officer knew the law and called off his gang. When the coast was
clear we went to search for the man, and found he had vanished,
taking half a flitch of bacon with him off the kitchen-rack.

All those days, too, throb in my head to the tramp of soldiers in the
streets, and ring with bugles blown almost incessantly from the
ramparts high above my garret. On Sundays Mr. Trapp and I used to
take our walk together around the ramparts, between church and
dinner-time, after listening to the Royal Marine Band as it played up
George Street and Bedford Street on the way from service in St.
Andrew's Church. If we met a soldier we had to stand aside; indeed,
even common privates in those days (so proudly the Army bore itself,
though its triumphs were to come) would take the wall of a woman--a
greater insult then than now, or at least a more unusual one.
A young officer of the '--'th Regiment once put this indignity upon
Mrs. Trapp, in Southside Street. The day was a wet one, and the
gutter ran with liquid mud. Mrs. Trapp recovered her balance,
slipped off her pattens, and stamped them on the back of his scarlet
coat--two oval O's for him to walk about with.

Those were days, too, which kept our Plymouth stones rattling.
Besides the coaches--the "Quicksilver," which carried the mails and a
coachman and guard in scarlet liveries, the humdrum "Defiance" and
the dashing "Subscription" or "Scrippy" post-chaises came and went
continually, whisking naval officers between us and London with
dispatches: and sometimes the whole populace turned out to cheer as
trains of artillery wagons, escorted by armed seamen, marines, and
soldiers, horse and foot, rumbled up from Dock towards the Citadel
with treasure from some captured frigate. I could tell, too, of the
great November Fair in the Market Place, and the rejoicings on the
King's Jubilee, when I paid a halfpenny to go inside the huge hollow
bonfire built on the Hoe: but all this would keep me from my story--
for which I must hark back to Miss Plinlimmon.

For many months I heard nothing of this dear lady, and it seemed that
I had parted from her for ever, when one evening as I returned from
carrying a bag of soot out to Mutley Plain (where a market-gardener
wanted some for his beds), Mrs. Trapp put into my hands a letter
addressed in the familiar Italian hand to "H. Revel, residing with
Mr. S. Trapp, House Renovator, near the Barbican." It ran:

"My dearest Harry,--I wonder i