'Yes, I'm a goin' home, I am,' he said.

'A very fortunate circumstance for me!' said I.  'At this rate we
shall see a good deal of each other, going the same way; and, now I
come to think of it, why should you not give me a cast?  There is
room beside you on the bench.'

With a sudden snatch, he carried the cart two yards into the
roadway.  The horses plunged and came to a stop.  'No, you don't!'
he said, menacing me with the whip.  'None o' that with me.'

'None of what?' said I.  'I asked you for a lift, but I have no
idea of taking one by force.'

'Well, I've got to take care of the cart and 'orses, I have,' says
he.  'I don't take up with no runagate vagabones, you see, else.'

'I ought to thank you for your touching confidence,' said I,
approaching carelessly nearer as I spoke.  'But I admit the road is
solitary hereabouts, and no doubt an accident soon happens.  Little
fear of anything of the kind with you!  I like you for it, like
your prudence, like that pastoral shyness of disposition.  But why
not put it out of my power to hurt?  Why not open the door and
bestow me here in the box, or whatever you please to call it?' And
I laid my hand demonstratively on the body of the cart.

He had been timorous before; but at this, he seemed to lose the
power of speech a moment, and stared at me in a perfect enthusiasm
of fear.

'Why not?' I continued.  'The idea is good.  I should be safe in
there if I were the monster Williams himself.  The great thing is
to have me under lock and key.  For it does lock; it is locked
now,' said I, trying the door.  'A propos, what have you for a
cargo?  It must be precious.'

He found not a word to answer.

Rat-tat-tat, I went upon the door like a well-drilled footman.

'Any one at home?' I said, and stooped to listen.

There came out of the interior a stifled sneeze, the first of an
uncontrollable paroxysm; another followed immediately on the heels
of it; and then the driver turned with an oath, laid the lash upon
the horses with so much energy that they found their heels again,
and the whole equipage fled down the road at a gallop.

At the first sound of the sneeze, I had started back like a man
shot.  The next moment, a great light broke on my mind, and I
understood.  Here was the secret of Fenn's trade:  this was how he
forwarded the escape of prisoners, hawking them by night about the
country in his covered cart.  There had been Frenchmen close to me;
he who had just sneezed was my countryman, my comrade, perhaps
already my friend!  I took to my heels in pursuit.  'Hold hard!' I
shouted.  'Stop!  It's all right!  Stop!'  But the driver only
turned a white face on me for a moment, and redoubled his efforts,
bending forward, plying his whip and crying to his horses; these
lay themselves down to the gallop and beat the highway with flying
hoofs; and the cart bounded after them among the ruts and fled in a
halo of rain and spattering mud.  But a minute since, and it had
been trundling along like a lame cow; and now it was off as though
drawn by Apollo's coursers.  There is no telling what a man can do,
until you frighten him!

It was as much as I could do myself, though I ran valiantly, to
maintain my distance; and that (since I knew my countrymen so near)
was become a chief point with me.  A hundred yards farther on the
cart whipped out of the high-road into a lane embowered with
leafless trees, and became lost to view.  When I saw it next, the
driver had increased his advantage considerably, but all danger was
at an end, and the horses had again declined into a hobbling walk.
Persuaded that they could not escape me, I took my time, and
recovered my breath as I followed them.

Presently the lane twisted at right angles, and showed me a gate
and the beginning of a gravel sweep; and a little after, as I
continued to advance, a red brick house about seventy years old, in
a fine style of architecture, and presenting a front of many
windows to a lawn and garden.  Behind, I could see outhouses and
the peaked roofs of stacks; and I judged that a manor-house had in
some way declined to be the residence of a tenant-farmer, careless
alike of appearances and substantial comfort.  The marks of neglect
were visible on every side, in flower-bushes straggling beyond the
borders, in the ill-kept turf, and in the broken windows that were
incongruously patched with paper or stuffed with rags.  A thicket
of trees, mostly evergreen, fenced the place round and secluded it
from the eyes of prying neighbours.  As I came in view of it, on
that melancholy winter's morning, in the deluge of the falling
rain, and with the wind that now rose in occasional gusts and
hooted over the old chimneys, the cart had already drawn up at the
front-door steps, and the driver was already in earnest discourse
with Mr. Burchell Fenn.  He was standing with his hands behind his
back--a man of a gross, misbegotten face and body, dewlapped like a
bull and red as a harvest moon; and in his jockey cap, blue coat
and top boots, he had much the air of a good, solid tenant-farmer.

The pair continued to speak as I came up the approach, but received
me at last in a sort of goggling silence.  I had my hat in my hand.

'I have the pleasure of addressing Mr. Burchell Fenn?' said I.

'The same, sir,' replied Mr. Fenn, taking off his jockey cap in
answer to my civility, but with the distant look and the tardy
movements of one who continues to think of something else.  'And
who may you be?' he asked.

'I shall tell you afterwards,' said I.  'Suffice it, in the
meantime, that I come on business.'

He seemed to digest my answer laboriously, his mouth gaping, his
little eyes never straying from my face.

'Suffer me to point out to you, sir,' I resumed, 'that this is a
devil of a wet morning; and that the chimney corner, and possibly a
glass of something hot, are clearly indicated.'

