fancy. “Oh, sir, why should she kill my child; we never did her harm!”

“You never hinted, I suppose”—the Inspector looked at her sternly and piercingly—“that the baby was a burden to you . . . that you didn’t know how you could keep it . . . that you’d be grateful if she could get it . . . adopted?”

“A burden to me, my little Will? I wouldn’t have let him out of my sight for a day, but I couldn’t have him with me in the theatre, sir—could I, could I? And what had I done to this wicked woman? How could she have the heart to murder him?”

“I don’t say she has, ma’am,” replied the Inspector in a grave voice. “It’s no part of my duty to suggest anything of the sort. But the River-Police have found . . . well, you’ll have to see for yourself, I’m afraid, what they found tucked in between a lighter and a coal-barge below the Palace gardens. George, tell the constable to get a cab. Wait a minute, though; I’m not satisfied with that scullery yet.”

He took the candle from the table; the Sergeant picked up the lantern again. In the mouldy-smelling scullery the Inspector went down with surprising agility on his hands and knees upon the floor and examined the cracked brickwork minutely with the bull’s-eye. Then he rose frowning and shot the rays round the walls.

The Inspector joined in straining and shoving, and the ponderous bit of old furniture rasped and squealed on the floor as, panting, they succeeded in pushing it out from the wall.

“Aha! Look here, George!” The Inspector was holding the lantern pointed downwards at a circular stone lid with an iron ring in it.

“The well!” screamed Fancy behind their backs. “She said there was a well!”

The Inspector stooped, and twisting his handkerchief in the stone, heaved it up with an effort. A cold draught rose from the orifice, coated with green slime and tufted with little weeds and funguses that glistened in the circle of lamp-light. From far below came a singing and tinkling of rushing water.

“I knew we’d find something of the kind,” said the Inspector, and let the stone fall back with a thud.

As Fancy swooned off, it seemed to her that she heard a heavy gun-shot reverberating among shadowy hills . . .

Straight before them in the east the first grey glimmer of the October dawn was slashed by a long sword-blade of crimson that dripped bloody flecks, reminding Lord Blackwater of those he had seen on the leafless twigs at Ferne Cottage that morning ages ago in another life. It showed the sullen snout of the Turkish earthwork on the nearest height in front, and the black pencil of its flagstaff.

“Can you see the standard?” he asked of one of Lord Lucan’s aides, who was peering through the deceptive gloom.

“I see two,” was the answer. The speaker continued to peer through his glass. “Why two flags?”

“That’s the arranged signal, surely!” cried another officer. “The enemy must be coming on!”

And the reply came from the earthwork in front, where a second and a third gun gave voice, to be echoed promptly from No. 2 Redoubt, placed a little further back, on the spine of low hills that cut the plain in two to the left of the riders. Ghost-like in the half-light, the white wreaths of the discharges mounted from the coffin-shape of the first redoubt, to shake their wailing skirts against the blood-spotted mouth of the dawn; and as the artillery-clamour rolled among the hills, the small group of the staff split as though scattered by a shell. In front the bobbing white speck of Lord Lucan’s feathers went streaking forward, arrow-like, towards the sound of the firing, and his aides and trumpeter went jangling after him; behind, Lord George Paget wheeled straight about and galloped for the camp to mount the Light Brigade. Blackwater followed him, to carry the news up to Lord Raglan’s Headquarters on the ridge above. Already trumpets were shrilling from the cavalry lines crouched to guard the plain beneath the rim of the plateau from which the Allied trenches menaced Sebastopol upon the further side, and the few twinkling yellow lanterns that marked the sites of the two encampments of the Heavy and Light Brigades went abruptly out. Blaring bugles answered down by the port of Balaclava, and a bouquet of green stars fell from a warning rocket shot up from Sir Colin Campbell’s lines defending the harbour-base.

“What the devil were our vedettes doing . . . sleeping as usual?” growled Lord George as he spurred his charger faster over the gentle swell of the plain towards the camp.

“Looks as though they’d been surprised, sir!” answered his aide. “You were out there last night, Lord Blackwater. Did you find anything wrong?”

Behind them as they galloped the cold dawn came up with a livid glare over the long sweeps of coarse grass, and the embosoming hills began to take on faint colour and harsh outline. The artillery bellowed continuously in their rear and the rattle of musketry volleys now blended with it.

“I wonder whether my noble yachtsman’s awake yet?” murmured a young officer, following behind, to his companion. “They must hear that tapping at their cabin-doors even down in the harbour, I think!”

“He’s got the best of it,” answered the other aide, pulling his pelisse in to his body with a shiver. “Give me snug quarters on a luxurious yacht instead of a lodging on the cold ground! I wouldn’t be in Brigade-Major’s boots when the Earl does come up and finds Lord George has mounted the Brigade without him!”

“If he and the Squire stay too long over their rolls and chocolate this morning, they’ll miss all the fun!”

Overhead the sky was turning to a pale remote blue, and a sudden dazzle of chill sunbeams smote across from the eastern hills as they galloped into the Light Brigade camp, where the long lines of men stood by their horses, craning forward with eager eyes for news as the staff rode past. The white and red pennons of the 17th Lancers in their cased helmets hung idly in the windless air and the Death’s Head badges on their uniforms grinned fixedly down the empty expanse of the plain, which seemed deserted but for the occasional figure of a mounted messenger fleeting over an undulation and disappearing again into a hollow. Only the uproar and the heavy white cloud that hung upon Canrobert’s Hill where the First Turkish Redoubt was now the centre of a massed Russian attack, gave sign that a great battle had begun. In a plantation by a little vineyard behind the half-struck tents of the camp the birds had begun their morning song, but ceased abruptly as the thunder of the cannonade came rolling over the plain to break back hollowly from the hills behind. On the word from Paget the Brigade Trumpeter sent the call to mount pealing down the lines.

As the Brigade moved out from its encampment the Mercuries were in the front line next to the Lancer regiment. Already they were a shrunken contingent. Of the 215-odd men that had formed the two squadrons that landed at Varna in the early summer, ninety had died or been disabled by disease before the regiment was transported to the Crimea, and a great number of horses had perished in Lord Cardigan’s ghastly “sore-back” reconnaissance in the Dobruja. At the affair of the Bulganak they had mustered no more than 125, and had already lost four officers; this morning, with more losses by cholera after the Alma, the tiny squadrons were reduced to a little over a hundred men, already filmed by the slovenliness of ill-provided campaigning. Their brown busbies, from which the draggled plumes had been discarded, were discoloured by weather; their furred sling-jackets worn for warmth close to their bodies hid the rents and tarnished lace of their jackets, their overalls were thrust into their short Wellington boots to conceal frayed edges and broken straps, their spurs were dulled. The horses, already suffering from want of proper forage, wore a tucked-in and spiritless look.

In contrast to this incipient squalor, the new Trumpet-Major, riding in front of the regiment with the Colonel, the Second-in-Command, Major Wetherby, and the Adjutant Shotter, shone speckless. The Trumpet-Major of the Mercuries had been among the cholera victims during the march from the Alma, and Mark Woodrofe had been promoted for good conduct to the place. His grey horse Dainty, fed with oats gleaned no one could imagine where, had a coat like satin and champed keenly on his bit; Mark’s busby and bag were brushed, his silver badges burnished, his white pouch-belt pipe-clayed from a hoard he had amassed from hungry comrades by sharing his thin rations with them in return; his crimson gold-striped overalls fitted to his slim legs as tightly as gloves—he had himself unstitched the seams and taken them in—and ended in long-necked, gleaming spurs, cleansed with brick-dust scraped from the walls of a Kadikoi farmhouse. Staff Sergeant-Major Jarman, who this morning took the place of the Regimental Sergeant-Major Godliman disabled by the kick of a horse the night before, had nodded approvingly at the figure of the new Trumpet-Major as he came on parade—“The only one of ’em looking like a Mercury,” he grumbled into his moustache.

Mark set the polished silver mouthpiece of his trumpet to his lips and the squadrons spurred their jaded horses to a trot.

“Gad! if this isn’t better than a box-seat at the Opera!” chuckled Major Gough, where he sat with the Commander-in-Chief and the rest of his large Staff on the edge of the plateau that looked down upon the plain from the British position. “Take a sandwich, Nolan, while you have the chance! You can’t tell where’ll you dine this evening, man!”

Captain Nolan brushed the offer curtly aside. He had edged forward to the very brow of the height, and now stood in his stirrups, frowning and twisting his neck, as he gazed out to see the field of battle below over the fezzes of the French Zouaves who were manning the trench just under the crest.

It was the little dark-ringleted vivandière, in her short jacket and baggy red trousers, who sat swinging her legs on the edge of the trench and clinking the silver spurs on her boots together in time to her music. She had unslung her canteen, and from time to time filled the tin mugs of her children as they passed them up in the intervals of slicing up their long French loaves.

Nolan did not listen; he was absorbed in the plain at his feet. The morning had presented a series of spectacles, now beautiful, now sublime, now grotesque, and to a passionate cavalry expert, intolerable. The brilliant gathering round the plain frock and unplumed hat of Lord Raglan, swollen by hangers-on and camp-followers—purveyors, chaplains, travellers, the square-bearded correspondent of The Times—who always eluded the gestures of dismissal from angry young aides and returned, after walking their horses a little way out of sight, to the post of vantage—had watched a succession of astonishing scenes in the sparkling autumn sunlight. They had witnessed the expulsion of the Turks from the redoubts on the hills planned to protect Balaclava, and the capture of the nine British naval guns arming those works; the descent of Russian cavalry upon the gorge leading to the tiny harbour, with its gilt toy domes and castle ruins, and their swift repulse by Sir Colin Campbell’s slender scarlet ribbon of Highlanders uncoiled upon a knoll; then the supreme excitement of the Heavy Brigade’s crash, with distant shouting and clatter of sabres, into the immense cloud of Russian horse that had come sweeping like a tidal grey wave over the spine of hills that cut the plain in two—a bottle of red ink spilled upon a darkling sea General Scarlett’s minute squadrons had looked from above—and in the moment of their triumph the onlookers had gaped astounded at the sight of the ranks of the Light Brigade standing still behind the rigid figure of Lord Cardigan in his gold-laced busby and cherry overalls, while the defeated enemy swirled past them into safety.

“What’s come to Cardigan? Has he gone deaf, or blind? Lucan’s trumpeter kept on sounding the charge.”

“I did. The man who learnt cavalry-work at Aliwal rebuffed by the man who learnt it in Hyde Park!”

“D’you think Cardigan held off to spoil Lucan’s little victory? He don’t love his brother-in-law.”

“Not a bit of it!” said Major Gough composedly over his shoulder to the speakers. “I expect you’ll find he had an order to keep that ground—and kept it though the skies should fall. Nothing can turn Cardigan from an order once given him!”

“Well, Major. He’s missed his chance of fame in this day’s record, anyhow!”

A lazy lull seemed to have fallen on the battlefield. The desultory firing from the hills had died away, and the routed Russian cavalry had streamed back across the dividing hills to the far end of the northern valley where it curved to meet the aqueduct to Sebastopol. They stood gathered in a dim mass behind a battery of Cossack artillery. Through spy-glasses the twelve guns and their limbers could be clearly distinguished and the ant-like forms of the artillerymen carrying shells to load, ready at need to sweep the still green valley with their fire. Nearer in, the wounded were being cleared off the scene of Scarlett’s victorious charge, and from the high ground by the Windmill to the left of the Staff, the Guards under the Duke of Cambridge, their bayonets flashing through the dust-cloud of their march, could be seen winding down with pulse of drum towards the plain, the jolt and clink of accompanying artillery coming hearteningly to Lord Raglan’s anxious ears. He shook out his spy-glass with his single hand and levelled it on that low range of the Causeway heights splitting the plain in two, where by the captured Turkish redoubts, with British guns for their trophies, a mass of Russian infantry supported by batteries protruded a spear-head at the British position.

“Sir George Cathcart’s Division, sir, is just debouching upon the plain,” announced General Airey, returning on a panting charger from a mission. He dismounted and took a fresh horse, a dark wiry man, indefatigable, with a harsh wooden face and gimlet-eyes. “What’s the next move, my lord?” he enquired deferentially of his Chief.

“I believe the enemy would prove soft to the touch up there,” he said, “after the thrashing Jim’s just given their horse. Send Lucan an order to advance and take advantage of any opportunity to recover the heights. He will be supported by the infantry who are ordered to advance on two fronts. Lord Blackwater! Carry this order to Lord Lucan. Bustle, Airey! Send and press Cathcart and His Royal Highness to advance immediately and open upon the redoubts in support of Lucan. We shall make a rout of their whole force if we strike home now!”

“If this is war,” said Major Gough, who had dismounted and was stretching his limbs upon the springy turf while he watched the blue whorl of his cigar-smoke curl up towards the warm sky, “if this is war, let it continue! To think we earn medals and pensions by this! If only that rascal of mine would bring the lunch-basket. . . . How long is it since they sent Lucan that order to advance? What can the man be doing. I think all our cavalry Generals except old Jim Scarlett have the paralysis to-day.”

“Look at that fellow Nolan!” Captain Sandeman nudged the Major. “Striding up and down and biting his chin-strap off! Aha! my friend, you are puzzled by the niceties of civilized warfare, are you, even though you have written a book upon cavalry tactics? . . . Poor devil, I’ll offer him a weed to soothe him!”

He walked across to Nolan and called his name. The cavalryman turned his head and looked at him. Sandeman stammered, tucked his cigar-case away again, and came quickly back to Gough.

“What’s up?” enquired the comfortable Major. “Had your nose bitten off?”

“I have, Major. . . . That fellow’s face! . . . But I forgot. You’re not a Scotsman . . . you’d only laugh at such beliefs!”

“Look out!” Major Gough started to his feet. “I believe something’s actually going to happen!”

There was a ripple in the group clustered nearest to Raglan, and Airey’s sharp, birdlike head turned towards the aides. The dismounted officers scrambled guiltily into their saddles, cramming flasks and sandwich-cases into their holsters.

“No! no!” came Lord Raglan’s high, delicate voice, “I want Nolan to take it!”

Nolan, already mounted, and bending forward in his saddle like a bird of prey, spurred his charger at a bound to the Commander-in-Chief’s side.

“You are to ride your hardest, Nolan, to Lord Lucan and tell him to advance at once, d’you hear, at once, follow up the enemy and prevent him carrying away the guns!”

“The French cavalry are on his left for the movement,” struck in Airey rapidly. “D’you understand? The French cavalry and . . .”

