or I shan't sleep a wink.'

'I'll go, of course,' said John; 'and perhaps Miss Garland would like to
see what's doing there to-day? Everybody is gone or going; the road is
like a fair.'

He spoke pleadingly, but Anne was not won to assent.

'You can drive in the gig; 'twill do Blossom good,' said the miller.

'Let David drive Miss Garland,' said the trumpet-major, not wishing to
coerce her; 'I would just as soon walk.'

Anne joyfully welcomed this arrangement, and a time was fixed for the
start.

XIII. THE CONVERSATION IN THE CROWD

In the afternoon they drove off, John Loveday being nowhere visible. All
along the road they passed and were overtaken by vehicles of all
descriptions going in the same direction; among them the extraordinary
machines which had been invented for the conveyance of troops to any
point of the coast on which the enemy should land; they consisted of four
boards placed across a sort of trolly, thirty men of the volunteer
companies riding on each.

The popular Georgian watering-place was in a paroxysm of gaiety. The
town was quite overpowered by the country round, much to the town's
delight and profit. The fear of invasion was such that six frigates lay
in the roads to ensure the safety of the royal family, and from the
regiments of horse and foot quartered at the barracks, or encamped on the
hills round about, a picket of a thousand men mounted guard every day in
front of Gloucester Lodge, where the King resided. When Anne and her
attendant reached this point, which they did on foot, stabling the horse
on the outskirts of the town, it was about six o'clock. The King was on
the Esplanade, and the soldiers were just marching past to mount guard.
The band formed in front of the King, and all the officers saluted as
they went by.

Anne now felt herself close to and looking into the stream of recorded
history, within whose banks the littlest things are great, and outside
which she and the general bulk of the human race were content to live on
as an unreckoned, unheeded superfluity.

When she turned from her interested gaze at this scene, there stood John
Loveday. She had had a presentiment that he would turn up in this
mysterious way. It was marvellous that he could have got there so
quickly; but there he was--not looking at the King, or at the crowd, but
waiting for the turn of her head.

'Trumpet-major, I didn't see you,' said Anne demurely. 'How is it that
your regime