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• "Not a farmer, storekeeper or stock-buyer," Shorty mentally sized him up, "Looks more like a hickory lawyer, herb-doctor or tin-horn gambler. What's he doin' in this caboose? Up to some devilment, no doubt. He'll bear watchin'."
• "She may be ill some time. Would it be asking too much of you to look after her?" The bachelor showed in that.
• "Yours, for example," promptly responded Shorty, sending out his mighty right against the man's head.
• Carthagena was strongly fortified, and the garrison was reinforced by the crews of a squadron lying there under Don Blas de Leon. If the place was to be assaulted, it should have been done at once; but Vernon lay perfectly inactive for five days, as if to allow the enemy to make all his preparations for defence. Notwithstanding this, the brave English erected a battery on shore, and played so effectually on the principal fort, that they soon made a breach in it, whilst the fleet fired into the harbour, thus dividing the attention of the enemy. In spite of their advantages, the Spaniards abandoned their forts and batteries, the English entered the breach, the vessels in the harbour were destroyed, and the passage cleared so that the fleet could sail in and support the army. There appeared nothing capable of preventing the conquest of the town but the cabals of the two commanders. Lord Cathcart had caught the endemic fever and died, and was succeeded by General Wentworth in command of the land forces. Wentworth had a great contempt of Vernon, and Vernon was by no means well disposed towards Wentworth. The fleet having entered the harbour, the land forces were all disembarked, and posted within a mile of Carthagena; but there the success stopped. Vernon had written home his dispatches to the Duke of Newcastle saying, "The wonderful success of this evening and night is so astounding, that we cannot but cry out, 'It is the Lord's doing, and it seems marvellous in our eyes!'"
• "But when are we going to get our guns and knapsacks and things, and start for the regiment?" persisted the eager boy, and the others joined in the impatient inquiry.
• "Go down at once to the Provost-Marshal's office and tell Col. Billings to come to Headquarters at once. To come at once, without a moment's delay."
• "Captain," said one of the men, "my horse can't go any farther. He's been in bad shape, and he fell and broke his knee coming up the hill."
• She did not. He had merely told her that her father was his friend and had died on the plains. "She thinks her mother died at Stanton. It is so near the Mescalero Agency that I let it go at that."
• "Bad Ax, Wis., Nov. 10.
• “It was called!” the detective showed a baffled face.
• "What in the world am I going to do?" inquired Si dolefully. "There's no use sending back for them. They've probably got mixed up with some other squads, and gone the Lord knows where. They haven't sense enough to find their regiment in such a ruck as this."
• "Yes, boss."
• Bradshaw shambled forward in a way that made Shorty call out:
• They saw that Mr. Whiteside carried a life preserver. In black on its side was painted “Tramp, New York.”
• "Did you see a star?" inquired the older man.
• She was silent, but the stubbornness was going fast. She broke off a bunch of little pink blossoms and rolled it in her hands.
• Behind the other pilot sat one of the Sky Patrol, at the mercy of a devilishly minded adversary, and he was as helpless to save himself as Larry and Dick were to aid him!
• Again the savory smell of the boiling chickens attracted sick boys, who begged for a little of the precious food. Having double the quantity, the Deacon was a little more liberal, but he had to restrain Shorty, who, despite his own great and gnawing hunger, would have given away the bigger part of the broth to those who so desperately needed it.
• “Stop that! Tell us where you’ve been and what you did? We’ve worried ourselves sick, nearly.”
• “He’d fly over that swamp and see if the other belt had fallen out of the seaplane—and he’d need a pilot—so he got Jeff!” Dick put the finishing touch to the revelation. “Larry kept Tommy busy, so Mr. Whiteside got Jeff.”
• He outlined the rest of his inference.
• Which was what they presently did. She expected it. A long, wrinkled hand reached in, feeling about for the knots of the tape. She stood still with the brush in her hands, watching. Another hand came, and another. She caught up her quirt from the cot, then realizing that the sting of the lash would only prove an exasperation and weaken her authority, if she had any whatever,—and she believed that she had,—she threw it down. The cook was probably in the kitchen tent and did not know what was going on. And she would have died before she would have called for help.
• Landor went to the tree and cut another rib from[Pg 96] the mutton and threw it on the coals. Then he walked across the clearing to the tent.
• [Pg 20]
• The Deacon laid down the spoon with which he had been stirring the broth, and doubling up his mighty fist, placed himself between Groundhog and the kettle, and said:
• There was an expression in his eyes Cairness did not understand. It was not like their usual twinkle of welcome. "Wait a moment," he said, and went on with his writing. Cairness dropped down on the ground, and, for want of anything else to do, began to whittle a whistle out of a willow branch.
• Then he would go off and try to compose his thoughts for a letter to Jerusha Briggs, but before he knew it he would find himself in the kitchen watching, with dumb admiration, Maria knead bread, with her sleeves rolled to her shoulders, and her white, plump arms and bright face streaked with flour. There would be little conversation, for Maria would sing with a lark's voice, as she worked, some of the sweet old hymns, chording with Amanda, busy in another part of the house. Shorty did not want to talk. It was enough for him to feast his eyes and ears.
• CHAPTER VIII. REIGN OF GEORGE III. (continued).
• well, especially since Grant came up and opened our cracker
• "McGillicuddy. Well, of all the names!" said that deliberate young woman. "Do you really mean to say that any man has really such a name as that?"
• "No; I'll go and see him," said the General. "Where is he?"
• As this excitement closed the old year, so it opened the new one. No sooner did Parliament meet, after the Christmas recess, than, on the 17th of January, 1764, the order for Wilkes's attendance at the bar was read. It was then found that he had thought it best to retire into France. Still he did not hesitate to send over a medical certificate, signed by one of the king's physicians and an army surgeon, affirming that his wound was in such a condition that it was not safe for him to leave Paris. The House of Commons paid no attention to the certificate, but proceeded to examine evidence, and the famous No. 45 of the North Briton; and after a violent debate, continuing till three o'clock in the morning, passed a resolution that the paper in question contained the grossest insults to his Majesty, to both Houses of Parliament, and tended to traitorous insurrection against the Government. Accordingly, the next day, he was formally expelled the House, and a new writ was issued for Aylesbury.
• “If I hadn’t gone off ‘half-cocked’,” he told his comrades, “maybe we would have seen something or somebody really worth following up.”
• Thunderstorms menaced, but always they were to the inland side, and Larry did not have to pass through them, or climb above them and lose his way.
• He rose to his feet, shaking off an impatience with her and with himself. "Come," he said peremptorily; and they went out and mounted and rode away in the face of a whipping wind up the gradual slope to the mountains, black and weird beneath the heavy, low-hanging rain clouds.
