with a foreign accent,
who, after collecting a vast deal of information on our resources, had
hired a boat at a southern port, and vanished with it towards France
before his intention could be divined.

In forecasting his grand venture, Buonaparte postulated the help of
Providence to a remarkable degree. Just at the hour when his troops were
on board the flat-bottomed boats and ready to sail, there was to be a
great fog, that should spread a vast obscurity over the length and
breadth of the Channel, and keep the English blind to events on the other
side. The fog was to last twenty-four hours, after which it might clear
away. A dead calm was to prevail simultaneously with the fog, with the
twofold object of affording the boats easy transit and dooming our ships
to lie motionless. Thirdly, there was to be a spring tide, which should
combine its manoeuvres with those of the fog and calm.

Among the many thousands of minor Englishmen whose lives were affected by
these tremendous designs may be numbered our old acquaintance Corporal
Tullidge, who sported the crushed arm, and poor old Simon Burden, the
dazed veteran who had fought at Minden. Instead of sitting snugly in the
settle of the Old Ship, in the village adjoining Overcombe, they were
obliged to keep watch on the hill. They made themselves as comfortable
as was possible in the circumstances, dwelling in a hut of clods and
turf, with a brick chimney for cooking. Here they observed the nightly
progress of the moon and stars, grew familiar with the heaving of moles,
the dancing of rabbits on the hillocks, the distant hoot of owls, the
bark of foxes from woods further inland; but saw not a sign of the enemy.
As, night after night, they walked round the two ricks which it was their
duty to fire at a signal--one being of furze for a quick flame, the other
of turf, for a long, slow radiance--they thought and talked of old times,
and drank patriotically from a large wood flagon that was filled every
day.

Bob and his father soon became aware that the light was from the beacon.
By the time that they reached the top it was one mass of towering flame,
from which the sparks fell on the green herbage like a fiery dew; the
forms of the two old men being seen passing and repassing in the midst of
it. The Lovedays, who came up on the smoky side, regarded the scene for
a moment, and then emerged into the light.

'Who goes there?' said Corporal Tullidge, shouldering a pike