Rodney Stone

n of the past brings out half a dozen others that were entangled with it. I was in two minds when I began whether I had enough in me to make a book of, and now I know that I could write one about

shaken with rage because we had beaten the French, so that after the Nile he wept for a whole day out of delight and then for another one out of fury, alternately clapping his hands and stamping his feet. Well I remember his thin, upright figure and the way in which he jauntily twirled his little cane; for cold and hunger could not cast him down, though we knew that he had his share of both. Yet he was so proud and had such a gra

icked that a man should look glum when he heard of a British victory; and when they burned his straw image at the gate of his farm, Boy Jim and I were among those who lent a hand. But we were bound to confess that he was game, though he mig

ting throats the whole time. If the money that is lost in taking French lives were spent in saving English ones, you w

!" cried young Master Ovingto

for the people of England? They are a deep, strong, silent stream, and you a

t, looking back, I am not sure that

upon a dark night, and, lying among the bracken, I have seen as many as seventy mules and a man at the head of each go flitting past me as silently as trout in a stream. Not one of them but bore its two

ght, Dan?"

thou must f

his pistol, and bl

erwards, "but I knew Dan was too good a

rite the lines for the tombstone, which we al

ft flew th

through the yo

fell, resigne

is languid e

dare say it is all still to

my father had fastened on to the walls, and wishing, like the lazy lad that I was, that Mr. Lilly had died before e

e cried. "What a vu

of so dark a red that it shaded away into purple over the nose and cheeks. She wore a great hat with a white curling ostrich feather, and from under its brim her two bold, black eyes stared out with a look of anger and defiance as if to tell the folk that she thought less of them than they could do of her. She had s

ful sight!" c

iss with he

er, Rodney, but I think that the u

at the smithy. I'll find out all the news for

him from the chaise, and he staring up at her with the queerest expression upon his face. Presently he threw down his rasp and went across to her, standing by the wheel and shaking his head as he talked to her. For my part, I slipped into the

e?" I hear

Harriso

was, I knew that, in spite of that bloated face, this woman had once been very beautiful. She put out a han

you're well,"

said Jim, staring fr

happy

'am, I t

that you

am, I have al

in a stern voice. "Blow up the forge

nt away. Her eyes gleamed, and her head tossed, while the smith with his two big hands outspread seemed to

then?" she c

ow," he

back. The smith stood with the rasp in his hand, looking after her until she was just

nstey Cross way. She's taken a kind of a fancy to you, Jim, and maybe she can

lp, uncle, and I don

ke me out a liar. She does but want to talk

ant to talk with

fancies. There's young Master Stone here who wouldn't refuse to go and see a

if Roddy Stone will

l go. Won't you

ther, who dearly loved a little bit of gossip. She shook her head when sh

h to see a more cosy little house: all honeysuckle and creepers, with a wood

cannot see yo

ed us to com

woman, in a rude voice. "I te

resolute fo

t tell her I am here

n't so much as hear a pistol in her ears? Try

the further end of the room, we caught a glimpse of a figure all lump

were off hot-foot for home. As for me, I was so young that I was not sure whether this was funn

ll any one, Ro

ss it's m

s enough that we should have seen her in her shame, without its being

so yester

d a kind heart, for I saw the one in the other when she looked at

to me by his manner. But it was not to be our last memory of the lady with the scarlet pel

"She would speak with me, and I woul

, as we drew near the house, that Jim was troubling i

th to meet us. She was so strange a figure, with some sort of purple wrapper on, and her big, flushed face smiling out of it, that I might, if I had been alone

a fruitless journey on Tuesday, but in a sense you were yourselves the cause of it, since the thought of your coming had e

oke. Then she passed one of them through J

cquaintances of mine, and though you cannot remember me, I have held you in my arms when you

, ma'am,

lso. We elderly people have our privileges, you know. And now you

upon a centre-dish, and a great plateful of smoking muffins which the cross-faced maid had just carried in. You can think that we did justice to all the good things, and Miss Hinton would ever keep pressing us to pass

me, when the table had been cleared.

so many pretty thin

ou think the pr

rosiest cheeks and the tenderest eyes-so daintily dressed, too, that I had never seen anything more perfect. She

he, laughing. "Well, now, walk up to it,

, as 'Peggy,' in The Country Wife, played for her be

ay-actress

ny one else. Why, 'twas but the other day that the Duke of Clarence, who may come to call himself King o

olded across her great body, and her big bl

"I was Miss Polly Hinton of the Haymarket Theat

y-bred folk that we were. To us they were a class apart, to be hinted at rather than named, with the wrath of the Almighty hanging over them like

hink evil of that which you do not understand! I wish you had been in the theatre that very night with Prince Florizel and four Dukes in the boxes, and all the wits and macaronis of London rising at me in

not like to be called a country lad, or to have it supp

a play-house," said he;

I eit

ut two to listen, but you must conceive me to be the Queen of the Peruvians, who is

r it rang and louder as it spoke of wrongs and freedom and the joys of death in a good cause, until it thrilled into my every nerve, and I asked nothing more than to run out of the cottage and to die then and there in the cause of my country. And then in an instant she changed. She was a poor woman now, who had lost her on

in the days when Sally Siddons would turn green at th

wrote i

d the writing of it! But there are some great li

lay no lon

back to them sometimes. It seems to me there is no smell like that of the h

ught of that poor w

s is 'Miss Priscilla Tomboy,' from The Romp. You must conceive that t

her hand up like an ear-trumpet, and her flouncing, bouncing daughter. Her great figure danced about with a wonderful lightness, and she tossed her head and pouted h

would not have you go back to Friar's Oak with long fa

d came out with a bottle and glass

aters," she said, "but this tal

rful thing. He rose from his chair,

t!" s

can still see those black eyes o

to hav

se, d

hat for a moment it entered my head that she was about to drink it off. Then she f

t satisfy you? It's long since an

od and kind for

d it would make you happier if I kept from the brandy, Jim? Well

s that

w or snow, to come up here twice in every week, that I may see you and

as won-as all fights are won if one does but fight long enough-and in the year before my father came back Miss Hinton had become another woman. And it was not her ways only, but herself as well, for from being the person that I have described, she became in one twelve-month as fine a looking lady as there was in the whole country-side. Jim was prouder of it by far than of anything he had had a hand in in his