“The troop of horse artillery may accompany, too, but he’s to lose no time in attacking, not a moment,” interrupted the Commander-in-Chief, with an unwonted note of excitement in his voice.

A shade of perplexity came over the aide’s face as the orders pelted upon him.

“Attack at once and capture the guns!” he murmured. “Very good, my lord!”

“Wait, sir!” cried Airey as the aide’s horse whirled round. “I’ll give you the order in writing as well!” He ripped a blue leaf from his pocket-book and scribbled on it, using his sabretache for a rest. “Now off with you!” he cried, handing Nolan the folded slip, “as fast as you can ride! Make no mistake!”

“You’re quite right, Airey; they are trying to get our guns out of the redoubts and carry them off for trophies! Lucan will spoil that little game for them as soon as he gets my order. We don’t lose our guns, even if our precious allies do run away and desert them!”

“It’s our guns he wants the cavalry to get!” whispered Major Gough to Sandeman with a little start. “He never said so to Nolan, though!”

“Look how that fellow takes the slope!” cried the Captain enviously, as he watched the aide descend the steep chalk face of the hill. “The creature can ride, damn him!”

“He has a powerful lack of second thoughts!” The Major shook his head. “They should have made it plain to him about those guns, though!”

Nolan’s trained charger scrambled and slid down the precipitous cliff-face like a cat, its rider swaying lithely to its movements and holding his reins daintily high in a white-gloved hand. His handsome tanned face glowed darkly red with passion, and his eyes beneath the little round tilted forage-cap were narrowed to gleaming slits of fire. At the foot of the slope a grassy track wound among banks and tiny hillocks; and as he guided his horse in and out, seeking the shortest cut to the flats below, he was suddenly aware of a very tall horseman by his side in the long frogged coat and peaked cap of a Guards Officer.

“From the Duke of Cambridge, sir!” said the stranger. “Are we attacking? Where can I find Lord Lucan?”

“I’m riding straight to him!” shouted Nolan, making a quick turn to his right as he emerged from the broken ground upon the plain. “The cavalry are to attack at once!” he threw over his shoulder to the Guardsman, and stretched his horse to the gallop.

The other came up with him in a moment, keeping level easily on a fine black mare that to Nolan’s horseman’s instinct was vaguely familiar.

“Attack?” he asked keenly, bending forward in his saddle to catch the aide’s reply. “On what front?”

“That’s for his lordship to say!” rapped out Nolan. “All I know is they’re to go in immediately and try to get the guns!”

They were rushing along, stirrup by stirrup now, and suddenly to their left, sunny and tempting, with a crow or two croaking and flapping languid wings on the short smooth turf, there opened up the North Valley, stretched dreaming beneath the bright sky, without a figure to break its loneliness or a hoof-print to mar its surface.

Nolan turned his head and glanced at the gently-falling sweep of turf as they hurtled past. The smooth incline dipped at the limit of vision and only the huddled crests of hills appeared at its further end.

“Good galloping!” he said, nodding, and spurred his horse even faster as the small compact blocks of the British cavalry came into view, drawn out along the base of the height from which he had descended, the scarlet of the Heavies topped by the glitter of the dragoons’ brass helmets and the plumed bearskins of the Greys, the dark-blue of the Light Brigade flecked by the gold lines on the Light Dragoons’ towering shakoes, the crimson splashes of the Hussar busby-bags, and the fluttering pennons of its single Lancer regiment.

“Hurry!” exclaimed the Guards Officer with a sudden accent of authority. “The Russkies are jammed down at the end of the Valley there in a panic, but they’re getting their guns away already. Quick, man! The Cossacks will slip through your fingers life eels!”

The words still rang in Nolan’s ears, already drumming with the fever of conflict, as he whirled up the line of waiting horsemen to where Lord Lucan’s white feathers gleamed between the blue and the red brigades. The aide fancied that he was crossed by another staff-officer galloping furiously past him, and he did not notice where the companion of his ride had vanished to; but he was alone as he pulled his charger to a stop upon its haunches and handed the folded slip of blue paper to the Cavalry Commander.

“Now the music’s going to begin!” said Mr. Vernon-Walsingham, Troop Leader of the left squadron of the Mercuries to Captain de Vallencey who had commanded that Squadron since Captain Rutherford’s death from cholera after the Alma. “Did you ever see even Nolan in such a stew?”

“Put that pipe out there!” he roared. “Smoking with swords drawn in face of the enemy! Fall out! Farrier! Take that man’s belt!” He paused, slightly disconcerted, as he caught sight of Colonel Merivale’s cigar, and muttering, “Set of blasted chimney-sweeps!” turned to the Lieutenant who had spoken to him. “Eh? What’s wrong?”

“Lucan and Nolan having a grand dust-up! Look at them! Why, what on earth’s that lunatic pointing down the Valley for? There he goes again! Doesn’t he know the Russkies have got a battery in position down there?”

Vernon-Walsingham stopped short as Lord Lucan, his face twisted into an anguish of perplexity, his hollow cheek throbbing, went past at a smart trot towards Cardigan in front of the Light Brigade, still holding in his hand the little slip of blue paper.

Nolan followed with a look of radiant release, and rode up to the 17th Lancers, aligned next to the Mercuries.

“Well?” asked their acting Commander, Captain Morris. “Are we going to carry out that order at last? We’ve had an hour to think it over!”

“To get up on the heights there!” answered the Lancer in an impatient tone, “and recover those damned redoubts! Do we want the enemy to carry off our guns the Turks kindly made ’em a present of?”

Nolan gave an agonized glance up at the Causeway heights, and as he did so a gun unseen upon the summit boomed across the Valley. Nolan sat dazed, his fingers closing and unclosing convulsively on his reins.

Morris, puzzled by his distress, glanced at the two General Officers in front. He saw Cardigan point with his sword to the bristling Causeway heights on the right, and then across to the Fedioukine Hills closing in the Valley to the left. Their pale-green turf was likewise smudged with the grey blobs of Russian riflemen and with little rows of black bolts, revealing the presence of batteries. Last of all, Cardigan pointed down the Valley. . . .

Lucan threw out his arms with a despairing gesture. For a second the two sat silent gazing down the sunlit sweep; then Cardigan saluted and Lucan, swinging his horse round, galloped away to the Heavies.

As soon as he had gone, Cardigan turned his tall chestnut charger with the two white-stockinged legs, and came towards his Brigade. He checked for a moment and looked at the Mercuries next to the 17th, in the first line. With a cruel smile he spoke to one of his aides, and the next moment the Mercuries received an order to fall back into the second line in support. There was muttered fury among the officers of the regiment, who recognized in this decision to remove them from the place of honour, Cardigan’s long-meditated riposte to that scene in their Mess two years ago.

But the Brigadier’s face had grown grave again, and a hush fell upon the rearranged squadrons. “The Bwigade will advance!” they heard him say, and his Trumpeter gave out a single, mournful-sounding note.

A third time it came, from the Hussars and Light Dragoons forming the third line of reserve, and the blended echoes hung and cried in the hollow places of the hill at their back.

There was a swish and a drumming of hoofs in the long grass as the five regiments moved slowly forward towards the head of the long, smooth slope that stretched away flecked with gold to the misty dip where immediate vision stopped. A dazzle of sunbeams smote upon the cherry-coloured bag of Cardigan’s busby and the rich gilt braid of his tightly-drawn-in pelisse. Stiff as a lead soldier he advanced alone at the head of his Brigade two horse’s lengths before his staff and trumpeter.

The single trumpet-note sounding the “Walk March!” seemed to wake Nolan from a dream. As the Lancers round him surged slowly forward, he let his charger carry him along behind Captain Morris, who rode in the place of their sick Colonel. In his burning brain the same words were beating out again and again. “The Cossacks will slip through your fingers like eels!” He had heard them before . . . he had heard them before . . . where had he heard them before?

In a flash the scene before him vanished—the shining sky, the encircling brooding hills, the flutter of the Lancers’ pennons all about him. He saw the vivid green of an Indian polo-ground, the dome of a white kiosk and beneath a striped silk awning on a verandah, himself sitting taking a peg with a tall lithe man, whose mallet still hung by its strap from his wrist. He saw the chill eyes mocking him beneath the brim of the sun-helmet; heard his own contemptuous voice, “And you think your cavalry could stand against English Hussars?” and the answer, “The Cossacks will slip through your fingers like eels!” . . . That was it! Alexei Pauloff, the mysterious Russian traveller with the vague credentials and the unsnubbable assurance . . . Pauloff, whose eyes he now saw gleaming cold on each side the pulled-down peak of the Guards Officer’s cap . . . Pauloff, the Unknown Staff-Officer of the Alma, probably! . . . Pauloff, who had pointed down the North Valley saying, “That’s the ground for cavalry!”

“That won’t do, Nolan!” came Morris’s voice sharply in his ears. “We’ve a long way to go and must be steady!” The Brigade had quickened its pace to a trot and was sweeping swiftly, silently, over the bright, untrodden grass; but for the jingle of accoutrements and heavy breathing of the excited horses, it might have seemed a dark-blue moving shadow, touched here and there with white tufts and bars of gold.

But Nolan did not listen. With a thrust of his spurs he drove his charger out from between the ranks, and waving his sword and shouting unintelligible words, careered blindly across the advancing front towards the erect, unseeing Brigadier. And as he started a smoke-puff broke from the Fedioukine Hills; then a long wailing scream as the shell curved over the Valley. It fell with a shattering roar just in front of the Brigade, and enveloped Nolan in stabbing flame and black fumes. Back through the ranks of the 17th, through the ranks of the Mercuries behind, rushed a panic-struck, foam-spattered horse, its rider upright in the saddle and holding a rigid swordless arm above his head. The first line saw his dead eyes glaring, heard his dead lungs deflate in a whistling shriek that pierced the crash of the Russian artillery as it gave tongue in cross-fire from the heights upon the just-discovered English horsemen. The Mercuries and the 11th Hussars who followed saw him, like an ill-tied marionette, jerking from side to side in his saddle, his pipe-clayed pouch-belt crimsoned by the tide that welled from his shattered chest and splashed over his horse’s straining neck. Through Paget’s third wave of supporting squadrons, Captain Lewis Nolan, his rider’s muscles loosing their automatic hold at last, reeled plunging from his seat, to fall, with his secret, a blood-stained question-mark upon the page of history.

Not a head was turned in all the sternly-disciplined ranks as he disappeared; but a private of the Mercuries on their right flank, whom he had sprinkled as he brushed by, grunted to the next man,

“See that chap? He’s served with his ration! Now, Troop-Cook, who’s next?”

The reply was instantaneous. It came in a rending crash that struck the left squadron of the Mercuries and made a whirlpool of rolling horses and falling riders in the middle of the front rank, gold-edged saddle-cloths, crimson-flapped busbies and pelisses flying in confusion.

“Close in to the centre!” cried Major Wetherby’s voice clearly, as he turned his head for a second to survey the havoc; and before the echoes of the shell had died away, the squadron in perfect alignment again had swept forward over the body of Captain de Vallencey, who lay with his busby off, his fair hair ruffling in the wind of the regiment’s passage, his supercilious, uninterested smile still on his lips. From under a tangle of kicking and screaming horses, his trumpeter wriggled, cursing and calling for a mount. Mr. Vernon-Walsingham rode steadily in his place at the head of the squadron.

Shells were cracking and banging now all round, mingled with the organ hum of bullets from the Russian riflemen, who were creeping down from the Fedioukine slopes and standing up to aim with immunity at the flying target. An acrid fog of smoke drifted between the files and in the uproar orders could scarcely be heard. Captain Townley, leading the right-hand squadron, pulled up his horse and fell away to the rear, his right arm shot off. The first line, in which the sustained artillery fire was punching great holes, had taken unordered to a gallop and was pouring over the dip in front. As the men parted to pass over fallen comrades and horses and closed in again to their centre, it had the look of a concertina opening and contracting.

“Steady, Mercuries! Steady! Don’t let them gallop, Shotter! Keep the distance!”

The Adjutant turned and waved the encroaching ranks back; and as he did so a hellish thunder broke from the end of the Valley in front, where the Cossack battery had sighted the front line charging straight at its mouths, and was pouring in salvoes among them.

Mark, tugging on Dainty’s reins to keep his regulation distance from his Colonel, was suddenly assailed by the creeping chill of terror. His bridle-hand clenched the reins in savage resistance to an unseen iron clutch that seemed to be struggling to turn his horse’s head. Then, in front, through the decimated fragments of the first line, he saw the figure of Lord Cardigan, cool and still, galloping forward at an easy controlled pace as though over the sward of his park at home, his legs thrust stiffly down into the long stirrups of the prescribed cavalry seat, his back like a ramrod, his gaze fixed on the centre of the battery before him; and at the sight Mark’s blood flowed free again, his eyes cleared, and he bent his thoughts afresh to preserving his distance and holding in his half-frantic horse. Only once in that ride did Cardigan make a movement; it was to shoot out his arm and lay the flat of his sword against the breast of an agitated officer who was seeking to press past him and end the ordeal among the Russian guns.

They were careering now over the bodies of Lancers with their white cross-belts, and Dragoons with their heavy black shakoes rolling over the hummocks like dice-boxes of Death. Again that fearful salvo roared, and out of the dense smoke-cloud ahead, there rushed a drove of riderless horses, one of which cannoned into Dainty and almost hurled Mark from the saddle. Around him he heard the voices of officers and sergeants,

“Give heed to your dressing! . . . Close in to your centre! A leader for Number One Squadron, Mr. Strangways, sir! . . . Will you look to your DRESSING, men!! Steady, Mercuries, steady!”

But the horses were now beyond control. The battery in front had actually been silenced by the mad onslaught of the tiny remnant of the front line; and through the swirling smoke ahead the flashing of sabres was visible, the thud of ineffective sabre-edges on the green shoulder-straps of the Cossack gunners could be heard, and a hoarse shouting, far away and distant, rose against the thunderous bass of the batteries on the hill-sides.

Colonel Merivale, seeing the uselessness of further attempts at restraint, rose in his stirrups, and crying, “Point, Mercuries, don’t cut, remember!” rode at the disabled battery.

