The scare that our squadron had caused extended from St. David’s to Fishguard, all along the coast, in fact, from which the big vessels could be seen approaching the land. There were one or two other scares besides this, for our nerves had been shaken, and our imaginations set going; and truly for many a long year after the little phrase “Look out for the French!” was enough to set women and children off at speed, and perhaps even to give an uncomfortable qualm in the hearts of the nobler sex. CHAPTER XII. INSIDE THE GOLDEN PRISON. I went at Easter to pay a short visit to two maiden aunts who lived at Pembroke, where they kept a little millinery—shop I had almost said, but that would have vexed their gentle hearts—establishment. They were sisters of my mother, who came from this district, often called “Little England beyond Wales,” the people who live there being in fact Flemings, not Cymri, and the language they speak, being a Saxon dialect, is worth studying, not from its beauty, but from its quaintness and originality. Welsh is utterly unknown “down below,” as the North Pembrokeshire folks call the southern half of the county. My mother had great difficulty in acquiring even a superficial knowledge of Welsh, and she was always regarded as a stranger in Fishguard, though she lived there nigh upon fifty years. It was probably my early acquaintance with English (of a sort) that made my father decide to bring me up for the ministry. However, to resume my story—which was strangely mixed up with that of the French prisoners—one of my chief pastimes during my visit to the worthy spinsters consisted in hanging about the entrance to the Golden Prison. The foreigners were allowed to employ their clever fingers in the manufacture of knick-knacks, made of straw, bones, beads, and other trifles, which they sold in order to provide themselves with anything they might require beyond the bare necessaries of life. My good aunts, Rebecca and Jane Johnson, permitted these articles to be exhibited on a little table in their show-room, where ladies while idling away their time in choosing and trying on finery, might perchance take a fancy to some little object, and bestow some of their spare cash in helping the poor prisoners. What made my aunts first think of doing this kindly act was the representations of their assistant, a pretty young girl named Eleanor Martin, a daughter of the gaoler of the Golden Prison, who had had such a sudden accession to his numbers and his responsibilities. One day Nellie had occasion to go to the prison with the money produced by these trifles, and she asked me if I would like to accompany her and see the Frenchmen at work. My answer may be readily imagined. So we set forth, and the first person whom we saw when we reached the limbo of incarcerated bodies, if not of despairing souls, was not by any means a repulsive object, being a remarkably pretty young woman, as like Nellie as two peas are like each other.