Indeed, the rain was now grown to be a deluge; the gutters of the
house roared; the air was filled with the continuous, strident
crash.  The stolidity of his face, on which the rain streamed, was
far from reassuring me.  On the contrary, I was aware of a distinct
qualm of apprehension, which was not at all lessened by a view of
the driver, craning from his perch to observe us with the
expression of a fascinated bird.  So we stood silent, when the
prisoner again began to sneeze from the body of the cart; and at
the sound, prompt as a transformation, the driver had whipped up
his horses and was shambling off round the corner of the house, and
Mr. Fenn, recovering his wits with a gulp, had turned to the door
behind him.

'Come in, come in, sir,' he said.  'I beg your pardon, sir; the
lock goes a trifle hard.'

Indeed, it took him a surprising time to open the door, which was
not only locked on the outside, but the lock seemed rebellious from
disuse; and when at last he stood back and motioned me to enter
before him, I was greeted on the threshold by that peculiar and
convincing sound of the rain echoing over empty chambers.  The
entrance-hall, in which I now found myself, was of a good size and
good proportions; potted plants occupied the corners; the paved
floor was soiled with muddy footprints and encumbered with straw;
on a mahogany hall-table, which was the only furniture, a candle
had been stuck and suffered to burn down--plainly a long while ago,
for the gutterings were green with mould.  My mind, under these new
impressions, worked with unusual vivacity.  I was here shut off
with Fenn and his hireling in a deserted house, a neglected garden,
and a wood of evergreens:  the most eligible theatre for a deed of
darkness.  There came to me a vision of two flagstones raised in
the hall-floor, and the driver putting in the rainy afternoon over
my grave, and the prospect displeased me extremely.  I felt I had
carried my pleasantry as far as was safe; I must lose no time in
declaring my true character, and I was even choosing the words in
which I was to begin, when the hall-door was slammed-to behind me
with a bang, and I turned, dropping my stick as I did so, in time--
and not any more than time--to save my life.

The surprise of the onslaught and the huge weight of my assailant
gave him the advantage.  He had a pistol in his right hand of a
portentous size, which it took me all my strength to keep
deflected.  With his left arm he strained me to his bosom, so that
I thought I must be crushed or stifled.  His mouth was open, his
face crimson, and he panted aloud with hard animal sounds.  The
affair was as brief as it was hot and sudden.  The potations which
had swelled and bloated his carcase had already weakened the
springs of energy.  One more huge effort, that came near to
overpower me, and in which the pistol happily exploded, and I felt
his grasp slacken and weakness come on his joints; his legs
succumbed under his weight, and he grovelled on his knees on the
stone floor.  'Spare me!' he gasped.

I had not only been abominably frightened; I was shocked besides:
my delicacy was in arms, like a lady to whom violence should have
been offered by a similar monster.  I plucked myself from his
horrid contact, I snatched the pistol--even discharged, it was a
formidable weapon--and menaced him with the butt.  'Spare you!' I
cried, 'you beast!'

His voice died in his fat inwards, but his lips still vehemently
framed the same words of supplication.  My anger began to pass off,
but not all my repugnance; the picture he made revolted me, and I
was impatient to be spared the further view of it.

'Here,' said I, 'stop this performance:  it sickens me.  I am not
going to kill you, do you hear?  I have need of you.'

A look of relief, that I could almost have called beautiful, dawned
on his countenance.  'Anything--anything you wish,' said he.

Anything is a big word, and his use of it brought me for a moment
to a stand.  'Why, what do you mean?' I asked.  'Do you mean that
you will blow the gaff on the whole business?'

He answered me Yes with eager asseverations.

'I know Monsieur de Saint-Yves is in it; it was through his papers
we traced you,' I said.  'Do you consent to make a clean breast of
the others?'

'I do--I will!' he cried.  'The 'ole crew of 'em; there's good
names among 'em.  I'll be king's evidence.'

'So that all shall hang except yourself?  You damned villain!' I
broke out.  'Understand at once that I am no spy or thief-taker.  I
am a kinsman of Monsieur de St. Yves--here in his interest.  Upon
my word, you have put your foot in it prettily, Mr. Burchell Fenn!
Come, stand up; don't grovel there.  Stand up, you lump of
iniquity!'

He scrambled to his feet.  He was utterly unmanned, or it might
have gone hard with me yet; and I considered him hesitating, as,
indeed, there was cause.  The man was a double-dyed traitor:  he
had tried to murder me, and I had first baffled his endeavours and
then exposed and insulted him.  Was it wise to place myself any
longer at his mercy?  With his help I should doubtless travel more
quickly; doubtless also far less agreeably; and there was
everything to show that it would be at a greater risk.  In short, I
should have washed my hands of him on the spot, but for the
temptation of the French officers, whom I knew to be so near, and
for whose society I felt so great and natural an impatience.  If I
was to see anything of my countrymen, it was clear I had first of
all to make my peace with Mr. Fenn; and that was no easy matter.
To make friends with any one implies concessions on both sides; and
what could I concede?  What could I say of him, but that he had
proved himself a villain and a fool, and the worse man?

'Well,' said I, 'here has been rather a poor piece of business,
which I dare say you can have no pleasure in calling to mind; and,
to say truth, I would as readily forget it myself.  Suppose we try.
Take back your pistol, which smells very ill; put it in your pocket
or wherever you had it concealed.  There!  Now let us meet for the
first time.--Give you good morning, Mr. Fenn!  I hope you do very
well.  I come on the recommendation of my kinsman, the Vicomte de
St. Yves.'

'Do you mean it?' he cried.  'Do you mean you will pass over our
little scrimmage?'

'Why, certainly!' said I.  'It shows you are a bold fellow, who may
be trusted to forget the business when it comes to the point.
There is nothing against you in the little scrimmage, unless that
your courage is greater than your strength.  You are not so young
as you once were, that is all.'

