The Project Gutenberg EBook of Colonel Quaritch, V.C., by H. Rider Haggard

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Title: Colonel Quaritch, V.C.
A Tale of Country Life

Author: H. Rider Haggard

Release Date: April 3, 2004 [EBook #11882]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COLONEL QUARITCH, V.C. ***

Produced by John Bickers and Dagny

COLONEL QUARITCH, V.C.
By H. Rider Haggard

First Published 1888.

Etext prepared by John Bickers, jbickers@ihug.co.nz
and Dagny, dagnypg@yahoo.com

COLONEL QUARITCH, V.C.

A TALE OF COUNTRY LIFE

BY

H. RIDER HAGGARD

I Dedicate

This Tale of Country Life

To

My Friend and Fellow-Sportsman,

CHARLES J. LONGMAN

PREPARER'S NOTE

This text was prepared from an 1889 edition published by Longmans,
Green and Co., printed by Kelly and Co., Gate Street, Lincoln's
Inn Fields, W.C.; and Middle Mill, Kingston-on-Thames.

COLONEL QUARITCH, V.C.

A TALE OF COUNTRY LIFE

CHAPTER I

HAROLD QUARITCH MEDITATES

There are things and there are faces which, when felt or seen for the
first time, stamp themselves upon the mind like a sun image on a
sensitized plate and there remain unalterably fixed. To take the
instance of a face--we may never see it again, or it may become the
companion of our life, but there the picture is just as we /first/
knew it, the same smile or frown, the same look, unvarying and
unvariable, reminding us in the midst of change of the indestructible
nature of every experience, act, and aspect of our days. For that
which has been, is, since the past knows no corruption, but lives
eternally in its frozen and completed self.

These are somewhat large thoughts to be born of a small matter, but
they rose up spontaneously in the mind of a soldierly-looking man who,