CHAPTER VI

FOR HIS COUNTRY

Shall I forget on this side of the grave?
I promise nothing; you must wait and see.


From the train arriving at East Burgen station at eight o'clock that same
evening there alighted a youth who seemed suddenly to have taken manhood
upon his shoulders. He stood on the platform and pointed out to a porter,
who called him Master James, a large Gladstone bag and a new sword-case.

Although he could have carried the luggage under one arm and the porter
under the other, he carefully refrained from offering to convey anything
except his own walking-stick. Such is the force of education. This boy
had been brought up to expect service. He was to be served all his life,
and so the sword-case had to be left to the porter whom he envied.

During the journey down--between the farthest-removed stations--the sword
had flashed more than once in the dim light of the carriage lamp. Ah!
those first swords! Not Toledo nor Damascus can produce their equal in
after years.

The porter, honest father of two private soldiers of the line himself,
saw it all--at once. He carried the sword-case with an exaggerated
reverence and forbore from remark just then. Afterwards, beneath the
station-lamp, he looked at the shilling--the first of its kind from that
quarter--with a pathetic, meaning smile.