A jewel in a midden, rather! How it came
among his trumpery archives I know as little as he, but can guess.
Some Lestiddle man must have stolen it, and chosen them as a safe
hiding-place.

It gave me the clue, and more than the clue. I know now the history
of that Mayor of Troy who was so popular that the town made him
Ex-Mayor the year following.

Listen! Stretch out both hands; open your mouth and shut your eyes!
It is a draught of Troy's own vintage that I offer you; racy,
fragrant of the soil, from a cask these hundred years sunk, so that
it carries a smack, too, of the submerging brine. You know the old
recipe for Wine of Cos, that full-bodied, seignorial, superlative,
translunary wine.

Yet I know not how to begin.

"Fortunam Priami cantabo et nobile bellum."

"I will sing you Troy and its Mayor and a war of high renown," that
is how I want to begin; but Horace in his _Ars Poetica_--confound
him!--has chosen this very example as a model to avoid, and the
critics would be down on me in a pack.

Very well, then, let us try a more reputable way.

CHAPTER I.

OUR MAJOR.

Arms and the Man I sing!

When, on the 16th of May, 1803, King George III. told his faithful
subjects that the Treaty of Amiens was no better than waste paper,
Troy neither felt nor affected to feel surprise. King, Consul,
Emperor--it knew these French rulers of old, under whatever title
they might disguise themselves. More than four centuries ago an
English King had sent his pursuivants down to us with a message that
"the Gallants of Troy must abstain from attacking, plundering, and
sinking the ships of our brother of France, because we, Edward of
England, are at peace with our brother of France": and the Gallants
of Troy had returned an answer at once humble and firm: "Your Majesty
best knows your Majesty's business, but _we_ are at war with your
brother of France." Yes, we knew these Frenchmen. Once before, in
1456, they had thought to surprise us, choosing a night when our
Squire was away at market, and landing a force to burn and sack us:
and our Squire's wife had met them with boiling lead. His Majesty's
Ministers might be taken at unawares, not we. We slept Bristol
fashion, with one eye open.

But when, as summer drew on, news came that the infamous usurper was
collecting troops at Boulogne, and flat-bottomed boats, to invade us;
when the spirit of the British people armed for the support of their
ancient