o whom the Light Dragoon's helmet and sword
and sash belonged, for immediately on one side of it is a portrait of a
very handsome man with dark hair and eyes, dressed in a blue coat with
silver braid, with the crimson sash round his waist, the curved sword
at his side, and the identical helmet under his arm; and you may read
underneath the picture that it represents Captain Richard Bracefort,
who was killed at the battle of Salamanca. Close by, too, is a picture
of his charger, Billy Pitt, which he rode in the battle, and which
lived, as is written on the picture, for many years afterwards. Again,
as a pendant to the Captain's picture hangs a portrait of a lady,
showing a beautiful oval face with three chestnut curls on each side of
it and a mass of chestnut hair above, and two blue eyes as clear and as
pure as a child's; and underneath this portrait is written the name of
Lady Eleanor Bracefort, wife and widow of Captain Richard the Light
Dragoon.

But how the drummer's coat ever found its way into Bracefort Hall there
is nothing to show. Nevertheless by that little coat there hangs a
tale; and though that tale is now nearly eighty years old, both the
Hall and the village are so little changed that it is perhaps worth the
telling.

CHAPTER II

It was the 22nd of July 1820, and the shadows were beginning to
lengthen over Ashacombe village on a burning summer's afternoon. The
men were still at work, and most of the women also; for, early though
it was, a farmer was cutting a field of wheat over the hill on the far
side of the valley, a field which was always the first in the whole
parish to ripen. So the men were cutting and the women were binding,
for women did more work in the fields in those days than in these; and
now and again, when the booming of the mill-wheel ceased for a moment,
the sound of the hones on the sickles could be heard clinking musically
in the still heavy air. Two or three old women alone stood in their
porches, with their sun-bonnets over their neat white caps, gossiping
as they knitted, and speaking an occasional word to an old, old man who
sat in a high-backed chair basking in the sun. The children were all
down in the meadow below, the little maids mostly sitting in the shade
and making nosegays of forget-me-nots; while every boy that could walk,
and some of the maids also, were paddling in the little stream or
dancing about the bank in chase of such unhappy fish as had been too