The King's General Part 4

"Well enough," I answered.

"I never thought to see you become a Grenvile."

"Nor I either."

"The ways of Providence are strange indeed.... You have not met my husband."

I bowed to the stranger at her side, a big, bluff, hearty man, a good deal older than herself. So this was the Antony Denys who had caused poor Kit so much anguish before he died. Maybe it was his weight that had won her.

"Where do we ride?" she asked, turning from me to Richard.

"In the open country, towards the sh.o.r.e," he answered.

She glanced at the falcon on his wrist. "A red hawk," she said, one eyebrow lifted, "not in her full plumage. Do you think to make anything of her?"

"She has taken kite and bustard, and I propose to put her to a heron today if we can flush one."

Gartred smiled. "A red hawk at a heron," she mocked. "You will see her check at a magpie and nothing larger."

"Will you match her with your tiercel?"

"My tiercel will destroy her, and the heron afterwards."

"That is a matter of opinion."

They watched each other like duellists about to strike, and I remembered how Richard had told me they had fought with each other from the cradle. I had my first shadow of misgiving that the day would turn in some way to disaster. For a moment I wondered whether I would plead fatigue and stay behind. I rode for pleasure, not for slaughter, and hawking was never my favourite pastime.

Gartred must have observed my hesitation, for she laughed and said, "Your bride loses her courage. The pace will be too strong for her."

"What?" said Richard, his face falling. "You are coming, aren't you?"

"Why, yes," I said swiftly. "I will see you kill your heron."

We rode out to the open country, with the wind blowing in our faces, and the sound of the Atlantic coming to us as the long surf rollers spilt themselves with a roar onto the sh.o.r.e far below.

At first the sport was poor, for no quarry larger than a woodc.o.c.k was flushed, and to this was flown the goshawks, who clutch their prey between their claws and do not kill outright like the large-winged peregrines.

Richard's falcon and Gartred's tiercel were still hooded and not slipped, for we were not yet come upon the herons' feeding ground.

My little mare pawed restlessly at the ground, for up to the present we had had no run, and the pace was slow. Hard by a little copse the falconers flushed three magpies, and a cast of goshawks were flown at them, but the cunning magpies, making up for the lack of wing power by s.h.i.+ftiness, scuttled from hedge to hedge, and after some twenty minutes or so of hovering by the hawks, and shouting and driving by the falconers, only one magpie was taken.

"Come, this is poor indeed," said Gartred scornfully. "Can we find no better quarry, and so let fly the falcons?"

Richard shaded his eyes from the sun and looked towards the west. A long strip of moorland lay before us, rough and uneven, and at the far end of it a narrow, soggy marsh, where the duck would fly to feed in stormy weather, and at all seasons of the year, so Richard told me, the sea birds came, curlews, and gulls, and herons.

There was no bird as yet on pa.s.sage through the sky, save a small lark high above our heads, and the marsh, where the herons might be found, was still two miles away.

"I'll match my horse to yours, and my red hawk to your tiercel," said Richard suddenly, and even as he spoke he let fly the hood of his falcon and slipped her, putting spurs to his horse upon the gesture. Within ten seconds Gartred had followed suit, her grey-winged peregrine soaring into the sun, and she and Richard were galloping across the moors towards the marsh, with the two hawks like black specks in the sky above them. My mare, excited by the clattering hoofs of her companions, took charge of me, nigh pulling my arms out of their sockets, and she raced like a mad thing in pursuit of the horses ahead of us, the yelping of the dogs and the cries of the falconers whipping her speed. My last ride... The sun in my eyes, the wind in my face, the movement of the mare beneath me, the thunder of her hoofs, the scent of the golden gorse, the sound of the sea... Unforgettable, unforgotten, deep in my soul for all time .I could see Richard and Gartred racing neck to neck, flinging insults at each other as they rode, and in the sky the male and female falcons pitched and hovered, when suddenly away from the marsh ahead of us rose a heron, his great grey wings unfolding, his legs trailing. I heard a shout from Richard, and an answering cry from Gartred, and in an instant it seemed the hawks had seen their quarry, for they both began to circle above the heron, climbing higher and still higher, swinging out in rings until they were like black dots against the sun. The watchful heron, rising, too, but in a narrower circle, turned down-wind, his queer ungainly body strangely light and supple, and like a flash the first hawk dived to him--whether it was Richard's young falcon or Gartred's tiercel I could not tell--and missed the heron by a hair's breadth. At once, recovering himself, he began to soar again, in ever higher circles, to recover his lost pitch, and the second hawk swooped, missing in like manner.