'And I beg of you, sir, don't betray me to the Vis-count,' he
pleaded.  'I'll not deny but what my 'eart failed me a trifle; but
it was only a word, sir, what anybody might have said in the 'eat
of the moment, and over with it.'

'Certainly,' said I.  'That is quite my own opinion.'

'The way I came to be anxious about the Vis-count,' he continued,
'is that I believe he might be induced to form an 'asty judgment.
And the business, in a pecuniary point of view, is all that I could
ask; only trying, sir--very trying.  It's making an old man of me
before my time.  You might have observed yourself, sir, that I
'aven't got the knees I once 'ad.  The knees and the breathing,
there's where it takes me.  But I'm very sure, sir, I address a
gentleman as would be the last to make trouble between friends.'

'I am sure you do me no more than justice,' said I; 'and I shall
think it quite unnecessary to dwell on any of these passing
circumstances in my report to the Vicomte.'

'Which you do favour him (if you'll excuse me being so bold as to
mention it) exac'ly!' said he.  'I should have known you anywheres.
May I offer you a pot of 'ome-brewed ale, sir?  By your leave!
This way, if you please.  I am 'eartily grateful--'eartily pleased
to be of any service to a gentleman like you, sir, which is related
to the Vis-count, and really a fambly of which you might well be
proud!  Take care of the step, sir.  You have good news of 'is
'ealth, I trust? as well as that of Monseer the Count?'

God forgive me! the horrible fellow was still puffing and panting
with the fury of his assault, and already he had fallen into an
obsequious, wheedling familiarity like that of an old servant,--
already he was flattering me on my family connections!

I followed him through the house into the stable-yard, where I
observed the driver washing the cart in a shed.  He must have heard
the explosion of the pistol.  He could not choose but hear it:  the
thing was shaped like a little blunderbuss, charged to the mouth,
and made a report like a piece of field artillery.  He had heard,
he had paid no attention; and now, as we came forth by the back-
door, he raised for a moment a pale and tell-tale face that was as
direct as a confession.  The rascal had expected to see Fenn come
forth alone; he was waiting to be called on for that part of
sexton, which I had already allotted to him in fancy.

I need not detain the reader very long with any description of my
visit to the back-kitchen; of how we mulled our ale there, and
mulled it very well; nor of how we sat talking, Fenn like an old,
faithful, affectionate dependant, and I--well!  I myself fallen
into a mere admiration of so much impudence, that transcended
words, and had very soon conquered animosity.  I took a fancy to
the man, he was so vast a humbug.  I began to see a kind of beauty
in him, his aplomb was so majestic.  I never knew a rogue to cut so
fat; his villainy was ample, like his belly, and I could scarce
find it in my heart to hold him responsible for either.  He was
good enough to drop into the autobiographical; telling me how the
farm, in spite of the war and the high prices, had proved a
disappointment; how there was 'a sight of cold, wet land as you
come along the 'igh-road'; how the winds and rains and the seasons
had been misdirected, it seemed 'o' purpose'; how Mrs. Fenn had
died--'I lost her coming two year agone; a remarkable fine woman,
my old girl, sir! if you'll excuse me,' he added, with a burst of
humility.  In short, he gave me an opportunity of studying John
Bull, as I may say, stuffed naked--his greed, his usuriousness, his
hypocrisy, his perfidy of the back-stairs, all swelled to the
superlative--such as was well worth the little disarray and fluster
of our passage in the hall.



CHAPTER XIII--I MEET TWO OF MY COUNTRYMEN



As soon as I judged it safe, and that was not before Burchell Fenn
had talked himself back into his breath and a complete good humour,
I proposed he should introduce me to the French officers,
henceforth to become my fellow-passengers.  There were two of them,
it appeared, and my heart beat as I approached the door.  The
specimen of Perfidious Albion whom I had just been studying gave me
the stronger zest for my fellow-countrymen.  I could have embraced
them; I could have wept on their necks.  And all the time I was
going to a disappointment.

It was in a spacious and low room, with an outlook on the court,
that I found them bestowed.  In the good days of that house the
apartment had probably served as a library, for there were traces
of shelves along the wainscot.  Four or five mattresses lay on the
floor in a corner, with a frowsy heap of bedding; near by was a
basin and a cube of soap; a rude kitchen-table and some deal chairs
stood together at the far end; and the room was illuminated by no
less than four windows, and warmed by a little, crazy, sidelong
grate, propped up with bricks in the vent of a hospitable chimney,
in which a pile of coals smoked prodigiously and gave out a few
starveling flames.  An old, frail, white-haired officer sat in one
of the chairs, which he had drawn close to this apology for a fire.
He was wrapped in a camlet cloak, of which the collar was turned
up, his knees touched the bars, his hands were spread in the very
smoke, and yet he shivered for cold.  The second--a big, florid,
fine animal of a man, whose every gesture labelled him the cock of
the walk and the admiration of the ladies--had apparently despaired
of the fire, and now strode up and down, sneezing hard, bitterly
blowing his nose, and proffering a continual stream of bluster,
complaint, and barrack-room oaths.

Fenn showed me in with the brief form of introduction:  'Gentlemen
all, this here's another fare!' and was gone again at once.  The
old man gave me but the one glance out of lack-lustre eyes; and
even as he looked a shiver took him as sharp as a hiccough.  But
the other, who represented to admiration the picture of a Beau in a
Catarrh, stared at me arrogantly.

