happened one night a few weeks before I came home from
school on my first summer holidays.

His father, in the early years of the century, had kept the mill up at
Trethake Water, two miles above Gantick. There were two sons, of whom
Reub, the elder, succeeded to the mill. Nat had been apprenticed to
the thatching. Accident of birth assigned to the two these different
walks of life but by taking thought their parents could not have
chosen more wisely, for Nat was born clever, with an ambition to cut a
figure in man's eyes and just that sense of finish and the need of it
which makes the good workman. Whereas his brother went the daily round
at home as contentedly as a horse at a cider press. But Nat made the
mistake of lodging under his father's roof, and his mother made the
worse mistake of liking her first-born the better and openly showing
it. Nat, jealous and sensitive by nature, came to imagine the
whole world against him, and Reub, who had no vice beyond a large
thick-witted selfishness, seemed to make a habit of treading on his
corns. At length came the explosion: a sudden furious assault which
sent Reub souse into the paternal mill-leat.

The mother cursed Nat forth from the door, and no doubt said a great
deal more than she meant. The boy--he was just seventeen--carried
his box down to the Ring of Bells. Next morning as he sat viciously
driving in spars astride on a rick ridge, whence he could see far
over the Channel, there came into sight round Derryman's Point a
ship-of-war, running before the strong easterly breeze with piled
canvas, white stun-sails bellying, and a fine froth of white water
running off her bluff bows. Another ship followed, and another--at
length a squadron of six. Nat watched them from time to time until
they trimmed sails and stood in for Falmouth. Then he climbed down
from the rick and put on his coat.

Two years later he landed at Portsmouth, heartily sick of the sea and
all belonging to it. He drank himself silly that night and for ten
nights following, and one morning found himself in the streets without
a penny. Portsmouth just then (July, 1808) was filled with troops
embarking under Sir John Moore for Portugal. One regiment especially
took Nat's eye--the 4th or King's Own, and indeed the whole service
contained no finer body of men. He sidled up to a corporal and gave
a false name. Varcoe had been his mother's maiden name, and it came
handy. The corporal took him to a recruiting s