I tried to rein in my mare but could not stop her, and now Gartred and Richard had turned eastward, too, following the course of the heron, and we were galloping three abreast, the ground ever rising towards a circle of stones in the midst of the moor.

"Beware the chasm," shouted Richard in my ear, pointing with his whip, but he was past me like the wind and I could not call to him.

The heron was now direct above my head, and the falcon lost to view, and I heard Gartred shout in triumph, "They bind--they bind--my tiercel has her," and I saw silhouetted against the sun one of the falcons locked against the heron and the two come swinging down to earth not twenty yards ahead.

I tried to swerve, but the mare had the mastery, and I shouted to Gartred as she pa.s.sed me, "Which way the chasm?" but she did not answer me. On we flew towards the circle of stones, the sun blinding my eyes, and out of the darkening sky fell the dying heron and the blood-bespattered falcon, straight into the yawning crevice that opened out before me. I heard Richard shout and a thousand voices singing in my ears as I fell.

It was thus, then, that I, Honor Harris of Lanrest, became a cripple, losing all power in my legs from that day forward until this day on which I write, so that for some twenty-five years now I have been upon my back, or upright in a chair, never walking more or feeling the ground beneath my feet. If anyone, therefore, thinks that a cripple makes an indifferent heroine to a tale, now is the time to close these pages and desist from reading. For you will never see me wed to the man I love, nor become the mother of his children. But you will learn how that love never faltered, for all its strange vicissitudes, becoming to both of us, in later years, more deep and tender than if we had been wed, and you will learn also how, for all my helplessness, I took the leading part in the drama that unfolded, my very immobility sharpening my senses, quickening my perception, and chance itself forcing me to my role of judge and witness. The play goes on then--what you have just read is but the prologue.

6.

It is not my purpose to survey, in these after years, the suffering, bodily and mental, that I underwent during those early months when my life seemed finished. They would make poor reading. And I myself have no inclination to drag from the depths of my being a bitterness that is best forgotten. It is enough to say that they feared at first for my brain, and I lived for many weeks in a state of darkness. As little by little clarity returned and I was able to understand the full significance of my physical state, I asked for Richard; and I learnt that after having waited in vain for some sign from me, some thread of hope from the doctors that I might recover, he had been persuaded by his brother Bevil to rejoin his regiment. This was for the best. It was impossible for him to remain inactive. The a.s.sa.s.sination at Portsmouth of his friend the Duke of Buckingham was an added horror, and he set sail for France with the rest of the expedition in that final halfhearted attack on La Roch.e.l.le. By the time he returned I was home again at Lanrest and had sufficient strength of will to make my decision for the future. This was never to see Richard again. I wrote him first a letter, which he disregarded, riding down from London expressly to see me. I would not see him. He endeavoured to force his way into my room, but my brothers barred the way. It was only when the doctors told him that his presence could but injure me further that he realised the finality of all bonds between us. He rode away without a word. I received from him one last letter, wild, bitter, reproachful--then silence.

In November of that year he married Lady Howard of Fitzford, a rich widow, three times wed already, and four years older than himself. The news came to me indirectly, an incautious word let slip from Matty and at once confusedly covered, and I asked my mother the truth. She had wished to hide it from me, fearing a relapse, and I think my calm acceptance of the fact baffled her understanding.

It was hard for her, and for the rest of them, to realise that I looked upon myself now as a different being. The Honor that was had died as surely as the heron had that afternoon in May, when the falcon slew him.

That she would live forever in her lover's heart was possible, no doubt, and a lovely fantasy, but the Richard that I knew and loved was made of flesh and blood; he had to endure, even as I had.

I remember smiling as I lay upon my bed, to think that after all he had found his heiress, and such a notorious one at that .I only hoped that her experience would make him happy, and her wealth ensure him some security.

Meanwhile, I had to school myself to a new way of living and a day-by-day immobility. The mind must atone for the body's helplessness. Percy returned from Oxford about this time, bringing his books of learning, and with his aid I set myself the task of learning Greek and Latin. He made an indifferent though a kindly tutor, and I had not the heart to keep him long from his dogs and his horses, but at least he set me on the road to reading, and I made good progress.

