Chapter III: Part 3

The clay-white face relaxed, and the Blackguard saw a bluish shadow come up like rising water over it, over the glazing eyes. Then the lips parted. He wrenched the letter from the clutch of a dead hand, which slid away down the breast of the scarlet jacket, and dropped to the ground.

It was the shattering blow of a bullet in the sleigh box above his head which roused la Mancha to turn and fight again. Hitherto he had merely disliked those men behind the snowdrifts, but now he wanted to skin, and burn a few of them slowly, and prayed to the saints that each bullet should inflict a painful and mortal wound, followed by a disagreeable hereafter.

Then he heard footsteps in the creaking snow, and knew that the troop surgeon had found the corpse beside him. He heard the doctor whisper: “Buck? Poor Buck!”

When la Mancha looked round again Dr. Miller was gone and a red-haired trooper was busy stripping the ammunition from the dead man’s belt.

“Down, fool,” said the Blackguard; “that scalp of yours draws fire—you ruddy oot.”

Red lay down on the edge of the dead man’s coat, and threw his feet across the Blackguard’s legs lest the snow should wet them. Then he grunted with content.

“Happy?” asked the Blackguard.

“’Ungry—gimme blood! Look there!”

Red jerked his thumb backwards over his shoulder and showed his chum how one of the officers, Inspector Sarde, lay near them. Sarde was hiding behind the next sleigh on the left, making an abject display of cowardice. “The lantern-jawed, swivel-eyed, white-livered, scarehead, misbegotten, jumped up son of a dog’s wife,” was the Blackguard’s comment.

“I kicked ’im,” Red grinned in ferocious joy, “cruel ’ard, too.”

“Red, help me to clear that bluff in front there; sight at one hundred yards, and fire low.”

“Low it is.” Red settled himself to work, fired, and pumped a cartridge while he watched results.

“What makes you sing, eh, Blackguard? I’m in a funk, I am—” he fired again.

“Was I singing?” La Mancha let drive at a smoke puff. “I bagged a buck Indian just now—aim low—got ’im.

“Carry him reverently, gently, slow—
Pace by the trunnions with patient tread;
Over the drifts of the rolling snow,
With arms reversed for the Dead.”

“Nice and cheerful, ain’t yer!” cried Red sarcastically, but la Mancha enjoyed himself.

“Little we thought of him while he shared
All that was worst in the long campaign;
Little he guessed that we really cared,
But drums roll now for the slain.

Spreading the Flag o’er his last long sleep,
Leading the horse which he may not ride.
Tho’ for the living the roads are steep—
The road for the Dead rolls wide.”

“’Ere, stop that!” Red howled at him, then wiped his eyes with his sleeve, as the Blackguard went on in a broken voice, revelling in grief.

“Bravely he suffer’d and manly fought;
Great with Death’s majesty rides he there;
Royal the honors he dearly bought—
The peace which we may not share.”

“Oh, shut up!” Red wailed, but la Mancha grinned at him. “Blackguard, got any more ammunition?”

The Blackguard chuckled: “For my self? why, plenty!” and he fired at a pearly gust of smoke among fairy trees of diamond. Then he heard the death scream of a horse at the rear, the shouting of orders, and a bugle crying, “Cease firing! Retire!”

II.

The horses were bought up from the rear, bucking, fighting, breaking away, or falling in their traces as the teamsters took them in charge. Then the enemy charged, the rear guard held them back, and confusion verged towards panic under a galling fire. La Mancha, with Red for his off man, was lucky enough to get a team away unharmed, but, as his horses plunged through breast-high drifts, he heard the outcry of two wounded men. Their sleigh, with one horse killed, and the other dying, had been abandoned.

“All right, Gilchrist!” he called. “Keep your hair on, Smith!” then swung his team about—“Drive on!” yelled Inspector Sarde, jumping directly in his path.

For answer the Blackguard drove straight over him to the rescue. In another moment willing helpers had carried the wounded men to la Mancha’s sleigh, and half a dozen jumped in to defend them, as the teamsters swung away towards the trail.

When he had tailed in with the retreat he turned, “What became of Sarde the Coward?” he called back over his shoulder.

“In your sleigh, constable!” answered the officer. “Sergeant, put this man under arrest.”

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant saluted. “Constable la Mancha,” he called, “for charging an officer with cowardice in the field, consider yourself under arrest.”

The charge was made, and only la Mancha could withdraw that now. Sarde looked from face to face and all eyes accused him; all these men were witnesses against him on a charge of cowardice in the field. He set his teeth.

“Sergeant,” he said, “when we reach the Fort you will put this constable under close arrest.”

The Blackguard was singing gaily as he drove, singing in vengeful triumph, forgetting the dozen or so of his comrades whose bodies lay on the bloody snow, abandoned. Then he remembered and was silent, while the crackle of musketry dwindled away astern, as the men of the rear guard fell back. Only the lope of the horses, the creaking of the runners, and occasional sobbing gasps of a hurt man in the sleigh, disturbed the silence of the wilderness. La Mancha handed the reins to his off man:

“Take the team, Red; I want—”

He took a letter from his pocket, and sat, all humped up, reading gloomily.

Eight miles away the fellows down in the Fort were waiting for news, the news of victory. Red’s heart, as he drove, was aching; his face burned with shame as he thought of the Outfit thrashed—the Greatest Regiment on Earth disgraced—the dead left in the field, the sleighs full of wounded men in their agony—then the settlements! What could save the far-strung, lonely settlements now from being sacked and burned, the men tortured to death, the women—the children! He dared not think of them at the mercy of Red Indian tribes at war. And Buck was dead; poor old Buck, who had rooked him last night at cribbage—dead!

