"Among the prisoners who next morning were reported to the captain as
safe were Fulke, his daughter, and one manservant.
"Morgan's heart failed him. He could not, dared not see them. He
ordered them to be kept in safe custody, and, meanwhile, summoned two of
his most trusty soldiers to receive orders respecting them.
"That night a small boat was brought round to the bottom of yonder
cliff, where you see the little creak, sir. And in it Fulke and the
young lady and their servant were rowed secretly to W--, where a
fishing-boat waited to carry them to Ireland. That's the story, sir."
"And what became of Morgan?" said I.
"No one heard of him after this affair, sir. And they do say he was
punished as a traitor. But whatever the end of him was, he never
repented his night's work at the burning of Fulke Castle."
CHAPTER TWELVE.
FALLEN AMONG THIEVES.
A GRANDFATHER'S YARN.
Sub-Chapter I.
"When I was a young fellow," began my grandfather--
There was a general silence and a settling of ourselves in our seats, as
the wavering voice of the old man uttered these magical words.
No one had asked him to tell a story, some of us had almost forgotten
that he was sitting there in his big chair, one of the group which
crowded round his own Christmas fire at Culverton Manor.
He was an old, old man, was my grandfather. The proverbial "threescore
years and ten" was an old story with him, and even the "fourscore"
awarded to the strong was receding into the distance. Yet there he sat,
in his old straight-back chair, hale and bright, as he looked round on
us his descendants, sons and daughters grey-haired already,
grandchildren, who some of them were staid heads of families themselves,
and the little group of great-grandchildren, who knew as well as any one
that when their father's grandfather began to talk of "the days when he
was young," it was worth their while to hold their peace and prick up
their ears.
"When I was a young fellow," began my grandfather, stroking his old
grizzled moustache, "I was a cornet in the Buffs. It was in the year--
heigho! my memory's getting rusty!--it was in the year 1803, I believe,
when every one was expecting the French over, and I was quartered with
my regiment at Ogilby. Ogilby is an inland town, you know, thirty miles
from here; and as there was not much immediate danger of Bonaparte
dropping in upon us there without good warning, we had a lazy rollicking
time of it in that bright little place.
"We young officers, boys that we were, thought it a fine thing to live
as grand gentlemen, and spend our pay half a dozen times over in all
sorts of extravagances. And, I recollect with sorrow, I was as bad as
any of them.
"Our colonel was an easy-going old soldier, who had been a wild blade
himself once, and held that it was little use looking too sharply after
us, so he didn't look after us at all; and we in consequence did just as
we pleased.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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