• They tore on, away from the noise of the flames, of the falling timber and the shouted commands, around the haystacks so close to the barbed-wire fence that the barbs cut his boot, off by the back of the quarters, and then upon the road that led from the reservation. If the pony could be kept on that road, there was small danger from dog holes. He would run himself out in time. The length of time was what was uncertain, however. A cow-pony can go a good many hours at a stretch.
• “What could make such a sound?” he pondered.
• THE PORTEOUS MOB. (See p. 67.) [After the Painting by James Drummond, R.S.A.]
• “Yeah! I know what Whiteside planned. But he didn’t plan for anybody to be here. What’s the need?”
• “Why, I gave——”
• "What do you want me to say to Stone?"
• "Great Jehosephat, what's come over Levi?" muttered Shorty. "Has he become the High-muk-a-muk of the whole army? Have they put him in Gen. Rosecrans's place?"
• ANNABEL APPRISED OF IT—SHORTY MEETS JERUSHA.
• Landor did not know; but she was part Apache, he said, and Harry Cabot's daughter, and it was pretty certain that with that blood in her veins she had the spirit of adventure.
• The glare of the burning building showed them preparing for that move. A gang had torn off the heavy rail from the hitching-post on the outside of the square, and were going to use it as a battering-ram. Then came another kind of yell from farther away, and suddenly the mob began running in wild confusion, while into the glare swept a line of soldiers, charging with fixed bayonets.
• Once he thought he caught a glint of light in the library window; but it could have come from a high beam of some automobile headlight, on the distant highway that passed the estate.
• And the next day she knew. When she came out in front of her quarters in the morning, rather later than usual, there was a new tent beside the hospital,[Pg 81] and when she asked the reason for it, they told her that a wounded Apache had been found down by the river soon after the shot had been fired the night before. He was badly hurt, with a ball in his shoulder, and he was half drunk with tizwin, as well as being cut in a dozen places.
• It was not of much avail in the end, the conference. There was more than one tribe to be pacified. The restlessness of the wild things, of the goaded, and of the spring was in their blood.
• CULLODEN HOUSE. (From a Photograph by G. W. Wilson and Co., Aberdeen.)
• The distance is too great to permit spectators to observe it, the ships scatter, seek different elevations, or in other ways fail to keep that close formation which makes of the hundred-yard dash such a blood-stimulating incident.
• FIVE-GUINEA PIECE OF GEORGE I.
• "You're English, I reckon, ain't you?"
• "Maria," called out Si, "if you don't stop plaguin' Shorty I'll come back there and wring your neck. You kin make the worst nuisance o' yourself o' any girl that ever lived. Here, you go up there and walk with Cousin Marthy. I'll walk with Shorty. I've got something I want to say to him."
• He saw the two men whisper together and tap their carpet-sacks significantly. They seemed to come to a familiar understanding at once, but they talked so low that Shorty could not catch their words, except once when the first-comer raised his voice to penetrate the din as they crossed a bridge, and did not lower it quickly enough after passing, and Shorty heard;
• Then he heard little Abel Waite say:
• SI AND SHORTY HAVE A TIME WITH THEIR WILD, YOUNG SQUAD.
• She echoed "To luncheon!" in amazement. "But, Jack, he was a soldier, wasn't he?"
• It was the eternal old story of the White-man's whiskey. A rancher living some four hundred yards from the boundary line upon the Mexican side had sold it to the Indians. Many of them were dead or fighting drunk. The two sober Indians asked for a squad of soldiers to help them guard the ranchman, and stop him from selling any more mescal. They were right-minded themselves and really desired peace, and their despair was very great.
• As they came out from dinner the orderlies had the horses at the door. Landor gave his wife parting instructions the while Brewster took an ostentatiously affectionate farewell of Miss McLane, who was herself neither so affectionate nor so sorrowful as she might have been expected to be. The adjutant watched them, furtively and unhappily. Felipa herself was not as unmoved as usual.
• THE DEACON HAS SOME EXPERIENCES WITH THE QUADRUPED.
• The train rumbled out, and presently stopped at another station. Another man got on, also carrying a large, heavy carpet-sack. He was younger than the other, looked like a farm-hand, was dressed partly in homespun, partly in "store-clothes," wore a weather-stained wool hat, and his sullen face terminated in a goatee. The first-comer looked him over an instant, and then said:
• "Well, he is now, then," insisted the officer; "Mrs. Landor is a squaw at bottom. Poor old Jack!" he sat up and fired a stone at the stalk of a Spanish bayonet, "I guess he's better off in the Happy Hunting Grounds. His wasn't a bed of roses."
• [See larger version]
• Felipa turned from them and waited, clasping her hands and smiling up at Brewster. He, misinterpreting, felt encouraged and begged her to leave the disgusting insects. He had something very different to talk about. She said that she did not want to hear it, and would he bet on the tarantula or the vinagrone?
• There was an expression in his eyes Cairness did not understand. It was not like their usual twinkle of welcome. "Wait a moment," he said, and went on with his writing. Cairness dropped down on the ground, and, for want of anything else to do, began to whittle a whistle out of a willow branch.
• "I've got the right number, sir," Si answered, saluting; "and if they ain't all the same men they're just as good."
• "Just the man," said the Chief Clerk eagerly, "if you go about it right. You're a stranger here, and scarcely anybody knows that you belong to Headquarters. Get yourself back in the shape you were this morning, and go out and try your luck. It'll just be bully if we can down this old blowhard."
• "Mother'd done much better, at home in her own kitchen, or anywhere you could've put her, than me with my clumsy ways," he continued, "but she never cooked anything that'll taste better to them boys."
• “About what?” demanded Larry, and Dick nodded to show he wanted an answer also.
• "Did you see a star?"
• Walpole did not wait for a like humiliation.[38] The next morning he waited on the king, and tendered his resignation of his places as First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. The king, if he could be judged by his conduct, had formed no resolution of parting with Walpole. He handed again to him the seals, cordially entreating him to take them back, speaking to him in the kindest manner, and appearing as though he would take no refusal. But Walpole remained steady to his purpose, and, accordingly, his friends Methuen, Pulteney, Lord Orford, and the Duke of Devonshire, resigned a few days afterwards. Stanhope was then appointed First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer; Sunderland and Joseph Addison were made Secretaries of State; Craggs, Secretary at War; Lord Berkeley, First Lord of the Admiralty; the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Chamberlain; the Duke of Bolton, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; Lord Cowper and the Duke of Kingston retaining their old places.
• "Mr. Brewster has just been here," she said at length, and she played with the lash of her whip, avoiding his eyes, which was also a new way for her.
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• "That's so," said Shorty, catching at once the fatherly feeling. "I'll punch the head off en the first sneezer that I ketch tryin' to impose on 'em."
• But a chicken was no more to be had in Chattanooga than a Delmonico banquet. The table of the Major-General commanding the Army of the Cumberland might have a little more hardtack and pork on it than appeared in the tents of the privates, and be cooked a little better, but it had nothing but hardtack and pork.