“Dearest,” the Blackguard read, “I can’t bear him any longer. Meet me behind the stockade at dusk. Your poor Polly.”

Who the deuce was Polly? What had he to tell her anyway from Buck? He put away Buck’s letter, and drove on, climbing the hillocks, swishing down the hollows among lakes and groves, until the deep valley of the Saskatchewan opened ahead, and far down beside the river he saw the old Hudson’s Bay Company’s post, Fort Carlton, where the Union Jack flamed out above the stockade, and the garrison waited for news of victory.

Away to the right, upon the eastern trail, a string of loaded sleighs was sweeping down long slopes toward the Fort, covered by mounted men with all the glitter and pageantry of war—the reinforcement which had come too late—B Troop, triumphant after a tremendous forced march to the rescue. The Blackguard grunted his disparagement, and spoke to his off man:

“Who’s poor Polly?”

Red laughed: “Sarde’s wife, of course.”

The Blackguard whistled softly. “So she’s poor Polly—oh, you sly dog! Oh, Buck!”

III.

The Blackguard slept in the cells a prisoner—“Pretty well, thank you!” as he told Red, through the window, afterwards. All day he lay at ease while the rest of the fellows made dismal lamentations about overwork. That soothed him, also the aftertaste of a nice fight, while in his cheery soul he gloated on things to come, the war, the downfall of Sarde, and meetings with that officer’s merry lady. No wonder she could not bear any more Sarde—small blame to her, for he was dismal and the lady gay, with a sense of humor, an engaging laugh, a dimple or two, and a pert eye for any fun in sight. Poor Polly! And so she let Buck hold her hand of an evening? Poor Buck! The Blackguard sighed. “But I’m rather nice”—he felt that Buck would approve—“and disengaged, too! I’m grateful, refreshing, comforting, well broken, docile, with the sweetest manners, the dearest little ways.” He chuckled as he thought of other merry ladies whom he had fondly loved, two or three at a time, charming girls by swarms down the perspectives of nice memory. “I did my duty.” He crooned, and composed himself for a nap.

Red came in the afternoon with news. The fort was to be abandoned, evacuated at midnight, and the garrison was to fall back, defending the settlements eastward. The boys had been turned loose to loot the Hudson’s Bay store—and here was the Blackguard’s share, flung in through the bars: a box of cigars, a mouth organ, a fine revolver, a baby’s bottle, some chocolate creams, and a family Bible which caught him full in the eye and floored him.

The Blackguard found that he could not play the mouth organ while he was eating chocolates and smoking, but had to take them by turns. The shadow of night stole softly in through the bars before he was bored.

Later on he began to get hungry, and as supper was delayed some hours he clamored at the door. To his amazement he was at once let out by a half-breed washerwoman, and looking round saw that the guardroom was full of civilian refugees. For a minute he stood watching them as they sat around a glowing stove, whose naked iron flue went red-hot through the wooden ceiling. “You’ll have the place on fire soon,” he said, and they only smiled at him. Where was the Guard? Away relieving sentries, he supposed, as he reached his sidearms down from a peg, belted on his revolver, and strolled outside. He found himself in the covered entry of the fort, under the gate house. On his right the great courtyard was littered with sleighs, and swarming with men at work preparing for the retreat. On his left the gates swung ajar. To look more business-like he swung an axe across his shoulder, and marched out, explaining to the sentry that he was on duty. The riverside meadows lay silver below the moon and the fresh night allured him as he skirted the stockade, answering a challenge from the bastion, then turned towards the rear side of the fort. He was thinking of the merry lady who might have been there had he come last night. She was there!

He drew near to the cloaked and silent woman, and lifted his cap; “Mrs. Sarde, I think?”

She shrank back against the upright posts of the stockade, thrust out white hands against him, and barely repressed a scream. “Who are you? What are you?” she cried.

He saw that her face was pale, touched by the moonlight into a spiritual delicacy. “The Blackguard, madam,” he answered.

“Oh, how you frightened me! What is it, la Mancha? You’ve brought a message for me?”

“You thought I was a ghost,” he whispered; “you thought I was—”

“Buck? Yes.” He saw a tear run down her cheek. “Yes, I thought so.”

“I am his messenger.” The Blackguard’s voice was soft and low, he leaned towards her, his hand against the stockade, as he bent down. “His last thought was of you, he tried to give me a message, but his voice failed then.”

“My brother! My poor brother!” The Blackguard started back.

“The deuce!” he stammered, “what a beastly sell! Your brother, madam?” He uncovered his head. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Sarde; I beg your forgiveness.”

“Nobody knew,” her voice was broken with tears; “not even my husband. Poor boy—things had gone wrong down East. He had to change his name, and when he joined the Force—for my sake, he wouldn’t say that he was my brother. He was in the ranks, you see, and I—”

“You are in trouble, madam”—a new reverence had come into la Mancha’s manner. “I was your brother’s friend—may I take his place and serve you?”

“How kind of you to think of that, Mr. la Mancha. But then, you see, my husband—you understand?”

“Has the right to protect you; yes, he has that great honor.”

“Oh, don’t mind me!” came Sarde’s sarcastic interruption, and both of them turned round, startled, horrified, to face the officer of the guard, visiting round unattended. “You may well start—the pair of you,” said Inspector Sarde, his eyes glittering with rage, then with bitter sarcasm he went on; “A husband’s rights? Moonshine! Myths! Lies! Woman, get back to the fort at once, or I’ll have you arrested for being out of bounds.”