My family were all most good and tender. My sisters and their children, tearful and strung with pity as they were at first, soon became easy in my presence, when I laughed and chatted with them, and little by little I--the hitherto spoilt darling-- became the guide and mediator in their affairs, and their problems would be brought to me to solve. I am speaking now of years and not of months, for all this did not happen in a day, Matty, my little maid, became from the first moment my untiring slave and bondswoman. It was she who learnt to read the signs of fatigue about my eyes and would hustle my visitors from my room. It was she who attended to my wants, to my feeding and my was.h.i.+ng, though after some little while I learnt to do this for myself; and after three years, I think it was, my back had so far strengthened that I was able to sit upright and move my body.

I was helpless, though, in my legs, and during the autumn and the winter months, when the damp settled in the walls of the house, I would feel it also in my bones, causing me great pain at times, and then I would be hard put to it to keep to the standard of behaviour I had set myself. Self-pity, that most insidious of poisons, would filter into my veins and the black devils fill my mind, and then it was that Matty would stand like a sentinel at the door and bar the way to all intruders. Poor Matty, I cursed her often enough when the dark moods had me in thrall, but she bore with me unflinching.

It was Robin, my dear, good Robin and most constant companion, who first had the thought of making me my chair, and this chair that was to propel me from room to room became his pet invention. He took some months in the designing of it, and when it was built and I was carried to it and could sit up straight and move the rolling wheels without a.s.sistance, his joy, I think, was even greater than my own, It made all the difference to my daily life, and in that summer I could even venture to the garden and propel myself a little distance, up and down before the house, winning some measure of independence.

In '32 we had another wedding in the family. My sister Mary, whom we had long teased for her devoutness and gentle, sober ways, accepted the offer of Jonathan Rashleigh of Menabilly, who had lost his first wife in childbed the year before and was left with a growing family upon his hands. It was a most suitable match in all respects, Jonathan being then some forty years of age and Mary thirty-two. She was married from Lanrest, and with their father to the wedding came his three children, Alice, Elizabeth, and John, whom later I was to come to know so well, but even now--as shy and diffident children--they won my affection.

To the wedding also came Bevil Grenvile, close friend to Jonathan as he was to all of us, and it was when the celebrating was over, and Mary departed to her new home the other side of Fowey, that I had a chance to speak with him alone. We spoke for a few moments about his own children and his life at Stowe, and then I asked him, not without some tremulation, for all my calm a.s.surance, how Richard did.

For a moment he did not answer, and, glancing at him, I saw his brow was troubled.

"I had not wished to speak of it," he said at length, "but since you ask me--all has gone very ill with him, Honor, ever since his marriage."

Some devil of satisfaction rose in my breast, which I could not crush, and: "How so?" I asked. "Has he not a son?"

For I had heard that a boy was born to them a year or so before, on May I6 to be I exact, which date, ironically enough, was the same as that on which I had been crippled.

A new life for the one that is wasted, I had thought at the time, when I was told of it, and like a spoilt child that has learnt no wisdom after all, I remember crying all night upon my pillow, thinking of the boy who, but for mischance and the workings of destiny, might have been mine. That was a day, if I recollect aright, when Matty kept guard at my door, and I made picture after picture in my mind of Richard's wife propped upon pillows with a baby in her arms, and Richard smiling beside her. The fantasy was one which, for all my disciplined indifference, I found most d.a.m.nable.

But to return to Bevil.

"Yes," he answered, "it is true he has a son, and a daughter, too, but whether Richard sees them or not I cannot say. The truth is he has quarrelled with his wife, treated her in a barbarous fas.h.i.+on, even laid violent hands upon her, so she says, and she is now pet.i.tioning for a divorce against him. Furthermore, he slandered the Earl of Suffolk, his wife's kinsman, who brought an action against him in the Star Chamber and won the case, and Richard, refusing to pay the fine--and in truth he could not, possessing not a penny--is likely to be cast into the Fleet Prison for debt at any moment."

Oh G.o.d, I thought, what a contrast to the life we would have made together. Or was I wrong, and was this symbolic of what might have been?

"He was always violent-natured, even as a lad," continued Bevil. "You knew so little of him, Honor; alas, three months of happy wooing is no time in which to judge a man."

I could not answer this, for reason was on his side. But I thought of the spring days, lost to me forever, and the apple blossoms in the orchard. No maid could have had more tender or more intuitive a lover.