• "Major, I was tryin' to say"
• He told her that he was going to operate at once, to remove the ball and the shattered bone, but that she might come if she wished. His disapproval was marked, but she went with him, nevertheless, and sat watching while he picked and probed at the wound.
• Landor had almost decided that he had made an ungenerous mistake, when Ellton came over with one light spring and, touching him on the shoulder, pointed to the window of the commissary office. A thick, dark blanket had evidently been hung within, but the faintest red flicker showed through a tiny hole.
• The retreat was made, and the men found themselves again in the morning on the bleak, black heath of Drummossie, hungry and worn out, yet in expectation of a battle. There was yet time to do the only wise thing—retreat into the mountains, and depend upon a guerilla warfare, in which they would have the decided advantage. Lord George Murray now earnestly proposed this, but in vain. Sir Thomas Sheridan and other officers from France grew outrageous at that proposal, contending that they could easily beat the English, as they had done at Prestonpans and Falkirk—forgetting that the Highlanders then were full of vigour and spirit. Unfortunately, Charles listened to this foolish reasoning, and the fatal die was cast.
• "Don't fire, boys," said Si, walking around among his guards, "until there is some reason for it. They'll probably try to make a rush and batter down the jail door. We'll watch for that."
• "We've got a telegraph dispatch," finally answered Maria, bursting in a torrent of tears, into which Sophia joined sympathetically, "and we know it's about poor Si."
• "Corporal Josiah Klegg, Q, 200th Ind.
• "Shut up, you coffee-boiler," shouted Shorty, striding toward him. "These boys 's goin' to the front, where you ought to be, and I won't have you sayin' a word to discourage 'em."
• The door catch yielded—their wrestling, struggling weight drew it inward.
• “First of all,” Larry said, “I’d go over to the weather display board, to see what the flying conditions would be.”
• 268
• In the Commons, on the same day, Grenville delivered a message from the Crown, announcing to the House the imprisonment of one of their members during the recess. Wilkes immediately rose in his place, and complained of the breach of that House's privilege in his person; of the entry of his house, the breaking open of his desk, and the imprisonment of his person—imprisonment pronounced by the highest legal authority to be illegal, and therefore tyrannical. He moved that the House should take the question of privilege into immediate consideration. On the other hand, Lord North, who was a member of the Treasury board, and Sir Fletcher Norton, Attorney-General, put in the depositions of the printer and publisher, proving the authorship of No. 45 of the North Briton on Wilkes, and pressing for rigorous measures against him. A warm debate ensued, in which Pitt opposed the proceedings to a certain extent, declaring that he could never understand exactly what a libel was.[181] Notwithstanding, the Commons voted, by a large majority, that No. 45 of the North Briton was "a false, scandalous, and malicious libel," tending to traitorous insurrection, and that it should be burnt by the common hangman.
• SI AND SHORTY TAKE CHARGE OF A SQUAD OF RECRUITS.
• Shorty contemplated the ruin from across the street, and strolled back to Headquarters, serenely conscious of having put in a part of the day to good advantage.
• HAS AN ENCOUNTER WITH THE PROVOST-MARSHAL.
• The next morning Shorty waited with eager impatience while the General was closeted with his Chief Clerk. Presently the General stepped to the door and said sternly:
• The Gila River cutting straight across the southern portion of Arizona, from the Alkali flats on the east to the Colorado at Yuma on the west, flowed then its whole course through desolation. Sometimes cottonwoods and sycamore trees rose in the bottom, and there was a patch of green around some irrigated land. But, for the most part, the basin was a waste of glittering sand and white dust, and beyond, the low hills, bare of every plant save a few stunted wild flowers, cacti and sage, greasewood and mesquite, rolled for miles and miles of barrenness. The chicken hawk and crow sailed through the fiercely blue sky, the air waved and quivered with incredible heat. At night malaria rose from the ground, the coyote barked and whined at the light of the brilliant stars, and the polecat prowled deliberately.
• There was grave discontent and suffering in France, and Marshal Saxe, through General Ligonier, made proposals for peace. The news of these overtures gave great delight in England, but the king and Cumberland were bent on continuing the war. Pelham and Chesterfield advocated acceptance of the terms, but Newcastle sided with the king, to gain favour with him. As the terms, however, could not with decency be bluntly rejected, Cumberland solicited and obtained the post of negotiator in the matter for England; but the Ministers, desirous of peace, foreseeing that the wishes or the hasty temper of Cumberland would[114] soon ruin every chance of accomplishing a treaty, the Earl of Sandwich was sent over to act as assistant to the duke; this meant that he was to overrule, if possible, the mischief Cumberland would be sure to make. Sandwich accordingly hastened over to Holland, and had a secret interview with the Marquis de Puisieulx, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, and, after much dodging on the part of the marquis, he managed to have the discussion removed from military negotiators to a congress at Aix-la-Chapelle.
• The government took neither course.
• He made a savage rush to break through Shorty's guard by main force, but Shorty evaded him by a quick movement, the Englishman struck his toe against a piece of railroad iron, and fell to his knees. Shorty had him at his mercy, but he merely stepped back a little further, and waited for his opponent to rise and regain his position before he again advanced to the attack.
• "You solemnly promise and swear," resumed the sepulchral tones of the chief actor, "to do all in your power to restore the Constitution and laws of this country to what were established by the fathers and resist the efforts of nigger-loving Abolitionists and evil-minded fanatics to subvert them."
• And things were coming to an end, anyway. He could see it in the looks of the Apaches, and hear it in their whispers. They consented to come in, and even to put themselves at the discretion of the government, but there was a lack of the true ring in their promises. So when, on the third morning, before it was yet daylight, two chiefs came hurrying into camp and awoke the general with bad news, he was not greatly surprised. He had warned Crook of the possibility, for that matter.
• "Ain't it funny how narrow-minded some good women can be, though?" he speculated, looking at her very much as he was in the habit of looking at his specimens. And he quoted slowly, as if he were saying over the names and family characteristics of a specimen.
• "But that is sport," she answered carelessly.
• These morning prowlers were as cunning as rats in finding their prey, and the only security that a man had of keeping his rations till morning was to eat them up before he went to bed. Their sharp eyes had not failed to notice the signs of unusual plenty about the Deacon's corn-crib, and they gave it earnest attention.
• "Bully," said Shorty, with the first joyous emotion since the reception of the letter. "It's jest the thing. Here's a half-dollar for you. Now, Sammy, kin you write?"
• "You give me what no one else could give—the best things in life."