“But, Cuthbert,” she pleaded, “you don’t understand. This gentleman—”

“Go, I say; go! Leave me to settle with this—this gentleman!”

Poor Polly crept away, and the two men watched her in silence until she had turned the corner of the stockade.

“Ah!” the Blackguard laid his axe against the wall. “At last!”

“And now, mister gentleman, may I venture to ask what you’re doing outside your cell?”

“You may.”

“Stand to attention; call me ‘sir’ when you address an officer.”

“Dear, dear! I would shout, I would screech if I were you. Then everybody will hear.”

“The Commissioner shall hear.”

“What? That I’m here to defend your wife’s honor, which you have insulted, you—you poached cat!”

“Right about turn, quick march for the guard room, or—”

“Or what?”

The officer was silent.

“That’s right. Now be good. I want to point out,” said the Blackguard with yearning sweetness, “that although I am tempted, without witnesses, I have not kicked you. No. I have denied myself even calling you names, you—you mule-foaled outrage on nature’s modesty; you stridulating, splay-footed, pop-eyed mistake of Providence; you supercilious brass-mounted, misdirected Excuse. I will not shock myself by speaking the truth about your appearance, origin, or destiny as a spatchcocked and fried Sin, but I daresay you’ll understand this—”

He flicked his glove across the officer’s face, and stood back, smiling blandly.

“How dare you!”

“With my glove, so—” he struck again, lightly, gracefully, tigerishly. “You see there are the snipers in the hills, taking the pot-shot, eh? which will explain your death, without my inconvenience; eh? It will account for all—we have revolvers—and so! Carramba! What more does the fool want?”

“Sir! I’m an officer, a gent—”

“Exactly—gent. Something less than a gentleman, eh? Well, I waive that. I waive the matter of rank—I accommodate you with every kindness; eh, what?”

Sarde hesitated.

“Come, I know you’re a coward, but never mind that. Brace up! You shall be a man for once. There now; at fifteen paces, eh? No? Don’t disappoint me, please,” the Blackguard pleaded. “I spoil for it—I beg you—have you no inside? Are you a shadow in trousers? Nombre de Dios! It’s for your wife’s honor!”

“I tell you that officers can’t fight with—”

“With me, Senor? I waive that, I tell you—I, Jose Santa Maria Sebastian Sant Iago Nuñez Ramiro de Guzman, de la Mancha, Marques de las Alpuxarras, Conde del Pulgar, a peer of Castile, am ready to waive my rank and fight a scrambled skunk! Draw! Stand back! At the word three I fire—one—two—Sangre de Cristo!”

Sarde had fired.

“What the deuce do you mean by firing before I give the word, eh? I’ll punch your head for that!” The Blackguard clutched at a burning pain on his shoulder, his hand was dyed with the blood of a spurting artery—and yet this seemed to concern him less than the red glare from within the fort which had flushed the face of his adversary. He reeled backwards now, staring up at the stockade, whose timbers loomed black against a fiery glow, which was rapidly mounting to heaven above Fort Carlton.

“Sarde,” said la Mancha, gravely, “you see that?”

“Had enough?” asked Sarde; “I’m going to kill you now. I fire when I count three—one—two—defend yourself—”

“Presently, my good man, presently,” la Mancha waved his hand to Sarde. “Don’t you see that the fort is on fire?”

“On fire—what? On fire! By the living—”

“Hush, don’t gabble, Sarde. You’ve played the man at last; I forgive you for firing too soon—I let you off the charge of cowardice in the field. Oh, you needn’t thank me—it’s for your wife’s sake. Yes, I let you off—I ask your pardon, sir. Oh, yes, why not?”

Within the fort a bugle was crying the terrible monotonous repetitions of the General Assembly, and men were yelling, as they ran, of wounded patients shut up in the blazing house. “The fort’s on fire. The fort’s on fire,” Sarde moaned.

La Mancha clutched Sarde’s arm to steady himself as he reeled backwards faint with pain from his wound.

“Those refugees,” he explained; “half-breeds in the guard room with a red hot stove. I warned them. Look, the gate house is on fire, the gate is blocked with flames, the only gate, and the fire will spread all round the buildings! All those people going to be burned to death unless we can cut a road through the stockade—you’ve hit my shoulder—I can’t use the axe. But you”—he shook the officer with frantic violence—“a Canadian, a born axeman— Do you hear? Save the garrison or they’ll burn to death! Take that axe!”

The Canadian sprang forward, the axe became a live thing in his hands; the gleaming blade flamed in red air, buried itself in quivering timber, then swung again, and lit, and swung again in a whirl of splinters.

La Mancha sat down in the snow, his blood-drenched hand upon the wound, his body rocking to the steady swing of the axe, though he could hardly see his enemy now, because of the red smoke curling between the timbers.

“Good man!” he gasped, “you are a man at last! You’ll save the garrison, you’ll get promoted, you’ll win back that lady’s love-you’re winning back your honor! Strike, man—strike!”

* * * * *

It is well known to the two hundred thousand readers of this magazine that its bald-headed editor often pulls his hair on the platform. He boarded the cars one day and slung his big valise between two seats and sat down by a drummer. The drummer looked at the valise and then at the bald-headed man and bluntly asked, “Are you a traveling man, sir?” “Yes, sir,” was the reply. “What line of goods are you selling?” queried the drummer. “Sweetened wind,” was the answer. “Oh, you are!” said the drummer; “preacher or lecturer?”—_Robert L. Taylor._

A ROYAL RESIDENCE.

By James Henry Stevenson.