"How was Richard violent?" I asked. "Irresponsible and wild, perhaps, but nothing worse. His wife must have provoked him."

"As to that, I know nothing," answered Bevil. "But I can well believe it. She is a woman of some malice and of doubtful morals. She was a close friend to Gartred-- perhaps you did not know--and it was when she was visiting at Orley Court that the match was made between them. Richard--as no one knows better than yourself-- could not have been his best self at that time."

I said nothing, feeling behind Bevil's gentle manner some faint reproach, unconscious though it was.

"The truth is," said Bevil, "that Richard married Mary Howard for her money, but, once wed, found he had no control over her purse or her property, the whole being in the power of trustees who act solely in her interest."

"Then he is no whit better off than he was before?" I asked.

"Rather worse, if anything," replied Bevil. "For the Star Chamber will not release him from his debt for slander, and I have too many claims upon me at this time to help him either."

It was a sorry picture that he painted, and though to my jealous fancy more preferable than the idyllic scene of family bliss that I had in imagination conjured, it was no consolation to learn of his distress. That Richard should ill-use his wife because he could not trifle with her property was an ugly fact to face, but, having some inkling of his worser self, I guessed this to be true. He had married her without love and in much bitterness of heart, and she, suspecting his motive, had taken care to disappoint him. What a rock of mutual trust on which to build a lasting union I I held to my resolve, though, and sent him no word of sympathy or understanding. Nor was it my own pride and self-pity that kept me from it, but a firm belief that such a course was wisest. He must lead his own life, in which I had no further part.

He remained, we heard later, for many months in prison, and then in the autumn of the following year he left England for the continent, where he saw service with the King of Sweden.

How much I thought of him and yearned for him, during those intervening years, does not matter to this story. I was weakest during the long watches of the night, when my body pained me. During the day I drilled my feelings to obedience, and what with my progress in my studies--I was by way of becoming a fair Greek scholar--and my interest in the lives of my brothers and sisters, the days and the seasons pa.s.sed with some fair measure of content.

Time heals all wounds, say the complacent, but I think it is not so much time that does it, but determination of the spirit. And the spirit can often turn to devil in the darkness.

Five, ten, fifteen years; a large slice out of a woman's life, and a man's too, forthat matter. We change from the awakening questing creatures we were once, afire with wonder, and expectancy, and doubt, to persons of opinion and authority, our habits formed, our characters moulded in a pattern.

I was a maid, and a rebellious, disorderly one at that, when I was first crippled; but in the year of '42, when the war that was to alter all our lives broke forth, I was a woman of some two and thirty years, the "good aunt Honor" to my numerous nephews and nieces, and a figure of some importance to the family at large.

A person who is forever chair-bound or bedridden can become a tyrant if she so desires, and though I never sought to play the despot, I came to be, after my mother died, the one who made decisions, whose authority was asked on all occasions, and in some strange fas.h.i.+on it seemed that a legendary quality was wove about my personality, as though my physical helplessness must give me greater wisdom.

I accepted the homage with my tongue in my cheek but was careful not to destroy the fond illusion. The young people liked me, I think, because they knew me to be a rebel still, and when there was strife within the family I was sure to take their part.

Cynical on the surface, I was an incurable romantic underneath, and if there were messages to be given, or meetings to arrange, or secrets to be whispered, my chamber at Lanrest would become try sting place, rendezvous, and confessional in turn.

Mary's stepchildren, the Rashleighs, were my constant visitors, and I found myself involved in many a youthful squabble, defending their escapades with a ready tongue, and soon acting go-between to their love affairs. Jonathan, my brother-in-law, was a good, just man, but stern; a firm believer in the settled marriage as against the impulsive prompting of the heart.

No doubt he was right, but there was something distasteful to my mind in the bargaining between parents and the counting of every farthing, so that when Alice, his eldest daughter, turned thin and pale for languis.h.i.+ng after that young rake Peter Courtney--the parents disputing for months whether they should wed or no--I had them both to Lanrest and bade them be happy while the chance was theirs, and no one was a whit the wiser.

They married in due course, and although it ended in separation (for this I blame the war), at least they had some early happiness together, for which I hold myself responsible.

My G.o.dchild Joan was another of my victims. She was, it may be remembered, the child of my sister Cecilia, and some ten years my junior. When John Rashleigh, Mary's stepson, came down from Oxford to visit us, he found Joan at my bedside, and I soon guessed which way the wind was blowing. I had half a thought of sending them to the apple tree, but some inner sentimentality forbade me, and I suggested the bluebell wood instead. They were betrothed within a week and married before the bluebells had faded, and not even Jonathan Rashleigh could find fault with the marriage settlement.