“Yoicks! Yoicks! Forr’ard!” yelled fat Major Wetherby, exultantly following his Commander; and a pealing cheer broke from the men behind as Mark, dropping his trumpet on its lines, plucked his sword from its scabbard and drove in with the disordered mass among the guns. He saw the big boots of a Cossack artilleryman squirming under the wheels of his piece for refuge; then another thrust wildly at him with the black nozzle of a rammer. Forgetting his Colonel’s injunction, Mark slashed at the man with the edge of his sabre, which he had spent despairing hours in sharpening on a stolen farmhouse whetstone, and a severed hand flew in his face with a rap that blinded his eyes with tears. The next moment he was borne forward on Dainty’s frenzied gallop round the curve of the bottle-neck end to the Valley; caught a glimpse of a grey stone bridge humping over the earth-banks of the aqueduct; and was abruptly confronted by a bristling forest of lances, a sea of rolling white eyeballs and the cages of Calmuck mouths writhed back in ferocity. Only twenty yards ahead the whole body of the Russian cavalry were massed where they had sheltered behind their guns, exultant and menacing.

Colonel Merivale, his white locks bare on his brown forehead; his overall slit up by a shell-splinter and stained with the blood that seeped through his pale-blue silk underwear, flung up his hand in signal to halt. Some thirty men, the mounted survivors of two squadrons of the Mercuries, obeyed.

“Threes about! Threes about!” exclaimed the Colonel in a croaking whisper; Mark put his trumpet to his lips to sound the order and a shot carried away all but the mouthpiece from which a ghostly drone resounded.

The remnant of the regiment, unattacked by the hesitating mass of Russian cavalry in front, wheeled and tried to form a troop.

“Where’s Lord Cardigan? What are our orders?” demanded Colonel Merivale, peering desperately about.

“Better retire, sir!” urged the Adjutant Shotter. “I see no supports. This is a mouse-trap!”

They began to urge their wearied horses in retreat amid the tangle of limbers and ammunition tumbrils.

“Major! Major! What are you doing? For God’s sake get on your horse! They’ll be down upon us any second!”

Wetherby had dismounted; pistolled three Russian artillerymen who were seeking to withdraw their gun; and actually unhooked it single-handed from its limber. Now, singing cheerily, he was gazing about him for help in getting his prize away.

“Mount, Wetherby! Mount at once!” the Colonel commanded, but too late. A little cloud of Russian lancers whirled through the smoke-wreaths; enveloped the Adjutant Shotter, who was never seen again; and buried their points in the Major’s body with a thump like the beating of a mattress. Wetherby stood propped against the wheel of his gun, exultation still stamped full upon his rigid, crimson face. With a bellow of fury the knot of Mercuries fell on the Russian lancers and drove them away. Mark felt a piercing pain in his knee as he cannoned against the slung carbine on the saddle of one adversary; cut at a second sour, moustachioed face and saw a seam of scarlet break out across it; then Dainty caught a hindfoot in the wheel of a limber and plunged so perilously that Mark had to drop his sword by the wrist-knot while he reined back to release him.

For the moment there was a little clear space round the gun Wetherby had seized, and one of the privates springing off his horse, seized the Major’s tottering corpse and piled it across his own saddle.

“I’m a-goin’ to bring ’im ’ome!” he sobbed. “G—— damn it, the —— was always good to us in B Troop!”

He had just set foot in the stirrup to remount, holding the body with one hand, when, Colonel Merivale shouting “Rally!” with uplifted sabre to a fresh distraught little group of Hussars and English Lancers that came eddying round him, the horse broke away to join them, dragging the man along the ground with his foot in the stirrup, while the corpse slid slowly off on to its head. . . .

Now they were all riding as hard as their under-fed, exhausted mounts could take them away from the scene of the disaster, thrashing their beasts’ heaving flanks with the flat of their sabres. The turf that had looked so smooth and fresh when they first swept over it was pitted and torn. Shellcases and fragments of canister littered it; broken swords and crushed busbies, torn Hussar pelisses and battered Lancers’ casques entangled their horses’ feet. Once a whole swarm of Russian lancers rode screaming at the retreating group from a hollow of the Fedioukine Hills; then wavered, stopped, and turned away again without attacking. The artillery on the heights still sent shrieking missiles over their heads, and the smoke hung, bitter with choking saltpetre fumes, like a fog-bank, shortening their view. Chargers lay still like mounds in death, or rolled and beat frantic hoofs in their agony. Men lay gnashing the grass with motionless teeth; others alive ran desperately through the gloom; limping figures supported one another; an officer crawled on white-gloved hands, his gold-edged sabretache beating against his spurs. And suddenly Mark pulled his horse in with a groan. He had almost ridden over Staff-Sergeant Jarman, who lay with his sword fastened to his wrist transfixing one Russian, another gripped in strangulation by his left hand, and a third fallen broken-necked across his legs. Mark stared wildly about him as the Colonel and his comrades disappeared in the smoke, bearing up the Valley again for safety, but what could he do for the dead? Then out of the murk a figure came charging down upon him with lance at rest strapped to its arm. It was a private of the 17th, and above his gilt-buttoned tunic and white collar with the Death’s Head badge, the arteries pumped little fountains from his headless neck. Mark beat the nightmare figure off with his sword; but for a long while it pursued him, kept in the saddle by feet entangled in the stirrups and lance-socket. . . .

Mark was alone, his breath coming and going in a hoarse rattle; there seemed to be silence and a thickness like night all around him; he could hear no sound, except a faint, regular thudding in his ears. He realized that he was shouting with a soundless voice; tried to check himself and found that he could not. Then a dull blow struck him on the shoulder; the ground heaved up dizzily and hit him in the face.

From æons of unconsciousness he revived, striking out frantically among large, howling waves, and saw a face peering at him. Blackwater! Grinding his teeth in impotent rage, he tried to strike at him, but his nerveless hand refused to move. Then he felt a taste of brandy in his throat and his senses danced a moment and grew steady.

“It’s you, is it!” exclaimed his brother, recognizing him through the grime of smoke and powder. “Well, I’m not sorry, after all! Here! Can you get on to this beast?” He was holding a Russian artillery horse, with the broken traces still flapping about its haunches.

Mark sat up with a load of lead on his brow. A few yards away a black horse, its forefeet twisted in the steaming entrails that fell in crimson coils from its shattered belly, was struggling with lolling tongue and insane glare to rise from the ground. A dead Dragoon stared with glassy curiosity at Mark’s torn boot. Mark felt his left hand resting on something soft, and looking down saw that it was the dappled grey neck of Dainty, his lips writhed back, his soft dark eye a viscous slit. Mark burst into uncontrollable tears.

“Pull up, old man!” said his brother, passing a supporting arm round him with a sudden gentleness. “Come! Scramble up here! It’s a quiet horse if you’re wounded.”

“I’m not hurt, sir!” Mark got reeling on to his feet with a feeling of shame.

“What’s that, then?” Blackwater pointed to a red ooze under the Trumpeter’s left shoulder. “Quick, now! I’ll give you a leg up! The Cossacks are out spearing our wounded, you know!”

“I’ve used up three horses, my boy, looking for the bullet with my name on it!” He laughed on a high, cracked note, and Mark, for the first time staring closely at him, saw that his cocked-hat was pierced with bullets, his blue coat ripped with lance-thrusts.

“Take the horse, brother!” he said. “Officers are needed most. I shan’t forget what you did, if I get away anyhow.”

“Old scores wiped out then? You actually forgive? I’d like to know I was forgiven by one human thing.”

Mark seized his hand and his sight grew misty. His brother caught him in his arms and hoisted and shoved him into the saddle of the artillery horse.

“I wanted to go back . . . there,” he muttered, “and be finished with it. But I suppose I must take you back, after all!”

On the reverse slope of the Causeway Heights out of line of the Russian fire some twenty minutes later, the fragments of the Light Brigade, a skein of tattered and blood-stained scarecrows, were collected, some seeking to bind up their own or comrades’ wounds, some cursing as they examined their horses’ hurts. The pistols of the Farriers were echoing sharply in the keen autumn air as they put an end to the sufferings of the wounded animals, often after growling remonstrances from their riders. Over the ridge trickled a thin rivulet of further dismounted survivors who had made their way to safety. Two of these were breathlessly but heatedly arguing.

“No wonder you saw visions, cully! A Guards Officer lyin’ dead out there among the Russkies. ’Ow in ’Ell did he get there?”

“I dunno that!” answered the other, one of the 13th Light Dragoons. “It was just where all them Rooshian Lancers came chargin’ out on us from under those hills the other side. Some one ’ad shot ’im. He was lyin’ dead with a pistol-hole through his forehead. A Guards Officer of ours! I know the uniform, don’t I?”

There were cheers from the ragged line as the walking survivors came in, and suddenly these swelled to a louder acclamation. Lord Cardigan had ridden up to the shreds of his Brigade, his busby shot through, a flap torn from his splendid, tight-wrapped pelisse where a bullet had given him a flesh-wound, his face channelled with sweat and blackened with powder. He ran his keen blue eye, now sunk as into a pit, over the relics of his command, and his mouth twitched under his heavy moustache.

“It was a mad-brained trick, men!” he burst out abruptly. “But don’t blame me! I had to obey my orders!”

“We’ll go again, if you want us, my lord!” called a voice, and a yet heartier cheer followed.

“No! no!” he cried in a quavering voice. “You’ve done enough, men! Enough . . .” He stopped abruptly and turned away to where, some yards behind, the Squire in his flat-brimmed bell top-hat and funereal frock-coat sat waiting for him on horseback with watchful eyes.

“Gawd! If the Earl warn’t ready to blub!” exclaimed a Mercury incredulously. . . .

“Call the roll!” ordered Colonel Merivale, turning to his own remnant. “Shotter! . . . Where’s Captain Shotter?”

There was an uneasy movement from a huddled heap in a dusty uniform lying with a bandaged stump on a bank near by, while the Assistant-Surgeon of the Mercuries and a blowsy-faced soldier’s wife with a black bottle in her hand stooped over him.

“Unfit for duty!” murmured the Colonel with pale lips. “Captain Curtis?”

“I saw him killed, sir!” came a private’s voice from the rear rank. “Blown to pieces by a shell, he was!”

“Captain de Vallencey went down first of ours, sir!” he answered respectfully.

Mr. Vernon-Walsingham, his horse shot, had been seen dragged away by the Russians, a prisoner; Mr. Pallavicino had been helped back, badly wounded, on a private’s horse. Then,

“Mr. Strangways,” said the Colonel, “have the roll called!” and murmured, as he was helped from his horse to have his head-wound attended to by the Surgeon, “A Cornet, a Cornet and I to officer the Mercuries!”

The raucous voice of a Sergeant was heard shouting names and making enquiries, while the old man sat, with his grey head shaking paralytically, on a tussock.

“There’s a little wound on your leg, too, sir!” said Strangways, coming up to him at the end of the roll-call. “Won’t you have it dressed?”

“We muster twenty-five, sir, and eighteen horses. But there must be a few more men still to come in. Staff-Sergeant-Major Jarman dead, sir; Sergeant Micklem dead; Sergeant-Major Cunningham severely wounded; Sergeant-Major Peck dead, Sergeant Jebb missing; Sergeant Runciman believed a prisoner; Sergeant . . .”

“Yes, sir. The Trumpet-Major, Woodrofe, sir, is missing . . . no, there he comes!”

Over the slope appeared Lord Blackwater, leading the Russian artillery horse by its reins with one hand and propping his brother in the saddle with the other.

“A brave boy!” said the Colonel. “He was at my side nearly all the time. He’s hurt! Surgeon, leave me and attend to him, now. Strangways, have the men had any food?”

“I’ll enquire, sir. Sergeant-Major, have the men had anything since breakfast?”

“Beg pardon, sir. We didn’t have breakfast. We were turned out an hour before daybreak as usual, and we were mounted straight away.”

“Then they’ve been fighting on empty stomachs? Where are their rations now?”

“Can’t say, sir. Those Turks plundered our camp while they were running away. Everything’s in a muck, begging your pardon, sir.”

“Two of the women have rolled a little keg of rum along, sir,” suggested the Sergeant doubtfully.

“Well, Blackwater,” the Colonel was asking. “How did this damned thing happen?”

“So do I, sir.” A spasm passed over the aide’s face. “He won’t feel it . . . still, it’s damned unfair!”

“How did you come to be riding with us, Blackwater?” enquired Colonel Merivale curiously.

“I was sent from Headquarters Staff, sir, to guide Lord Lucan in his movements.”

“Lord Lucan didn’t need me for the time being.” Blackwater seemed still more confused. “When I saw you start I judged there had been some miscarriage of orders. I galloped after to see what I could do.”

“Little enough, indeed, sir. It was too late. But I found myself among the Russian lancers over there under the Fedioukine Hills. I had done all I could and . . . and I made the best of my way back with the Brigade.” He ceased, and stood silent and curiously still, his eyes sunk once more upon the ground.

Upon the plain and heights the opposed armies stood eyeing one another with sullen suspicion. Word flew round that Lord Raglan and General Canrobert, the French Commander, had decided to let the Russians hold the ground they had won.

Suddenly, from behind Colonel Merivale and Lord Blackwater, there broke out disorderly shouts and a bawled, discordant chorus. A Sergeant bellowed and a tipsy voice answered, “Shut up, yourself! Call yourself a Sh-Sergeant? Why, I tell you I killed three Rush-hic . . . Rushky Generals in that b——y battery!”

“Mr. Strangways,” said the Colonel sternly, “put that fellow under arrest at once! And stop those others tippling. We’ve no use for such drunken blackguards in the Mercuries!”

But as the Cornet went over to execute the order, the ranks, light-headed with hunger, were singing again. . . .

unmelodiously concluded the two half-gypsy drovers who, with a candle stuck in a bottle, were finishing a game of cards on a barrel near the steps of the little blackwood caravan. A large fire threw cavernous shadows round the Highgate dingle where the mixed camp of vagabonds had been formed well out of sight of the high-road above. Its flames flickered on the impassive faces of the Turkish juggler troupe, fat father and mother, daughter, and three sons of diminishing height, who were preparing pilau, for which a suspiciously-new-killed fowl lay ready, still unplucked, in front of their queer little fringed tent; and on the figure of the Peep-Show man, Mr. Niblick, who was bending his ferocious black eyebrows and fiery purple face over repairs to his little scenes. A black horse used for drawing the caravan, a lean white horse and two ponies in which the drovers hoped to deal, were hobbled and cropping grass just on the edge between the firelight and the shadow.

“Ah! ha’ done with your row!” exclaimed Mr. Niblick fretfully, as the drovers began their chorus again. “You’ll bring the Peelers on us, and this-yer’s not common land, I’d have you know. Blowed if I don’t think I ’ear a step now!”

Silence fell on these words, and in the silence all could distinctly hear a foot crashing in the undergrowth of the thickets that hid the dingle from the road overhead.