One morning the Professor, whom I had not seen since I left Tennessee, accidentally unearthed me in London and proposed that we should visit Windsor. Now, I may as well confess to defective initiative, in regard to sight-seeing, for I had been within reach of Windsor on several former occasions and had not yet seen the home of the most gracious queen the world has ever known. This, too, in face of the fact that a German professor had assured me that Windsor was “himmlisch.” When a German so far forgets himself as to say that anything English is “heavenly,” be assured he has great provocation.

WINDSOR CASTLE FROM THE THAMES.
]

Of course, I acceded without hesitation to the Professor’s proposal and we selected a train, appointed a _rendezvous_, and agreed to go the following morning.

The Professor’s traveling companion was a “blue grass” doctor of divinity, while I was courier, guide, and advance agent to the “delegate,” sent by his admiring countrymen and brethren to unload some ecclesiastical “thunder and lightning” on their conservative confrères in the old land. The “delegate’s” wife was traveling with him as a sort of balance wheel on his too impetuous energy and to see that he was not imposed on by the overbearing foreigner; she was not averse to a little vigorous sight-seeing when otherwise unemployed. They also joined the party, which was completed by “Wee McGregor,” as the eight-year-old was called, who looked to me for his traveling expenses.

Having visited London before, and being possessed of an unearned reputation as a _dragoman_, I felt it was incumbent on me to show the party the best and quickest way to reach Windsor. Accordingly I hailed one of those obsolete conveyances which the London City Fathers provide for the traveler, to whom the conservation of energy is of more moment than arriving at a destination.

In due time, somewhat shaken but still in good humor, for the day was yet young, we arrived at King’s Cross station on the Metropolitan Railway, better known by the more modest and suggestive title of the “Underground.” “Here,” I had said to the prospective sightseers, “we shall get a train that will connect direct and without change at Paddington station with the train for Windsor.” This was all true except the “without change” clause. For this slight deviation from strict veracity I have no apology to make. Indeed, I doubt whether I am entitled to play the role of guide while so generous with the truth.

I kept my tourists “rounded up” and prevented them from embarking in various directions. As there were trains passing every two or three minutes it seemed a waste of time not to take one and I had, as a consequence, a very busy quarter of an hour. At last our train came, and, after rushing madly up and down the platform the entire length of the train, we found places, though in different “stalls.”

When an American train arrives at a station you go in and find a seat. When an English train, especially of the old style which is now happily disappearing, arrives, you must first find a seat and then go in. You trail up and down the platform and poke your nose into every compartment answering to the class for which you have purchased tickets. Here is one with two or three places vacant, but you have a party of four, and as they are strangers in the country, you must keep them together to ensure their alighting at the right place. Besides you naturally want to be within speaking distance of one another. So you start back again to the other end of the train, terrified every moment lest the engineer grow weary of your bootless explorations, and decide to start. Ah! Here is a vacant apartment at last, but just as you are about to step in with a light heart you notice that it is marked “first class” and unfortunately you are not a millionaire. You continue your search and find eventually a vacant apartment of the class in which you are entitled to ride. Your troubles are now ended; your party is seated; your _impedimenta_ are laboriously stowed away in the racks, when, with envious nonchalance, enters a smoker armed with a little cigarette that vomits smoke like a factory chimney. The ladies are indignant; you rack your brain for something sufficiently withering to say, and just as you are ready to deliver, you notice, faintly etched on the window, the word “smoking.” Now, if you were traveling in Austria, you would give the “guard” a quarter to remove the label with the offensive word, and would settle back virtuously into the leather cushions, but here, while the English guard would be equally obliging—for a like “bakshish”—it is a more serious matter to remove the door or window. In the meantime you have left the smoker in quiet possession to fill the vacant space with clouds of the fragrant weed. In despair you apply to the guard and when you appropriately recognize his importance, he finds you a place in a moment.

The stations on the “Underground” are open to the surface and are light and airy, but when the train plunges under London, and the compartment fills up with the gases, that have been accumulating down here for the past thirty years, you realize that traveling on the “Underground” does not differ widely from suicide by slow asphyxiation.

The “delegate” put his silk handkerchief to his nostrils and looked suspiciously at me. It requires some ten minutes to make the distance between King’s Cross and Paddington, so he was unable to hold his breath all the way. Every time he breathed I felt as if I had murdered a man. My Tennessee friend and the Kentucky parson were not yet disposed to be critical, so they chatted merrily, breathed regularly, and acted as though these sulphur laden fumes were their “native air.”

But after we had quitted Paddington station, and the train had taken its last few plunges under ground; when we had actually shaken off the dust and grime and roar of London, the beauty of the incomparable English landscape began to make us glad. Patchwork hillsides, where tiny fields are partitioned off by greenest hedges, lovely valleys, where brimming streams shimmer their length along, came, one by one, into view. The English streams have no visible banks. The turf, green as an emerald, grows clear to the water’s brink and dangles its luxuriant growth into the quiet brook, as a barefoot boy, playing truant, cools his feet in some wayside stream, while the master’s wrath grows warm. These rivers—for rivers I must call them, though a good athlete might almost leap from side to side—are always full and seem as though the accidental dropping in of a pebble would make them overflow.

As hill and valley, hedge and garden, country home and quiet hamlet, all of surpassing loveliness, swept past us, my entire party began to fall under the spell of this exquisite beauty, and I felt that there had arisen the unanimous, though unexpressed, conviction that now, at last, the self-appointed guide was earning his salary.

