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Rupert, in his rides with messages across the country, saw enough to make him heartsick at the distress into which the people of the country were plunged. One day when riding, followed by Hugh, he came upon a sad group. By a hut which had recently been burned, after some resistance, as was shown by the dead body of a Hessian trooper, a peasant knelt by the body of his wife.
"I would as lief go there as anywhere," Harry Esmond said, simply, "for there is nobody to care for me." There must have been something touching in the child's voice, or in this description of his solitude, for the Captain looked at him very good-naturedly, and the trooper called Steele put his hand kindly on the lad's head, and said some words in the Latin language.
A long trail of smoke, drawing rapidly nearer, streaked the gray and ochre of the level plain, and presently the big engine and dusty cars rolled into the station amid the hoarse tolling of the bell. As they ran slowly past him, Edgar saw a police trooper leaning out from a vestibule, and when the train stopped the constable on the platform hurried toward the car.
The Spaniards hated helmets and proof armour, while the English trooper, in casque, cuirass, and greaves, was a living fortress impregnable to Spanish or Italian light horsemen. And Leicester seemed almost convinced by his reasoning. It was five o'clock of a chill autumn morning. It was time for day to break, but the fog was so thick that a man at the distance of five yards was quite invisible.
"'Tis a glorious heaven to look upon," continued the trooper, in the same tone, disregarding the offer of Betty, "and 'tis a thousand pities that such worms as men should let their vile passions deface such goodly work." "You speak the truth, dear John; there is room for all to live and enjoy themselves in peace, if each could be satisfied with his own.
He carried a pick and shovel for one of his sick men, and after we reached camp walked back with a mule to get another trooper who had fallen out from heat exhaustion. The result was that the captain himself went down and became exceedingly sick. We at last succeeded in sending him to the States.
And so while the seniors among the sergeants were becoming gradually the associates, if not the intimates, of this fine-looking trooper, the mass of the regiment, or rather the little detachment thereof stationed at Lowell, looked upon Bland with the eye of suspicion.
The agitation of her enthusiasm had been so conspicuous when listening, and when first applying for information, that I could not but ask her if she had not some relative in the Peninsular army. Oh yes; her only son was there. In what regiment? He was a trooper in the 23d Dragoons. My heart sank within me as she made that answer.
Indeed, I shall feel far safer with a man in the house now that we are having fires and Indian out-breaks and prisoners escaping and all that sort of thing. Do come, Mr. Blakely." And in that blue flannel shirt and the trooper trousers and bandanna neckerchief, Blakely went and thanked her; sent for Nixon and his saddle-bags, and with such patience as was possible settled down forthwith.
They catch it that fellar by'n-by. Again he pointed at Ryder, and again his laugh echoed in the gorge. 'Mine tink it trooper search him scrub plenty long time. Boss tink I go hunt by scrub to-morrow, mine come sit down longa here.
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