'And who are you, sir?' he asked.

I made the military salute to my superiors.

'Champdivers, private, Eighth of the Line,' said I.

'Pretty business!' said he.  'And you are going on with us?  Three
in a cart, and a great trolloping private at that!  And who is to
pay for you, my fine fellow?' he inquired.

'If monsieur comes to that,' I answered civilly, 'who paid for
him?'

'Oh, if you choose to play the wit!' said he,--and began to rail at
large upon his destiny, the weather, the cold, the danger and the
expense of the escape, and, above all, the cooking of the accursed
English.  It seemed to annoy him particularly that I should have
joined their party.  'If you knew what you were doing, thirty
thousand millions of pigs! you would keep yourself to yourself!
The horses can't drag the cart; the roads are all ruts and swamps.
No longer ago than last night the Colonel and I had to march half
the way--thunder of God!--half the way to the knees in mud--and I
with this infernal cold--and the danger of detection!  Happily we
met no one:  a desert--a real desert--like the whole abominable
country!  Nothing to eat--no, sir, there is nothing to eat but raw
cow and greens boiled in water--nor to drink but Worcestershire
sauce!  Now I, with my catarrh, I have no appetite; is it not so?
Well, if I were in France, I should have a good soup with a crust
in it, an omelette, a fowl in rice, a partridge in cabbages--things
to tempt me, thunder of God!  But here--day of God!--what a
country!  And cold, too!  They talk about Russia--this is all the
cold I want!  And the people--look at them!  What a race!  Never
any handsome men; never any fine officers!'--and he looked down
complacently for a moment at his waist--'And the women--what
faggots!  No, that is one point clear, I cannot stomach the
English!'

There was something in this man so antipathetic to me, as sent the
mustard into my nose.  I can never bear your bucks and dandies,
even when they are decent-looking and well dressed; and the Major--
for that was his rank--was the image of a flunkey in good luck.
Even to be in agreement with him, or to seem to be so, was more
than I could make out to endure.

'You could scarce be expected to stomach them,' said I civilly,
'after having just digested your parole.'

He whipped round on his heel and turned on me a countenance which I
dare say he imagined to be awful; but another fit of sneezing cut
him off ere he could come the length of speech.

'I have not tried the dish myself,' I took the opportunity to add.
'It is said to be unpalatable.  Did monsieur find it so?'

With surprising vivacity the Colonel woke from his lethargy.  He
was between us ere another word could pass.

'Shame, gentlemen!' he said.  'Is this a time for Frenchmen and
fellow-soldiers to fall out?  We are in the midst of our enemies; a
quarrel, a loud word, may suffice to plunge us back into
irretrievable distress.  Monsieur le Commandant, you have been
gravely offended.  I make it my request, I make it my prayer--if
need be, I give you my orders--that the matter shall stand by until
we come safe to France.  Then, if you please, I will serve you in
any capacity.  And for you, young man, you have shown all the
cruelty and carelessness of youth.  This gentleman is your
superior; he is no longer young'--at which word you are to conceive
the Major's face.  'It is admitted he has broken his parole.  I
know not his reason, and no more do you.  It might be patriotism in
this hour of our country's adversity, it might be humanity,
necessity; you know not what in the least, and you permit yourself
to reflect on his honour.  To break parole may be a subject for
pity and not derision.  I have broken mine--I, a colonel of the
Empire.  And why?  I have been years negotiating my exchange, and
it cannot be managed; those who have influence at the Ministry of
War continually rush in before me, and I have to wait, and my
daughter at home is in a decline.  I am going to see my daughter at
last, and it is my only concern lest I should have delayed too
long.  She is ill, and very ill,--at death's door.  Nothing is left
me but my daughter, my Emperor, and my honour; and I give my
honour, blame me for it who dare!'

At this my heart smote me.

'For God's sake,' I cried, 'think no more of what I have said!  A
parole? what is a parole against life and death and love?  I ask
your pardon; this gentleman's also.  As long as I shall be with
you, you shall not have cause to complain of me again.  I pray God
you will find your daughter alive and restored.'

'That is past praying for,' said the Colonel; and immediately the
brief fire died out of him, and, returning to the hearth, he
relapsed into his former abstraction.

But I was not so easy to compose.  The knowledge of the poor
gentleman's trouble, and the sight of his face, had filled me with
the bitterness of remorse; and I insisted upon shaking hands with
the Major (which he did with a very ill grace), and abounded in
palinodes and apologies.

'After all,' said I, 'who am I to talk?  I am in the luck to be a
private soldier; I have no parole to give or to keep; once I am
over the rampart, I am as free as air.  I beg you to believe that I
regret from my soul the use of these ungenerous expressions.  Allow
me . . . Is there no way in this damned house to attract attention?
Where is this fellow, Fenn?'

I ran to one of the windows and threw it open.  Fenn, who was at
the moment passing below in the court, cast up his arms like one in
despair, called to me to keep back, plunged into the house, and
appeared next moment in the doorway of the chamber.

'Oh, sir!' says he, 'keep away from those there windows.  A body
might see you from the back lane.'

'It is registered,' said I.  'Henceforward I will be a mouse for
precaution and a ghost for invisibility.  But in the meantime, for
God's sake, fetch us a bottle of brandy!  Your room is as damp as
the bottom of a well, and these gentlemen are perishing of cold.'

