* * * * *

England with folded arms was at peace. The Treaty of Versailles had
terminated the disastrous war with America. The independence of the
"Thirteen States" had been recognized. The world was drawing a long
breath, filling its fighting lungs, awaiting the death struggle with
Napoleon for the supremacy of Europe. Yet the spirit of war lingered in
the air. It even drifted on the breeze across the Channel to Guernsey,
and filtered through the trees that crowned the Lion's Rock at Cobo. It
invaded the valleys of the Petit Bot and stirred the bulrushes in the
marshes of Havelet. The pulse of our hero throbbed with the subtle
infection. Not with the brute lust for other men's blood, but with the
instinct of the true patriot to shed, if need be, his own blood to
maintain the right. He would follow the example of his ancestors and
fight and die, if duty called him, in defence of king and country.

The sweet arrogance of youth uplifted him. Earth, air and water
conspired to encourage him. To satisfy this unspoken craving for action
he would, from his outlook on the Jerbourg crags--where bold Sir Hugh
had sat for just such purpose years before--watch the Weymouth luggers
making bad weather of it beyond the Casquets; or challenge in his own
boat the rip-tides between Sark and Brechou, and the combers that romped
between St. Sampson and the Isle of Herm.

There was no limit to this boy's hardihood and daring. The more furious
the gale the more congenial the task. Returning from these frequent
baptisms of salt water, his Saxon fairness and Norman freshness aglow
with spray, he would loiter on the beach to talk to the kelp gatherers
raking amid the breakers, and to watch the mackerel boats, reefed down,
flying to the harbour for shelter. The crayfish in the pools would tempt