asked; "because I
have twice as many ears as eyes."

This being so, he stuck fast to the conviction which he had nourished
all along, that the scheme of invasion was a sham, intended to keep the
British fleet at home, while the enemy ravaged our commerce and colonies
afar. And by this time the country, grown heartily tired of groundless
alarms and suspended menace, was beginning to view with contempt a camp
that was wearing out its own encampment. Little was it dreamed in the
sweet rose gardens of England, or the fragrant hay-fields, that the curl
of blue smoke while the dinner was cooking, the call of milkmaids, the
haymaker's laugh, or the whinny of Dobbin between his mouthfuls, might
be turned (ere a man of good appetite was full) into foreign shouts, and
shriek of English maiden, crackling homestead, and blazing stack-yard,
blare of trumpets, and roar of artillery, cold flash of steel, and the
soft warm trickle of a father's or a husband's blood.

But the chance of this hung upon a hair just now. One hundred and sixty
thousand soldiers--the finest sons of Mars that demon has ever yet
begotten--fifteen thousand warlike horses, ready to devour all the oats
of England, cannons that never could be counted (because it was not
always safe to go near them), and ships that no reckoner could get to
the end of, because he was always beginning again.

Who was there now to meet all these? Admiral Darling, and Captain
Stubbard, and Zebedee Tugwell (if he found them intrusive), and Erle
Twemlow, as soon as he got his things from London. There might be a few
more to come forward, as soon as they saw the necessity; but Mr. John
Prater could not be relied on--because of the trade he might expect
to drive; Mr. Shargeloes had never turned up again; and as for poor
Cheeseman, he had lost himself so entirely now that he made up the
weight of a pound of sausages, in the broad summer light, with a tallow
candle. Like others concerned in this history, he had jumped at the
stars, and cracked his head against a beam, in manner to be recorded.

The country being destitute thus of defenders--for even Stubbard's
battery was not half manned, because it had never been wanted--the plan
of invasion was thriving well, in all but one particular. The fleet
under Villeneuve was at large, so was that under Lallemand, who had
superseded Missiessy, so was the force of Gravina and another Spanish
admiral; but Ganteaume had failed to elude the vigilance