up long
ago?'"

"That's easy answered: to please others," explained Mr. Lyddon. "Fust
theer was his promise to Phoebe, then his mother's illness, then his
other promise, to bide till his wife was brought to bed. Looking back I
see we was wrong to use our power against his awn wish; but so it
stands."

"I ought to go; I ought to be alongside un," moaned Phoebe; "I was at
the bottom of everything from fust to last. For me he run away; for me
he stopped away. Mine's the blame, an' them as judge him should knaw it
an' hear me say so."

"Caan't do no such vain thing as that," declared Mr. Blee. "'T was never
allowed as a wife should be heard 'pon the doin's of her awn husband.
'Cause why? She'd be one-sided--either plump for un through thick an'
thin, or else all against un, as the case might stand."

"As to the sentence," continued Martin, "if a man with a good character
deserts and thinks better of it and goes back to his regiment, he is not
as a rule tried by court-martial at all. Instead, he loses all his
former service and has to begin to reckon his period of engagement--six
or seven years perhaps--all over again. But a notoriously bad character
is tried by court-martial in any case, whether he gives himself up or
not; and he gets a punishment according to the badness of his past
record. Such a man would have from eighty-four days' imprisonment, with
hard labour, up to six months, or even a year, if he had deserted more
than once. Then the out-and-out rascals are sentenced to be 'dismissed
her Majesty's service.'"

"But the real gude men," pleaded Phoebe--"them as had no whisper 'gainst
'em, same as Will? They couldn't be hard 'pon them, 'specially if they
knawed all?"

"I should hope not; I'm sure not. You see the case is so unusual, as an
officer explained to me, and such a great length of time has elapsed
between the action and the judgment upon it. That is in Will's favour. A
good soldier with a clean record who deserts and is apprehended does not
get more than three months with hard labour and sometimes less. That's
the worst that can happen, I hope."

"What's hard labour to him?" murmured Billy, whose tact on occasions of
universal sorrow was sometimes faulty. "'Tis the rankle of bein' in
every blackguard's mouth that'll cut Will to the quick."

"What blackguards say and think ban't no odds," declared Mrs. Blanchard.
"'Tis better--far better he should do what he must do. The disgrace is
in the minds of