So soon as I had paid him (for everything, I found, must be paid in
advance), I turned my attention to the fire, and whether because I
threw greater energy into the business, or because the coals were
now warmed and the time ripe, I soon started a blaze that made the
chimney roar again.  The shine of it, in that dark, rainy day,
seemed to reanimate the Colonel like a blink of sun.  With the
outburst of the flames, besides, a draught was established, which
immediately delivered us from the plague of smoke; and by the time
Fenn returned, carrying a bottle under his arm and a single tumbler
in his hand, there was already an air of gaiety in the room that
did the heart good.

I poured out some of the brandy.

'Colonel,' said I, 'I am a young man and a private soldier.  I have
not been long in this room, and already I have shown the petulance
that belongs to the one character and the ill manners that you may
look for in the other.  Have the humanity to pass these slips over,
and honour me so far as to accept this glass.'

'My lad,' says he, waking up and blinking at me with an air of
suspicion, 'are you sure you can afford it?'

I assured him I could.

'I thank you, then:  I am very cold.'  He took the glass out, and a
little colour came in his face.  'I thank you again,' said he.  'It
goes to the heart.'

The Major, when I motioned him to help himself, did so with a good
deal of liberality; continued to do so for the rest of the morning,
now with some sort of apology, now with none at all; and the bottle
began to look foolish before dinner was served.  It was such a meal
as he had himself predicted:  beef, greens, potatoes, mustard in a
teacup, and beer in a brown jug that was all over hounds, horses,
and hunters, with a fox at the fat end and a gigantic John Bull--
for all the world like Fenn--sitting in the midst in a bob-wig and
smoking tobacco.  The beer was a good brew, but not good enough for
the Major; he laced it with brandy--for his cold, he said; and in
this curative design the remainder of the bottle ebbed away.  He
called my attention repeatedly to the circumstance; helped me
pointedly to the dregs, threw the bottle in the air and played
tricks with it; and at last, having exhausted his ingenuity, and
seeing me remain quite blind to every hint, he ordered and paid for
another himself.

As for the Colonel, he ate nothing, sat sunk in a muse, and only
awoke occasionally to a sense of where he was, and what he was
supposed to be doing.  On each of these occasions he showed a
gratitude and kind courtesy that endeared him to me beyond
expression.  'Champdivers, my lad, your health!' he would say.
'The Major and I had a very arduous march last night, and I
positively thought I should have eaten nothing, but your fortunate
idea of the brandy has made quite a new man of me--quite a new
man.'  And he would fall to with a great air of heartiness, cut
himself a mouthful, and, before he had swallowed it, would have
forgotten his dinner, his company, the place where he then was, and
the escape he was engaged on, and become absorbed in the vision of
a sick-room and a dying girl in France.  The pathos of this
continual preoccupation, in a man so old, sick, and over-weary, and
whom I looked upon as a mere bundle of dying bones and death-pains,
put me wholly from my victuals:  it seemed there was an element of
sin, a kind of rude bravado of youth, in the mere relishing of food
at the same table with this tragic father; and though I was well
enough used to the coarse, plain diet of the English, I ate scarce
more than himself.  Dinner was hardly over before he succumbed to a
lethargic sleep; lying on one of the mattresses with his limbs
relaxed, and his breath seemingly suspended--the very image of
dissolution.

This left the Major and myself alone at the table.  You must not
suppose our tete-a-tete was long, but it was a lively period while
it lasted.  He drank like a fish or an Englishman; shouted, beat
the table, roared out songs, quarrelled, made it up again, and at
last tried to throw the dinner-plates through the window, a feat of
which he was at that time quite incapable.  For a party of
fugitives, condemned to the most rigorous discretion, there was
never seen so noisy a carnival; and through it all the Colonel
continued to sleep like a child.  Seeing the Major so well
advanced, and no retreat possible, I made a fair wind of a foul
one, keeping his glass full, pushing him with toasts; and sooner
than I could have dared to hope, he became drowsy and incoherent.
With the wrong-headedness of all such sots, he would not be
persuaded to lie down upon one of the mattresses until I had
stretched myself upon another.  But the comedy was soon over; soon
he slept the sleep of the just, and snored like a military music;
and I might get up again and face (as best I could) the excessive
tedium of the afternoon.

I had passed the night before in a good bed; I was denied the
resource of slumber; and there was nothing open for me but to pace
the apartment, maintain the fire, and brood on my position.  I
compared yesterday and to-day--the safety, comfort, jollity, open-
air exercise and pleasant roadside inns of the one, with the
tedium, anxiety, and discomfort of the other.  I remembered that I
was in the hands of Fenn, who could not be more false--though he
might be more vindictive--than I fancied him.  I looked forward to
nights of pitching in the covered cart, and days of monotony in I
knew not what hiding-places; and my heart failed me, and I was in
two minds whether to slink off ere it was too late, and return to
my former solitary way of travel.  But the Colonel stood in the
path.  I had not seen much of him; but already I judged him a man
of a childlike nature--with that sort of innocence and courtesy
that, I think, is only to be found in old soldiers or old priests--
and broken with years and sorrow.  I could not turn my back on his
distress; could not leave him alone with the selfish trooper who
snored on the next mattress.  'Champdivers, my lad, your health!'
said a voice in my ear, and stopped me--and there are few things I
am more glad of in the retrospect than that it did.

