in
one of the hottest parts of the peninsula. That's why he's so brown,
and it made his blood thin, too. He can't endure cold. The officer
with him is one of our majors, Apthorpe. He has had less experience
than the colonel, but thinks he knows more. His opinion of the French
is very poor. Believes we ought to brush 'em aside with ease."

"I hope you don't think that way, Grosvenor," said Robert. "We in this
country know that the French is one of the most valiant races the
world has produced."

"And so do most thinking Englishmen. The only victories we boast much
about are those we have won over the French, which shows that we
consider them foes worthy of anybody's steel. But the play is going to
begin, I believe. The hall is well filled now, and I'm not trying to
make an appeal to your local pride, Lennox, when I tell you 'tis an
audience that will compare well with one at Drury Lane or Covent
Garden for splendor, and for variety 'twill excel it."

Robert was pleased secretly. Although more identified with Albany than
New York, he considered himself nevertheless one of the people who
belonged to the city at the mouth of the Hudson, and he felt already
its coming greatness.

"We call ourselves Englishmen," he said modestly, "and we hope to
achieve as much as the older Englishmen, our brethren across the
seas."

"Have you seen many plays, Lennox?"

"But few, and none by great actors like Mr. Hallam and Mrs. Douglas. I
suppose, Grosvenor, you've seen so many that they're no novelty to
you."

"I can scarcely lay claim to being such a man about town as that. I
have seen plays, of course, and some by the great Master Will, and I
do confess that the mock life I behold beyond the footlights often
thrills me more than the real life I see this side of them. Once, I
witnessed this play 'Richard III,' which we are now about to see, and
it stirred me so I could scarce contain myself, though some do say
that our Shakespeare has made the hunchback king blacker than he
really was."

Presently a little bell rang, the curtain rolled up, and Robert passed
into an enchanted land. To vivid and imaginative youth the great style
and action of Shakespeare make an irresistible appeal. Robert had
never seen one of the mighty bard's plays before, and now he was in
another world of romance and tragedy, suffused with poetry and he was
held completely by the spell. Shakespeare may have blackened the
character of the hunchback, but Robe