ugoumont. In his absence, however, the hedges surrounding the
position had been set on fire by a howitzer battery of the French, and
the passage of the carts full of powder became a most hazardous matter.
The first tumbril exploded, blowing the driver to fragments. Daunted
by the fate of his comrade, the second driver turned his horses, but
Corporal Brewster, springing upon his seat, hurled the man down, and
urging the powder cart through the flames, succeeded in forcing his way
to his companions. To this gallant deed may be directly attributed the
success of the British arms, for without powder it would have been
impossible to have held Hougoumont, and the Duke of Wellington had
repeatedly declared that had Hougoumont fallen, as well as La Haye
Sainte, he would have found it impossible to have held his ground.
Long may the heroic Brewster live to treasure the medal which he has so
bravely won, and to look back with pride to the day when, in the
presence of his comrades, he received this tribute to his valour from
the august hands of the first gentleman of the realm."

The reading of this old cutting increased in the girl's mind the
veneration which she had always had for her warrior kinsman. From her
infancy he had been her hero, and she remembered how her father used to
speak of his courage and his strength, how he could strike down a
bullock with a blow of his fist and carry a fat sheep under either arm.
True, she had never seen him, but a rude painting at home which
depicted a square-faced, clean shaven, stalwart man with a great
bearskin cap, rose ever before her memory when she thought of him.

She was still gazing at the brown medal and wondering what the "Dulce
et decorum est" might mean, which was inscribed upon the edge, when
there came a sudden tapping and shuffling upon the stair, and there at
the door was standing the very man who had been so often in her
thoughts.

But could this indeed be he? Where was the martial air, the flashing
eye, the warrior face which she had pictured? There, framed in the
doorway, was a huge twisted old man, gaunt and puckered, with twitching
hands and shuffling, purposeless feet. A cloud of fluffy white hair, a
red-veined nose, two thick tufts of eyebrow and a pair of dimly
questioning, watery blue eyes--these were what met her gaze. He leaned
forward upon a stick, while his shoulders rose and fell with his
crackling, rasping breathing.

"I want my morning rations,"