singing. They faithfully promise that as soon as ever the gunboats appear in view, and they have fired the beacon, to run down here first, in case we shouldn’t see it. ’Tis worth while to be friendly with ’em, you see, though their tempers be queer.’

‘Quite worth while, miller,’ said she.

Anne was rather embarrassed by the presence of the regular military in such force, and at first confined her words to the dairymen’s wives she was acquainted with, and to the two old soldiers of the parish.

‘Why didn’t ye speak to me afore, chiel?’ said one of these, Corporal Tullidge, the elderly man with the hat, while she was talking to old Simon Burden. ‘I met ye in the lane yesterday,’ he added reproachfully, ‘but ye didn’t notice me at all.’

‘I am very sorry for it,’ she said; but, being afraid to shout in such a company, the effect of her remark upon the corporal was as if she had not spoken at all.

‘You was coming along with yer head full of some high notions or other no doubt,’ continued the uncompromising corporal in the same loud voice. ‘Ah, ’tis the young bucks that get all the notice nowadays, and old folks are quite forgot! I can mind well enough how young Bob Loveday used to lie in wait for ye.’

Anne blushed deeply, and stopped his too excursive discourse by hastily saying that she always respected old folks like him. The corporal thought she inquired why he always kept his hat on, and answered that it was because his head was injured at Valenciennes, in July, Ninety-three. ‘We were trying to bomb down the tower, and a piece of the shell struck me. I was no more nor less than a dead man for two days. If it hadn’t a been for that and my smashed arm I should have come home none the worse for my five-and-twenty years’ service.’

‘You have got a silver plate let into yer head, haven’t ye, corpel?’ said Anthony Cripplestraw, who had drawn near. ‘I have heard that the way they morticed yer skull was a beautiful piece of workmanship. Perhaps the young woman would like to see the place? ’Tis a curious sight, Mis’ess Anne; you don’t see such a wownd every day.’

‘No, thank you,’ said Anne hurriedly, dreading, as did all the young people of Overcombe, the spectacle of the corporal uncovered. He had never been seen in public without the hat and the handkerchief since his return in Ninety-four; and strange stories were told of the ghastliness of his appearance bare-headed, a little boy who 

 Prev. P 23/275 next