But the war years were upon us before we were aware, and Jonathan, like all the county gentlemen, my brothers included, had more anxious problems put before him.

Trouble had been brewing for a long while now, and we in Cornwall were much divided in opinion, some holding that His Majesty was justified in pa.s.sing what laws he pleased (though one and all grumbled at the taxes), and others holding to it that Parliament was right in opposing any measure that smacked of despotism. How often I heard my brothers argue the point with Jack Trelawney, Ra.n.a.ld Mohun, d.i.c.k Buller, and other of our neighbours--my brothers holding firmly for the King, and Jo already in a position of authority, as his business was to superintend the defences of the coast--and as the months pa.s.sed tempers became shorter and friends.h.i.+ps grew colder, an unpleasing spirit of distrust walking abroad.

Civil war was talked of openly, and each gentleman in the county began to look to his weapons, his servants, and his horses, so that he could make some contribution to the cause he favoured when the moment came. The women, too, were not idle, many--like Cecilia at Maddercombe--tearing strips of bed linen into bandages and packing their storerooms with preserves for fear of siege. Arguments were fiercer then, I do believe, than later when the fighting was amongst us. Friends who had supped with us the week before became of a sudden suspect, and long-forgotten scandals were brought forth to blacken their names, merely because of the present opposition to their views.

The whole business made me sick at heart, and this whipping up of tempers between neighbours who for generations had lived at peace seemed a policy of the devil. I hated to hear Robin, my dearly loved brother with his tenderness for dogs and horses, slander d.i.c.k Buller for upholding Parliament, vowing he took bribes and made spies of his own servants, when d.i.c.k and he had gone hawking together not six months before. While Rob Bennett, another of our neighbours and a friend of Buller's, began to spread d.a.m.ning rumours in return against my brother-in-law Jonathan Rashleigh, saying Jonathan's father and elder brother, who had died very suddenly within a week of each other many years before, during the smallpox scourge, had not succ.u.mbed to the disease at all but had been poisoned. These tales showed how in a few months we had changed from neighbours into wolves at one another's throats.

At the first open rupture between His Majesty and Parliament in '42, my brothers Jo and Robin and most of our friends, including Jonathan Rashleigh, his son-in-law Peter Courtney, the Trelawneys, the Arundells, and of course Bevil Grenvile, declared for the King. There was an end at once to family life and any settled way of living. Robin went off to York to join His Majesty's Army, taking Peter Courtney with him, and they were both given command of a company almost immediately.

Peter, showing much dash and courage in his first action, was knighted on the field.

My brother Jo and my brother-in-law Jonathan went about the county raising money, troops, and ammunition for the royal cause, the first no easy matter, Cornwall being a poor county at the best of times, and lately the taxes had well-nigh broken us; but many families, with little ready money to spare, gave their plate to be melted down to silver, a loyal if wasteful gesture which I had many qualms about before following it myself, but in the end was obliged to do so, as Jonathan Rashleigh was collector for the district. My att.i.tude to the war was somewhat cynical, holding no belief in great causes; and, living alone now at Lanrest with only Matty and the servants to tend me, I felt myself curiously detached.

The successes of the first year did not go to my head, as they did to the rest of my family, for I could not believe, which they were inclined to do, that the Parliament would give way so easily. For they had many powerful men at their command, and much money--all the rich merchants of London being strongly in their favour-- besides which I had an uneasy suspicion, which I kept to myself, that their army was incomparably the better of the two. G.o.d knows our leaders wanted nothing in courage, but they lacked experience; equipment, too, was poor, and discipline non-existent in the ranks. By the autumn the war was getting rather too close for comfort, and the two armies were ranged east and west along the Tamar. I had an uneasy Christmas, and in the third week of January I learnt that the worst had happened and the enemy had crossed the Tamar into Cornwall. I was at breakfast when the news was brought us, and by none other than Peter Courtney, who had ridden hot-foot from Bodmin to warn me that the opposing army was even now on the road to Liskeard, he with his regiment, under the command of Sir Ralph Hopton, being drawn up to oppose them, and Hopton at the moment holding a council of war at Boconnoc, only a few miles distant.

