as only to put forth his hand, or draw his bow or
swing his fishing-rod, and help himself. To be sure, in time of war, man
has just got to be earnest, and think out plans for catching and
spearing his enemies, and drill his troops and improve his weapons, in
fact to do some work, or have his throat cut, and be put in the oven and
eaten. Thus it is really hard for the most fortunate people to avoid
being earnest now and then.

The people whose stories are told in this book were very different from
each other in many ways. The child abbess, Mere Angelique, ruling her
convent, and at war with naughty abbesses who hated being earnest, does
not at once remind us of Hannibal. The great Montrose, with his poems
and his scented love-locks, his devotion to his cause, his chivalry, his
death, to which he went gaily clad like a bridegroom to meet his bride,
does not seem a companion for Palissy the Potter, all black and shrunk
and wrinkled, and bowed over his furnaces. It is a long way from gentle
Miss Nightingale, tending wounded dogs when a child, and wounded
soldiers when a woman, to Charles Gordon playing wild tricks at school,
leading a Chinese army, watching alone at Khartoum, in a circle of cruel
foes, for the sight of the British colours, and the sounds of the
bagpipes that never met his eyes and ears.

But these people, and all the others whose stories are told, had this in
common, that they were in earnest, though we may be sure that they did
not go about with talk of earnestness for ever in their mouths. It came
natural to them, they could not help it, they liked it, their hearts
were set on two things: to do their very best, and to keep their honour.
The Constant Prince suffered hunger and cold and long imprisonment all
'to keep the bird in his bosom,' as the old Cavalier said, to be true to
honour. 'I will carry with me honour and fidelity to the grave,' said
Montrose; and he kept his word, though his enemies gave him no grave,
but placed his head and limbs on spikes in various towns of his country.
But now his grave, in St. Giles's Church in Edinburgh, is the most
beautiful and honourable in Scotland, adorned with his stainless
scutcheon, and with those of Napiers and Grahams, his kindred and his
friends.

"The grave of March, the grave of Gwythar,
The grave of Gugann Gleddyvrudd,
A mystery to the world, the grave of Arthur,"

says the old Welsh poem, and unknown as the grave of Arthur is