Corporal Sam and Other StoriesQuiller-Couch, Arthur
General
Corporal Sam and Other Stories
Quiller-Couch, Arthur
Short stories, English
'So my grandfather shouldered his biddick and marched off, down and
across the valley, marked off his patch pretty high on the slope, and
fell to work. Just there he could keep the whole traffic of the road
under his eye, as well as the fields around his house; and for a
moment it gave him a shock as he called to mind that in the only
field that lay out of sight he'd left a scarecrow standing--in a
patch that, back in the summer, he had cropped with pease for the
agent's table up at the War Prison. To be sure, 'twasn't likely to
mislead a search-party, and, if it did, why a scarecrow's a
scarecrow; but my grandfather didn't like the thought of any of these
gentry being near the house. If they came at all they might be
minded to search further. So he determined that when dinner-time
came he would go back home and take the scarecrow down.
'The road (as I said) was always pretty full of traffic, coming and
going between Plymouth and the War Prison. There were bakers'
wagons, grocery vans, and vans of meat, besides market carts from
Bickleigh and Buckland. My grandfather watched one and another go
by, but made out nothing unusual until--and after he had been digging
for an hour, maybe--sure enough he spied a mounted soldier coming up
the road at a trot, and knew that this must be one of the searchers
returning. In a minute more he recognised the man for an
acquaintance of his, a sergeant of the garrison, and by name
Grimwold, and hailed him as he came close.
'"Hallo! Is that you?" says the sergeant, reining up. "And how long
might you have been workin' there?"
'"Best part of an hour," says my grandfather. "What's up?"
'"There's a prisoner escaped, another o' those damned Yankees," says
the sergeant. "I've been laying the alarm all the way to Plymouth.
You ha'n't seen any suspicious-lookin' party pass this way, I
suppose?"
'My grandfather said very truthfully that he hadn't, but promised
very truthfully that he would keep an eye lifting. So the sergeant
wished him good-day and rode on towards Two Bridges.
'For the next twenty minutes nothing passed but a tax-cart and a
market woman with a donkey; and a while after them a very
queer-looking figure hove in sight.
''Twas a man walking, with a great sack on his shoulders and two or
three hats on his head, one atop of another. By the cut of his jib,
as they say, my grandfather knew him at once for one of the Plymouth
Jews, that visited Princetown by the dozen with cast-off clothes for
sale, and silver change for the gold pieces that found their way
sometimes into the prison as prize-money. Sometimes, too, they
carried away the Bank of England notes that the Frenchmen were so
clever at forging. But though, as he came near, the man had Jew
written all over him, my grandfather couldn't call to mind that he'd
ever seen this particular Jew before.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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