It must have been about four in the afternoon--at least the rain
had taken off, and the sun was setting with some wintry pomp--when
the current of my reflections was effectually changed by the
arrival of two visitors in a gig.  They were farmers of the
neighbourhood, I suppose--big, burly fellows in great-coats and
top-boots, mightily flushed with liquor when they arrived, and,
before they left, inimitably drunk.  They stayed long in the
kitchen with Burchell, drinking, shouting, singing, and keeping it
up; and the sound of their merry minstrelsy kept me a kind of
company.  The night fell, and the shine of the fire brightened and
blinked on the panelled wall.  Our illuminated windows must have
been visible not only from the back lane of which Fenn had spoken,
but from the court where the farmers' gig awaited them.  In the far
end of the firelit room lay my companions, the one silent, the
other clamorously noisy, the images of death and drunkenness.
Little wonder if I were tempted to join in the choruses below, and
sometimes could hardly refrain from laughter, and sometimes, I
believe, from tears--so unmitigated was the tedium, so cruel the
suspense, of this period.

At last, about six at night, I should fancy, the noisy minstrels
appeared in the court, headed by Fenn with a lantern, and knocking
together as they came.  The visitors clambered noisily into the
gig, one of them shook the reins, and they were snatched out of
sight and hearing with a suddenness that partook of the nature of
prodigy.  I am well aware there is a Providence for drunken men,
that holds the reins for them and presides over their troubles;
doubtless he had his work cut out for him with this particular
gigful!  Fenn rescued his toes with an ejaculation from under the
departing wheels, and turned at once with uncertain steps and
devious lantern to the far end of the court.  There, through the
open doors of a coach-house, the shock-headed lad was already to be
seen drawing forth the covered cart.  If I wished any private talk
with our host, it must be now or never.

Accordingly I groped my way downstairs, and came to him as he
looked on at and lighted the harnessing of the horses.

'The hour approaches when we have to part,' said I; 'and I shall be
obliged if you will tell your servant to drop me at the nearest
point for Dunstable.  I am determined to go so far with our
friends, Colonel X and Major Y, but my business is peremptory, and
it takes me to the neighbourhood of Dunstable.'

Orders were given to my satisfaction, with an obsequiousness that
seemed only inflamed by his potations.



CHAPTER XIV--TRAVELS OF THE COVERED CART



My companions were aroused with difficulty:  the Colonel, poor old
gentleman, to a sort of permanent dream, in which you could say of
him only that he was very deaf and anxiously polite; the Major
still maudlin drunk.  We had a dish of tea by the fireside, and
then issued like criminals into the scathing cold of the night.
For the weather had in the meantime changed.  Upon the cessation of
the rain, a strict frost had succeeded.  The moon, being young, was
already near the zenith when we started, glittered everywhere on
sheets of ice, and sparkled in ten thousand icicles.  A more
unpromising night for a journey it was hard to conceive.  But in
the course of the afternoon the horses had been well roughed; and
King (for such was the name of the shock-headed lad) was very
positive that he could drive us without misadventure.  He was as
good as his word; indeed, despite a gawky air, he was simply
invaluable in his present employment, showing marked sagacity in
all that concerned the care of horses, and guiding us by one short
cut after another for days, and without a fault.

The interior of that engine of torture, the covered cart, was
fitted with a bench, on which we took our places; the door was
shut; in a moment, the night closed upon us solid and stifling; and
we felt that we were being driven carefully out of the courtyard.
Careful was the word all night, and it was an alleviation of our
miseries that we did not often enjoy.  In general, as we were
driven the better part of the night and day, often at a pretty
quick pace and always through a labyrinth of the most infamous
country lanes and by-roads, we were so bruised upon the bench, so
dashed against the top and sides of the cart, that we reached the
end of a stage in truly pitiable case, sometimes flung ourselves
down without the formality of eating, made but one sleep of it
until the hour of departure returned, and were only properly
awakened by the first jolt of the renewed journey.  There were
interruptions, at times, that we hailed as alleviations.  At times
the cart was bogged, once it was upset, and we must alight and lend
the driver the assistance of our arms; at times, too (as on the
occasion when I had first encountered it), the horses gave out, and
we had to trail alongside in mud or frost until the first peep of
daylight, or the approach to a hamlet or a high road, bade us
disappear like ghosts into our prison.

The main roads of England are incomparable for excellence, of a
beautiful smoothness, very ingeniously laid down, and so well kept
that in most weathers you could take your dinner off any part of
them without distaste.  On them, to the note of the bugle, the mail
did its sixty miles a day; innumerable chaises whisked after the
bobbing postboys; or some young blood would flit by in a curricle
and tandem, to the vast delight and danger of the lieges.  On them,
the slow-pacing waggons made a music of bells, and all day long the
travellers on horse-back and the travellers on foot (like happy Mr.
St. Ives so little a while before!) kept coming and going, and
baiting and gaping at each other, as though a fair were due, and
they were gathering to it from all England.  No, nowhere in the
world is travel so great a pleasure as in that country.  But
unhappily our one need was to be secret; and all this rapid and
animated picture of the road swept quite apart from us, as we
lumbered up hill and down dale, under hedge and over stone, among
circuitous byways.  Only twice did I receive, as it were, a whiff
of the highway.  The first reached my ears alone.  I might have
been anywhere.  I only knew I was walking in the dark night and
among ruts, when I heard very far off, over the silent country that
surrounded us, the guard's horn wailing its signal to the next
post-house for a change of horses.  It was like the voice of the
day heard in darkness, a voice of the world heard in prison, the
note of a cock crowing in the mid-seas--in short, I cannot tell you
what it was like, you will have to fancy for yourself--but I could
have wept to hear it.  Once we were belated:  the cattle could
hardly crawl, the day was at hand, it was a nipping, rigorous
morning, King was lashing his horses, I was giving an arm to the
old Colonel, and the Major was coughing in our rear.  I must
suppose that King was a thought careless, being nearly in
desperation about his team, and, in spite of the cold morning,
breathing hot with his exertions.  We came, at last, a little
before sunrise to the summit of a hill, and saw the high-road
passing at right angles through an open country of meadows and
hedgerow pollards; and not only the York mail, speeding smoothly at
the gallop of the four horses, but a post-chaise besides, with the
post-boy titupping briskly, and the traveller himself putting his
head out of the window, but whether to breathe the dawn, or the
better to observe the passage of the mail, I do not know.  So that
we enjoyed for an instant a picture of free life on the road, in
its most luxurious forms of despatch and comfort.  And thereafter,
with a poignant feeling of contrast in our hearts, we must mount
again into our wheeled dungeon.

