‘Pol, you’re hard. I don’t know where you get it from. But, mind you! One of these days you might find yourself led into a temptation, and then perhaps you’ll think of your old father. How many business men have gone through life, and never done but one thing as they had a call to be ashamed of? I’ve done one; and I’ve been bowled out at it! There’s men that does hundreds, Polly, and are never bowled out at all! I’ll tell you what. It ain’t me having been dishonourable as stands between us. It’s your own pride, Polly. It’s a good pride. It’s what you might call a righteous pride. But if I was just what I am, without being your father--if I was just what you might call an average old sinner, you wouldn’t let me beg like this, Polly. No, you wouldn’t! And look here, Polly. Money’s money, and here’s a thousand pound----’ ‘Damn your thousand pounds,’ cried Polson. He turned to face his father in an agony, and struck his own clenched fist upon his breast three several times. Then he turned to his original position and stared through the window across the empty square. ‘Yes,’ said John Jervase slowly. ‘Damn the thousand pounds. Damn it, and damn it, and damn it over again. You think I’m trying to bribe you, Polly? No! You wait till you’re a father, with your only son a-going to the wars without a penny in his pocket, and hating you too much to take what you can give him. Then you’ll feel what I feel. Damn the thousand pounds! Damn all the money as was ever coined. But, Polly, there’s my hand again. I’d rather you took it full--but won’t you take it empty?’ The lad took the empty hand and wrung it hard, and held it long. CHAPTER IX The time, half-past four o’clock in the morning; the date the twentieth of September, eighteen hundred and fifty-four; the place the southern bank of the River Alma. Present, some thirty thousand stalwart British men, the vast majority of them snoring open-mouthed, and here and there in the grey of the morning a sentry pacing up and down. Facing northward, Polson Jer-vase’s regiment lies far to the right, and to the right of it again, at a distance of some half a mile, the men of Bosquet’s command are also sleeping. This is a day destined to be famous and terrible in history; but the dawn is cloudless and quiet. Away beyond the slope of the valley, across the grey flow of the river and half-way upon the northern slope, the pacing sentries, or such of them as are sharp-sighted, can perceive what looks like a wrinkle in the hill. It is some three or maybe four miles from the long line of sleepers, and it indicates the outlines of that great Redoubt around which the memories of Englishmen will cling for centuries to come.