MY NEW HAT
Here was what I had dreamed of. Here was the dearest wish of my heart
gratified. I was twenty-three, and I had three-and-twenty's darling
equipment--a magnificent horse, a pair of unerring pistols, a fine rapier,
a pocket full of guineas, the memory of a woman's grace and beauty, and a
tough job in hand. The only material thing I really wanted was a new hat,
for yester morning's milk and subsequent bashings and bruisings had ruined
my old one. I had not bothered about it as long as it had bobbed alongside
the grey woollen hood of Margaret's domino, but, cheek by jowl with her
new hat, it had become an offence, and must be remedied.
The black shadow flitted in and out of my mind. I was clean and clear of
all blood-guiltiness. I had struck for Margaret as he would have struck
for Kate. Fate had been too strong for us, but whatever penance life
should lay upon me should be paid to the uttermost farthing. I had this
comfort that, could Jack ride up to me now, there would be no change in
him. There would be for me the old hearty hand-grip and the boyish,
affectionate smile, just as when he had run in to me on the town-hall
steps.
I had been commissioned by the Prince to do three things: first, to
deliver a dispatch to my Lord George Murray, wherever I should find him,
which would probably be at Ashbourne, twelve miles ahead along a good
road; second, to carry a letter to Sir James Blount at his house called
Ellerton Grange, somewhere near Uttoxeter; third, to make a wide circuit
west and south of Derby, picking up all the information I could as to the
feeling of the populace and the disposition of the enemy's forces, and to
report on this to the Prince in person at Derby at six o'clock the
following night. On this third commission the Prince and Colonel Waynflete
had laid great stress. An independent and trustworthy report was, it
appeared, of the utmost importance.
Finally, as a dependent commission arising out of the first of the duties
imposed on me by the Prince, I bore a letter to my Lord Ogilvie from her
ladyship. She had summoned me willy-nilly to her room privily.
"Tell Davie yonder that I'm very well and very, very guid," she said, as
she handed me the letter.
"With infinite pleasure, my lady," I replied.
"It will be true, ye ken," she asserted, as if there was a corner for
dubiety in her own mind regarding the matter.
"Solemnly and obviously true, my lady," I agreed.
"Oh, thou incomparable Oliver, I wish you were a lass," she said, lifting
her merry, girlish face level with mine, and putting a hand on each of my
shoulders.
"Why, my lady?" I said, straightening at her touch.
"Then you could give Davie this as well!" which said, she pecked lightly
at me with her sweet lips and kissed me.
It had flustered me greatly, but she only laughed ringingly and
delightsomely as I backed out of the room. And when, door-knob in hand, I
made my last bow, she had wagged her finger at me for emphasis and said,
"Dinna forget to tell Davie I'm very guid."
Good she was, as beaten gold, and she kept her spirits up to this high
pitch to the very end. You can read in Mr. Volunteer Ray's history of the
whole affair of the 'Forty-five' how, after Culloden, she was taken
prisoner while dressing for the ball which was to crown the expected
victory.
I smiled a young man's smile as I thought of it. Experience was writing
some items on the credit side of my new account with life. I had met a
winsome lady of title and she had kissed me. Margaret, behind my back and
to a third party, had called me an "incomparable" something. What, I knew
not,--"servant" probably, but I cared not what.
Mile after mile passed without incident of any kind until, at a second's
notice, I rode into a ring of muskets which closed round me out of vacancy
as if by magic. It was the outermost picket of the army at Ashbourne. I
gave the parole, "Henry and Newcastle," and demanded a guide to my Lord
George Murray's quarters. There came a Gaelic grunt out of the gloom; men
and muskets disappeared, with the exception of a single clansman, who
seized Sultan's bridle and led me into the town.
The General was quartered at the "Swan with Two Necks," a very
respectable hostelry, where my first care was to have a cloth thrown over
Sultan, and to order for him a bucket of warm small beer with three or
four handfuls of oatmeal stirred into it. While this was adoing, and I was
awaiting a summons to his lordship's presence, I took a nip of brandy in
the public room of the inn, and over it amused myself by reading a crude
fly-sheet nailed on the wall, offering a reward of fifty guineas to anyone
giving information leading to the arrest of one Samuel Nixon, commonly
called 'Swift Nicks,' a notorious highwayman, six feet high, of very
genteel appearance, well-spoken, but a cruel, bloody ruffian with it all.
The Highlander interrupted my reading by beckoning me to follow him.
Upstairs we went, and he ushered me into a room where were two gentlemen
seated on opposite sides of a table on which were a small map and two
large glasses containing a yellowish liquid.
The younger of them was of much the same general appearance as
Maclachlan, though by the look of him a simpler and sweeter man. The
other, a middle-aged, domineering man with a powerful face, looked angrily
at me as I handed him my dispatch.
He read it impatiently, threw it down beside the map, and said, "They're
coming on to-night, Davie." Then, curtly to me, "Your name, sir?"
"Wheatman of the Hanyards."
"Hanyards? Humph! Are you an Irishman?"
"No, my lord. Not even a Scotchman!"
He glared at me, but his companion laughed, and said, "That's one under
your short ribs, Geordie!"
"Damn the Irish!" cried Murray. "They're the ruination of the whole
business, Davie, and ye know it."
"Of course they are," he replied, "but that's no reason for telling it to
an English loon who thinks less of a Scotchman than he does of a pickelt
herring."
