Ghost stories; Male friendship -- Fiction; Short stories; Soldiers -- Fiction
"Well, sir, they buried him three days after; and at first my father was
minded to say nothing about his dream (as he thought it). But the day
after the funeral, he met Parson Kendall coming from Helston market; and
the parson called out: 'Have 'ee heard the news the coach brought down
this mornin'?' 'What news?' says my father. 'Why, that peace is agreed
upon.' 'None too soon,' says my father. 'Not soon enough for our poor
lads at Bayonne,' the parson answered. 'Bayonne!' cries my father, with
a jump. 'Why, yes;' and the parson told him all about a great sally the
French had made on the night of April 13th. 'Do you happen to know
if the 38th Regiment was engaged?' my father asked. 'Come, now,' said
Parson Kendall, 'I didn't know you was so well up in the campaign. But,
as it happens, I do know that the 38th was engaged, for 'twas they that
held a cottage and stopped the French advance.'
"Still my father held his tongue; and when, a week later, he walked
in Helston and bought a 'Mercury' off the Sherborne rider, and got the
landlord of the 'Angel' to spell out the list of killed and wounded,
sure enough, there among the killed was Drummer John Christian, of the
38th Foot.
"After this there was nothing for a religious man but to make a clean
breast. So my father went up to Parson Kendall, and told the whole
story. The parson listened, and put a question or two, and then asked:
"'Have you tried to open the lock since that night?'
"'I haven't dared to touch it,' says my father.
"'Then come along and try.' When the parson came to the cottage here, he
took the things off the hook and tried the lock. 'Did he say "Bayonne?'
The word has seven letters.'
"'Not if you spell it with one "n" as he did,' says my father.
"The parson spelt it out--'B-A-Y-O-N-E' 'Whew!' says he, for the lock
had fallen open in his hand.
"He stood considering it a moment, and then he says: 'I tell you what. I
shouldn't blab this all round the parish, if I was you. You won't get no
credit for truth-telling, and a miracle's wasted on a set of fools. But
if you like, I'll shut down the lock again upon a holy word that no one
but me shall know, and neither drummer nor trumpeter, dead or alive,
shall frighten the secret out of me.'
"'I wish to heaven you would, parson,' said my father.
"The parson chose the holy word there and then, and shut the lock back
upon it, and hung the drum and trumpet back in their place. He is gone
long since, taking the word with him. And till the lock is broken by
force nobody will ever separate those two."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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