It was an old man with sparse white locks streaming, wild eyes and a long, frosty chin. He was astoundingly dressed in a seedy black frock-coat, rumpled pepper-and-salt trousers, on his head a plumed tartan bonnet, over his shoulder a tartan sash, with a cairngorm brooch to gather it and a basket-handled broadsword thrust into its knot, on his back a round leather target thudding hollowly on his thin shoulders, and in his arms a baby. The mountebanks gaped.

“How now!” demanded the stranger. “You secret, black and midnight hags, what is’t you do?”

“Blow me tight!” ejaculated Mr. Niblick. “If this ain’t the rummiest start a cove ever had! Where’d you spring from, old gemman?”

Mr. Fawkes turned his head sharply at the words, and catching a glimpse of the Peep-Show, gave a cry of joy.

“Scenes and characters!” he cried. “Here, one of you, guard the child well!”

Carelessly he passed little Will over to the fat Turkish mother, who, with tears running down her face, had waddled forward and now clasped it as if it were a gift from Heaven. The drovers at the same time drew near and fingered the dirty but expensive cashmere shawl in which the infant was wrapped.

Meanwhile, Mr. Fawkes, stooping with his hands on his knees, was surveying with rapturous chuckles Mr. Niblick’s stock-in-trade, spread about the grass, little scenes that fitted into cases, with cardboard figures and sometimes even rudely-carved wood puppets to make the foreground to each view.

“You like ’em, old ’un?” asked Mr. Niblick, studying him with a devouring curiosity in his little black eyes. “Six scenes for a penny-peep—the Market-Place, the Wedding, the Execution, the Congress of Statesmen at Vienna, the Dook of Wellin’ton’s Funeral, and Her Gracious Majesty reviewing the Guards before their departure for the Theayter of War in the Crimear . . . Tell me,” he added in a lower voice, “where did you pinch the kinchin?”

“My grandson, the Young Duke?” asked Fawkes impatiently. “Took him away from that wicked woman, of course. She’d have murdered him; she’d have murdered him! What have you fetched all these characters out of their frames for?”

“They needs repairs, doctoring and tailoring same as you and I might, old ’un. . . . Wheriver did you get this precious rig?” He fingered the tartan sash.

“Found it in the cottage in the Vale of Health yonder. The woman’s father was a tragedian—Ethelred Humphreys, fourth-class, Norwich circuit. I couldn’t stay with her longer; no brains; her conversation exasperated me. She took my hat and cloak away, so I borrowed these.”

The father of the Turkish jugglers had approached them and was speaking laboriously.

“Well, I dunno!” said Mr. Niblick, taken aback. “You got to arsk his leave, I should say.” He indicated Mr. Fawkes.

“You no comprenez!” said the Turk patiently. “Our babby . . . him die, last yesterday week. . . . My wife she much sorry. . . . Now Allah he send de babby. . . . She tak’ him. . . . We mek him jogglaire . . . artiste!”

“Artist!” said Mr. Fawkes. “Precisely: that is what I would wish. Bring my grandchild up to the legitimate, sir, no farces, no pantomimes.” He resigned little Will with indifference to the enraptured Turkish woman. “You, sir!” he turned again upon Mr. Niblick. “You are a very clumsy workman. You had better let me repair your characters. I am Fawkes!”

“O. Fawkes, late Bluemantel. I will go with you. I will keep your characters in good order. Give me those scissors!” He seized them and snipped at the puppet of a General Officer, whose plumes were broken and his scarlet rag tunic gaping. “There!” said Mr. Fawkes. “That looks smarter!”

“By no manner o’ means, yer Majesty!” Mr. Niblick swept off his battered brown topper in a splendid bow.

“Then give me a needle and cotton!” Mr. Fawkes looked haughtily round at the group of mountebanks clustered in silence about himself and the Peep-Show proprietor. “We will e’en proceed together,” he said graciously.

“Work!” Mr. Fawkes rubbed his hands with zest. “Let me have your characters, let me have them!” He stretched himself proudly and looked through the stunted trees at the lower end of the dingle to where in the foggy abyss below a criss-cross of golden lights and a sandy-red furnace glow in the sky overhead proclaimed the metropolis. “I am the Emperor of the Earth!” he said. “Wives, statesmen, soldiers! Who can do better than I can with the little figures?”

At the head of a ravine running deep into the unprotected upland on which the investing armies crouched behind their tattered canvas walls, the two riders drew rein. Below them there opened up a bird’s-eye view of the bay and city of Sebastopol.

Cleaving the leaden autumn sky in an interval between squalls, two broad shafts of pale sunshine fell, one on the dark-blue sea outside the harbour where the smoke of the Allied guard-boats hung in crape streamers, the other upon the forts across the roadstead, their wetted casemates gleaming like cruel teeth. The city itself ran steeply up and down its hills and ravines, a huddle of white streets dingy in the sordid light and gashed by inky dock-basins from which a tangle of masts and rigging rose among the houses. Its flat, reddish roofs were pierced by the olive-green bulbs of church-domes, the dull glint of gold vanes and crosses, the classical colonnade of the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, the pillared cupola and circular Observatory upon the Admiralty Buildings.

Nearer in, where the ribbon of the walls zigzagged over waste undulations, the landward forts exhibited their crenellated crests topped by gaunt flag-staffs; and as the two Englishmen sat watching, the round Malakoff puffed forth a fleecy cloud, followed after some seconds by a hollow boom that ran like thunder round the hills on which they stood. It was followed by a crackle from certain dark seams in the dun-coloured stretches of ground below them which they had barely noticed before, and whistling white jets spurted out, to end in curling blue and grey bouquets and fresh reverberations from the rounded peaks about them. Then silence fell again, except for the pit-pat of rain and the hissing of the wind among the grasses round their horses’ feet.

“Come along, Mark!” said Lord Blackwater, hunching his shoulders. “Let’s try and find a rock for shelter while we eat our sandwiches and talk. . . . I didn’t ask leave to take you with me on this off-duty expedition simply to carry my sketchbooks. . . . There’s a lot must be said; let’s dismount, or, wait a minute . . . what’s that place on the edge there?”

He pointed to the high slope of the seaward cliff to their left, where a little cluster of buildings nestled under the jagged black promontory of Cape Chersonese. As they drew near, these defined themselves in the rainy light as a group of low whitewashed buildings built round a small church with a dome and curved apse. It was the mountain monastery of St. George, placed on a precipitous terrace overhanging the gulf at the foot of which the Euxine heaved in grey swathes edged with flashes of foam. By the gates a Zouave sentry, posted by the Allies to protect the monastery from pillage, stood wrapped in his cape and leaning on his long musket. He saluted as they rode in, and a monk in a black robe and high black hat came out to meet them, bowing with an uneasy propitiatory smile of yellow teeth through his bushy beard.

Blackwater addressing him in French, he seemed in a vague way to understand, summoned a gardener in a pointed sheepskin cap to lead their horses under a shed, and with a gesture of invitation opened a door into a tiny refectory with an unwashed floor and odour of dry-rot. Blackwater declined with a word of thanks, and pointed instead to the terrace, where a small shelter or two had been hollowed out of the cliff.

In one of these he sat down wearily, staring out at the dim and storm-haunted waters tossing four hundred feet below and merging at the misted horizon with an equally uneasy sky. Mark in silence unpacked the food they had brought with them.

Presently the monk reappeared beneath an umbrella, offering them cheese and milk, which they accepted out of courtesy and that they might be let alone.

“Have you got the flask?” asked Blackwater then, and took a deep drain. “Yes,” he pursued, passing his hand over his forehead. “The devil of a lot that must be said. . . . Why to you whom I used to hate so for making a fool of me in the eyes of the regiment? . . . Yet it must be you, because I have only you I can trust to . . . and because you know her!”

Mark paused, startled, with a lump of cheese in his hand. He could not dream what the other meant. The next moment he understood, and it was his turn to surprise his brother. For Blackwater had hardly begun the tale of his meeting with Fancy than Mark cried out:

“So you were the swell who came to the shop! No wonder I thought of Crocketts!” . . . and swiftly again, “No wonder she thought it was your eyes and brows she saw when I came muffled out of the cupboard that Christmas Eve!”

And then when Blackwater told of the mock-marriage he had planned, so fearful a cry broke from Mark that for a moment his brother cowered back on the stone seat, raising his hand to guard himself.

“My God!” he faltered after a moment, looking at Mark’s face. “And you too loved her then?”

Mark’s eyes blazed into menacing fury for a second; then the angry light died out as if under some strong internal control; his features stiffened in the familiar mask of discipline.

“Go on,” he said, and listened motionless to the rest of his brother’s story.

“Why don’t you say something?” Black water abruptly broke off. “Why don’t you curse me? Why don’t you throw me over this precipice? I won’t resist!”

“Are you made of wood, man!” cried Blackwater, his voice rising on a note of hysteria. “Why, what’s that?”

He pointed aghast to Mark’s pelisse, which he was wearing drawn round his body but with the left sleeve hanging loose, for his wound-bandages under his left shoulder forbade him to insert his arm. Blackwater was gazing at the worn blue cloth which was turning damp with a sluggish red stain. Mark’s rigid face had gone deathly white; his eyes were filming. Blackwater seized the flask of cold brandy and water and forced it between Mark’s teeth.

“My God!” he murmured, “and to me she was a toy! But, Mark!” he cried, passing his arm in contempt of discipline affectionately round his brother’s unhurt shoulder. “Listen! Pull yourself together! You shall save her!”

“You shall right her! You shall establish her marriage! I’ll write out a confession . . . at least I’ll try to, if I can bring myself to do it. . . . There must be a register, something or other to bear it out!”

“This can’t be!” said Mark with an effort. “You married again, some lord’s daughter. I read about it. It’s too late!”

“No,” answered Blackwater. “That was bigamy. I realize it now. When I went through the ceremony with Lady Blackwater I was already a married man. Therefore she is not the Countess of Blackwater, and Fancy is. Therefore her child who is shortly to be born will not be Viscount Speardown, if it is a boy, and Fancy’s son is.”

“I had enquiries made. I couldn’t help it. I sent her money indirectly; I don’t know if she ever got it. I didn’t dare go near her any more myself.”

“One of me loved her, don’t you understand? The man who had always sought relief from the boredom of his proper station in posing as an artist, who kept a studio in his family name where he was never known by his title . . . who had a capacity for tenderness. . . . I never knew it till that night I saw her lying like a crumpled snowdrop on the boards of that dirty theatre. . . . He was another man indeed . . . a happy man, though always fearing exposure. . . . That day I nearly encountered de Vallencey and his trumpeter on the edge of Ranalow Common: what an escape! . . . But at any rate I can right her now . . . or I think I can. I’ll see you’re furnished with money, with proofs, with all you need to undo this wrong.”

“Why do you put this on to me? What can I do, a private soldier? It’s your part, brother, if your conscience accuses you, to set this right!”

“I choose you because I know no one else who wouldn’t prefer the family name to Fancy Fawkes; I choose you because you’re straight and simple and brave . . . all I’ve never been and hated you enviously for being the first day I saw you on parade, before ever I knew you were my brother. And I choose you because I’m not going home from the Crimea, Mark.”

“No! That’s what you can’t understand! Would you go on . . . would you . . . if every night when you lay down to sleep you were ridden over by skeletons . . . skeletons in uniform, Hussars, Dragoons, Lancers . . . yes, by G——! ‘Death or Glory Boys’ with a vengeance they are! Skulls and mutilated faces and decaying faces and threatening eye-sockets that are empty . . . on they come and on, till I wake running with sweat, soaked in it, in a thin tent on this plateau in Autumn!—and my tongue nearly bitten through so that I shan’t scream out and let all the world know my secret, and that I’m afraid, afraid of these galloping dead men who threaten me. . . . And yet, when I’m fully awake, I know that these men, these ‘drunken blackguards’ the Colonel called ’em, would never threaten if they were alive. They’d find excuses for me; they’d forgive as you’ve forgiven! They forgive us every one; they forgive everything. That’s the worst of all!”

“Forgive you? What should we forgive? You rode with us down the Valley, didn’t you? You brought me away from under the Russian guns and saved me from being speared by the Cossacks, didn’t you?”

“That’s all you know! And everyone will be blamed but me! They’ll blame Cardigan because he’s a heroic blockhead; Lucan because he’s an unpopular commander; Nolan because he’s dead and can’t answer for himself . . . but who put the idea of riding down the North Valley into Nolan’s head?”

“No, it will never be known. There was a man speaking to him, mounted on my black mare, the mare I gave him to escape on. . . . There’s a man in Guards’ uniform lying dead below the Fedioukine Hills where I pursued and shot him under the points of Jeropkine’s Lancers. . . . And the Truth will never be known, by me or anybody . . . and I am left with my dreams!”

Again he sank into his Gehenna of silence, his eyes bent on the shadowy abyss that soughed in almost total darkness now below their feet. The dusk was closing in upon the terrace like a murky veil. The prying, whispering wind that had pursued them all the day had suddenly dropped, as though its curiosity were satisfied. With its departure a stronger pulse of rain splashed upon the rock shelter, spotting their coats.

From the invisible dome of the chapel near by, a bell began to clang, and Blackwater roused himself with a violent gesture.

“That’s enough of that!” he said. “Don’t question me further; you’ll learn no more from me! But for the last lap I’ll run straight. I won’t try to tangle the reins of Destiny any further. Let the truth be known and Fate be accomplished. I’ll give you a packet to-night with every clue I know of to help you. I’ll give you money to buy your discharge when this war ends. That’s yours, whatever happens, in reparation. You’ll find Fancy when you get back to England . . . and you’ll do what you think right.”

“That’s not so easy, brother! Think what it will mean to your wife . . . to Lady Blackwater, that is; to her son, if she has one. What has she done to deserve it? Has she no claim on you?”

“You’ll do what you think is just when you find Fancy. I’ve done my part. I’m tired out, Mark; I daren’t sleep, you see, and I think I’m nearing the end.”

Once more the rain was heard pattering in the silence. From the chapel yellow lights began to glimmer through the oval windows of the little cupola. The monk who had received them reappeared with a lantern and motioned an invitation to them to attend Vespers.

Vague, and each wrapped in his own thoughts, they followed him into the church where mellow lamps glowed on the gilded screen and on the silver icons of the Saints, their painted heads and hands making dark gaps in the metal draperies. A faint smell of wax and ancient incense hung on the peaceful stillness. They could no longer hear the chafing sea below, and seemed miles removed from the sounds of siege and conflict.