• Now if one cannot have revenge upon the real malefactor himself, because one is afraid of him, there is still satisfaction to be derived, to a certain extent, from[Pg 204] wreaking it upon the innocent, of whom one is not afraid. Lawton felt, in his simple soul, that Stone was astute with the astuteness of the devil and all his angels. On the other hand, he believed the government to be dull. It was big, but it was stupid. Was not the whole frontier evidence of that fact to him? Clearly, then, the government was the one to be got even with.
• He got a spoon, and tested some of the broth appreciatively.
• Jim Humphries, one of the medium-sized boys, suddenly turned as white as a sheet and fell on the planks. One after another of those around him did the same, until a half-dozen were lying there in a heap.
• "No," he heard that official say to a man who appeared a plain farmer like himself; "you not only can have no pass, but you can't stay in Nashville an other day. I remember you. I've heard you tell that story of a sick son in the hospital before. I remember all the details. You haven't changed one. You're a smuggler, and I believe a spy. You've got mule-loads of quinine somewhere in hiding, and may be gun-caps and other munitions of war. If you know what's good for you, you'll take the next train north, and never stop until you are on the other side of the Ohio River. If you are in town to-morrow morning, I'll put you to work on the fortifications, and keep you there till the end of the war. Get out of my office at once."
• She heard, and again her eyes met Forbes's. There was a flash of comprehension in them. She knew what he was thinking very well. But she left the fence, and, pushing the sunbonnet over her head, joined them, not in the least put out, and they dismounted and walked beside her, back to the house.
• The White explained carefully that it was not a contract, that it was nothing at all, in fact.
• The lace manufacture was still prosecuted merely by hand, and chiefly in Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, and in the West of England. No lace was produced from machinery before 1768.
• His eyes, in that position, were almost on a level with the pole-pieces to which wires were joined to enable the switch metal, when thrust between the flat pole contacts, to make contact and complete the electrical circuit.
• By the light of the blazing pine, the Deacon pulled off the cedar boughs and developed his store. The boughs had kept in the heat, so that the food was not yet quite cold, though it had a resinous flavor, from its covering. The Deacon broke one of the cornpones in two and gave half of it to Shorty, with as much as he thought he should have of the meat and vegetables. Then he fed Si, who relished the new diet almost as much as he had relished the chicken broth. The Deacon made a hearty supper himself, and then stored away the rest in his "cellar" under the crib, rolling up some more large stones as an additional precaution.
• It made it none the better that only Landor had the right to give her the strength of his arm, and that only Cairness had the right to the desperate, imploring look she threw him. It was a swift glance of a moment, and then she reached out a steady enough hand for the parasol, and smiled. It had been much too tragic to last—and in those surroundings. It was a flash of the naked swords of pain, and then they were sheathed. But each had left a sharp gash. No one had seen it. Perhaps to many there would have been nothing to see.
• "Here, who are you, and where are you going so early in the morning?" he inquired.
• One of the series of four Paintings entitled "The Election," by W. Hogarth.
• "That father o' yours is certainly quite an innocent old party," Shorty answered, consolingly, "and the things he don't know about army life'd make more'n a pamphlet. But he has a way of wakin' up to the situation that is sometimes very surprisin'. I wisht I was able to go about with him, but I think he's fully able to take care o' himself around in camp. There's always somebody about who won't see an old man and a citizen imposed on. But what I'm afraid of is that he's wandered out in the country, huntin' for somethin' for us to eat, and the guerrillas've got him."
• "Not by a durned sight," slowly gasped Shorty. "Seen sicker dogs'n this git well. Nearly dead for a drink o' water, though. Then I'll be all right."
• The Battle of Rosbach raised the fame of Frederick wonderfully all over Europe. He soon roused himself, however, for fresh efforts. Whilst he had been thus engaged on the Saale, the Austrians had again overrun Silesia, defeating the Prussians under the Duke of Bevern, storming the great fortress of Schweidnitz, and making themselves masters of Breslau, the capital. In spite of his reduced numbers and the advancing winter, Frederick immediately directed his march towards Silesia, gathering reinforcements as he went, so that by the 5th of December, just one month from the Battle of Rosbach, he came up with Prince Charles of Lorraine and Marshal Daun at Lissa, a small village near Breslau, and with forty thousand men encountered and defeated nearly seventy thousand Austrians, killing and wounding twenty-seven thousand of them, taking above fifty standards, one hundred cannon, four thousand waggons, and much other spoil. This battle at once freed Silesia from the Austrians, who trooped over the mountains in all haste, and left the victorious king to close this unexampled campaign.
• He reached the firing-line, strung along the ragged bluffs, and hiding behind trees, stumps and stones.
• "You haven't, but the summer has told on you just the same. You are thin, and your eyes are too big. Look at that!" He held out a hand that shook visibly. "That's the Gila Valley for you."
• “No Sandy,” said Dick, worried. “Do you suppose they?——”
• "'Tention!" commanded Si. "Fall in single rank 'cordin' to your size. Tall boys on the right, short ones on the left, medium in the center. Gid Mackall, you're the tallest. You can go there to the corner o' the platform and let the others form on you."
• Felipa had discarded, long since, the short skirt and moccasins of her girlhood, and had displayed no inconsiderable aptitude in the matter of fashions; but she was given to looseness of draperies and a carelessness of attire in her own home that the picturesqueness of her beauty alone only saved from slatternliness. There was one manifestation of ill taste which she did not give, however, one common enough with the wives of most of the officers. She was never to be found running about the post, or sitting upon the porches, with her husband's cape around her shoulders and his forage-cap over her eyes. Her instinct for the becoming was unfailing. This was a satisfaction to Landor. But it was a secret grievance that she was most contented when in her riding habit, tearing foolhardily over the country.
• "I think you'll pull through all right," continued the Surgeon, "if you don't have concussion of the brain. You'll have to be—"
• In April the inferior prisoners were tried in the Common Pleas. Forster, brigadier Mackintosh, and twenty of their accomplices were condemned; but Forster, Mackintosh, and some of the others, managed, like Wintoun, to escape; so that, of all the crowds of prisoners, only twenty-two in Lancashire and four in London were hanged. Bills of attainder were passed against the Lords Tullibardine, Mar, and many others who were at large. Above a thousand submitted to the king's mercy, and petitioned to be transported to America.
• And at another window Felipa also stood looking out into the dusk. There had been a shower in the afternoon, and the clouds it had left behind were like a soft moss of fire floating in the sky. A bright golden light struck slantwise from the sunset. They had all gone away to dine and to dress for the hop; Landor had walked down to the post trader's for the mail, and she was left alone.
• "I rather thought that might be too much for even you," said Cairness.
• “I came to America, made the hinged door to the hangar, rewired the switches to get light by day to prepare the amphibian.
