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