"God send our poor distressed country a hundred thousand of such poor pitiful cowards to uphold the right," said Lady Royland, softly, as she drew her son more tightly to her swelling breast. "Hush, hush, my boy! it is your mother speaks. There, rest here as you used to rest when you were the tiny little fellow whose newly opened eyes began to know me, whose pink hands felt upward to touch my face. You a coward! Why, my darling, can you not understand?" "Yes, I understand," he groaned, as he clung to her, "that it is my own dear mother trying to speak comfort to me in my degradation and shame. Mother, mother! I would not have believed I was such a pitiful cur as this." "No," she said, softly; "I am speaking truth. You do not understand that after the work and care of all this terrible time of preparation, ending in the great demands made upon you to-day, the strain has been greater than your young nature can bear. Bend the finest sword too far, Roy, and it will break. You are overdone--worn-out. It is not as you think." "Ah! it is you who do not know, mother," he said, bitterly. "I am not fit to lead." "Indeed! you think so?" she said, pressing her lips to his wet, cold brow. "You say this because you look forward with horror to the bloodshed to come." "Yes; it is dreadful. I was so helpless to-night, and I shall be losing men through my ignorance." "Helpless to-night? But you beat the enemy off." "No, no--Ben Martlet's doing from beginning to end." "Perhaps. The work of an old trained man of war, who has ridden to the fight a score of times with your father, and now your brave father's son's right-hand--a man who worships you, and who told me only to-day, with the tears in his eyes, how proud he was of that gallant boy--of you." "Ben said that--of me?" "Yes, my boy; and do you think with all his experience he cannot read you through and through?" "No, mother, he can't--he can't," said the lad, despondently; "no one can know me as I do." "Poor child!" she said, fondly, as she caressed him; "what a piece of vanity is this! A boy of seventeen thinking he knows himself by heart. Out upon you, Roy, for a conceited coxcomb! Why, we all know you better than you know yourself; and surely I ought to be the best judge of what you are." "No," said Roy, angrily; "you only spoil me." "Indeed! then I shall go on, and still spoil you in this same way, and keep you the coward that you are." "Mother!" he cried, reproachfully; "and with all this terrible responsibility rising like a dense black cloud before my eyes."