l, I mean--no,
no--right wheel. Mar--r--r--rch!'

Some wheeled to the right and some to the left, and some obliging men,
including Cripplestraw, tried to wheel both ways.

'Stop, stop; try again! 'Cruits and comrades, unfortunately when I'm in
a hurry I can never remember my right hand from my left, and never could
as a boy. You must excuse me, please. Practice makes perfect, as the
saying is; and, much as I've learnt since I 'listed, we always find
something new. Now then, right wheel! march! halt! Stand at ease!
dismiss! I think that's the order o't, but I'll look in the Gover'ment
book afore Tuesday.' {211}

Many of the company who had been drilled preferred to go off and spend
their shillings instead of entering the church; but Anne and Captain Bob
passed in. Even the interior of the sacred edifice was affected by the
agitation of the times. The religion of the country had, in fact,
changed from love of God to hatred of Napoleon Buonaparte; and, as if to
remind the devout of this alteration, the pikes for the pikemen (all
those accepted men who were not otherwise armed) were kept in the church
of each parish. There, against the wall, they always stood--a whole
sheaf of them, formed of new ash stems, with a spike driven in at one
end, the stick being preserved from splitting by a ferule. And there
they remained, year after year, in the corner of the aisle, till they
were removed and placed under the gallery stairs, and thence ultimately
to the belfry, where they grew black, rusty, and worm-eaten, and were
gradually stolen and carried off by sextons, parish clerks, whitewashers,
window-menders, and other church servants for use at home as rake-stems,
benefit-club staves, and pick-handles, in which degraded situations they
may still occasionally be found.

But in their new and shining state they had a terror for Anne, whose eyes
were involuntarily drawn towards them as she sat at Bob's side during the
service, filling her with bloody visions of their possible use not far
from the very spot on which they were now assembled. The sermon, too,
was on the subject of patriotism; so that when they came out she began to
harp uneasily upon the probability of their all being driven from their
homes.

Bob assured her that with the sixty thousand regulars, the militia
reserve of a hundred and twenty thousand, and the three hundred thousand
volunteers, there was not much to fear.

'But I sometimes have a fear tha