WINDSOR CASTLE FROM THE THAMES.
]

As Windsor is distant from London by about forty minutes ride, the tourist arrives at his destination fresh and “fit,” to use an expressive English phrase. When we issued forth from the station we encountered, as a matter of course, the ubiquitous hackman who, in all lands, stands ever ready to drive you to all the places you especially do not want to visit. The object of our pilgrimage was the Castle, distant a stone’s throw from the station, so there was no occasion to provoke an unnecessary and futile dispute with the “cabbie.” We next encountered an army of small boys distributing handbills, on which were set forth, in eloquent terms, the merits of the various “tea rooms” of the city, which unselfishly cater to the comfort of the stranger. We accepted this service as a matter of course, first, because it was gratuitous; second, because it was the easiest way to get rid of the boy, and third, because, though a sight-seer may pull through the day without the assistance of a hansom or a “growler,” I have never known one who was not ready to take a little refreshment, especially when he was traveling abroad. After we had become thoroughly tired out, with climbing the steps of the Round Tower and general sight-seeing, we found a cosy, clean and restful upper room, where the actual bill of fare was not badly out of harmony with the promises of the card.

The town of Windsor, itself, possesses nothing of special interest to the traveler. The Castle, situated in a commanding position on the Thames, dominates the town from every point of view, and is, with its environs, the sole reason for a visit.

The group of buildings enclosed by the walls is nearly a mile in circumference and has been the favorite home of most of the sovereigns of England since the days of William the Conqueror. Each one has continued the lavish expenditures of his predecessor to enrich and beautify it. It fascinates, therefore, not only by its great beauty, the romance suggested by wall and tower, but also, and especially, by the variety of its architecture. Here we can study the master-builder’s art, as gate, chapel, and tower step forth, in quick succession, to instruct us. The space, enclosed by the walls of the castle, is divided into two wards—the lower and the upper—by the great Round Tower, which occupies the brow of a hill, or mound, commanding the upper ward, which is level, and looking down upon the lower ward, which is situated on a gradual incline. The walls are pinched together at the Tower, but swell out around either ward, suggesting somewhat the figure eight.

We arrived at Windsor by the Great Western Railway, and after walking up a little hill, High Street, passing on the left the beautiful Jubilee statue of Queen Victoria, we found ourselves at the main entrance of the lower ward, Henry VIII’s gateway. Notice this splendid example of Tudor architecture, built about 1510. Either side of the gateway is flanked by a mighty tower, which you will notice has three sides to make more effective the defence. Over the gateway, in a row, may be seen the badges of Henry: the _fleur-de-lis_, suggesting the English claim to the French crown; the Tudor Rose; and the portcullis, used so frequently after the twelfth century to protect the gateway from sudden assault.

My readers will remember that Henry was rather indulgent to himself in the matter of marriages. He experienced, all told, six wives, of whom Providence removed two, divorce set aside two more, and the executioner’s axe cut short the career of the remaining pair.

His second wife, Anne Boleyn, the most charming of the lot, whom Henry first married, afterward divorcing her rival, paid the penalty of her attractiveness, or coquetry, at the executioner’s block in the Tower of London. She, with a gorgeous retinue attending her, was met at this gate by Henry and welcomed to the place with the assurance that she would shortly be its real mistress. All this, however, to the great regret of the “delegate’s” wife, took place before our arrival.

How different is the architecture of the Norman gate with its graceful round towers! Here, in these chambers which you may see above the entrance, and in the rooms of the towers themselves, were kept, during the struggle between Crown and Parliament, many famous prisoners.

As we entered the lower ward, by Henry VIII’s gateway, the beautiful proportions of St. George’s Chapel rose before us on the left. Adjoining, on the east, is Albert Memorial Chapel, the gem of the entire group. Still traveling east and ascending the hill, we come first to the residence of the Dean and Chapter, and then to the famous Round Tower. Directly across from St. George’s the group of buildings is the residence of the Military Knights, who date from the founding of the order of the Garter, when Edward III established this to provide for the relief of poor knights. It was called by Elizabeth, “Poor Knights of Windsor,” but William IV took away its reproach by giving it the present name.

These are the main features of the lower ward, the buildings being grouped around a large balloon-shaped court.

WINDSOR CASTLE, NORMAN GATEWAY.
]

Beyond the Round Tower lies the upper ward, perfectly level, with stately buildings on three sides of a square which contains a splendid example of artistic gardening. The buildings on the north are the State apartments, and those on the south and east the royal suites. This group has twenty-four towers, seventeen state apartments, forty-eight rooms, seventy-nine bedrooms, sixty-five sitting rooms, and rooms containing two hundred and thirty-one beds for servants.

Our first objective point was St. George’s Chapel. The exterior of this building is very beautiful and singularly in harmony with the surrounding structures. This effect the architect accomplished by avoiding the use of the conventional church tower, while at the same time preserving the ecclesiastical appearance.

We found, within, a group of people in charge of a verger, who was explaining to them the various objects of interest. We went our own way and when we had finished, found that the verger and his flock had departed and the door was locked. It felt, at first, a trifle like being in jail, but conscious of our rectitude, we waited till the door opened again and then passed out. As we had found the door open when we arrived and had entered in unchallenged, it did not occur to us that the verger considered it necessary to personally conduct us through the building and bid us farewell when we left; nor did we think that we had in any way slighted him till the Kentucky parson, who had remained behind to ask a few questions, later reported that the ecclesiastical pathfinder had enquired of him, with fine scorn, if “that aristocratic party belonged to him.” The “aristocratic party,” was the professor, the “delegate” and myself, who were now safely out of reach, while the verger’s fee jingled merrily at the bottom of our pockets.

