"Yes, and it is best so, sweetheart," he replied; serious, though still smiling--she was so pure, so trustful, and so very fair. Her gentle beauty racked him--"Best so," he repeated--"best pass the time honourably, fighting for king and country, until your twenty-first birthday is past, and Dudley can no longer forbid our marriage, and I can claim you, make and keep you mine forever and a day--" And thereupon he stopped abruptly, for his elder brother had come upon them unperceived--Dudley, thin and tall, clothed in sad-coloured, brown-grey coat and vest, the locks of his long, pale hair stirred by the summer wind, in his hand a bundle of papers--Dudley, whose high, narrow head, refined features, and deep-set, fanatical eyes reminded Laurence strangely of his uncle, Montagu Rivers, lying upstairs in the carven, ebony bed, with the crystal _memento mori_ and the silver bell of the elegantly poised Mercury handle on the table beside him.--But how was that? How could it be? He confused two generations. Dudley Rivers's coffin he had seen, in the vault of the little, Norman church, only this morning. The dust lay thick on it. For more than half a century it had reposed there undisturbed; whereas his uncle, Montagu Rivers, died but last night! Yet even while he thus reasoned, the scene suffered change. All around him was the roar of cannon; and beneath him the screaming of two ships, grinding into one another, side to side, upon the lift and fall of the Atlantic, where the sea grows short towards Gibraltar and the Straits. They screamed, those ships, as fighting stallions scream--a fierce and terrible sound. And all their decks were slippery with blood, through which half-naked men ran red-footed, or falling, wallowed, while the yell of battle went up hoarse from many hundred throats. The white sails, torn and streaming, were dyed wild, lurid colours by the flash of musketry and up-rolling volumes of smoke from the heavy guns. It was as hell let loose. Yet discipline prevailed, as did a desperate and persistent purpose, through all the tumult and slaughter. Laurence himself felt cool, light-hearted even, as he shouted orders and rallied his men in no mild language. His courage was high and his life strong in him. He laughed, notwithstanding the murderous noise, the sickening and brutal sights. But, to his fury, just in the turn of the engagement, when victory seemed assured at last, he felt a shattering blow at the top of his chest, and the blood welled up from his pierced lungs, and all the world about him grew black. He staggered back against the splintered bulwarks, putting his left hand upon the thin packet of letters buttoned inside his uniform against his heart, and called aloud--"Agnes, Agnes."