There was a shuffling of feet, and the monks, some nine or ten of them, filed in, wearing their black habits, and took their places in rude wooden stalls to right and left of the glittering screen. A leader intoned the opening Invocation and the deep voices replied, echoing up to the mouldering rafters and descending in subtly modulated harmonies. After a while Blackwater’s scholarly ear caught the dominant refrain or anthem: Hagios Theos! Hagios ischyros! Hagios athanatos! Eleison himas! and on an impulse he turned and whispered in the ear of his brother, standing just behind:

As the service drew to its end the black-gowned figures turned in their stalls and bowed deeply to the two Englishmen, crossing themselves as they did so with sweeping gestures of their long sleeves.

“Ils prient pour vous!” murmured in his halting French the Guest-master, who had stood beside them on the broken brick floor throughout the office; and in answer the English soldiers saluted their enemies.

As he moved away, with Mark’s spurs tinkling faintly on the stones behind him, Blackwater heard a sound like rushing waters at his back. It was the monks repeating rapidly together, “May the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace!”

It was an alarming journey they made back at a cautious walk of their horses to the British camp. The drizzle had turned to a blanketing sea fog which quenched their sense of direction. The horses, as lost as themselves, gave no guidance; twice they made circles and, but for the hollow boom of the tide on the rocks at the foot of the precipice upon their right hand, they would at least once have strayed over the edge of the cliff.

Turning sharp away from the sound, they rode in silence for a long while, until suddenly a clock struck, as it seemed, in their very ears.

They pulled up abruptly and counted the strokes. Midnight! And they must be under the very walls of Sebastopol! As quietly as they could they turned their horses; but a bit chinked and a voice challenged them in Russian only a few yards away. But as they spurred and fled, the sentry did not fire into the fog.

“Stupid of me!” exclaimed Blackwater, when at last they drew rein to rest their flagging horses for a while. “I forgot I carry a pocket-compass.”

He consulted it, wiping the fog-moisture off its glass with a furred cuff, while Mark held the flaring lucifer in cupped hands. They did this several times as they pieced out their slow way; and it was while the brushing of the horses’ hoofs was stilled during one of these pauses that Blackwater raised his head and listened.

“Church-bells down in the city—we’ve come a long way from it now,” answered Mark dreamily. “To-morrow’s Sunday—I’d forgotten it. It reminds me of Balcombe Church ever so long ago, and the chimes coming through the woods to our cottage . . . and now it makes me think of London on a Sunday evening: the streets empty and the bells calling from St. Mark’s, Clerkenwell, to St. Luke’s, Old Street, and Shoreditch Parish Church answering them again. Yes, I’ve been listening to those bells quite a long time; there seem an extra lot of them to-night.”

“Yes, yes!” interrupted Blackwater impatiently, “of course I can hear the bells. But I was listening just then to something else. Right over in front, it seemed, ever so far away. Put the bells out of your mind now, and listen again, for a lower note!”

Mark obeyed, straining his ears; and at last, very faint and distant, he heard the sound his brother meant . . . jolt . . . jolt . . . clink, clink . . . jolt . . .

“They’re coming out of the City to my way of hearing. And that sound is too heavy for a mere waggon train. Listen once more!”

“Yes, right away in the river valley, I should guess from the compass. Isn’t that what they call the Inkerman Bridge down there?”

On the heights above Sebastopol, whither the cavalry-camps had been shifted after Balaclava, Mark woke from his short sleep the next morning in the dark as the trumpets sounded an hour before dawn for the troops to stand to; and, hearing the rain pattering on the black-flagged hospital-tent, he turned over with a luxurious feeling in his blankets, for as an invalid he need not yet rise.

Then the memory of Blackwater’s talk and disclosures of yesterday rushed over him, and his comfort vanished. He lay staring up at the dimly-defined tent-roof, on which the rain swished and rattled, wondering what it had all meant and what his own duty was in the crushing trust laid upon him.

For the moment his thoughts fastened on the appalling, the half-crazy distress his brother had shown in speaking of the Light Cavalry Charge. Clearly he held himself in some sense responsible for that murderous blunder. Exactly how he had refused to explain, and Mark had not been able from his broken words to make out. But the Staff, Mark recognized, had dreadful responsibilities of their own, and some grave dereliction of duty his brother must have been guilty of to be suffering such torments to-day. Fearful torments they must be, if he had reason to blame himself in any degree for the slaughter in his old regiment. Mark’s mind ran again over the list of losses: Major Wetherby, Captain Curtis and Captain de Vallencey killed, Captain Townley permanently disabled by the amputation of his right arm, Mr. Vernon-Walsingham a prisoner, the Adjutant Shotter simply vanished—nobody had been able to hear anything of him; the Russians had not named him among their prisoners in answer to an enquiry sent under a flag of truce; somewhere out on that plain or in the folds of the hills, now turning to morasses in the stormy autumn weather, he must lie dead, or, worse still, perhaps alive. The non-commissioned ranks were decimated; only one trumpeter besides Mark survived; from the ranks so many comrades were missing that the turn-out of the regiment was more like the assembly of a piquet. . . . Still, they had all, luxurious officers, harsh sergeants, hardly-driven privates, one and all, behaved like Mercuries; that made up for everything. . . . But what comfort lay in that for Mark’s brother, if he had this load upon his conscience?

Mark turned over on his straw palliasse to escape the thought, and as he did so felt beneath his head the edge of the packet Blackwater had given him half an hour after they returned to camp the night before, a packet of papers in the middle of which the crackle of bank-notes could be heard as Mark moved. What was he to do with that money, those documents? When would the war end? When could he hope to get his discharge and begin his mission? How should he set about finding Fancy and her child, of whose whereabouts Blackwater confessed he had lost all trace? How would he, a penniless ex-soldier, be able to contest a big law-case against one of the greatest families in the land? What sort of a duty was it to have to assail a woman in her pride and her security and bring her, and perhaps her unborn child, to ruin? Even for Fancy’s sake, what sort of a duty was that? . . .

Boom! A heavy gun sounded, and his fellow-patients in the tent awoke and listened, some half-starting from their palliasses. In a moment a terrific roar of artillery came whirling down through the dark from the higher crests above the camp.

“Gawd! What’s this?” asked one of the wounded men. “They haven’t niver bin and gone and assaulted the place without tellin’ us? Leavin’ us stuck up ’ere out of all the fun?”

“Maybe a sortie!” grunted another man, his blanket drawn up snugly to his chin. “Maybe you’ll have to skip on that broken leg of yours with a Rooshian bayonet tickling you up. . . .”

A furious rattle of musketry, punctuating the artillery firing, came rolling down from the hilltop.

“They’re up here on the heights! We’re attacked!” exclaimed the trumpeter, leaping up and hunting for a match to light the tent-lantern.

“Put that light out there, damn you!” roared a voice as he kindled the wick, and the next moment the trumpets shrilled the assembly along the diminished cavalry lines. Overhead the noise of battle crashed and pounded in a violent crescendo.

Mark with set teeth stripped off every bandage but the dressing immediately covering his wound, and with an agonized twinge forced himself into his jacket. Then he grabbed his trumpet from the tent-pole and ducked out through the tent-opening. A dirty grey light was filtering through curtains of mist; and as Mark looked up towards the camp of the Second Division on the ridge above, whence the furious clamour of the guns proceeded, he saw these curtains irradiated from behind with great flashes like lightning.

He stood for a moment doubtful, as figures ran past him in the mist, men carrying their sabres and carbines, and grooms dragging up officers’ chargers. Then he made up his mind and ran for the horse-lines.

There was a canter at his back, and Strangways, now a Brevet-Major, came up with him.

“I’m well enough, sir. For G——’s sake, let me fall in with the Regiment!”

“Very good. Fall in with the Troop, if you can get a horse. We’re devilish short of trumpeters.”

In a few minutes Mark was mounted with the slender Troop of the Mercuries, and sitting as Trumpet-Major behind Strangways, who was commanding in place of the Colonel, fallen sick.

The tiny Light Brigade sat in their saddles waiting. They had been mounted, dismounted again for a period of hours; then once more mounted and told to hold themselves ready. Still nothing happened. The noise of the battle above gave no signs of decreasing; but the swelling daylight afforded little fresh information, since the fog still clung round the rises and ridges and the fine drizzle drifted in sheets before their eyes.

Still they sat and shivered, until the sound of keen bugles playing a march was heard, and out of the fog behind them appeared a battalion of French Zouaves marching up towards the crest with the same little vivandière Mark had seen before Alma riding at their head on her ginger-coloured screw, now more bony and haggard than ever, matching the girl’s own dilapidated uniform. But she herself seemed bright and gay as ever, waving her children forward with a gold-mounted riding-whip she had picked up on the field of Balaclava after the charges.

The Frenchmen shouted fraternal greetings at the English Hussars as they swept by, pointing towards the place of battle, but the Mercuries only growled sulkily in answer, “What do they send for Froggies for and leave us sitting here?” . . . “Women! To go into action before us! . . .” “Well, what use are cavalry up there anyways? We can’t ride up and down blasted preecipices!” . . . “No use? What are we served out with carbines for, then?” . . .

“Silence!” bleated Strangways. “Sergeant-Major, take those men’s names!”

There was a loud jingling and trampling, and General Canrobert, the French Commander-in-Chief, majestic in curling hair and imperial, rode past in the centre of his splendid great Staff, with his escort of snowy-cloaked Spahis, his standard crowned with the gilt eagle and his trumpeter gorgeous in blue and silver.

“Fine feathers!” sneered the irrepressible commentator of the Mercuries in a whisper.

“Frenchy looks more worried, all the same, than our old —— in his shabby frock-coat, I bet,” murmured the next man to him. “Why the Hell can’t they let us get along up there and see what they’re doing?”

“I’ll tell you what they’re doing!” said a voice, as an officer’s servant in his shirt-sleeves ran breathlessly in out of the fog.

“I’ve been taking my man his second charger. They’ve come up out of the tahn down there, the Rooshians ’ave, in ’underd thousands! ’Strewth and they ’ave! More’n two ’underd of their guns in position on Shell Hill over yonder!”

“Tell you I just come from there! I see ’em, didn’t I? Surprised us fine, they did, the ——! Crawled up in the b——y dark! They’ve pounded Pennefather’s Division all to bits! All his camp’s a shambles, a butcher’s shop! The Guards are licked . . . licked, I tell you! They lost two of their colours at the Sandbag Battery. Bentinck’s killed! Adams’ killed! Old Brown despritely wounded . . . I see him carried off. . . . What a Sunday mornin’! What a Sunday mornin’! . . . We ’aven’t a cartridge left up there! We’re on the run and they’ll pitch us into the sea!”

A low, protesting growl came from the Mercuries as the messenger of evil vanished with a grimace, running hard in the direction of the Balaclava road.

“Don’t you believe him, men!” cautioned a Sergeant, and a loud laugh from the ranks reassured him.

“Sergeant, how often have I got to tell you to keep order there?” wailed Strangways, trotting towards the troop. “Ah!” He swung his horse round again. “What is it, sir?”

A Staff-Officer on a panting horse had burst out of the mist. It was Lord Blackwater.

“Where’s Lord George Paget?” he asked. “Get ready to move, Strangways! You’re to support an advance of the French Chasseurs, and I’m to guide the Brigade.”

The cavalry began to canter up the long grass slope towards the Inkerman ridge. As they drew near they saw what looked like a cloud of troops in skirmishing order rapidly advancing against them.

“Draw swords! Charge!” cried Strangways. “No! Halt! It’s our own men!”

It was a stream of fugitives in their dark overcoats, their pouches and belts awry and disordered. Some were wounded; some were helping wounded men along; some were even obliging enough to come to the rear carrying the rifles or shakoes of the wounded for them. Others growlingly answered to Blackwater’s objurgations that they had retired because they had no orders, no cartridges, and had been fighting since before daybreak.

Then through the throng tramped with measured pace a squad of Guardsmen in grey coats and tall bearskins, escorting their colours to safety by the Windmill. Their bearded faces were grim and threatening.

“We must let those other rascals run if they will!” said Blackwater. “Look, Strangways, there go your Frenchmen! Align on their right if you can!”

Among the gorse-bushes and little stunted oaks that now grew thick there bobbed up and down the streaming white head-dresses and dapple-grey ponies of the Chasseurs d’Afrique, threading their way in and out with the address of desert-trained troops.

“They’re the chaps that silenced that battery for us on the hill at Balaclava!” shouted the Sergeant of the Mercuries. “Give ’em a cheer, men!”

The Hussars roared and galloped forward as best they could over the broken rocky ground to join the red-breeched French horsemen.

To their right now loomed the abyss below the Inkerman Tusk, plunging amid giant shapes of writhed rock into a swirling ocean of fog; they wheeled to their left, and as the command to halt came, saw some hundred yards before them in a patch of dissolving mist, the dreadful Sandbag Battery.

Amid a frenzied bawling and ear-splitting roar of musketry, the great Guardsmen, like bronze statues, were wrestling upon the parapet of sacking with a dense mass of Russians, whose red cap-bands made a wavering line of colour against the grey mists and the grey coats of both armies. Behind the work the ground was strewn as with leaves by motionless or writhing figures, while the few surviving officers of the Guards walked to and fro behind the ragged line directing the desperate fight.

Vainly it seemed. Round the inky bearskins, like a tide lapping at scattered rocks, the wave of pale, flat, monotonous faces all wearing the same dazed look beneath their red-edged caps, pressed on and on; it seeped over the parapet, tore holes in the sandbags, and eddied round the corners of the battery. More and more surged behind, their bayonets flashing in the pallid sunshine that now began to pierce the fog like an ocean of sparkling ripples. A grey-haired, venerable Russian officer, displaying stars of high rank, wrestled on the slippery blood which oozed from the crest of the parapet, with a beardless Ensign of the Guards; the youth’s gilt-handled sword snapped like a pencil upon his adversary’s thick coat, and the old man plunged his sword into the boy’s heart, just before an English Sergeant took him by the throat and hurled him down upon the points of his own bayonets. From the distant Russian artillery all the time shells fell hissing and crashing into the chaos.

Meanwhile the ghostly sunlight grew, until Mark, sitting with the cavalry in the rear of the mêlée, saw the fog-curtains roll away, the gulf of the Inkerman ravine open up, and the ruins of the ancient city and the prehistoric cave-dwellings show far below on the opposite side of the valley. Swiftly the unearthly shaft shot across, chased by black cloudy fingers, and now, as the Inkerman ruins were buried again in gloom, Sebastopol in the infinite distance stood out as it had been made of shining marble. The houses, with their red roofs and green verandahs, seemed near enough for a hand outstretched to grasp them; the pillars of the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, the baroque carvings garlanding the Naval Library and statue-crowned octagon of the Temple of the Winds, the balusters of the round Observatory Tower, the airy grove of masts in the dockyard harbour gleamed tantalizingly as fairy treasure. Haunting, inaccessible, Sebastopol for a moment hovered like the celestial city of man’s hope; then with a fresh spatter of rain, the sombre veils closed down once more and hid the vision; only the angry foreground, chaotic with acrid twisting smoke, encumbered with fallen and falling bodies, rent by the strife of men who bellowed, thrust and tore at one another for no reason that they understood, remained to fill the view.