"With any luck," he told us, "the fighting will not touch you here at Lanrest, but will be between Liskeard and Lostwithiel. If we can break them now and drive them out of Cornwall the war will be as good as won."

He looked handsome, flushed and excited, his dark curls falling about his face.

"I have no time to go to Menabilly," he told me. "Should I fall in battle, will you tell Alice that I love her well?"

He was gone like a flash, and I and Matty, with the two elderly menservants and three lads, all that were left to us, were alone, unarmed and unprepared. There was nothing to do but get the cattle and the sheep in from pasture and secure them in the farmstead, and likewise bolt and bar ourselves within the house. Then we waited, all gathered round the fireside in my chamber upstairs, and once or twice, opening the cas.e.m.e.nt, we thought we heard the sound of cannon shot, dull and intermittent, sounding strangely distant in the cold clear air of January. Somewhere about three in the afternoon one of the farm lads came running to the house and hammered loud upon the entrance door.

"The enemy are routed," he called excitedly. "The whole pack of them scattering like whipped dogs along the road to Liskeard. There's been a great battle fought today on Braddock Down."

More stragglers appeared, who had taken refuge in the hedges, and one and all told the same story, that the King's men had won a victory, fighting like furies and taking nigh a thousand prisoners.

Knowing that rumour was a lying jade, I bade the household bide awhile and keep the doors fast until the story should be probed, but before nightfall we knew the victory was certain, for Robin himself came riding home to cheer us, covered in dust, with a bloodstained bandage on his arm, and with him the Trelawney brothers and Ra.n.a.ld Mohun. They were all of them laughing and triumphant, for the two Parliament divisions had fled in dire disorder straight for Saltash and would never, said Jack Trelawney, show their faces more this side of Tamar.

"And this fellow," he said, clapping Robin on the shoulder, "rode into battle with a hawk on his wrist, which he let fly at Ruthin's musketeers, and by G.o.d, the bird so startled them that the lot of them shot wide and started taking to their legs before they'd spent their powder."

"It was a wager I had with Peter," smiled Robin, "which, if I lost, I'd forfeit my spurs and be G.o.dfather to his next baby."

They rocked with laughter, caring not a whit for the spilt blood and the torn bodies they had trampled, and they sat down, all of them, and drank great jugs of ale, wiping the sweat from their foreheads and discussing every move of the battle they had won, like gamesters after a c.o.c.kfight.

Bevil Grenvile had been the hero of the day in this, his first engagement, and they described to us how he led the Cornish foot down one hill and up another in so fierce a charge that the enemy could not withstand them.

"You should have seen him, Honor," said Robin, "with his servants and his tenants drawn up in solemn prayer before him, his sword in his hand, his dear, honest face lifted to the sky, and they all clad in the blue-and-silver livery, as if it were high holiday. And down the hill they followed him, shouting, 'A Grenvile, a Grenvile,' with his servant Tony Paine waving his standard with the griffin's head upon it. My G.o.d, I tell you, it made me proud to be a Cornishman."

"It's in his blood,"said Jack Trelawney. "Here's Bevil been a country squire for all his life, and you put a weapon in his hand and he turns tiger. The Grenviles are all alike at heart."

"I wish to heaven," said Ra.n.a.ld Mohun, "that Richard Grenvile would return from slaughtering the savages in Ireland and come and join his brother."

There was a moment's awkward silence, while some of them remembered the past and recollected my presence in the room, and then Robin rose to his feet and said they must be riding back to Liskeard. Thus, in southeast Cornwall, war touched us for a brief s.p.a.ce in '43 and so departed, and many of us who had not even smelt the battle talked very big of what we had heard and seen, while those who had taken part in it, like Robin, boasted that the summer would see the rebels in Parliament laying down their arms forever.

Alas, his optimism was foolish and ill judged. Victories we had indeed that year, throughout the West, as far as Bristol, with our own Cornishmen covering themselves with glory, but we lost, in that first summer, the flower of our Cornish manhood.

Sydney G.o.dolphin, Jack Trevannion, Nick Slanning, Nick Kendall, one by one their faces come back to me as I review the past, and I remember the sinking feeling in the heart with which I would take up the list of the fallen that would be brought to me from Liskeard.

All of them were men of n.o.ble conduct and high principle, whom we could ill spare in the county and whose loss would make its mark upon the Army. The worse tragedy of the year, or so it seemed to us, was when Bevil Grenvile was slain at Lansdowne.