in the story, for which, indeed, there seemed no evidence.

Derrick's eyes during this conversation were something wonderful to
see, and long after, when we were not actually playing at anything,
I used often to notice the same expression stealing over him, and
would cry out, "There is the man defending the bridge again; I can
see him in your eyes! Tell me what happened to him next!"

Then, generally pacing to and fro in the apple walk, or sitting
astride the bridge itself, Derrick would tell me of the adventures
of my ancestor, Paul Wharncliffe, who performed incredible feats of
valour, and who was to both of us a most real person. On wet days
he wrote his story in a copy-book, and would have worked at it for
hours had my mother allowed him, though of the manual part of the
work he had, and has always retained, the greatest dislike. I
remember well the comical ending of this first story of his. He
skipped over an interval of ten years, represented on the page by
ten laboriously made stars, and did for his hero in the following
lines:

"And now, reader, let us come into Mondisfield churchyard. There
are three tombstones. On one is written, 'Mr. Paul Wharncliffe.'"

The story was no better than the productions of most eight-year-old
children, the written story at least. But, curiously enough, it
proved to be the germ of the celebrated romance, 'At Strife,' which
Derrick wrote in after years; and he himself maintains that his
picture of life during the Civil War would have been much less
graphic had he not lived so much in the past during his various
visits to Mondisfield.