We came to our stages at all sorts of odd hours, and they were in
all kinds of odd places.  I may say at once that my first
experience was my best.  Nowhere again were we so well entertained
as at Burchell Fenn's.  And this, I suppose, was natural, and
indeed inevitable, in so long and secret a journey.  The first
stop, we lay six hours in a barn standing by itself in a poor,
marshy orchard, and packed with hay; to make it more attractive, we
were told it had been the scene of an abominable murder, and was
now haunted.  But the day was beginning to break, and our fatigue
was too extreme for visionary terrors.  The second or third, we
alighted on a barren heath about midnight, built a fire to warm us
under the shelter of some thorns, supped like beggars on bread and
a piece of cold bacon, and slept like gipsies with our feet to the
fire.  In the meanwhile, King was gone with the cart, I know not
where, to get a change of horses, and it was late in the dark
morning when he returned and we were able to resume our journey.
In the middle of another night, we came to a stop by an ancient,
whitewashed cottage of two stories; a privet hedge surrounded it;
the frosty moon shone blankly on the upper windows; but through
those of the kitchen the firelight was seen glinting on the roof
and reflected from the dishes on the wall.  Here, after much
hammering on the door, King managed to arouse an old crone from the
chimney-corner chair, where she had been dozing in the watch; and
we were had in, and entertained with a dish of hot tea.  This old
lady was an aunt of Burchell Fenn's--and an unwilling partner in
his dangerous trade.  Though the house stood solitary, and the hour
was an unlikely one for any passenger upon the road, King and she
conversed in whispers only.  There was something dismal, something
of the sick-room, in this perpetual, guarded sibilation.  The
apprehensions of our hostess insensibly communicated themselves to
every one present.  We ate like mice in a cat's ear; if one of us
jingled a teaspoon, all would start; and when the hour came to take
the road again, we drew a long breath of relief, and climbed to our
places in the covered cart with a positive sense of escape.  The
most of our meals, however, were taken boldly at hedgerow
alehouses, usually at untimely hours of the day, when the clients
were in the field or the farmyard at labour.  I shall have to tell
presently of our last experience of the sort, and how unfortunately
it miscarried; but as that was the signal for my separation from my
fellow-travellers, I must first finish with them.

I had never any occasion to waver in my first judgment of the
Colonel.  The old gentleman seemed to me, and still seems in the
retrospect, the salt of the earth.  I had occasion to see him in
the extremes of hardship, hunger and cold; he was dying, and he
looked it; and yet I cannot remember any hasty, harsh, or impatient
word to have fallen from his lips.  On the contrary, he ever showed
himself careful to please; and even if he rambled in his talk,
rambled always gently--like a humane, half-witted old hero, true to
his colours to the last.  I would not dare to say how often he
awoke suddenly from a lethargy, and told us again, as though we had
never heard it, the story of how he had earned the cross, how it
had been given him by the hand of the Emperor, and of the innocent-
-and, indeed, foolish--sayings of his daughter when he returned
with it on his bosom.  He had another anecdote which he was very
apt to give, by way of a rebuke, when the Major wearied us beyond
endurance with dispraises of the English.  This was an account of
the braves gens with whom he had been boarding.  True enough, he
was a man so simple and grateful by nature, that the most common
civilities were able to touch him to the heart, and would remain
written in his memory; but from a thousand inconsiderable but
conclusive indications, I gathered that this family had really
loved him, and loaded him with kindness.  They made a fire in his
bedroom, which the sons and daughters tended with their own hands;
letters from France were looked for with scarce more eagerness by
himself than by these alien sympathisers; when they came, he would
read them aloud in the parlour to the assembled family, translating
as he went.  The Colonel's English was elementary; his daughter not
in the least likely to be an amusing correspondent; and, as I
conceived these scenes in the parlour, I felt sure the interest
centred in the Colonel himself, and I thought I could feel in my
own heart that mixture of the ridiculous and the pathetic, the
contest of tears and laughter, which must have shaken the bosoms of
the family.  Their kindness had continued till the end.  It appears
they were privy to his flight, the camlet cloak had been lined
expressly for him, and he was the bearer of a letter from the
daughter of the house to his own daughter in Paris.  The last
evening, when the time came to say good-night, it was tacitly known
to all that they were to look upon his face no more.  He rose,
pleading fatigue, and turned to the daughter, who had been his
chief ally:  'You will permit me, my dear--to an old and very
unhappy soldier--and may God bless you for your goodness!'  The
girl threw her arms about his neck and sobbed upon his bosom; the
lady of the house burst into tears; 'et je vous le jure, le pere se
mouchait!' quoth the Colonel, twisting his moustaches with a
cavalry air, and at the same time blinking the water from his eyes
at the mere recollection.

