forward and climbing a wall, suddenly found himself in a quiet
old garden by the house. And here, for a time forgetting, as it
would seem, the battle, and heedless of the bullets that now and
then flew past him like peevish wasps, the young Officer stayed,
gathering roses--old-fashioned damask roses, streaked with red
and white--which, for the sake of a Court Beauty, there besieged
with her father, he carried to the house; falling, however,
struck by a chance bullet, or shot perhaps by one of his own
party. A few of the young Officer's verses, written in the
stilted fashion of the time, and almost unreadable now, have
been preserved. The lady's portrait hangs in the white drawing
room at Bligh; a simpering, faded figure, with ringlets and
drop-pearls, and a dress of amber-coloured silk.




_In Church_


"For the Pen," said the Vicar; and in the sententious pause that
followed, I felt that I would offer any gifts of gold to avert
or postpone the solemn, inevitable, hackneyed, and yet, as it
seemed to me, perfectly appalling statement that "the Pen is
mightier than the Sword."




_Parsons_