The Drummers Coat | Page 4

that wicked Boney had plunged all the world into war again. Then Dick jumped up and brought down a china figure of a man in a blue coat on a prancing horse with his hand pointing upwards, who was no other than Boney, the terrible Bonaparte himself, as he appeared when crossing the Alps.
"Ah, the roog," said Sally, as Dick flourished the figure. "Many's the time that I've wanted to throw he behind the fire. He tooked from me my boy, my Jan; ah, you knows the story of my Jan, don't 'ee, my dear?" she added turning to Elsie.
"Yes," said Elsie, who had heard the story so often as a mite of a child that she told it herself with something of a Devonshire accent, "poor Jan that 'listed for a soldier and went to Portingale to the wars, and never come back, not he, nor wild Lucy that ran away for the love of him, nor the boy that was born to them."
"Aye," said the old woman to the Corporal, but smiling sadly on the child. "Killed he was, so they said, but they couldn't tell how nor where; and missing they was, but I never could find out nought about mun, though I hope still to hear somewhat; but it must come soon for it's ten years agone now, and I reckon that my time's a getting short."
The Corporal nodded; but Dick had brought down another figure in china, the figure of a man in a red coat with a hooked nose and two curves of black whisker on his cheeks, underneath which was written WELLINGTON.
"Aye," said old Sally, triumphantly, "that was the boy to give Boney what vor. And now here's the wreaths, my dears, tied with the family colours, blue and white. I've a had they ribbins forty years, ever since the great election, when Bracefort was head of the poll, your grandfather that was. And now you'm going to catch the old Billy Pitt, I reckon; dear, dear, to think that the horse should still be here and the captain gone."
"But the Lieutenant's come back," said the Corporal. "Colonel Fitzdenys, I should say, whom I mind as the captain's lieutenant; come back only yesterday safe and sound from the Injies."
"That's well," said Sally, "for a fine brave gentleman he is, as never passes me without a kind word. But don't 'ee go yet for a minute, my dears," and she hobbled away to a large glass bottle, took out two sticks of toffee, such as she sold to the village boys for a halfpenny a piece, and gave them to Dick and Elsie.
The children took them gratefully, for it was little sweet stuff that children got in those days; and old Sally watched them as they went up the road, each of them breaking off a large piece for the Corporal.
They had not long been gone when a new and strange figure suddenly bounded into the road from the bank at the side. It was that of a young man who seemed to be about five and twenty, short in stature and slight in figure, and dressed in a long skirted coat, breeches and gaiters, which were all alike full of rents and patches. He wore no hat, but his head was so thickly covered by a shock of brown hair that he did not seem to want one. His face was brown and sunburnt and partly covered by a fair downy beard, which, though not thick, added to his wild and untidy appearance; and his eyes were very large, grey and vacant. He sprang down from the bank as though he had lived there all his life, like a rabbit, and then moved on towards the village at a strange shambling pace, straying from side to side of the road and waving his arms meaninglessly. Suddenly he stopped, and pulling a squirrel out of his pocket began to play with it, cooing and whistling to it as it ran over his arms, and chirping when it stopped and threw its tail over its back. The two seemed to be the very best of friends, and after playing for some time the man moved on with the squirrel on his shoulder, drawing closer to the village; when of a sudden the boys at play in the stream broke into such a storm of yells that he jumped up on the bank again to look at them, and stood there for a time gaping and grinning from ear to ear at what he saw.
For the boys had succeeded in driving a little eel into a corner and in throwing it ashore; and there they were, dancing about like mad creatures, unable to hold it, more than half afraid to touch it, but always contriving to