"That is the first part of the story, and the least," said the Parson.
"And while I'm telling you the rest you'd better have some grub."

He reached up to a rafter.

"I keep the tackle up here out of Blob's way. The boy's all belly— ain't you, you young shark?"

Blob stroked his waist feelingly.

"She kips on a-talkin," he purred. "She dawn't get much answer though."

"Well, don't eat that candle anyway, you little glutton!"

"Oi warn't eatin it," said Blob, aggrieved. "Oi were suckin it."

The Parson arranged what food there was on the floor.

'"Honour and salt-beef—campaigners' fare!' as Nelson used to say in
Corsica….

"And while you're at that, I'll get on with my story."

II

He went to the gable-end and took down a tarpaulin bag hanging on a staple.

"Kit, that was a great haul you made."

He took a packet from the bag.

"What d'you think this contains?" stripping the india-rubber from it.

There crept into his eyes again that steely look.

"It contains," he continued in the still voice of the man so moved that he dare hardly trust himself, "a list of all those gentlemen of Kent and Sussex who are À nous, as the paper says."

The boy dropped his knife.

"Traitors in fact!"

"That's the ugly word," said the Parson between set teeth. "And may God have mercy on them as they deserve!… When I read that list," he continued, breathing hard, "for the first time in my life I was sick, sick to call myself an Englishman…. There are men down there I've dined with, gamed with, chaffed with, may heaven forgive me for it! true men as I honestly believed, men I've seen drink the King's health and damnation to the French with three times three, as a Christian and a gentleman should. There are magistrates, squires, a peer or two, one sheriff, a deputy-lieutenant, and small fry— publicans, carriers, smugglers, and the like—by the score."

He spread squares of paper on the floor, piecing them.

"And here's a map in sections of the whole country from Pevensey to Westminster—farms, inns, cottages, all put down, see!—where guides can be got; the wells marked, bakers' shops, mills; roads, metalled and unmetalled; and in the margin here and there a Church or what-not drawn out pretty as you please for a sign-post."

The boy looked. Yes, it was the hand that had written the scent-bottle note.

"There's enough in that bag to hang some of the best names in England," continued the Parson with gloating delight. "And I hope to have that bag in Pitt's hands before many hours are out."

The colour stole back to his cheeks, and he began to rub his hands together.

"Kit, my boy, we'll have such a hanging as was never before seen in
England—God helping us…. That's what we're here for."

The boy's eyes were raised to his.

"No, sir, please. What we're here for is to save Nelson."

III

The Parson staggered.

"Nelson!" he cried, ghastly.

His mind clutched in the dark at something it had lost.

"The plot, sir…. Beachy Head."

"My God!" cried the Parson, and died against the wall.

The despatch-bag and its contents had so possessed him that Nelson's need had for the moment slipped his mind.

"And I call myself a soldier!"

He leapt to life again.

"What's to-day?" savagely.

"Wednesday, sir."

"Is it to-morrow?"

"Yes, sir."

The life faded out of his blue eyes.

Till that moment he had been hugging the comfortable belief that Time, the soldier's best ally and worst enemy, was on his side. Sooner or later relief must come. Cosy in their tiny fortress, they could afford to wait for it. The Gentleman could not. Now for the first time the Parson learned that his anticipated ally was his foeman's.

"Talk of Knapp!—I'm the one ought to be shot."

"How soon shall we be relieved, sir?" asked the boy feverishly at his side. "When may we expect the soldiers?"

The words revived the Parson like a whip-lash. Knapp, a soldier, had betrayed his trust. He, a soldier, had let slip thirty golden hours. He was bitterly jealous for his dear Service.

"We shan't be relieved," he snarled. "How can the soldiers relieve us when they don't know we want relief? Knapp didn't get through—told you so already once."

"But the country-folk, sir! Surely they'll report."

"No, they won't," stonily. "This is Sussex. We aren't alive in Sussex: we're dead-alive…. If they did see anything was up they'd only think it was one of the ordinary rows between the blockade-men and the gentlemen, as they call the smugglers."

He looked out of the Downward window. There was little comfort. Tall men in French uniforms swaggered about England's greensward as though already it was theirs. He could catch their beastly foreign lingo. The sight and sound made him mad. Grim old watchdog that he was, he felt the bristles at the back of his neck rising. What right had these strange folk in his back-yard?—O to make his teeth meet in their gaitered legs!

Besides the Frenchmen, not a soul stirring.

English rooks cawing over English green, and an English sheepdog answering them.

A lonely land at the best of times, it was a desert now.

Westward in a cloud of beeches, a grey house glimmered—George Cavendish's—empty. The Seahouses over by Splash Point—empty too. So was every house of any size for ten miles inland from Fair-light to Selsea Bill. Everybody bolted who could afford it. The old lady of Hailsham quite a proverb for pluck in these parts; and they said she looked under her bed every night to see if the French had come.

And the luck! where was the luck?

Ten days since this uttermost corner of England had stirred to the strange music of men making ready for battle: bugle-calling Cavalry in the new barracks in Eastbourne on the hill; thundering Artillery in the Circular Redoubt at Langney Point; Sea-Fencibles in the martello- towers along Pevensey Levels. Now all was still and dead again. A concentration in force had taken place at Lewes. The Cavalry had been withdrawn to the camp there. A case of cholera had emptied Langney Fort. The Sea-Fencibles had run away. Black Diamond had swept up the blockademen.

Darkness, darkness, everywhere.

Kit stole to his side.

"We must get a message through to Nelson," he chattered. "We must."

The boy felt himself at war with destiny, and crushed by it. He recalled the Man of Despair in the Iron Cage in Pilgrim's Progress. The fate of the country was in his hands. He alone had the knowledge that could save her, and he could not use it. He was a dumb thing, possessed of a vast world-secret, which he could not impart for lack of voice.

"If there's no other way, we must cut our way through."

The Parson met him with a rough,

"Nonsense."

"Why?" hotly.

"Impossible—that's why."

It was the first time he had thrown that dead-wall word across the lad's path, and it maddened the boy.

After all, he was responsible, not this beefy soldier.

"That's a word we don't know in our Service, sir," he cried with scornful nostrils.

The taunt touched the Parson on the raw.

He swung round savagely.

"Your Service!" he stormed. "At a time such as this, there is only one Service for loyal hearts, and that's the Service of his country."

The lad quailed before the thunder-and-lightning of the man's wrath.

"Why can't we sally?" sullenly.

The Parson shot a hand toward the window.

The boy followed his pointing finger.

In the open, behind the wall, was a camp-fire, a group of soldiers squatting round it, arms piled. To right and left, embracing the cottage, a chain of sentries ran, tall men all in tall-plumed bear- skins.

Old Piper was right. A cordon indeed!

"Grenadiers of the Guard!" rumbled the Parson in the boy's ear, rolling his r's like a feu de joie. "Marksmen to a man; veterans all; and half of them decorated."

Grenadiers of the Guard! the men of the Bridge of Lodi, of the Battle of the Pyramids and Mount Tabor, of Hochstadt and Hohenlinden.

Kit recalled the tops of the Cocotie swarming with riflemen, and old Ding-dong's surprised disgust.

Now he understood.

On the success of this venture hung Napoleon's world-projects. CoÛte que coÛte, he had told Mouche, he must bring off this coup. So he was employing on it the pick of the first Army the world had ever seen.

As he thought of the issues at stake, the boy's soul fainted within him.

How could he, Kit Caryll, aged fifteen, and hovering on the brink of tears, stand up against the Victor of Marengo?