and hung down, in stiff wooden ringlets, over his pale cheeks. At this
the dandy-corporal sneered, and his sneers growing louder on every
occasion, John Clare, at the first favourable opportunity, knocked him
down with his unoccupied right hand. The offence, amounting to a crime,
was at once reported to the captain, and Clare expected momentarily to be
thrust into the black-hole, to be tried by court-martial, and perhaps to
be shot. But, singularly enough, nothing, after all, came of the whole
affair. The serious breach of military discipline was entirely overlooked
by the authorities of the Northamptonshire militia, who probably thought
the whole body of men not worth looking after, the greater number of them
consisting of a mere collection of the lowest rabble. In consequence of
strong remonstrances made by the good people of Oundle about the
insecurity of their property, and even their lives, the thirteen hundred
warriors were disbanded soon afterwards, and never called together again.
John Clare thereupon left his quarters at the 'Rose and Crown,' where he
had been tolerably well treated by the owners, a widow and her two
daughters, and, with a joyful heart, returned to Helpston. He came home
somewhat richer than he left, for he brought back with him a second-hand
copy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost,' an odd volume, with some leaves torn
out, of Shakespeare's 'Tempest,' both works purchased at a broker's shop
at Oundle, and, over and above these acquisitions, a knowledge of the
goose step.




TROUBLES OF LOVE, AND A TRIAL OF GYPSY LIFE.

The few weeks' martial glory which John Clare enjoyed had the one good
effect of weaning him from the roisterous company at the Bachelors' Hall,