“Yes; my name is English all over. Gavin is my first name”—and he pronounced it Garvan.

“Have you any English blood in you?”

“I have not a drop of any but English blood, my Captain. My father, Sir Gavin Hamilton, is an Englishman; and my mother, God bless her, is Lady Hamilton.”

“Then,” said St. Arnaud, very naturally, “what are you doing as a trooper in Dufour’s regiment?”

“Because,” replied Gavin, taking up the tin pan and scooping out the last remnants of their supper, “my father is a great rascal.” And he washed the pan out with snow.

St. Arnaud, accustomed to the extreme filial respect of the French for their parents, felt a shock at Gavin’s cool characterization of his father, and said in reply:

“A man sometimes has cause for resentment against his father, but seldom calls him a rascal.”

“True, my Captain,” cheerfully replied Gavin, “but my father is a terrible rascal. He has ill-used my mother, the finest creature God ever made. What do you think of a man with a great fortune deserting his wife and child in a foreign land [Pg 11]and then using all his power to make her admit she is not his wife, when he knows she is; and when he finds she has a soul not to be terrified, trying to fool her into a divorce? But I tell you, my Captain, my mother is a brave lady. She told him and wrote him that she was his lawful wife, and that she would defend me—I was a little boy then—that she would have no divorce, lest it reflect on me, and that no one of my rights would be bartered away by her. And at that very time she could barely keep body and soul together by giving lessons in Paris. She is well educated, luckily, being an English officer’s daughter. The English laws are hard on poor and friendless women, and being in France, too, my mother had little chance to prove her rights. She looked to me, however, to be able one day to maintain all she had claimed; and she taught me carefully, so that, as she said, when I came to the condition and estate of a gentleman, I might know how to bear myself. She did not wish to go back to England, where she knew persecution awaited her, and brought me up as much an English boy as she could in France. The only thing that troubled her was my pronunciation—she always laughs when I pronounce my own name. I have an English way of using my fists [Pg 12]when I am angry. She scolds me, but I know her brothers fought like that when they were lads at school.”

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