it had been
more earnest play. For him the fun began and ended with the ambush,
the supposed raid and its swashing deeds of valour; for her all these
were but incident to a scheme, long brooded on, by which we were to
amass plunder sufficient to buy back the family estate of Lantine with
all the consequence due to an ancient name in which the rest of us
forgot to feel any pride. But this was my sister Margery's way; to
whom, as honour was her passion, so the very shadows of old repute,
dead loyalties, perished greatness, were idols to be worshipped. By a
ballad, a story of former daring or devotion, a word even, I have seen
her whole frame shaken and her eyes brimmed with bright tears; nay, I
have seen tears drop on her clasped hands, in our pew in St. Sampson's
Church, with no more cause than old Parson Kendall's stuttering
through the prayer for the King's Majesty--and this long before the
late trouble had come to distract our country. She walked our fields
beside us, but in company with those who walked them no longer; when
she looked towards Lantine 'twas with an angry affection. In the
household she filled her dead mother's place, and so wisely that we
all relied on her without thinking to wonder or admire; yet had we
stayed to think, we had confessed to ourselves that the love in which
her care for us was comprehended reached above any love we could repay
or even understand--that she walked a path apart from us, obedient to
a call we could not hear.

In her was born the spirit which sends men to die for a cause; but
since God had fashioned her a girl and condemned her to housework, she
took (as it were) her own hope in her hands and laid it all upon her
twin brother. They should have been one, not twain. He had the frame
to do, and for him she nourished the spirit to impel. With her own
high thoughts she clothed him her hero, and made him mine also. And
Mark took our homage enough, without doubting he deserved it. He was
in truth a fine fellow, tall, upright, and handsome, with the delicate
Lantine hands and a face in which you saw his father's features
refined and freshly coloured to the model of the Lantine portraits
which hung in the best sitting-room to remind us of our lost glories.
For me, I take after my mother, who was a farmer's daughter of no
lineage.

I remember well the Christmas Eve of 1643, when the call came for
Mark; a night very clear and crisp, with the stars making a brave show
against the br