On every hand, at Windsor, are posted notices forbidding the servants to receive any gratuities, but we learned, that notwithstanding the seemliness of such a regulation in such a place, none but a novice took it seriously. Consequently, when we later visited the Royal Stables, we emerged proudly from the ordeal after having deposited a shilling in the ever ready hand of the guide.

But to return to the chapel. It was begun by Henry I and mutilated as usual by the soldiers of the Puritans, and restored again by Charles II and his successors, but Victoria has perhaps done most for it.

HENRY VIII GATEWAY.
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There are many tiny chapels around the various walls, in the fashion of the churches of Europe. We noticed, especially, the Braye chapel to the right of the entrance. On the walls hung a sword and swordbelt, showing evident marks of service in the field. An inscription explained that they belonged to Captain Wyatt-Edgall, who recovered the body of the Prince Imperial, in Zululand. He, himself, was also killed in South Africa. The same chapel contains the monument to Prince Imperial—son of Napoleon III and Eugènie,—who fought with the English in South Africa, and there died.

A translation of the inscription at the foot of the marble figure—a figure of the recumbent prince, grasping his sword which lies along his body—reads: “The well-beloved youth, the comrade of our soldiers, slain in the African war, and thence carried to the tomb of his fathers, and represented in funereal marble in this holy domicile of kings, Queen Victoria receiveth as her guest.”

There is also an interesting extract from the will of the prince, which reads: “I shall die with a feeling of profound gratitude for her Majesty, the Queen of England, and for the royal family, and for the country in which, during eight years, I have received so cordial a hospitality.”

The choir, a church within the church, is situated in the center of the chapel and at the east end. A passage runs the entire way round the sides and rear. It is raised some four feet above the level of the floor and is a long gallery with two rows of lateral seats, and an organ, said to be the finest choir organ in Europe, at the farthest end. The seats, on either side, are the stalls of the Knights of the Garter. They are most elaborately carved from floor to ceiling, decorated with crests and emblems.

The remains of Henry VIII and Lady Jane Seymour, who was neither divorced nor beheaded, since she lived only a year after her marriage, are buried beneath the center of the choir. Under the entire chapel a royal vault was constructed by George III, cut out of the chalk rocks below. It is seventy by twenty by fifteen feet and designed for eighty-one bodies.

THE ROUND TOWER, WINDSOR CASTLE.
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Directly in the rear of St. George’s is Albert Memorial Chapel, the most interesting feature, as well as the most artistic and costly creation at Windsor. The chapel was begun by the pious, though much married, Henry VIII, who soon abandoned it for Westminster. Constancy was, perhaps, not one of Henry’s strong points. Wolsey, who was Henry’s pope and aspired to be the real one, begged and obtained the chapel for himself, but fell from Henry’s favor, as the ladies had done, before he could finish it. When the Parliamentary forces obtained possession of Windsor, they desecrated it as usual, and sold its plunder for $3,000. Wolsey’s sarcophagus, which escaped, was removed by George III, three hundred years later, to St. Paul’s, where it now holds the dust of Nelson.

It is well known that Victoria decided to convert this chapel into a memorial for the Prince Consort after his death. No expense was spared, and when it was completed in 1874, its interior rivaled the most splendid ecclesiastical structures in the world.

The fourteen windows, with panels beneath thirteen of them, are dreams of art. The windows contain portraits and arms of various kings, queens and princes, and some symbolical figures. The panels beneath picture scenes from the Old and New Testaments, suggestive of various virtues and religious truths. The chapel contains in the center, besides the Prince’s cenotaph, the tombs of the Dukes of Albany and Clarence.

The Round Tower is the most picturesque feature of the castle. Nothing is so interesting as a tower. Not a modern tower—a mere imitation—but a real tower, with dungeons, where prisoners have clanked their chains in despair, with great halls where knights in armor foregathered, with secret passages and musty mysteries in every corner—a tower that has lived on to see this age of civilization superimposed upon its own rough, ready and bloody past.

VICTORIA TOWER AND SOUTH SIDE.
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The tower is over three hundred feet in circumference and is built on the top of a high mound in a most commanding situation. It is reached, after one passes through the Norman Gate, by a long flight of steps, which is continued up through the structure till the base of the turret is reached. This flight is commanded by a cannon placed at the head of the stairs. The turret, a good-sized tower itself, is built upon the top of the old tower of George III. Within the turret, the stairs wind around a massive bell, brought from Sevastopol.

Finally the top is reached, three hundred and twenty-five feet from the ground, and we walk round the ample promenade—the turret is twenty-five feet wide—dumb in the presence of the loveliness before us. How beautiful is an English landscape, with its living green, threaded here and there by the silver sparkle of a stream. West and south we looked out over Windsor forest and parks, while in the north Eton College was plainly visible with the inevitable cricketers, dressed in white flannel, moving to and fro over the matchless sward, or facing the “crease,” which is, I believe, the “correct” name for the “pitcher’s box.”

How much history and mystery might not the walls of this old tower, built by Edward III, teach us, could they but speak! This tower once contained the great round table of the Knights of the Garter and was the home of the constable-governors, who were responsible for the safe keeping of the state prisoners, among the most famous of whom have been John, of France, and David, of Scotland.

As illustration of the possible mysteries that may still lurk about the tower, I will mention a recent discovery. While investigating a stone cover with an iron handle, the mouth of a well was uncovered. It was found to descend one hundred and sixty-four feet, to the level of the Thames, and was lined up with masonry most of the way.

From the turret a fine view is obtained of the state and private apartments of the castle. These contain magnificent collections of rare bric-a-brac and art objects of all kinds. Paintings, tapestries, and ceramics of priceless worth, are kept in the various rooms and galleries. The Van Dyck room recalls the fact that this Dutch artist was brought to England, knighted and pensioned by Charles I. There are also a Zuccarelli room and a Rubens room, with famous paintings from the artists whose names they bear.

