Part 28 (1/2)

Once they knew Crecy, Hastings, Drogheda, Moscow, a.s.saye, Khartoum or Glencoe,-- Now the old hatreds are tinder for campfires.

England has only her world to show!

They are not dreamers, these men of the Empire, Guarding their land in the old-time way, And this is the style that prevails in the Legions,-- ”The foe of the past is a friend to-day.”

_”It's a long, long road to the Empire (From Beersheba even to Dan) And the time is rather late for a chronic Hymn of Hate,-- And we know the tailor doesn't make the man!”_

XIX

ADMIRAL OF NEW ENGLAND

Barefoot and touzle-headed, in the coa.r.s.e russet and blue homespun of an apprentice, a small boy sidled through the wood. Like a hunted hedgehog, he was ready to run or fight. Where a bright brook slid into the meadows, he stopped, and looked through new leaves at the infinite blue of the sky. Words his grandfather used to read to him came back to his mind.

”Let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout from the top of the mountain.”

The Bible which old Joseph Bradford had left to his grandson had been taken away, but no one could take away the memory of it. If he had dared, Will would have shouted aloud then and there. For all his hunger and weariness and dread of the future the strength of the land entered into his young soul. He drank of the clear brook, and let it wash away the soil of his pilgrimage. Then he curled himself in a hollow full of dry leaves, and went to sleep.

When he woke, it was in the edge of the evening. Long shadows pointed like lances among the trees. A horse was cropping the gra.s.s in a clearing, and some one beyond the thicket was reading aloud. For an instant he thought himself dreaming of the old cottage at Austerfield--but the voice was young and lightsome.

”Where a man can live at all, there can he live n.o.bly.”

The reader stopped and laughed out. A lively snarling came from a burrow not far away, where two badgers were quarrelling conscientiously.

”Just like folks ye be, a-hectorin' and a-fussin'. What's the great question to settle now--predestination or infant baptism?--Why, where under the canopy did you come from, you pint o' cider?”

”I be a-travelin',” Will said stoutly.

”Runaway 'prentice, I should guess. I was one myself at fifteen.”

”I'm 'leven, goin' on twelve,” said the boy, standing as straight as he could.

”Any folks?”

”I lived with granddad until he died, four year back.”

”And so you're wayfarin', be you? What can you do to get your bread?”

The urchin dug a bare toe into the sod. ”I can work,” he said half-defiantly. ”Granddad always said I should be put to school some day, but my uncle won't have that. I can read.”

”Latin?”

”No--English. Granddad weren't college-bred.”

”Nor I--they gave me more lickings than Latin at the grammar school down to Alvord, 'cause I would go bird's-nesting and fis.h.i.+ng sooner than study my _hic_, _haec_, _hoc_. And now I've built me a booth like a wild man o' Virginia and come out here to get my Latin that I should ha'

mastered at thirteen. All the travel-books are in Latin, and you have to know it to get on in foreign parts.”

”Have you been in foreign parts?”

”Four year--France and Scotland and the Low Countries. But I got enough o' seeing Christians kill one another, and says I to myself, John Smith, you go see what they're about at home. And here I found our fen-sludgers all by the ears over Bishops and Papists and Brownists and such like. In Holland they let a man read's Bible in peace.”

”Is that the Bible you got there?”