or their husbands, what must it have been for me, and those like me, whose friends and all whom they loved--yea, all, all!--were overwhelmed in one common ruin, and expected nothing but death? Our own misery I cannot truly set forth. Sometimes the memory of it comes back to me, and it is as if long afterwards one should feel again the sharpness of the surgeon's knife. Oh! since I must write down what happened, let me be brief. And you who read it, if you find the words cold where you would have looked for fire; if you find no tears where there should have been weeping and wailing, remember that in the mere writing have been shed again (but these you cannot see) the tears which belonged to that time, and in the writing have been renewed (but these you cannot hear) the sobbings and wailings and terrors of that dreadful autumn. The soldiers belonged to a company of Grenadiers of Trelawny's Regiment, stationed at Ilminster, whither they carried the prisoners. First they handcuffed Barnaby, but, on his giving his parole not to escape, they let him go free; and he proved useful in the handling of the cart on which my unhappy father lay. And, though the soldiers' talk was ribald, their jests unseemly, and their cursing and swearing seemed verily to invite the wrath of God, yet they proved honest fellows in the main. They offered no rudeness to us, nor did they object to our going with the prisoners; nay, they even gave us bread and meat and cider from their own provisions when they halted for dinner at noon. Barnaby walked sometimes with the soldiers, and sometimes with us; with them he talked freely, and as if he were their comrade and not their prisoner: with us he put in a word of encouragement or consolation, such as 'Mother, we shall find a way out of this coil yet;' or 'Sister, we shall cheat Tom Hangman. Look not so gloomy upon it;' or, again, he reminded us that many a shipwrecked sailor gets safe ashore, and that where there are so many they cannot hang all. 'Would the King,' he asked, 'hang up the whole county of Somerset?' But he had already told me too much. In his heart I knew he had small hope of escape; yet he preserved his cheerfulness, and walked towards his prison (to outward seeming) as insensible of fear, and with as unconcerned a countenance as if he were going to a banquet or a wedding. This cheerfulness of his was due to a happy confidence in the ordering of things rather than to insensibility. A sailor sees men die in many ways, yet himself remains alive. This gives him something of the disposition of the Oriental, who accepts his fate with outward unconcern, whatever it may be. Perhaps (I know not) there may have been in his mind that religious Assurance of which he had told me. Did Barnaby at this period, when death was very near unto him, really believe that there was one religion for landsmen and another for sailors--one way to heaven for ministers, another for seamen? Indeed, I cannot tell;