Shots were beginning to fall among the English cavalry; horses collapsed as the plunk of lead tearing into their bellies made a sound like that of stones falling into mud; men lurched and toppled out of their saddles with a bright flash of falling busby and pelisse. In front the Guards were being forced back and back; the sea of Russians stretched from side to side of the spur, concealing the captured battery from sight.

Suddenly a shrill cry was heard and the little vivandière of the Zouaves appeared, dismounted and bare-headed, urging her men forward with her gold-mounted whip against the heaving grey Russian wall. A fierce volley broke from their front rank; she spun about and fell on her hands and knees, half-raised herself with a puzzled, childish look, and sank down again, peacefully pillowing her black ringlets on the litter of spent cartridge-cases in the mud. At the sight the Zouaves with a howl of superstitious woe broke and scattered; their officers beat them vainly with their swords.

Then Mark saw his brother ride forward into the confusion. Conspicuous on a tall horse, a smile like youth upon his face, he raised his cocked-hat in a gallant gesture of encouragement. Almost at the same moment, while the Russians volleyed again, a fresh flood of Guards, with colours slanted forward, the officers cheering their men and jesting one to another as they passed along, came thronging in to shut out Mark’s view of the conflict.

A trumpet sounded from Lord George at the head of the miniature Brigade, and “Threes about!” commanded Major Strangways. Mark set his trumpet to his lips and, turning, lost sight of the field of Inkerman.

On the morning of May 1st, 1855, a soldier walked over London Bridge. His Hussar uniform was smart, the buttons polished, the gold lace gleaming, the pill-box forage-cap set jauntily over his ear; but his gaunt frame, the knotted muscles at the thin wrists, the protruding cheek-bones above shadowy hollows told their own tale of sickness and privation. Yet the brown eyes shone mildly and steadily in their sunken pits; the shoulders were squared; the pace was steady and decided, though without the swagger of youth to animate it, as Mark Woodrofe, who had just got down out of the train that had brought him from the hospital ship at Tilbury, walked over the Bridge that had eleven years ago afforded him his first sight of London town.

He had recovered cleanly enough from his first Balaclava wound; but the dire Crimean winter descending on the unfed and unequipped troops who cowered stubbornly from the weather upon the iron-bound plateau above Sebastopol, shredding their once splendid uniforms to squalid rags, knotting their limbs with rheumatism and crippling their hands and feet with frost-bite, driving the starved horses frantically to gnaw each others’ manes and tails, the Crimean winter had done its work on him as on the rest.

Cavalry duties had practically disappeared when the Armies settled down to sustained siege-work; but the bullet of a Russian sharpshooter, lurking in the caves across the Inkerman Valley, had grazed the lung of the trumpeter who was riding down towards the Bridge, attendant on an officer with a flag of truce which had, on the background of snow, escaped the eyes of the enemy outposts. Supervening on dysentery the new wound had prostrated Mark Woodrofe, who had passed enfeebled months in the Scutari Hospital till invalided home with a draft in the Spring for light duties at the depot at Ranalow pending his final examination by a Medical Board. Now, with a couple of days furlough specially accorded before rejoining at the Depot, he was marching across London Bridge in the same atmosphere of smoke, the same rumble of heavy omnibuses and drays, the same surge of top-hatted business men that had been going on, he reflected, above the grey Thames ripples, monotonous and unbroken, during all his months of adventure and pain and glory by the shores of a distant dark sea.

As he reached the Middlesex end of the Bridge a congestion on the pavement slowed his pace. Around him whiskered faces scowled and fat watches were dragged uneasily out by heavy Albert chains. Mark heard the thumping of a drum, and, peering between the heads of an assembly of idlers, he caught sight of the tip of a column of revolving greenery, the flash of a tambourine in a female hand protruding from a gaudy, frilled sleeve, and then a black face grinning and bobbing up and down.

“It’s high time they stopped these May-day sweeps and their nonsense!” growled a voice behind his back. “Half of ’em aren’t sweeps at all! Mere loafers! Ah! here come the police: that’s a good thing!”

Inexorable, leather-bound top-hats forged through the crowd; the drum stopped abruptly, and the released throng hurried on its way again. As Mark marched with it past the steps descending to the Church of St. Magnus the Martyr, he had a glimpse of the Jack-in-the-Green disappearing down the stairway and of the white head of the old man who played the drum, which he now carried hunched upon his shoulders.

When a short while afterwards Mark arrived in front of the warehouse of Hepplewhite Brothers in Mincing Lane, he stopped in surprise. It seemed that the place was being rebuilt. It was caged in scaffolding, through which, violently interrupting the subdued brick and stucco delicacies of the old street, there glared a mass of dead-white stone, breaking out into floriated pinnacles and urns, capped by little pepper-pot domes with corrugated surfaces, smiling superciliously with carved faces, tawdry with bunches of unneeded pilasters. Mark experienced a shock that he was incapable of analysing at his first introduction to Mid-Victorian architecture.

For a few minutes he felt hesitation about entering, for the doors were obscured by a platform draped in sacking, on which masons and carpenters in square paper caps were clatteringly engaged. But presently he discerned a written notice: “Business as usual,” hanging on one of the scaffold-poles; and ducking with due care for his uniform under the boarding overhead, which exuded clouds of white dust and chips, he entered a strange bleak passage smelling of damp plaster and, with a touch of his ancient tremors, asked of the smart young clerk who held the place of Mr. Lytchett, whether Mr. Hepplewhite was disengaged.

The reply was almost more breath-taking than the sight of the renovated offices.

“He’ll make time to see a soldier!” answered the clerk. “What name shall I take in?”—and with a flash of his bright pepper-and-salt pantaloons, was up the new stone stair.

In another minute, Mark was standing in the familiar old room with the paintings of the founder of the firm and the negroes carrying cargoes under the palm-trees (for this landing had not yet been reconstructed) and was being shaken by both hands, while Mr. Hepplewhite, totally unchanged, cooed over him like a maternal hen, his fine lips quivering and his glancing grey eyes misted.

“Mark Woodrofe again!” he murmured. “Our old Mark! Here’s a joyful surprise! Dash my wig if it isn’t! Ah! if only poor old Lytchett were here to see what a fine figure you’ve become! But he left us, you know . . . left us on the completion of fifty-five years’ faithful service. The firm subscribed a very handsome tombstone with the inscription, chosen by me after a great deal of thought as to what was suitable to a man in his mercantile position: ‘Take thy bill, and write fourscore’; he was just eighty when he died, d’you see!—together with a figure of an elegant female in a veil weeping over the grave. . . . I don’t know what Mrs. Lytchett thought about that, I’m sure; but she seemed to enjoy the funeral very much all the same . . . yes, he’d have been proud to welcome you, as I am, Mark! By Jove, now I come to think, you were one of Cardigan’s men, weren’t you?” He rang a bell violently. “Jenkins!” he cried to the young clerk who looked in, “run out and buy a bottle of port, and bring some biscuits! Here’s one of the Light Brigade straight from Balaclava! By Gad, sir! I’ll have all the staff in; you shall tell us all about it! Most glorious page in the history of England, dash my wig if it isn’t. I’ll have ’em all in to see and hear you!”

Mark made a protesting gesture, and he relented with his hand again on the bell.

“Well, I suppose I must spare your blushes. But by G——! you’ve nothing to be ashamed of, boy! If only I could have been there; I’d have shown you how to do it! Still, perhaps it’s as well not to take the men off their work this morning. We’re busy . . . never been so busy in all my life!”

“Rebuilding and enlarging!” Mr. Hepplewhite stood on his toes upon the hearthrug and expanded his white waistcoat as though aspiring to take in all Mincing Lane and the City of London entire. “We’ve taken over two houses to our left and three to our right. We had to! The expansion of business was terrific. There’s no doubt this War has been a marvellous thing for the drug-trade. Two ship-loads of medical stores, entirely supplied by this firm, sir, I saw shipped off at the docks only yesterday for Scutari . . . and, between ourselves, we sell stores overland at fancy prices to the Russians as well. Nothing unpatriotic, I hope, in relieving the sufferings of their poor fellows too, eh, Mark?”

“Not to my mind, sir!” Mark sighed. “I only wish the day’d come a little quicker, Mr. Hepplewhite, when you didn’t need to send Army medical stores out to anyone in the East.”

“What do you mean? Peace? Don’t let me hear of it! Are all our sacrifices to be wasted? Don’t ask me to agree that all I’ve done and borne is to be in vain! Russia’s got to be humbled in the dust, sir, and the bulldogs are the boys to do it! And don’t you run away with the idea, either, that as a member of the Peace Party, I’m being inconsistent in saying I won’t hear of a cessation of hostilities! I’ll tell you why not!” He sat down at his desk and raised an impressive white forefinger. “This is no ordinary war, Mark. This is the war to end war. That’s why it’s got to be fought to a finish, and, damme, I’ll cheerfully send the last British soldier and the last British tar to his doom before I’ll eat humble-pie—in a cause like this! We’ll show the Tsar he’s combating the forces of civilization, and that can’t be done unless Sebastopol is reduced to ashes, ashes, sir!” He struck violently upon his blotting-pad, and a blob of ink leapt out of the great brass sarcophagus and stained his clean cuff, which quenched his pacific fury in querulousness until Jenkins arrived with the port and soothed him.

“Leave an iron-mould stain, though, you mark my words!” he grumbled. “But now, Mark, tell me what it’s like campaigning. By Jove, if I was young again, I shouldn’t be in doubt which was the profession for a man. . . . Glorious! Glorious!” he commented, as Mark reluctantly, at his request, told over yet again the story of the Charge of the Light Brigade. “I heard Lord Cardigan’s speech at the Mansion House. There’s no doubt, from what he himself confessed, it couldn’t have been carried out at all under any other commander. It takes a man of rank and family to lead the British soldier!”

“Asking your pardon, sir,” said Mark mildly, “it’s my belief the men will follow any officer who shows ’em the way with courage.”

“No! no!” affirmed Mr. Hepplewhite with conviction. “You don’t understand the spirit of the Army, and that’s a fact. It’s the old families that supply the backbone. Then there was the affair of your brother—for I take it you’re old enough now for me to speak plainly about your relationship? Killed at Inkerman, rallying the Guards . . .”

“The French, sir! Their vivandière was killed, and it kind of broke their spirits, you see.”

“Yes, he’s shed fresh lustre on the house of Blackwater, and made me prouder than ever to be distantly related. Sometimes I used to be afraid he might not turn out well—just a leetle wild he was, just a leetle. But it’s a tragedy none the less. Leaves an heir hardly six months old now, a fearful shock it was to the young Countess, the news of his death coinciding. But she’s better now. It would have been terrible if the title had passed to the other branch, because I’m told the fellow has low tastes and made a very vulgar marriage. . . . Yes”—Mr. Hepplewhite shot an anxious glance at the clock—“will you have another glass of port before you go? Or did you come to see me on any special business? Can I be of use to you in any way? If so, only too much honoured to be of service to a man of the Light Brigade!”

Mark hesitated. Actually, he had come to Mincing Lane with the wild idea of taking Mr. Hepplewhite into his confidence about Blackwater’s secret. He was related to the family, and Mark knew no other person of position and knowledge of the world to whom he might turn; he had always understood, too, that his old employer was a fervid Radical, who would not, he had supposed, pronounce at once against Fancy because she was a tradesman’s daughter. Now he saw the hopelessness of his plan; a voice inside him whispered caution. He began to understand the obstacles that would be thrown against Fancy’s claim from every side, even if it proved good in law. Caution! He rose respectfully.

“No, sir!” he said, “I didn’t wish to trouble you with any of my affairs. Only to see you again and thank you for your kindnesses to me when I was one of your boys.”

“Yes, I was proud of you when you knocked out that young snob—what was his name? He left us to become a publican’s assistant—shocking!—After fourteen rounds, wasn’t it?—being yourself almost too groggy to stand!”

“But how are you getting on in the Army? Looking forward to promotion . . . you’ve earned it!”

“Afraid my lung’ll never be quite all it should be again. And anyhow, I’ve the means to buy my discharge, given me by . . . by an officer, sir, who befriended me out there and was killed.”

“Yes, I’ve let them make me Master of the local pack down at my new place by Stanmore. You should see it, by the way. Forty acres of grounds it stands in, and enough glass to make ’em jealous at Kew, by Gad! Well, as I say, you know all about horses. You’d be well enough to ride?”

“If not, we’d find you lighter work about the place. So remember my offer if you do take your discharge.”

“Not at all! You’ve done your piece for the country and I’ll do mine. . . . Tell Jenkins as you go down that I want him at once.”

Mark came slowly out of the bustling office and let his feet carry him westwards past St. Paul’s, down Ludgate Hill and through Temple Bar, vaguely seeking some small eating-house at which to dine in the Strandward district. His mind had now reverted to his primary problem, how to find Fancy in this multitude that thronged about him, supposing even she was in London at all. His barrack seclusion had left him too unsophisticated to think of such means as newspaper advertisement, even if it was probable that Fancy read the newspapers.

Worried by the jostle on the pavements of the Strand, he turned at Charing Cross down Villiers Street towards the river, and there the idea came to him of doing his best in the time at his disposal to comb the minor theatres. In one of them, he considered, Fancy might be acting again, or someone might be found who could give news of her. He turned to the right by the stairs and the little rotting wharves that clustered at the foot of the unembanked riverside slope, and sought the towered Suspension Bridge that to-day spans the gulf of red cliffs outside Bristol. As he passed Hungerford Market he heard again the thumping of the May-day revellers’ drum within the arcades.

An hour or two later the Jack-in-the-Green, with a grunt of relief, wriggled out of his framework of greenery within the shelter of the Adelphi arches, and revealed the heated countenance of Mr. Niblick.