Our next visit was paid to the Royal Stables. Here we were received at an office, and after registering our names and nativity were put in charge of guides. Words cannot do justice to the splendid appearance of the well-matched horses, a large proportion of which were greys, and the cleanliness and order of the stalls. Even the straw beneath the horses’ feet was unruffled. At the foot of the stall was laid a nicely plaited braid of straw, forming a pretty border, and on either side stood little sheaves of straw, daintily bound, and presenting the appearance of a row of sentinels down the long line.

We were conducted through stable after stable, and shown horses for all sorts of uses, and horses that were no longer of any use but were pensioners of His Majesty, for services already rendered the State. Then came the carriages. Carriages for royal purposes, and for State purposes and for “breaking in” purposes.

What impressed me most was an old chair on wheels—such as one sees invalids moved about in. It was as commonplace looking as one could well imagine. To it were attached a pair of shafts, and I recognized it at once as there rose before me the vision of the Queen, with broad brimmed straw hat, and accompanied only by a little child, usually one of her grandchildren, while a humble donkey ambled through the grounds of Windsor and pulled the improvised carriage. Such was the picture I had seen in the Sunday school papers, and now the sight of the actual carriage gave the much needed air of reality. This mode of taking exercise emphasized at once both the Queen’s independence and simplicity of manner.

The Great Park, adjoining Windsor Castle, contains 18,000 acres. Within it is located Frogmore House, another royal residence, near which is the Royal Mausoleum. Everyone must have been impressed, at some time or other, with the faithfulness of the late queen to the memory of the Prince Consort. Throughout her long widowhood, she seems to have lived in the presence of his death. The monuments, that perpetuate his name, unless one looks at their artistic value, seem an extravagant waste of money. Certainly he rendered no conspicuous service to the State, so that we are justified in regarding these costly memorials as tributes of the loyal and undying love which the Queen cherished for her husband.

Royal marriages, that are so frequently the result of political exigencies, are not always happy. Perhaps it would not be wide of the mark to say, are not often happy. All the greater reason, therefore, that this one, which was conspicuously congenial, should iterate its testimony.

On the fourteenth of December, the anniversary of the Prince’s death, the Dean of Windsor regularly held a memorial service at the mausoleum, during the lifetime of the Queen. Those who had obtained tickets were admitted to the mausoleum after the service, but this was the only date in the year when it might be seen.

The foundation stone of the structure was laid by the Queen, herself, and contains the following words:

“His mourning widow, the queen, directed all that is mortal
of Prince Albert, to be placed in this sepulchre, A. D. 1862.
Farewell, well-beloved: Here at last I will rest with thee; with
thee, in Christ, I will rise again.”

Windsor Castle has had a long and varied history; it has been associated closely with many of the kings of England and with stirring scenes of English history, but for many, many years to come, its mention will call to memory the good and universally beloved woman—Victoria.

THE FINEST HOTEL.

A SKETCH OF LIFE IN THE MOUNTAINS OF KENTUCKY.

By A. Lytle Peterman.

“Boys, is there a hotel in this place?” the traveler asked of two youngsters lounging near, as he stood, suit-case in hand, on the cinder path by the track, looking inquiringly about him, while the train pulled off down the road.

“What place?” putting answer and inquiry into one. It aroused their interest and surprise to hear Montvale called a “place.”

“This village, or hamlet, or station, or whatever you call it—is there a hotel hereabout?” he replied, a little impatient and determined to make himself understood.

“A hotel? Yes, _sir_,” answered the larger of the boys.

“Then I’ll thank you and pay you to show me to it,” the stranger said, as he brightened up, throwing off the lost look that had struck his face at the same moment his foot had struck the cinders, when he stepped from the train.

“All right; up this a-way,” the larger boy answered, as he turned into the path, and the smaller fell in behind him. The traveler and his suit-case, side by side, brought up the rear. The boys were agreeable, but not over-polite, neither thinking to say, “I’ll take the baggage.”

When they had gone perhaps a hundred yards, the traveler’s eyes all the while seeking sight of a hotel and finding none, the leader stopped suddenly, raised his arm, pointed his finger back down the railway, and remarked, “The _finest_ hotel is ’way down hyander.”

“Very well,” said the stranger, an experienced traveler, therefore past the “kicking” stage; “take me to the finest.”

The procession faced about, headed down the track, retraced its steps, passed the depot, and continued on its way.

But we are not yet to “the finest hotel.” In fact, there is time to “view the landscape o’er” before we arrive, especially as the boys are quiet, remarkably quiet for Kentucky boys—“mighty say-nothin’ shavers,” as the landlady afterwards described them to her guest.

It was dusk, on a Sunday evening in September. The rain had just begun falling gently—the prelude to the first cool snap of the autumn. The stranger had left the train to spend the night, preparatory to his cross-country trip on the following day.

Montvale is a station on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, in the mountains of Kentucky, seventy-five or a hundred miles east of Lexington. It is of consequence chiefly because it is on the road to somewhere else—the point of departure from the railway to the country lying beyond. Contrary to the rule, its inhabitants seemed to realize its urban limitations, especially the meagerness of its population. The two boys, unprepared for such compliment, were surprised to hear it called a “place.”

At that time, less than a decade ago—and doubtless ever since,—Montvale straggled around over a wide expanse of flat woods and weedy fields, between ranges. Space to spare was the most striking thing about it. The land, too swampy for tillage, except after elaborate artificial drainage, was “good to fill a hole in the ground and hold the world together.”