• While Shorty was rapidly gaining health and strength, his mind was ill at ease. He had more time than ever to think of Jerusha Briggs, of Bad Ax, Wis., and his surroundings accentuated those thoughts. He began by wondering what sort of a girl she really was, compared to Si's sisters, and whether she was used to such a home as this? Was she as handsome, as fine, as high-spirited as Maria? Then his loyal soul reproached him. If she would have him he would marry her, no matter who she she was. Why should he begin now making comparisons with other girls? Then, she might be far finer than Maria. How would he himself compare with her, when he dared not even raise his eyes to Maria?
• He had gone back.
• "Then he lied," said the buck, and tucked the scrap back under his head band. "They all lie. I worked for him two weeks. I worked hard. And each night when I asked him for money he would say to me that to-morrow he would pay me. When all his hay was cut he laughed in my face. He would pay me nothing." He seemed resigned enough about it.
• But a daughter's a daughter all her life."
• [65]
• "She was a captive among the Chiricahuas up in the Sierra Madre. She's had a hard time of it. That and the return march have been too much for her."
• In 1734 the Wesleys commenced their career as preachers to the people, and were soon followed by Whitefield. This may, therefore, be considered the date of the foundation of Methodism. None of them had any the remotest idea of separating from the Church, or founding new sects. The Wesleys made a voyage to Georgia, in America, and, on their return, found their little party not only flourishing in Oxford but in London, where they had a meeting-house in Fetter Lane. Whitefield, however, was the first to commence the practice of field-preaching, amongst the colliers at Kingswood, near Bristol; but in this he was soon imitated by Wesley. As they began to attract attention by the ardour of their preaching and the wonderful effect on the people, this became necessary, for speedily all church doors were closed against them. John Wesley had a peculiar genius for the construction of a new religious community, and he was ready to collect hints for its organisation from any quarter. The most prolific source of his ordinances for his new society was the system of the Moravians, whose great settlement at Herrnhuth, in Germany, he visited, and had much consultation with its head, Count Zinzendorf. From it he drew his class-meetings, his love-feasts, and the like. In framing the constitution of his society, Wesley displayed a profound knowledge of human nature. He took care that every man and woman in his society counted for something more than a mere unit. The machinery of class-meetings and love-feasts brought members together in little groups, where every one was recognised and had a personal interest. Numbers of men, who had no higher ambition, could enjoy the distinction of class-leaders. It did not require a man to go to college and take orders to become a preacher. Thomas Maxwell with Wesley, and Howel Harris with Whitefield, led the way from the plane of the laity into the pulpits of Methodism, and have been followed by tens of thousands who have become able if not learned, and eloquent if not Greek-imbued, preachers. Wesley divided the whole country into districts, into which he sent one or more well-endowed preachers, who were called circuit preachers, or round preachers, from their going their rounds in particular circuits. Under the ministry of these men sprang up volunteer preachers, who first led prayer-meetings, and then ascended to the pulpit in the absence of the circuit preachers, and most of them soon discovered unexpected talents, and edifying their own local and often remote or obscure little auditories, became styled local preachers. Out of these local preachers ever and anon grew men of large minds and fertilising eloquence, who became the burning and shining lights of the whole firmament of Methodism. It was Wesley's object not to separate from the Church, and it was only after his death that the Wesleyans were reckoned as Nonconformists.
• GEORGE I.
• As the crushed Lieutenant-Colonel was leaving the office, Shorty lounged up, and said:
• “No ghost with any self-respect would make a show of himself for newspaper publicity!” Dick chuckled.
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• 198
• She stood by the mound for a little while thinking of him, of how well he had lived and died, true to his standard of duty, absolutely true, but lacking after all that spirit of love without which our actions profit so little and die with our death. She had a clearer realization of it than ever before. It came to her that Charles Cairness's life, wandering, aimless, disjointed as it was, and her own, though it fell far below even her own not impossibly high ideals, were to more purpose, had in them more of the vital force of creation, were less wasted, than his had been. To have known no enthusiasms—which are but love, in one form or another—is to have failed to give that impulse to the course of events which every man born into the world should hold himself bound to give, as the human debt to the Eternal.
• It was certainly not apparent, on the face of it, how the thing was to be done, but the captain explained. "I've been stationed here, you know, and I know the roads. We are about a half a mile or more from where the Stanton road to the railway crosses the lava. It is narrow and rough, and about from three-quarters of a mile to a mile wide, but cavalry can go over it without any trouble. I can take my troop over, and then the Indians will be hemmed in between us. We might capture the whole band."
• "He is mistaken, sir."
• "Purty good milker, is she?" inquired the Deacon with interest.
• All afternoon he was as busy as a boy trying to keep ten tops spinning!
• Then she came forward, holding out her hand in the most matter-of-fact way, if, indeed, any action of a very beautiful woman can be matter of fact.
• The Committee of Inquiry, stimulated by the disappointment of the public, began preparations for a fresh report; but their labours were cut short by the termination of the Session. In order to conciliate in some degree public opinion, Ministers hastened to allow the passing of a Bill to exclude certain officers from the House of Commons; they passed another to encourage the linen manufacture; a third, to regulate the trade of the Colonies; and a fourth, to prevent the marriage of lunatics. They voted forty thousand seamen and sixty-two thousand landsmen for the service of the current year. The whole expenditure of the year amounted to nearly six million pounds, which was raised by a land-tax of four shillings in the pound; by a malt-tax; by a million from the sinking fund; and by other resources. They provided for the subsidies to Denmark and Hesse-Cassel, and voted another five hundred thousand pounds to the Queen of Hungary. On the 15th of July the king prorogued Parliament; at the same time assuring the two Houses that a peace was concluded between the Queen of Hungary and the King of Prussia, through his mediation; and that the late successes of the Austrian arms were in a great measure owing to the generous assistance of the British nation.
• "You bet I will," responded the boy, with his eyes dancing. "Goin' to run away? I'm goin to run away myself some day. I'm awful tired o' havin' to git up in the mornin', wash my face and comb my hair, and do the chores, and kneel down at family prayers, and go to Sunday, school, and stay through church, and then have to spell out a chapter in the Bible in the afternoon. I'm goin' to run away, and be a soldier, or go out on the plains and kill Injuns. I'm layin' away things now for it. See here?"
• "Yes, sir," said Shorty saluting, with a furtive wink at the Chief Clerk, which said as plainly as words, "No presenting compliments this time."
• CHAPTER XXVII SANDY’S DISCOVERY
• "I order you to take him out and buck-and-gag him," shouted the Provost-Marshal.
• No one in the territory was busy. The atmosphere was still too much that of the Mexican possession; but Cairness said it was undoubtedly so, and took his leave,[Pg 173] clanking his spurs, heavy footed, and stooping his long form, in continuance of the r?le of ass. He knew well enough that he had been so summed up. It is a disadvantage the British citizen labors under in the West.
