"It's a strange thing, sir," he began, "that I seem somehow to have
always the wrong sow by the ear. I'm English after all, and I glory in
it. My eye! don't I, though! Let some of your Frenchies come over here
to invade, and you'll see whether or not. O yes, I'm English to the
backbone, I am. And yet look at me! I got hold of this 'ere William
Wallace and took to him right off; I never heard of such a man before!
And then you came along, and I took to you. And both the two of you were
my born enemies! I--I beg your pardon, Mr. Ramornie, but would you mind
it very much if you didn't go for to do anything against England"--he
brought the word out suddenly, like something hot--"when I was along of
you?"

I was more affected than I can tell.

"Rowley," I said, "you need have no fear. By how much I love my own
honour, by so much I will take care to protect yours. We are but
fraternising at the outposts, as soldiers do. When the bugle calls, my
boy, we must face each other, one for England, one for France, and may
God defend the right!"

So I spoke at the moment; but for all my brave airs, the boy had wounded
me in a vital quarter. His words continued to ring in my hearing. There
was no remission all day of my remorseful thoughts; and that night (when
we lay at Lichfield, I believe) there was no sleep for me in my bed. I
put out the candle and lay down with a good resolution; and in a moment
all was light about me like a theatre, and I saw myself upon the stage
of it playing ignoble parts. I remembered France and my Emperor, now
depending on the arbitrament of war, bent down, fighting on their knees
and with their teeth against so many and such various assailants. And I
burned with shame to be here in England, cherishing an English fortune,
pursuing an English mistress, and not there, to handle a musket in my
native fields, and to manure them with my body if I fell. I remembered
that I belonged to France. All my fathers had fought for her, and some
had died; the voice in my throat, the sight of my eyes, the tears that
now sprang there, the whole man of me, was fashioned of French earth and
born of a French mother; I had been tended and caressed by a succession
of the daughters of France, the fairest, the most ill-starred; I had
fought and conquered shoulder to shoulder with her sons. A soldier, a
noble, of the proudest and bravest race in Europe, it had been left to
the prattle of a hobbledehoy lackey in an English chaise t