eye from the calm, sad face which in the day of battle could outflash
them all. That sensitive, mild, complaisant face (humble, and even
homely now, with scathe and scald and the lines of middle age) presented
itself as a great surprise to the many who came to gaze at it. With
its child-like simplicity and latent fire, it was rather the face of a
dreamer and poet than of a warrior and hero.

Mrs. Cheeseman, the wife of Mr. Cheeseman, who kept the main shop in
the village, put this conclusion into better English, when Mrs. Shanks
(Harry's mother) came on Monday to buy a rasher and compare opinions.

"If I could have fetched it to my mind," she said, "that Squire Darling
were a tarradiddle, and all his wenches liars--which some of them be,
and no mistake--and if I could refuse my own eyes about gold-lace, and
crown jewels, and arms off, happier would I sleep in my bed, ma'am,
every night the Lord seeth good for it. I would sooner have found
hoppers in the best ham in the shop than have gone to church so to
delude myself. But there! that Cheeseman would make me do it. I did
believe as we had somebody fit to do battle for us against Boney, and I
laughed about all they invasion and scares. But now--why, 'a can't say
bo to a goose! If 'a was to come and stand this moment where you be
a-standing, and say, 'Mrs. Cheeseman, I want a fine rasher,' not a bit
of gristle would I trim out, nor put it up in paper for him, as I do for
you, ma'am."

And Widow Shanks quite agreed with her.

"Never can I tell you what my feelings was, when I seed him a-standing
by the monument, ma'am. But I said to myself--'why, my poor John, as is
now in heaven, poor fellow, would 'a took you up with one hand, my lord,