• No sooner was the sentence passed than his judges were seized with a vehement desire to procure a pardon for the admiral. They made the most urgent entreaties to the Admiralty for that purpose, and Captain Augustus Keppel authorised Horace Walpole to say that he and four others of the members of the Council had something of importance to communicate, and desired to be relieved from their oath of secresy. The House of Commons was quite ready to pass a Bill for the purpose, and the king respited the admiral till all such inquiries had been made. But when the Bill had been passed by one hundred and fifty-three to twenty-three, it turned out that these five officers had nothing of consequence to disclose. Still Lord Temple, who was at the head of the Admiralty, was greatly averse from the carrying out of the sentence, which, in fact, was much disproportioned to the crime. Pitt also interceded with the king, and renewed applications were made to the Admiralty; but, on the other hand, the people were smarting under the loss of Minorca, and demanded the execution of the sentence. Hand-bills were posted up, "Hang Byng, or take care of the King." The House of Lords, when the Commons' Bill was carried up to them, however, settled the matter. Murray and Lord Hardwicke demanded of every member of the court-martial at the bar of the House whether they knew of any matter which showed their sentence to be unjust, or to have been influenced by any undue motive; and as all declared they did not, the Lords dismissed the Bill. The[126] sentence was therefore fixed for execution on the 14th of March. Byng, both during the trial, and now when brought on board the Monarch in Portsmouth Harbour to be shot, showed no symptoms of fear. When one of his friends, to prevent a man from coming in to measure Byng for his coffin, said, standing up by him, "Which of us is the taller?" Byng immediately replied, "Why this ceremony? I know what it means; let the man measure me for a coffin." On the deck he wished to have his eyes left unbound; but when told it might frighten the soldiers and distract their aim, he said, "Let it be done, then; if it would not frighten them, they would not frighten me." He fell dead at the discharge (March 14, 1757).
• SURPRISE OF FREDERICK AT HOCHKIRCH. (See p. 131.)
• "And you think there will be trouble?" He knew that the buck had come there for nothing but to inform.
• [See larger version]
• Lord Townshend succeeded Stanhope as Secretary of State. Aislabie, who had been deep in the iniquities of the South Sea affair, was compelled to resign his post as Chancellor of the Exchequer, to which Walpole succeeded. Meanwhile the Secret Committee appointed by the Commons continued its labours indefatigably. They sat nearly every day from nine in the morning till eleven at night, and on the 16th of February, 1721, they presented their first report to the House. This revealed a vast amount of Ministerial corruption.
• [See larger version]
• They had need of anxiety. A scattering volley of shots came from the bushes and the rocks on the opposite side of the Tennessee River and one of the leaders in the team just ahead of him dropped dead in his tracks. The teams in front were whipped up still harder, and succeeded in getting away. The shots were answered from a line of our own men on this side of the river, who fired at the smoke they saw rising.
• When the father returned to Tucson, he had sent her the history, and she had read and reread it. In a way she was something of a linguist, for she had picked up a good deal of Spanish from Mexicans about the post, chiefly from the nurse of the Campbell children.
• But she would die before she would be faithless to him. He was sure of that. Only—why should he exact so much? Why should he not make the last of[Pg 150] a long score of sacrifices? He had been unselfish with her always, from the day he had found the little child, shy as one of the timid fawns in the woods of the reservation, and pretty in a wild way, until now when she sat there in front of him, a woman, and his wife, loving, and beloved of, another man.
• It was the post-trader, he told Felipa when he came back, and he was asking for help from the officer-of-the-day. Some citizens down at the store were gambling and drinking high, and were becoming uproarious.
• He peered ahead.
• 272
• "Thank you," he said; and Cairness walked away.
• “All right,” agreed Sandy. “Dick, you and I are the ground crew. As soon as you’re ready, Mr. Whiteside, we’ll take hold!”
• Which happened upon the following day. And he was there to see it all, so that the question he had not cared to ask was answered forever beyond the possibility[Pg 198] of a misunderstanding. It was stable time, and she walked down to the corrals with him. He left her for a moment by the gate of the quartermaster's corral while he went over to the picket line. The bright clear air of a mountain afternoon hummed with the swish click-clock, swish click-clock of the curry-combs and brushes, and the busy scraping of the stable brooms in the stalls.
• And the questions they asked. Si had in a manner repelled them by his curt treatment of Harry Joslyn, and his preoccupied air as he went back and forth getting his orders and making preparations for starting. But Shorty was in an affable mood, and by pleasantly answering a few of their inquiries brought the whole fire of their questioning upon him.
• "Why don't you hunt down the guerrillas and kill 'em off and be done with 'em?"
• With the sublime indifference to the mockery of the world, characteristic of his race, Cairness kept at it. It was ridiculous. He had time to be dimly aware of that. And it certainly was not war. He did not know that they were affording the opposing forces much enjoyment. He had not even observed that the firing had stopped. But he meant to catch that much qualifiedly impudent little beast, or to know the reason why. And he would probably have known the reason why, if one of the Apache scouts, embarrassed by no notions of fair play, had not taken good aim and[Pg 233] brought his youthful kinsman down, with a bullet through his knee.
• The English army was now in full march against them. About eight o'clock in the morning of April 16 a man who had been left asleep in the wood of Kilravock hastened to Culloden House, where Charles and his chief officers were resting, to announce that Cumberland's troops were coming. There was then a hurried running and riding to get the army drawn up to receive them. Cumberland came on with his army, divided into three columns of five battalions each. The artillery and baggage followed the second column along the sea-coast on the right; the cavalry covered the left wing, which stretched towards the hills. The men were all in the highest spirits, and even the regiments of horse, which had hitherto behaved so ill, seemed as though they meant to retrieve their characters to-day. The Highlanders were drawn up about half a mile from the part of the moor where they stood the day before, forming a sad contrast to Cumberland's troops, looking thin, and dreadfully fatigued. In placing them, also, a fatal mistake was made. They were drawn up in two lines, with a body of reserve; but the Clan Macdonald, which had always been accustomed to take their stand on the right since Robert Bruce placed them there in the battle of Bannockburn, were disgusted to find themselves now occupying the left. Instead of the Macdonalds now stood the Athol Brigade. As the battle began, a snow-storm began to blow in the faces of the Highlanders, which greatly confounded them.
• “There’s somebody—on the lawn!” cried Dick, swinging off in that direction. From behind a large tree emerged a figure. Larry and the detective followed at a run. But the man who came quickly forward to meet them gave all three a surprise.
• "Your husband is in jail," he said without preface. He had done with the mask of civility. It had served its purpose.
• "I say, Landor," he began, after having outwardly greeted Felipa and inwardly cursed his luck at being obliged to tear a man away from so fair a bride, "I say, there's been the dickens of a row up at the Agency."
• Cairness did not see that it called for a reply, and he made none.
• "I've got four chickens hid under the underpinnin' there for you and Si," confessed the Deacon. "The dogs seemed to 've smelled 'em out and wuz after 'em."
