came at last to look upon it as the natural state, and thought how queer
it must seem to be at peace. During that long time we fought the Dutch,
we fought the Danes, we fought the Spanish, we fought the Turks, we
fought the Americans, we fought the Monte-Videans, until it seemed that
in this universal struggle no race was too near of kin, or too far away,
to be drawn into the quarrel. But most of all it was the French whom we
fought, and the man whom of all others we loathed and feared and admired
was the great Captain who ruled them.

It was very well to draw pictures of him, and sing songs about him, and
make as though he were an impostor; but I can tell you that the fear of
that man hung like a black shadow over all Europe, and that there was a
time when the glint of a fire at night upon the coast would set every
woman upon her knees and every man gripping for his musket. He had
always won: that was the terror of it. The Fates seemed to be behind
him. And now we knew that he lay upon the northern coast with a hundred
and fifty thousand veterans, and the boats for their passage. But it is
an old story, how a third of the grown folk of our country took up arms,
and how our little one-eyed, one-armed man crushed their fleet.
There was still to be a land of free thinking and free speaking in
Europe.

There was a great beacon ready on the hill by Tweedmouth, built up of
logs and tar-barrels; and I can well remember how, night after night, I
strained my eyes to see if it were ablaze. I was only eight at the
time, but it is an age when one takes a grief to heart, and I felt as
though the fate of the country hung in some fashion upon me and my
vigilance. And then one night as I looked I suddenly saw a little
flicker on the beacon hill--a single red tongue of flame in the
darkness. I remember how I rubbed my eyes, and pinched myself, and