Derrick’s eyes during this conversation were something wonderful to see, and long after, when we were not actually playing at anything, I used often to notice the same expression stealing over him, and would cry out, “There is the man defending the bridge again; I can see him in your eyes! Tell me what happened to him next!” Then, generally pacing to and fro in the apple walk, or sitting astride the bridge itself, Derrick would tell me of the adventures of my ancestor, Paul Wharncliffe, who performed incredible feats of valour, and who was to both of us a most real person. On wet days he wrote his story in a copy-book, and would have worked at it for hours had my mother allowed him, though of the manual part of the work he had, and has always retained, the greatest dislike. I remember well the comical ending of this first story of his. He skipped over an interval of ten years, represented on the page by ten laboriously made stars, and did for his hero in the following lines: “And now, reader, let us come into Mondisfield churchyard. There are three tombstones. On one is written, ‘Mr. Paul Wharncliffe.’” The story was no better than the productions of most eight-year-old children, the written story at least. But, curiously enough, it proved to be the germ of the celebrated romance, ‘At Strife,’ which Derrick wrote in after years; and he himself maintains that his picture of life during the Civil War would have been much less graphic had he not lived so much in the past during his various visits to Mondisfield. It was at his second visit, when we were nine, that I remember his announcing his intention of being an author when he was grown up. My mother still delights in telling the story. She was sitting at work in the south parlour one day, when I dashed into the room calling out: “Derrick’s head is stuck between the banisters in the gallery; come quick, mother, come quick!” She ran up the little winding staircase, and there, sure enough, in the musician’s gallery, was poor Derrick, his manuscript and pen on the floor and his head in durance vile. “You silly boy!” said my mother, a little frightened when she found that to get the head back was no easy matter, “What made you put it through?” “You look like King Charles at Carisbrooke,” I cried, forgetting how much Derrick would resent the speech. And being released at that moment he took me by the shoulders and gave me an angry shake or two, as he said vehemently, “I’m not like King Charles! King Charles was a liar.” I saw my mother smile a little as she separated us. “Come, boys, don’t quarrel,” she said. “And Derrick will tell me the truth, for indeed I am curious to know why he thrust his head in such a place.”