• There was now at Grant the prospect of a girl, and for days ahead the bachelors had planned about her. She was Landor's ward,—it was news to them that he had a ward, for he was not given to confidences,—and she was going to visit the wife of his captain, Mrs. Campbell. When they asked questions, Landor said she was eighteen years old, and that her name was Cabot, and that as he had not seen her for ten years he did not know whether she were pretty or not. But the vagueness surrounding her was rather attractive than otherwise, on the whole. It was not even known when she would arrive. There was no railroad to[Pg 14] Arizona. From Kansas she would have to travel by ambulance with the troops which were changing station.
• The Ministerial arrangements being completed, the coronation took place on the 31st of October, and was fully attended by the chief nobles and statesmen, even by Oxford and Bolingbroke, and was celebrated in most parts of the kingdom with many demonstrations of joy. Parliament was then dissolved, and the elections went vastly in favour of the Whigs, though there were serious riots at Manchester, and throughout the Midlands. The hopes of advantage from a new monarch made their usual conversions. In the House of Commons of 1710 there was a very large majority of Whigs; in that of 1713 as great a one of Tories; and now again there was as large a one of Whigs. In the Lords the spectacle was the same. Bolingbroke says, "I saw several Lords concur to condemn, in one general vote, all that they had approved of in a former Parliament by many particular resolutions."
• Because it had been supposed that the “ghost”—Jeff—or whoever it was, would use that means of getting in, Dick’s own position had been chosen. He had selected a place sharply diagonal in direction from it. In his corner he could not be seen in the beam of a flashlight from the small cupboard unless its user came all the way out: otherwise the sides would shape the path of the light so it would not come near him.
• The woman fairly flung the ill-cooked food upon the table, with a spitefulness she did not try to conceal. And she manifested her bad will most particularly toward the pretty children. Cairness felt his indignation rise against Kirby for having brought a woman to this, in the name of love.
• She kept her sullen glance on the ground, but she was shaking violently.
• The King of Spain hoped, by the dismissal of Alberoni, to obtain more advantageous terms of peace from France and England; but they still stood firmly to the conditions of the Quadruple Alliance. On the 19th of January, 1720, the plenipotentiaries of England, France, and Holland signed an engagement at Paris not to admit of any conditions of peace from Spain contrary to those of the alliance. Stanhope despatched his secretary, Schaub, to Madrid, to endeavour to bring over the queen to this agreement, and Dubois sent instructions to the Marquis Scotti, Father d'Aubenton, and others in the French interest to press the same point. She stood out firmly for some time, but eventually gave way, and the mind of the king was soon influenced by her. Some difficulties which could not be overcome were referred to a congress to be held at Cambray. On the 26th of January Philip announced his accession to the Quadruple Alliance, declaring that he gave up his rights and possessions to secure the peace of Europe. He renewed his renunciation of the French Crown, and promised to evacuate Sicily and Sardinia within six months, which he faithfully performed.
• “I haven’t seen much of you, I know.” Larry sat down on the swing by Dick on the latter’s veranda. “Daytimes I’ve been studying rigging and checking up on an airplane, because Tommy thinks a pilot ought to know everything there is to know about his ship because he may have to do things himself if he gets hold of a careless rigger.”
• Before he left with Taylor on the next morning but one, he ventured to warn Kirby. But he was met with a stolid "I was brought up that way," and he knew that argument would be entirely lost.
• He sat down cross-legged on the ground, facing her. "I've got plenty of time, my dear woman. I can stop here all day if you can, you know," he assured her. Afterward he made a painting of her as she had sat there, in among the rocks and the scrub growth, aged, bent, malevolent, and in garments that were picturesque because they were rags. He called it the Sibyl of the Sierra Madre. And, like the Trojan, he plied her with[Pg 240] questions—not of the future, but of the past. "Well," he said, "are you going to answer me?"
• "They won't be ready. No use making haste, Captain," Cairness suggested at daybreak, as Landor hurried the breakfast and saddling. They knew that the chances were ten to one that it would be a wild goose chase, and the captain already repented him. But at seven the men were mounted, with two days' rations in their saddle bags, and trotting across the flat in the fragrance of the yet unheated day, to the settlement of San Tomaso.
• Dutchy was a little German, who kept a milk ranch some seven miles from the post. "Apachees, Apachees," he squealed, gasping for breath.
• Barnwell had told Brewster about him also. "His name is Cairness,—Charles Cairness,—and he's got a lot of fool theories too," he explained. "He goes in for art, makes some pretty good paintings of the Indians, and has picked up some of their lingo. Made himself agreeable to the squaws, I guess. The interpreter says there's one got her nose cut off by her buck, on his account."
• He failed in his purpose.
• “Talking to farmer boys—what they didn’t know, they found out from their older sisters when any of them were picking up early potatoes or snipping asparagus or digging up onions.”
• She had been sufficiently ashamed of herself thereafter, and totally unable to understand her own evil[Pg 312] impulse. As she lay swinging in the hammock, she remembered this and many other things connected with that abhorred period of compulsory civilization and of success. The hot, close, dead, sweet smell of the petunias, wilting in the August sun, and the surface-baked earth came up to her. It made her vaguely heartsick and depressed. The mood was unusual with her. She wished intensely that her husband would come back.
• The Scottish rebellion had been an auspicious circumstance for the arms of France. Marshal Saxe had taken the field, to the surprise of the Allies, in the very middle of winter, invested Brussels, and compelled it to surrender on the 20th of February, 1746. One town fell after another; Mons, Antwerp, Charleroi, and finally, Namur capitulated on the 19th of September, after a siege of only six days. As soon as Cumberland could leave Scotland after the battle of Culloden, he returned to London, in the hope that he should be appointed, covered, as he was, with his bloody laurels, to the supreme command of the Allied forces in Flanders, where he flattered himself he could arrest the progress of the French. But that command had been conferred on Prince Charles of Lorraine, the Emperor's brother, much to the disgust of both Cumberland and the king. On the 11th of October the Prince of Lorraine engaged the French at Raucoux, on the Jaar, and was signally defeated; the English cavalry, under General Ligonier, managing to save his army from total destruction, but not being able to stem the overthrow. At the close of the campaign the French remained almost entire masters of the Austrian Netherlands.
• “drop a signal flare,” urged Sandy. “We’ll come a-flying!”
• Charles was, both in Scotland—on which his wild adventure had inflicted such miseries—and in France, a hero of romance; but his captured adherents had far other scenes to face than the lights and luxurious music of the opera. The prisons were crammed to such a degree with the[109] unfortunate Gaels, that Government was compelled to stow numbers away on board of men-of-war and transports, till fever broke out and swept them off by hundreds, sparing the labours of judges, juries, and hangmen. In Carlisle prison alone four hundred Scots were jammed in a space not properly sufficient for forty! The poor prisoners had been brought out of Scotland in open defiance of the Act of union and of the recognised rights of the Scottish courts; and now they were called on to cast lots for one in twenty to take their trials, with a certainty of being hanged, and the rest shipped off to the Plantations in America without any trial at all.
