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When he lifted his head Dougal and the others had joined him, and the whole company of the Die-Hards was assembled on a patch of grass which was concealed from the landward view by a thicket of hazels. Another, whom he recognized as Heritage, was coiling up the rope. "We'd better get all the stuff into the old Tower for the present," Heritage was saying.
Six boatloads of Rats, with pistols and cutlasses, will come up the river and effect a landing in the garden; while a picked body of Toads, known at the Die-hards, or the Death-or-Glory Toads, will storm the orchard and carry everything before them, yelling for vengeance. There won't be much left of you to wash, by the time they've done with you, unless you clear out while you have the chance!"
The Colonel, though choleric, was a good-natured man, and too much of a gentleman to let his temper loose, though sorely tried, when at the bottom of the hill the Die-hards halted his carriage that he might receive not only an address from the Doctor as Mayor, but a large bouquet from the hands of the Doctor's four-year-old daughter, little Miss Sophronia, whom her mother led forward amid the plaudits of the crowd.
'Why "British"? the reader may ask. 'Have fishes, then, our nationalities? The doctor liked to think so. He was a lover of his country, and for three years, while Napoleon threatened us with invasion, he had served as a second-lieutenant in that famous company, the East and West Looe Volunteer Artillery, better known as the Looe Die-hards.
He speaks in the tone of the "Die-hards," the Peers who refused all surrender and held out to the last, raving at their opponents, assailing them with curses and even with fists, and in general aiding the rest of the world to realize that the manners of some portion of the British Peerage needed reform quite as much as their governmental privileges.
Ye'll no beat the Gorbals Die-Hards." "You're right, Dougal," said Dickson. "There's just the six of you. If there were a dozen, I think this country would be needing some new kind of a government." The first cocks had just begun to crow and clocks had not yet struck five when Dickson presented himself at Mrs. Morran's back door.
As he looks at the ancient tents, the humble equipment, the ring of small shockheads, a great tenderness comes over him. The Die-Hards are so tiny, so poor, so pitifully handicapped, and yet so bold in their meagreness. Not one of them has had anything that might be called a chance.
Sitting on the hen-house roof and munching a raw turnip was a figure which she recognized as the smallest of the Die-Hards.
The old lords of Huntingtower had once quarrelled and revelled and plotted here, and now here he was at the same game. Present and past joined hands over the gulf of years. The saga of Huntingtower was not ended. The Die-Hards had brought with them their scanty bedding, their lanterns and camp-kettles. These and the provisions from Mearns Street were stowed away in a corner.
It was his specific contribution to the covenant in Paris. Article X was the one point in the covenant which Wilson would not consent to modify or, as he expressed it, see "nullified." Just because it lay nearest Wilson's heart, it was the article against which the most virulent attacks of the "die-hards" were directed.
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