“Well, dona,” he said to the Columbine in the gaudy frilled sleeves, “I can do with my dinner and a cooling pint, if so be you’ll be good enough to step along to that house at the corner of Villiers Street and fetch the tankards.” He counted out some pence and ha-pence. “Poor business,” he said. “May-day’s a-going out in England, I think. I dunno why. Too many people in the streets; traffic too noisy; everyone in too much of a hurry, I s’pose. Well, that’s ’ow it is, and we knows as ’ow it won’t be made different fur to obleege us. . . . Fetch the tipple, Columbine; you must be fair parched, too, a’nussin’ of that babby all the times atween dances. Leave me to take care of ’im now.” He cast an eye towards the rude little handcart they had dragged with them since dawn. Then, “Why! wot’s the matter with ’is Majesty?” he said hurriedly, rising from the stone ledge on which he had been squatting.

The old drummer, after unstrapping his instrument from his shoulders, had noiselessly fallen on his knees and collapsed across it, his face on the taut skin.

The Columbine gave a cry, and hastened to raise him. Mr. Niblick and the two “sweeps”, who had been busy unpacking bread and cheese from their wallets, came to her help, and together they laid the old white-haired man down on the stones, pillowing his head upon a coat that one of the sweeps took off and folded. His eyes looked glassy; his emaciated face had taken a purplish shade, his mouth hung at one corner and he was breathing thickly.

“Father!” cried the Columbine, “what’s the matter with you? Father, don’t you know me? Oh, Mr. Niblick, he’s terribly bad; look at him!”

“What’s the trouble, yer Majesty?” asked Mr. Niblick, with a rough gentleness. “Tired out, are yer? It’s no life for an old ’un, this, I know. My dear”—he turned to the Columbine—“you better run quick to that pub I spoke of, try and get a few penn’orth o’ brandy. Never mind my beer! There won’t be enough for both!”

By the time she got back the old man appeared to be breathing more easily. The purple look about his face had gone, though it was replaced by a haggard greyness. He seemed to be slumbering, for his breath came regularly and his eyes were closed.

“Best not disturb him if he’s resting!” advised Mr. Niblick. “In which case, with your permission, I drinks to ’Is Majesty’s quick return of ’ealth!” and he drained the little allowance of brandy the woman had brought in a hurriedly-rinsed bottle. “I know you niver touches a drop, my dear!” he added apologetically to the Columbine, pulling out the stump of a clay pipe, “and as for them two romanies yonder, they ’ad their mugful after the share-out in the market.”

He indicated the soot-disguised gypsies, who had withdrawn again into the deeper shadow of the arches, where only their white teeth and eyeballs showed against the begrimed brick vaulting. Outside the river swept past, transformed by the bright sunshine of noon into a blue flowing mantle for London’s shoulders, bespangled with hollow gold ripples. From above there drummed through the black passages of the sloping subterranean labyrinth on the edge of which they sat, the reverberation of the traffic in the Strand. The smoke of Mr. Niblick’s short clay pipe ascended in pale grey wraiths shot through by the sunbeams from outside.

“Yes,” he resumed philosophically, looking round over his shoulder at the Columbine who sat, with her baby in her arms, upon the upturned drum beside the frail figure of the old man huddled upon the stones, her eyes fixed anxiously upon the worn cheeks and palpitating lips, “yes, it’s too hard for the old ’un, this life. But what can a man do? A Peep-Show won’t bring in bread and cheese, let alone beer and ’bacca for the three of us. Too many Fairs disappearin’, too many perlice to move you on these days. Seems, too, as if people, even the childer, was gettin’ beyond peep-shows some’ow; t’other day a nipper arsks me, couldn’t I make the picters move. Move, mark you! ‘I s’pose you’ll want ’em to talk next?’ I sez. But there ain’t no manner o’ doubt, ’is Majesty was better fixing the little figgers for me. That was ’is gift. I remember the night ’ee fust come among us in that dingle atop of Highgate Hill. ‘I am the Hemperor of the Earth!’ sez he.” Mr. Niblick chuckled. “ ’Ee wos a figger ’imself that would ’a’ done credit to a waxwork or any show ’ee was in, in that there extraordinary rig-out ’ee prigged from the actor’s cottage. And with your babby in his arms! Clever of ’im to steal it in time from that there baby-farmer wot they strung up. Blest if I didn’t make sure ’ee was somebody important though, that night! I thought it might ’a’ bin the heir of an Earl or someone ’ee ’ad kidnapped and that there would be sure to be a big reward offered. Which was why I studied the perlice news and notices, which all led simply to my a-findin’ of you, Fancy!”

“A bad disappointment for you, Mr. Niblick,” she murmured, “but oh! how thankful I am that you did find me!”

“No, I wouldn’t put it quite that way, dona!” said Mr. Niblick gallantly. “It’s bin a pleasure to me to enjoy refined feemale sassiety again . . . a thing as I’d bin deprived of since I parted from the Two-’Eaded Nightin’gale in Jedidiah’s Booth at Greenwich, come five-and-twenty year, acause she would not consent to speak one at a time . . . and ’sides, you’ve worked and you’ve danced and cooked and mended . . . no, I don’t reckon to have made noways a bad bargain . . . and, as you yourse’f says, if you ’adn’t ’a bin found in the nick o’ time, through that River Perlice notice respectin’ of the babby you’d lost, them Turks would a’ taken the kid off with ’em on to the continong.”

Fancy suddenly started and stooped forward. Mr. Niblick turned his head at her movement. The old man on the ground had opened his eyes and now suddenly said in a distinct tone,

“Has he come? Not yet? How slow he is! I can hear his footstep, searching, searching!”

The afternoon wore on and the old man sank back again into his stupor. His breath seemed to come with more difficulty now, and there was a low, rattling sound in it, which blended with the continuous distant roar of hoofs and wheels that floated down through the mouths of the eerie labyrinth, haunt at night of London’s beggars, thieves and wastrels, though deserted at this hour. After a time the two “sweeps”, with a nod to Mr. Niblick and a jerk of the thumb towards the crowded streets above, where, east and west, the double streams of London’s labour poured unrestingly along, stole out in quest of further pennies, bearing the Jack-in-the-Green with them. The other two remained with the infant and the stricken grandfather, not daring to move him, not knowing how to relieve him; Fancy with a more and more agonized anxiety on her tired face, the Peep-Show Man spinning his dilapidated brown topper on his finger with a look of rueful resignation. Outside the river danced by through the long afternoon, its mood and colour changing endlessly. After many hours, as the sun began to shrink away behind the tall buildings and spires to the south-west, and the shadows from the heart of the vaults, no longer checked by the beams from without, crawled forward inch by inch, loading the interior with dank night, they moved Mr. Fawkes as carefully as they could to the very edge of the archway, where the last rays of the falling sun might, if they would, strike on his face and limbs and warm them.

It was at about this time that a soldier, wearied but still stepping manfully forward, paid his halfpenny toll on the Surrey side of Waterloo Bridge, and began to cross over. Halfway he stopped and leaned upon the balustraded parapet gazing down towards Westminster. The gaiety of the May-day had been quenched in a dusky evening, and before him, outlining in black the nearly-completed clock-tower of Parliament, like a gaunt giant in a pointed cap with bristling moustaches of scaffolding, the sunset smouldered in a wide red sheet with smoky arabesques unfurling lazily across it. On either bank buildings and warehouses, the triangular-tipped façade of Somerset House, the pointing chimneys of the south side loomed in spectral grey, heavy at once and insubstantial. Far below, London River fleeted with occasional pale glimmerings, and as Mark leaned over to pierce the shadows that veiled it, he seemed to catch its murmur of oblivion and undyingness. So it was running; so it had always run and would run, the very soul of its city, sweeping away the hours and human ripples on its bosom.

Mark was shaken by a deep sigh as he leant his head on his hand. His afternoon’s search, from which he had not indeed hoped great things, weighed his spirit down with a sense of the futility of his task. He had been to Astley’s, to the Surrey, to the Victoria, and one or two less important little theatres, enquiring, gossiping, standing drinks, waiting hours for this or that person “who might know something” to arrive, and drawing blank when they did. He wished now he had begun at the old Ionic—but in a bar near the tiny Stangate Theatre he had met an old actor just discharged from the Ionic who was positive that Fancy had not been there the last two years and a half. Well, there was nothing for it but to find some cheap lodging for the night and to-morrow renew the search among the theatres of the other bank.

Mark passed off the bridge and turned down the thronged Strand where the lamp-lighters were just planting their saffron flowers and the last streaks of the sunset glowed in a mist of grey and rose above the housetops. He soon realized that there was no hotel or inn in this great thoroughfare that would suit his position and means, and once again turned off towards the riverside stairs, thinking there would probably be poor men’s lodging-houses by the water-edge.

This time he descended Buckingham Street to the York Water-gate, then turned to the left down a few steps towards a wharf, where he noticed a little crowd collected in front of some arches. He was making to pass them by when one of the loafers in the group, mistaking his blue uniform in the gloaming, shouted, “Here’s a police officer!” and beckoned to him violently. Mark turned back and drew near. As he did so a woman burst through the gathering and ran towards him, crying.

“Fancy!” cried Mark, seizing her hands and gazing in ecstasy at the faded blue eyes in the care-lined face, wet with tears, that glistened in the subdued evening light.

For a second she stared blankly at him, and then fell, mumbling incoherent words, on his breast. He held her tight, as though dreading lest Destiny that had played this saving prank upon him, might change its mind and whisk her away again. Then the loafer who had first brought him to the spot jogged his elbow and murmured,

Fancy, with a wild moan, disengaged herself from his embrace and ran back towards the archway. Mark followed briskly down the lane formed by the tiny crowd. There on the muddied cobbles lay Oliver Fawkes, in his arms the ragged heir to the Blackwaters, whom he had brokenly begged to hold a short while since, a tattered mountebank in a crushed topper bending over him, while a last ray of the disappearing sun, slanting nearly horizontally through a slit between two houses, clove the gloom of the arches and fell on his long face, sharply pointed now by Death, and on his straggling white hair.

At the sight of Mark, with the last suffusion of the dying day glinting on the gold bars of his uniform, a flare of recognition came into the old man’s hollow eyes.

“The fell Sergeant!” he panted, “strict in his arrest!” He was silent again, while Fancy flung herself, quivering with sobs, on the stones beside him. After a few rattling breaths he opened his eyes once more and murmured, “There! Take the Young Duke!” and Mark, stooping tenderly down, obeyed him.

The little ring of sordid loafers, irresistibly fascinated, closed in and in upon him as he lay painfully drawing his last gasps, hiding him from the view of those on the edge of the circle.

“Thank you!” it said, “thank you . . . ever the most indulgent of audiences!”

The Spring foliage was covering the trees of Hyde Park with a tender pale-green mist, and the air after recent showers was full of scent and the sense of swelling sap, as Mark stood waiting under the Achilles statue, his eyes keenly alert for the sight of Fancy.

He had seen very little of her during the year that had elapsed since he found her at her father’s weird death-bed in the Adelphi arches. The War, which everyone had believed at the time he was invalided home last year to be approaching its end, had dragged obstinately on; and Mark, passed for home service by the Medical Board in spite of his lung, which indeed showed little sign of giving trouble, had been kept hard at work at the depot in Ranalow, training young trumpeters, and, also, in the shortage of instructors, teaching in Riding-School. Recruits had been gathered in from every quarter and by every means, for Sebastopol still held out and the Allies were obstinate not to make peace without their prize. Until peace was signed there could be no question of Mark buying his discharge.

Fancy, on his advice, had taken her claim and her documents to a lawyer in Lincoln’s Inn, a fatherly and prudent old man they had by good fortune hit upon, who quickly realized the serious implications of the case and counselled silence and patience while he instituted preliminary investigations. Mr. Lewknor possessed a double dose of the deliberation of the old school, and had after some weeks experienced a first check by the absence of any record of “Wilfred Pargeter’s” marriage in the register of St. Matthias’s Church, Highbury, of which the Rev. Eginhard Daryngton was Vicar at the time of the ceremony. Fancy was positive that a book had been signed, with her father as witness . . . but O. Fawkes was no longer there to give evidence, and the question was whether Daryngton had used a bogus register or had later mutilated the real one. Moreover, from the packet which Blackwater had entrusted to Mark to bring to England there was lacking the confession he had promised to write. He had shrunk from the humiliation, or had postponed it until too late. The important thing now was to find Daryngton if it were possible, and Mr. Lewknor had sent an agent to Boulogne, Bruges and other haunts of voluntary outlaws from England, to prosecute enquiries. This had meant another long delay, and Fancy, determined to keep the money her husband had transmitted to her exclusively for these proceedings on behalf of her child, had gone into service as housekeeper to two unmarried sisters living off the Edgware Road.

Meanwhile Sebastopol had fallen in September of the preceding year, and it was now nearly two months since peace had been concluded in Paris. Mark was proposing to purchase his discharge this summer, and having been granted a short furlough, had written to Fancy to meet him to-day in the Park and tell him what progress, if any, had been made in her case. And here she came towards him along the path parallel to Park Lane, wheeling little Will in a perambulator.

“Who would believe this was the Columbine of the Ionic?” he said smiling, as he looked at her plain bonnet and her quiet-coloured shawl. “That’s all got to be forgotten now, hasn’t it? Still,” he added, marking the deep glint of her blue eyes above the hollowed cheek, which the shadow of the coal-scuttle bonnet emphasized, “still, you’ve not changed one bit from the real Fan, the old Fan who looked after that troublesome nipper from the country so many years ago . . . I suppose that must be forgotten too, now,” he sighed.

“Why, Mark, I’m sure I look much, much older.” She tucked a wisp of the old, unchanged, mutinous brown hair into place.

“I don’t notice it, then. Seems to me, as I look at you, that it’s I who am getting young again!”

“Yet you’re glad that I’m to become, if your plans succeed, as different as all the world can make me!”

“Riches won’t spoil you,” affirmed Mark quietly. “Rank won’t change you, I know.”

They had turned the corner by the Piccadilly gates, and as they paced side by side towards the west with the Row upon their right, Mark fell into step with her, his spurs clinking while the wheels of the perambulator ground upon the gravel. He noticed that many of the passers-by glanced at his uniform and was struck by the cordiality of their regards. No keeper had sought to oppose his entrance into the Park, as would have been done before the War; it was evident that the old dislike of the soldier had died on the fields of Alma and Balaclava.

“Yes,” agreed Mark. “I want to hear all the news you must have for me by now.”

“Before you talk any more about that business, about papers and registers and lawyers and all those things that muddle your poor old head so much, Mark, I’ve something to show you.”

“Something to show me? Well, it can’t be half so important as your claim, anyways, Fancy.”

