elf, Colonel Jervois
strode off to the nearest farm, requisitioned a waggon, and having
packed the boys into it, bought loaves and milk enough to breakfast
them all, and transported the whole twenty-eight to our door. He left
four with my mother, and marched off with the rest. The Woods took in a
large batch, and in the course of the afternoon he had for love or money
quartered them all. He betrayed no nervousness in dealing with numbers,
in foraging for supplies, or in asking for what he wanted. Whilst other
people had been doubting whether it might not "create unpleasantness" to
interfere in this case and that, the Colonel had fought each boy's
battle, and seen most of them off on their homeward journeys. He was
used to dealing with men, and with emergencies, and it puzzled him when
my Uncle Henry consulted his law-books and advised caution, and my
father saw his agent on farm business, whilst the fate of one of
Crayshaw's victims yet hung in the balance.

When all was over the Colonel left us, and took Lewis with him, and his
departure raised curiously mixed feelings of regret and relief.

He had quite won my mother's heart, chiefly by his energy and tenderness
for the poor boys, and partly by his kindly courtesy and deference
towards her. Indeed all ladies liked him--all, that is, who knew him.
Before they came under the influence of his pleasantness and politeness,
he shared the half-hostile reception to which any person or anything
that was foreign to our daily experience was subjected in our
neighbourhood. So that the first time Colonel Jervois appeared in our
pew, Mrs. Simpson (the wife of a well-to-do man of business who lived
near us) said to my mother after church, "I see you've got one of the
military with you," and her tone was more critical than congratulatory.
But when my mother, with unconscious diplomacy, had kept her to
luncheon, and the Colonel had handed her to her seat, and had stroked
his moustache, and asked in his best manner if she meant to devote her
son to the service of his country, Mrs. Simpson undid her
bonnet-strings, fairly turned her back on my father, and was quite
unconscious when Martha handed the potatoes; and she left us wreathed in
smiles, and resolved that Mr. Simpson should buy their son Horace a
commission instead of taking him into the business. Mr. Simpson did not
share her views, and I believe he said some rather nasty things about
swaggering, and not having one sixpence to