eton of
something human standing below half-dressed.

'Has anybody come?' asked the form.

'O, Mrs. Jolliffe, I didn't know it was you,' said the young man kindly,
for he was aware how her baseless expectations moved her. 'No; nobody
has come.'

_June_ 1891.

THE MELANCHOLY HUSSAR OF THE GERMAN LEGION

CHAPTER I

Here stretch the downs, high and breezy and green, absolutely unchanged
since those eventful days. A plough has never disturbed the turf, and
the sod that was uppermost then is uppermost now. Here stood the camp;
here are distinct traces of the banks thrown up for the horses of the
cavalry, and spots where the midden-heaps lay are still to be observed.
At night, when I walk across the lonely place, it is impossible to avoid
hearing, amid the scourings of the wind over the grass-bents and
thistles, the old trumpet and bugle calls, the rattle of the halters; to
help seeing rows of spectral tents and the _impedimenta_ of the soldiery.
From within the canvases come guttural syllables of foreign tongues, and
broken songs of the fatherland; for they were mainly regiments of the
King's German Legion that slept round the tent-poles hereabout at that
time.

It was nearly ninety years ago. The British uniform of the period, with
its immense epaulettes, queer cocked-hat, breeches, gaiters, ponderous
cartridge-box, buckled shoes, and what not, would look strange and
barbarous now. Ideas have changed; invention has followed invention.
Soldiers were monumental objects then. A divinity still hedged kings
here and there; and war was considered a glorious thing.

Secluded old manor-houses and hamlets lie in the ravines and hollows
among these hills, where a stranger had hardly ever been seen till the
King chose to take the baths yearly at the sea-side watering-place a few
miles to the south; as a consequence of which battalions descended in a
cloud upon the open country around. Is it necessary to add that the
echoes of many characteristic tales, dating from that picturesque time,
still linger about here in more or less fragmentary form, to be caught by
the attentive ear? Some of them I have repeated; most of them I have
forgotten; one I have never repeated, and assuredly can never forget.

Phyllis told me the story with her own lips. She was then an old lady of
seventy-five, and her auditor a lad of fifteen. She enjoined silence as
to her share in the incident, till she should be 'dead, buried, an