“Well, come now! Only think what your life will be like as a Countess! Look at those lovely horses!” He pointed with his whip to the moving cloud of riders in the Row, the men in glossy whiskers and tail-coats, the women wasp-waisted and veiled, with skirts that hung below the stirrup-iron and billowed in the breeze, disclosing dark strapped trousers and the gleam of dainty patent-leather boots. “Some of the finest horseflesh in England!” mused Mark, as he studied the foaming mounts with their polished bits and saddles. “You’ll be on one o’ those before the year is out!”

“Well, then,” he indulged her with a smile. “Look over your shoulder at the carriages yonder! You’ll have your own pair, coachman and footmen in wigs. . . .”

“I’d be even more frightened of a footman than of a horse! Can you picture me, Mark, me! coming down to dinner between two lines of the smug creatures, all winking behind my back at the Countess from the gutter?”

“I’d think they were doing it, anyway, and that would be just as bad, wouldn’t it?”

“You’d be a quick learner of the new ways, I reckon. And . . . and anyhow, Fan, if it has a frightening side to it—and I don’t say it hasn’t—you’re doing it mainly for the sake of the child here, aren’t you?”

“And would it be a good thing for him? Are you sure of that, Mark? Have you thought it out?”

“Well, I can’t say I’ve thought much about it . . . in that way. I reckoned it was his right, which it was our duty to establish if we could.”

“And did you ever find standing on your rights did you much good, in the Army or outside it?”

Mark scratched his head, taken aback; but before he could find an answer, Fancy nudged him.

“Hush!” she said. “This is what I brought you here to see. Look at that pram coming along towards us!”

“With the smart nussmaid in the silk streamers? Some bigwig’s kid, eh? Bright little fellow, a’nt he, sitting up like that, crowing and clapping his hands!” Mark chuckled paternally.

“He wouldn’t crow and clap his hands if he could understand what you and I are plotting to do.”

“It is. I’ve watched him every day this week, taking his outing. He’s a dear. Almost as sweet as little Will—if anyone could be. And they’re rather alike, too, in the queerest little ways—the crease at the corner of their eyes and the shape of their little thumb-nails. But Will has my blue eyes and will have my long nose, I’m afraid.” Mark protested incoherently, but she went on. “That one has his father’s brown eyes—and yours. He’s stronger than Will, I think,” she concluded a little sadly.

“It does seem a shame,” said Mark heavily. “He looks cut out for the place that seems to be his—but isn’t rightfully, you know,” he pleaded.

“You see it’s not so simple as you thought, old Mark, is it? Wait just a little longer, and I expect we’ll see something else.”

Through a momentary gap in the throng there came cantering over the tan a tall young woman on a noble chestnut horse. Her slim figure was in a black habit and the tiny veil that fluttered from her top-hat about her elegant neck was of crape. A groom in green livery and cockade followed her, and at her side rode an elderly gentleman of military look.

The touches of mourning told Mark at a glance who she was, and he watched her closely as she drew up by the railings, while the nursemaid in the silk streamers wheeled the perambulator forward, and the infant again tried to rise from the seat into which he was strapped, and greeted her with a clear cry.

The old man riding with her made some clearly flattering observation, and Lady Blackwater turned in her saddle, flushing pink with pleasure as she answered. Then she leaned forward over her horse’s mane to catch her baby’s eye, gently waving her little tasselled whip to and fro and gazing at him out of large dark eyes shining with pride.

At last she straightened herself again in the saddle and motioned to the nurse to move on with the child. At that moment her frank, kindly look fell on Mark, and she spoke again to her companion, slightly indicating the soldier with her whip.

The General followed her glance and nodded. No doubt where the young man, still gaunt-cheeked and with prematurely-grizzled hairs peeping under his pill-box cap, had left his youth and part of his health.

“Come along, Sir Percy!” said Lady Blackwater to her horse, and the three riders turned and cantered away towards Knightsbridge.

“Yes, she’s a rare girl,” assented Mark to the question in Fan’s eyes. “Thoroughbred! This seems a crueller shame than the other. She’ll feel it! My God, won’t she feel it!”

Fancy changed the subject abruptly. “Mark, what do you mean to do when you leave the Army?”

“Take the position old Hepplewhite has kindly offered me. Become Whipper-In to his pack at Stanmore. I reckon I’m strong enough for hunting if not for soldiering. I can anyways try.”

“Well, dear,” he murmured, “you’ll have your way to go and it’ll be very different from mine . . . I shall read about you in the newspapers sometimes, I suppose . . . and if I have hard times they’ll be softened by knowing you’re rich and happy.”

There was a throb and lift in her voice that came out of the far past and pierced him with worse agony than the Inkerman sharpshooter’s bullet.

“Well, dear,” he answered with an effort, while a dark mist seemed to hide the Spring Park from his eyes, “that’s part of my duty, too. To be lonely for your sake . . . and little Will’s.”

“You’re a great one for duty, Mark, aren’t you? Always were . . . except that night you fought Jim Ballon in the pub. The dutifullest, stupidest old creature! No, it’s a shame to laugh at you, Mark, but it’s because I’m so happy, such a load off me after all these months. . . . Now you’ve seen what I wanted you to see, so as to make the news easier for you to bear, I’ll tell you what I’ve done.”

“And I’ve burnt the papers you brought, as well as that letter giving an account of my marriage that Father wrote and addressed to the Queen and the French Emperor and the Tsar of Russia, and then left in the lining of his old hat—the letter Mr. Lewknor thought so valuable!”

“I did. And why not? I’ve paid Mr. Lewknor—it was the last pound of what Wilfred gave you for me, by the way, that’s the law for you! Mr. Lewknor said it would take years, and thousands of pounds more, to make out and fight such a case on the grounds we could bring forward, though he believed we’d win it in the end, all the same. But they would take it on from court to court—it seems they can—right to the House of Lords, he said. Just think of that! And I didn’t want it fought at all. You know the kind of life little Will’s father led—could I wish that for him? He would have all the same temptations—and who would there be to keep him from the same bad, idle ways? A mother whom he must learn to despise, seeing everybody else smiling at her and saying cutting things about her. . . . He’d know what they thought, however much they tried to keep their real feelings from him.”

“You’ve seen the true Countess this afternoon, Mark. . . . You said it yourself—she’s a thoroughbred. Could I manage a horse like that, or a footman, or a party, or the upbringing of a child that’s going to be an Earl? It’s absurd! Why should Fancy Fawkes, the Columbine of the Ionic, try to upset her? It was all a dream of yours, Mark, a dear dream, for which I thank you. But it’s ended, and you must never go back to it again.”

“That dreadful place?” Fancy shuddered. “I’ve heard about it and read about it. If I’d known you were there, I think it would have killed me. . . . I remember Mrs. Tankerman; I know what it is to be at the mercy of a hospital nurse.”

“Just what you don’t know, my dear . . . I mean, you don’t know how things are changed. The worst was over before ever they brought me to Scutari, but I heard something of what it had been like before. But I couldn’t notice much, because what with the wound and the fever and this secret biting into my brain, so it seemed in those days, like a tooth of iron, I was fairly off my head. I guess I gave trouble in the ward at nights, shouting and crying, and the Orderly of the room must have complained about me, for she came in late herself and sent him away. Then she put down her lamp on the window-sill by my bed and sat down beside me ever so quiet and calm, and looked at me a long while out of those grey eyes of hers that seemed always to be sort of softly alight inside . . . if you understand me. Then, ‘Trumpet-Major,’ said she, for it was one of her ways to know every man’s name and rank correctly, ‘Trumpet-Major, there’s something troubling your mind, and your body won’t get well while that’s so. Won’t you tell me what’s troubling you? I’m here to listen.’ ”

“How could I help it? But before I mentioned you or anybody, she said, ‘No names! It will be wiser to tell me no names, I think.’ So I just gave her the story, whispering so’s no one else should hear in the ward . . . and she was angry . . . I could see how angry she was from that flame behind her eyes, rising and rising. And when I’d done she said, ‘That is the way of blackguards, Trumpet-Major, in the Officers’ Mess or the barrack-room, in Park Lane or Seven Dials. Don’t judge by titles and rank, but judge righteous judgment.’ I remember that deep voice of hers, just like the organ in a big church, it was, for the moment. Then, ‘But you needn’t let it lie on your mind, Trumpet-Major,’ she said, ‘you won’t have to decide . . . the woman will.’ I’d never seen it like that before; I always thought all that sort of thing had to be done for women by us men. And then she said, ‘I don’t believe the woman, if she’s worth anything, will make a stupid mistake.’ ”

“I didn’t know then . . . I just went off to sleep, feeling rested like. . . . But I know now what she meant all right, Fancy!”

“No, Fan, I understand what she meant, now. . . . It’s I have been the fool all this while, judging by fuss and feathers . . . I ought to have learnt better at Balaclava!”

“Then, Mark dear, what are you going to give little Will, to make up for the chance he’s losing?”

“What am I going to give him?” He looked at her with his puzzled eyes rolling.

“Oh, Mark!” she cried. “You’re the same silly small boy still, aren’t you, that I toasted that first night with the muffins? The same innocent eyes! . . . Come now, am I to go back to keep house for the Misses Blandford? It’s a little dull, you know! Or am I going back to dance Columbine in front of Mr. Niblick’s Educational and Historical Exhibition at the Fairs? I’m a little tired of that, let me tell you!”

“Oh Sixpence, mooncalf! Doesn’t he want a father? . . . Oh, you’ve got it at last, have you? Be quiet! You’ll upset the pram! Besides, people are looking at us!”

The Row had nearly emptied of riders, and the footpaths were thinning as the shadows of the trees lengthened across the sun-flecked sward. From Oxford Street and Piccadilly came, mellow and subdued, the distant roar of London’s sea. Up beyond Knightsbridge the General and Lady Blackwater turned back from their last gallop.

“A lovely ride, General,” she said, panting slightly. “It’s wonderful to be on horseback again after that long seclusion. I felt quite nervous, though, about coming out for the first time, after more than a year.”

“I told you you’d meet no danger at all, dear lady, with me beside you. Now, tell me, did you encounter any dragons in your path?”

“You look . . . divine, if I may say so. Now your mourning’s over, you must try to start enjoying life again . . . it’s a duty, perhaps you’ll forgive me for reminding you.”

“Oh, look, General!” she exclaimed suddenly, reining in. “There goes that soldier again, passing away under the trees there with his young woman. . . . He looks so worn . . . she looks so shabby, poor thing. . . . I feel so much restored that I wish I could do something in return to help people like them!”

From Knightsbridge Barracks close by, a cavalry trumpet rang out, sending lingering notes down the vistas of lilac shadow.

This book was composed, printed, and bound by The Haddon Craftsmen, Camden, N. J. The paper was manufactured by S. D. Warren Co., Boston, Mass.

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Because of copyright considerations, the illustrations by John Alan Maxwell (1904-1984) have been omitted from this etext.

Some pages of advertising from the publisher were excluded from the eBook edition.

CONTENTS

Book One

LONDONER

I	London Town
II	The Toy-Theatre Maker
III	Juvenile Drama
IV	From Primrose Hill
V	A Night’s Pleasure
VI	June Rose
VII	Palace of Peace
VIII	The Three “S’s”
IX	And One More!


Book Two

THE SHILLING

I	Recruit Drill
II	In the Officers’ Mess
III	Trumpeter
IV	Christmas Furlough
V	The Marquis of Carabas
VI	At Mrs. Ramage’s
VII	The Merchant of Grains
VIII	A Pledge
IX	Mr. Pargeter Bleeds at the Nose
X	A Family Matter
XI	Professional Opinion
XII	Temptation
XIII	Mr. Pargeter Disappears
XIV	“Double! Double!”


Book Three

THE CRIMEA

I	On the March
II	By Shadowed Places
III	Affair of Honour
IV	Red Dawn
V	The Valley
VI	On the Monastery Terrace
VII	The Sandbag Battery
VIII	London River
IX	In Hyde Park

NOTE

Chapter One LONDON TOWN

1

2

3

4

5

Chapter Two THE TOY-THEATRE MAKER

1

2

3

Chapter Three JUVENILE DRAMA

1

2

3

Chapter Four FROM PRIMROSE HILL

1

2

3

4

Chapter Five A NIGHT’S PLEASURE

1

2

3

Chapter Six JUNE ROSE

1

2

3

Chapter Seven PALACE OF PEACE

1

2

Chapter Eight THE THREE “S’s”

1

2

3

Chapter Nine AND ONE MORE!

1

2

3

Chapter One RECRUIT DRILL

1

2

3

Chapter Two IN THE OFFICERS’ MESS

1

2

3

Chapter Three TRUMPETER

1

2

3

4

Chapter Four CHRISTMAS FURLOUGH

1

2

3

Chapter Five THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS

1

2

3

4

5

Chapter Six AT MRS. RAMAGE’S

1

2

3

Chapter Seven THE MERCHANT OF GRAINS

Chapter Eight A PLEDGE

1

2

3

Chapter Nine MR. PARGETER BLEEDS AT THE NOSE

1

2

3

Chapter Ten A FAMILY MATTER

1

2

3

Chapter Eleven PROFESSIONAL OPINION

Chapter One
LONDON TOWN

Chapter Two
THE TOY-THEATRE MAKER

Chapter Three
JUVENILE DRAMA

Chapter Four
FROM PRIMROSE HILL

Chapter Five
A NIGHT’S PLEASURE

Chapter Six
JUNE ROSE

Chapter Seven
PALACE OF PEACE

Chapter Eight
THE THREE “S’s”

Chapter Nine
AND ONE MORE!

Chapter One
RECRUIT DRILL

Chapter Two
IN THE OFFICERS’ MESS

Chapter Three
TRUMPETER

Chapter Four
CHRISTMAS FURLOUGH

Chapter Five
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS

Chapter Six
AT MRS. RAMAGE’S

Chapter Seven
THE MERCHANT OF GRAINS

Chapter Eight
A PLEDGE

Chapter Nine
MR. PARGETER BLEEDS AT THE NOSE

Chapter Ten
A FAMILY MATTER

Chapter Eleven
PROFESSIONAL OPINION

Chapter Twelve
TEMPTATION

Chapter Thirteen
MR. PARGETER DISAPPEARS

Chapter Fourteen
“DOUBLE! DOUBLE!”

Chapter One
ON THE MARCH

Chapter Two
BY SHADOWED PLACES

Chapter Three
AFFAIR OF HONOUR

Chapter Four
RED DAWN

Chapter Five
THE VALLEY

Chapter Six
ON THE MONASTERY TERRACE

Chapter Seven
THE SANDBAG BATTERY

Chapter Eight
LONDON RIVER

Chapter Nine
IN HYDE PARK