• But the astute Deacon had overlooked one thing in his calculations. The crisp morning air was filled with the pungent smell of burning feathers and flesh, and the fragrance of stewing chicken. It reached hungry men in every direction, made their mouths water and their minds wonder where it could come from.
• They had need of anxiety. A scattering volley of shots came from the bushes and the rocks on the opposite side of the Tennessee River and one of the leaders in the team just ahead of him dropped dead in his tracks. The teams in front were whipped up still harder, and succeeded in getting away. The shots were answered from a line of our own men on this side of the river, who fired at the smoke they saw rising.
• He kept thinking about it while engaged in what he called "doin' up the chores," that is, making Si and Shorty comfortable for the day, before he lay down to take a much-needed rest. He had never been so puzzled in all his life. He thought of burying them in the ground, but dismissed that because he would be seen digging the hole and putting them in, and if he should escape observation, the dogs would be pretty certain to nose them out and dig them up. Sinking them in the creek suggested itself, but had to be dismissed for various reasons, one being fear that the ravenous catfish would devour them.
• "How near would the guns come to hitting a man a mile off?"
• "You might marry," Landor suggested. "You can always do that when all else fails."
• But a chicken was no more to be had in Chattanooga than a Delmonico banquet. The table of the Major-General commanding the Army of the Cumberland might have a little more hardtack and pork on it than appeared in the tents of the privates, and be cooked a little better, but it had nothing but hardtack and pork.
• "Were you out late last night?"
• He laughed crossly. Evidently he was dropping back into the poetical tendencies of his most callow youth. He would be doing her a sonnet next, forsooth. He had done two or three of them in his school days for Sydney damsels. That was when he had aspired to be ranked in his own country with Gordon. Good Lord! how many aspirations of various sorts he had had. And he was a cow-boy.
• The Deacon found that a ride in a wagon was not such an unqualified favor as he might have thought. The poor, half-fed, overworked mules went so slowly that the Deacon could make better time walking, and he was too merciful to allow them to pull him up hill.
• There was now at Grant the prospect of a girl, and for days ahead the bachelors had planned about her. She was Landor's ward,—it was news to them that he had a ward, for he was not given to confidences,—and she was going to visit the wife of his captain, Mrs. Campbell. When they asked questions, Landor said she was eighteen years old, and that her name was Cabot, and that as he had not seen her for ten years he did not know whether she were pretty or not. But the vagueness surrounding her was rather attractive than otherwise, on the whole. It was not even known when she would arrive. There was no railroad to[Pg 14] Arizona. From Kansas she would have to travel by ambulance with the troops which were changing station.
• “What?” Dick asked, with a mental reservation as to any promise.
• "That's a good enough gag for the Provost, but I understand you, in spite of your hayseed airs. Say, I'll make it $250."
• Colonel Gardiner endeavoured to charge the advancing enemy with his dragoons; but it was in vain that he attempted to animate their craven souls by word and example—at the first volley of the Highlanders they wheeled and fled. The same disgraceful scene took place on the left, at nearly the same moment. Hamilton's regiment of horse dispersed at the first charge of the Macdonalds, leaving the centre exposed on both its flanks. The infantry made a better stand than the cavalry; it discharged a steady and well-directed volley on the advancing Highlanders, and killed some of their best men, amongst others, a son of the famous Rob Roy. But the Highlanders did not give them time for a second volley; they were up with them, dashed aside their bayonets with their targets, burst through their ranks in numerous places, so that the whole, not being able to give way on account of the park wall of Preston, were thrown into confusion, and at the mercy of the foe. Never was a battle so instantly decided—it is said not to have lasted more than five or six minutes; never was a defeat more absolute. Sir John Cope, or Johnnie Cope, as he will be styled in Scotland to the end of time, by the assistance of the Earls of Loudon and Home, collected about four hundred and fifty of the recreant dragoons, and fled to Coldstream that night. There not feeling secure, they continued their flight till they reached Berwick, where Sir Mark Kerr received Cope with the[97] sarcastic but cruelly true remark that he believed that he was the first general on record who had carried the news of his own defeat.
• He despatched a squadron of ten ships of the line to the Mediterranean, under Admiral Haddock; another strong squadron sailed for the West Indies; letters of marque and reprisal were issued to the merchants; and troops and stores were forwarded to Georgia, which the Spaniards had threatened to invade. He gave directions to all merchants in Spanish ports to register their goods with a public notary in case of a rupture. These measures produced a rapid change of tone at the Spanish Court. On comparing the demands on both sides for damages sustained in commerce, there appeared a balance in favour of England of two hundred thousand pounds. Against this, the Spaniards demanded sixty thousand pounds in compensation for the ships taken by Admiral Byng in 1718—a claim which Stanhope would never allow, but which had been recognised in the Treaty of Seville, and was now, therefore, acknowledged. This reduced the sum to a hundred and forty thousand pounds, which the Spanish Court proposed should be paid by assignments on the American revenues. This, the Ministers were well aware, might involve the most endless delays and uncertainties, and they certainly showed a most conceding spirit by allowing a deduction of forty-five thousand pounds for prompt payment at Madrid. The sum was now reduced to ninety-five thousand pounds; and this being agreed to, a convention was signed on the 14th of January, 1739.
• His first measure was to establish the Great Northern Alliance. He had obtained information of designs on the part of France and Spain to make a descent on our southern coast, and burn the dockyards of Portsmouth and Plymouth. Before quitting office, in 1761, he had planned this alliance, and he now made endeavours, but in vain, to induce Frederick of Prussia to come into such an alliance. Frederick was too sore at his treatment by the Cabinet of Lord Bute to listen to any proposals from England. Still, this would not have prevented Chatham from prosecuting the object of the alliance with Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Germany, and Holland, had he remained long enough in[191] office. His name carried the utmost weight all over the Continent. His indomitable vigour, and his victorious arms, had been witnessed with wonder. In Paris, Horace Walpole found the news of his return to office produced a panic not to be described. The very mention of his name struck a silence into the most boastful or insolent company.
• "Yes, cl'ar out immejitly," commanded the old man. "I'm a Jestice of the Peace, and ef you don't go to wunst I'll find a way to make yo'. We've a law agin able-bodied vagrants. Cl'ar out, now."
• He had seen a large band heading for the ranch, and[Pg 128] had found a dead white man on the north road, he said, and he gesticulated madly, his voice choked with terror.
• "Better do something with that cow right off," advised the first-comer, as he walked off. "You can't keep her in camp all day. Somebody'll git her away from you if they have to take her by main force."

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