It was a good thought to me that he had found these friends in
captivity; that he had started on this fatal journey from so
cordial a farewell.  He had broken his parole for his daughter:
that he should ever live to reach her sick-bed, that he could
continue to endure to an end the hardships, the crushing fatigue,
the savage cold, of our pilgrimage, I had early ceased to hope.  I
did for him what I was able,--nursed him, kept him covered, watched
over his slumbers, sometimes held him in my arms at the rough
places of the road.  'Champdivers,' he once said, 'you are like a
son to me--like a son.'  It is good to remember, though at the time
it put me on the rack.  All was to no purpose.  Fast as we were
travelling towards France, he was travelling faster still to
another destination.  Daily he grew weaker and more indifferent.
An old rustic accent of Lower Normandy reappeared in his speech,
from which it had long been banished, and grew stronger; old words
of the patois, too:  Ouistreham, matrasse, and others, the sense of
which we were sometimes unable to guess.  On the very last day he
began again his eternal story of the cross and the Emperor.  The
Major, who was particularly ill, or at least particularly cross,
uttered some angry words of protest.  'Pardonnez-moi, monsieur le
commandant, mais c'est pour monsieur,' said the Colonel:  'Monsieur
has not yet heard the circumstance, and is good enough to feel an
interest.'  Presently after, however, he began to lose the thread
of his narrative; and at last:  'Que que j'ai?  Je m'embrouille!'
says he, 'Suffit:  s'm'a la donne, et Berthe en etait bien
contente.'  It struck me as the falling of the curtain or the
closing of the sepulchre doors.

Sure enough, in but a little while after, he fell into a sleep as
gentle as an infant's, which insensibly changed into the sleep of
death.  I had my arm about his body at the time and remarked
nothing, unless it were that he once stretched himself a little, so
kindly the end came to that disastrous life.  It was only at our
evening halt that the Major and I discovered we were travelling
alone with the poor clay.  That night we stole a spade from a
field--I think near Market Bosworth--and a little farther on, in a
wood of young oak trees and by the light of King's lantern, we
buried the old soldier of the Empire with both prayers and tears.

We had needs invent Heaven if it had not been revealed to us; there
are some things that fall so bitterly ill on this side Time!  As
for the Major, I have long since forgiven him.  He broke the news
to the poor Colonel's daughter; I am told he did it kindly; and
sure, nobody could have done it without tears!  His share of
purgatory will be brief; and in this world, as I could not very
well praise him, I have suppressed his name.  The Colonel's also,
for the sake of his parole.  Requiescat.



CHAPTER XV--THE ADVENTURE OF THE ATTORNEY'S CLERK



I have mentioned our usual course, which was to eat in
inconsiderable wayside hostelries, known to King.  It was a
dangerous business; we went daily under fire to satisfy our
appetite, and put our head in the loin's mouth for a piece of
bread.  Sometimes, to minimise the risk, we would all dismount
before we came in view of the house, straggle in severally, and
give what orders we pleased, like disconnected strangers.  In like
manner we departed, to find the cart at an appointed place, some
half a mile beyond.  The Colonel and the Major had each a word or
two of English--God help their pronunciation!  But they did well
enough to order a rasher and a pot or call a reckoning; and, to say
truth, these country folks did not give themselves the pains, and
had scarce the knowledge, to be critical.

About nine or ten at night the pains of hunger and cold drove us to
an alehouse in the flats of Bedfordshire, not far from Bedford
itself.  In the inn kitchen was a long, lean, characteristic-
looking fellow of perhaps forty, dressed in black.  He sat on a
settle by the fireside, smoking a long pipe, such as they call a
yard of clay.  His hat and wig were hanged upon the knob behind
him, his head as bald as a bladder of lard, and his expression very
shrewd, cantankerous, and inquisitive.  He seemed to value himself
above his company, to give himself the airs of a man of the world
among that rustic herd; which was often no more than his due;
being, as I afterwards discovered, an attorney's clerk.  I took
upon myself the more ungrateful part of arriving last; and by the
time I entered on the scene the Major was already served at a side
table.  Some general conversation must have passed, and I smelled
danger in the air.  The Major looked flustered, the attorney's
clerk triumphant, and three or four peasants in smock-frocks (who
sat about the fire to play chorus) had let their pipes go out.

'Give you good evening, sir!' said the attorney's clerk to me.

'The same to you, sir,' said I.

'I think this one will do,' quoth the clerk to the yokels with a
wink; and then, as soon as I had given my order, 'Pray, sir,
whither are you bound?' he added.

'Sir,' said I, 'I am not one of those who speak either of their
business or their destination in houses of public entertainment.'

'A good answer,' said he, 'and an excellent principle.  Sir, do you
speak French?'

'Why, no, sir,' said I.  'A little Spanish at your service.'

'But you know the French accent, perhaps?' said the clerk.

'Well do I do that!' said I.  'The French accent?  Why, I believe I
can tell a Frenchman in ten words.'

'Here is a puzzle for you, then!' he said.  'I have no material
doubt myself, but some of these gentlemen are more backward.  The
lack of education, you know.  I make bold to say that a man cannot
walk, cannot hear, and cannot see, without the blessings of
education.'

He turned to the Major, whose food plainly stuck in his throat.

'Now, sir,' pursued the clerk, 'let me have the pleasure to hear
your voice again.  Where are you going, did you say?'