The houses, after the “boxed” style of carpentry, seemed not to have been built, but to have grown up, like the weeds. They had never peeped into a paint-bucket; their complexion was that of the crawfish land on which they stood. Most of the doors, off the hinges, whether they ever had any or not, stood leaning against the inside wall, ready in case a storm or other emergency arose.

There was little direct communication between the homes, partly because the weeds overhung the pig-trails of travel; partly because it was about a Sabbath-day’s journey from each house to its nearest neighbor; partly because all paths led to or through the depot yard, as the literal and figurative center of the hamlet. The railway station was at once the market, the park, the amusement hall, the shipping center, the business section, the social resort, the lounging place, the nursery and playground of all Montvale. The railway track, with the path beside it, was the main and only street of the “place.”

Just as the traveler was wondering if they were going to tramp down to the next station, the leader said, “Out this hyer way,” turning off to the right, through a sea of white-topped weeds. The rain was still falling, and night had come on. A few pale rays of the moon, struggling through the clouds, showed the boys’ heads now and then bobbing above the watery weeds, like porpoises at play on the surface of the ocean.

At last, the little procession reached a plank fence with a gap in it. The boys stopped, confronted the traveler, and the leader said, “_This_ is the finest hotel anywhar about hyer.”

“Where?” the stranger asked.

“Right yander—go through this gate,” tapping with his hand a piece of frame-work standing across the path.

The boys took the proffered pay, dropped it into their pockets, thrust their hands down to keep it from getting out, and plunged again into the depths of the weedy sea.

The traveler peered through the rain and fog into the yard, where the weeds had lost so much of their stature that he thought he must be nearing the shore. He picked up the gate leaning across the path, from panel to panel of the fence, and set it out of the way, remarking, “Everything about here is off its hinges—I’m nearly off myself.”

He approached the “hotel,” consisting mostly of “boxed” lean-to, and rested one foot upon the sill of the shed—by courtesy known as the “porch.” He paused; in the language of eastern railway danger signs, he thought he would “Stop, Look and Listen.” Silence and the clouds reigned. No sound but the patter of the drops on the roof. No light gleamed from the skimpy window, nor crept through the generous cracks in the wall.

He rapped at the door; no answer. He rapped again—louder; still no answer. There must be nobody at home in “the finest hotel.” So he hammered the rickety, raky, crazy shutter just because there wasn’t, till it shook, rattled and shivered, and the boards on the rear wall creaked and groaned in sympathy.

A cracked, rasping, whining voice from the inner depths called out, “Well!”

“Madam”—for that voice could belong to none but a crone—“I want to get to stay over night.”

“This is a purty time o’ night to be a-prowlin’ ’round, a-draggin’ uv honest, hard-workin’ folks out’n the bed ter wait on ye,” the landlady replied. The reprimand came mixed with the rattle of straw-ticks and the rustle of bedclothing.

“I am sorry,” the traveler answered, “but I came as early as I could. Really, I am neither the conductor, engineer, nor superintendent of that train. Don’t you keep hotel?”

“Yes, sorter, a leetle, sometimes, when I feel like it. But can’t ye wait tell a body gits on her cloze; ur will ye jist come in anyhow, whether ur no?”

“Oh, certainly, I’ll gladly wait,” the traveler said; “take your own time—mine, too.”

“Whar air you frum?” asked the voice from within, somewhat muffled as it poked its head up through a calico dress.

“I don’t see what that has to do with it, but I came directly from Lexington.”

“Yes, I ’lowed so;” she answered. “I jist thought it ’uz some o’ them Bluegrass fellers what sets up all night and sleeps all day—what hain’t nothin’ to do but keep awake them that has to work.”

After taking time enough to have arrayed herself for presentation to the queen, Madame Calico now approached the door, holding a little sputtering brass lamp—apparently the model of the first invention—in one hand, while she vainly tried to tie her apron strings with the other. She knocked up the wooden latch with her elbow and a clatter, and the door swung open. Holding high her lamp—a rustic model for “Liberty Enlightening the World”—she waited for the stranger to speak.

“Madame, I’m very sorry—,” he began.

“Yes, I know it,” she snapped, cutting him off from the remainder of his sentence. “’Bout ever’ thing ’at comes frum Lex’n’ton’s sorry, mighty sorry. Guess they’s some good people down thar, but I hain’t never seed ’em. They don’t never come up hyer. I _reckin_ you kin stay, but I can’t give ye no bed all to yerself; an’ I tell ye now, ye needn’t to ax it.”

Meanwhile, Madame Calico had admitted him and led the way through a side door into an adjoining room which served as a lounging hall for guests, whether “by the day” or “by the week.” Having learned how to make allowances for the moods of hotels, landlords and landladies, he had followed meekly, without invitation.

By “the dim and flaring lamp,” he now caught the outlines of a half-finished stairway winding up to the garret. There was no railing to this gangway; safety consisted in keeping away from the brink. Madame Calico stood on the third step, her countenance and kerosene jet beaming contemptuously down upon the upturned face of the hesitating guest at the bottom.

“Madam,” he asked, hearing, as he thought, a chorus of snores winding down the gangway, “does anybody else sleep up there?”

“No, they hain’t nobody hardly now, sence the mill ’uz shot down.” Rather an evasive answer.

“How many?” he inquired.

“The mill is shot down, an’ most uv the hands has quit work, an’ they hain’t many stays hyer now.”

The guest, growing insistent, asked the third time, as he took a single, hesitating step upward, “Well, who are they—can’t you say just how many?”