ving some
mishap, when old Teggley summoned us to get down and walk.

"Wouldn't be acting like a Christian to ask a horse to drag you three
big lads up a hill like this. I did think," he grumbled, "that with all
this talk about making good roads, something would have been done to
level ourn. Mortal bad they be for a horse sewer_ly_."

"Why, what could you do to the roads?" I said, as I stood on the step
looking at the quaint old fellow. "Do, lad? Why, there's plenty of
stuff ar'n't there? Cutoff all the tops of the hills, and lay in the
bottoms, and there you are, level road all the way."

We seemed to have only been away a few days, as, after parting from
Bigley, Bob and I reached the cottage, where, just as of old, were my
father and the doctor.

I remember thinking that they both looked a little older and greyer, but
that was all. But that was soon forgotten in the interest and
excitement of what was going on around me, for I had, I found, gradually
been growing older, and ready to take an interest in matters more
important than hunting prawns and groping for crabs down on the rocky
shore.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

OLD SAM IS UNHAPPY.

Seventeen, and grown as big as Bigley, with the consequence that I could
not help thinking a good deal of what people said to me when I went in
to Ripplemouth or down to the Gap.

The salute I generally met was:

"Why, Master Sep Duncan, you are growing quite a man."

I suppose I was in appearance, but, thank goodness, I was still only a
boy at heart.

Plenty to see, plenty to hear.

The fishermen and people at the tiny port were always looking out to
sea, and shutting their eyes and shaking their heads.

"Ay, and we need look out, master," they would say. "Strange doings
now. Who knows how soon they Frenchies will come down upon us and try
to take the town. But we're going to fight 'em to a man."

I remember even then laughing to myself as I went home one morning after
being disappointed in finding Bob Chowne, who had gone on a round with
his father, for I asked myself what the French, whom the Ripplemouth
people saw in every passing vessel, would gain by making a descent upon
our rock-strewn shore.

But when I ventured to hint at their being more likely to attack
Plymouth or Portsmouth, old Teggley Grey, who was down on the pier
loading up with coal that had come over in a sloop from Monmouth, shook
his head.

"Ay, it be well for you, lad, with all t