"That may be, my lord," said I to him, "but I think so well of one
Scottish lady that I'm proud to be her humble courier." And I handed him
his letter.
"Man! man!" he said ecstatically, as he ripped it open, "ye're welcome as
sunshine in December. It's from Ishbel. God bless her pretty face!"
He read the letter eagerly and then thrust it into his bosom.
"I am, further," I went on, "entrusted with a message from her ladyship."
"God bless her! Out with it, man, out with it!"
"I was to inform you that she was very, very good," said I, soberly as a
judge passing sentence.
"What do you think of that, Geordie Murray? Very, very guid! Eh, man,
isn't she a monkey? God bless her!"
"I'll send the whole lot of 'em packing off back to Edinburgh," said
Murray. "Women are a nuisance on a campaign. Your Ishbel, be hanged to
her, wants a carriage all her own and another for her fineries."
"Ye ken a lot about soldiering, Geordie," retorted Ogilvie, "no man more,
but ye ken less about soldiers than a lad of ten. At Gladsmuir I said to
MacIntosh, 'Let's get the damn thing over, Sandy, and be back to breakfast
wi' the leddies!' And we did."
"You did so," acknowledged Murray. "Now, Davie, take our courier out and
feed him. I thank you, sir! You have ridden speedily. Your pace is faster
than your tongue."
"My lord," said I, "although I am doing his Royal Highness such poor
service as lies in me, I am not yet duly acting under his commission and
authority."
"What of it?" he asked.
"Hence I am not an officer under your command, my lord!"
"Excellent logic! And the therefore, my beef-eating friend, is....?"
"That I would as lief knock your head off as look at you!"
"When you are an officer," cried he, "by gad, sir, I'll teach ye the
manners of an officer. Till then, my birkie," rising and holding out his
hand, "guid luck to ye!"
We shook hands heartily and so parted.
"He's a grand man is Geordie Murray," said Ogilvie, as he led me to
another room across the landing. "Just a wee bit birsy, maybe, but these
damned Irish have got his kail through the reek. They're o'ermuch on his
spirits of late."
All his other talk was of his lady, though he looked well enough after
me, and I made a good meal of the better half of a cold chicken, a cottage
loaf, and a tankard of poor ale. Ashbourne is noted, say the wise in such
matters, for the best malt and the poorest ale in England.
I am overmuch English, as is often the case with us who live in the very
heart of England. The famous Mr. Johnson is a shire-fellow of mine, and
very proud I am of it, and reckon it among the greatest events of my life
that he has bullyragged me soundly for differing from him, and being
right, about a line of Virgil he had misquoted in my hearing. Like Mr.
Johnson, I love men and loathe dancing-masters, and these Scotsmen were
men indeed, my Lord Ogilvie, as I came to know later, one of the choicest.
He was a spare-built man, in years thirty or thereabouts, with a face all
lines and angles, and dotted with pock-marks. For a lord, his purse was
very bare of guineas, and nature had made up for it by giving him a belly
full of pride. For him, the Highland line had been the boundary of the
known world, so that his mind was a chequer-work of curious ignorance and
knowledge.
From the first I liked him for his joy in his dainty lady. She was the
daughter of a cadet of a distant branch of the famous Bobbing John's
family, and had spent nearly all her life in France till, on a chance
visit to Scotland, she had been snapped up by Ogilvie. They were a
strangely matched pair, she from the gay _salons_ of Paris, he from
the misty mountains of the north; but mutual love had assorted them to
admiration, for the heart of each was sound as a bell.
Between bites I answered questions as to how she had looked, what she'd
said, done, and so forth.
"Was she wearing her brown riding-coat with the pretty wee shoulder
capes?" he asked.
"No," said I, becoming more interested.
"Or her creamy dress with the gold flowers all over it?"
"No," said I again, smiling at my discoveries.
"She's keeping 'em for London," he explained. "Gosh, man! She will look
divine in 'em."
"She won't," said I, clipping away at the sweet bits still hanging on the
carcass of my chicken.
"It'll take your logic all its time to keep six inches o' cauld steel out
of your brisket," he said very fiercely.
"Never had better chicken in my life," said I, watching him out of one
eye--quite enough for any Scotsman.
"Damn the chicken!" he roared. "Why won't she?"
"Because she's given 'em away," I explained in my airiest tones.
"The blue blazes of hell!" gasped his lordship. "Given 'em away, and they
cost me twenty pounds English! Given 'em away!" he whined, utterly lost
for words, "given 'em away! The callack's clean dawpit. Twenty pounds good
English money!"
"Nothing like enough!" said I. "You'll be sorry it wasn't two hundred."
Two hundred pounds English was, however, something too stupendous for his
mind to grasp, and the gibe had no effect on him. While I finished my ale
he chuntered away in his own Gaelic.
"I'll mak' it up in London," he said at length, "but it'll be the deil's
own job."
"It will indeed," I agreed, and drained my tankard dry.
A look at my watch told me it was time to set about my second commission.
Sultan was brought from the stable, fit as a fiddle and eager to be going.
I examined my pistols, ran the tuck up and down in its scabbard, leaped on
Sultan, and asked for the Uttoxeter road.
My Lord Ogilvie parted from me on the fairest terms, bringing me with his
own hands a great stirrup-cup, or "dock-an-torus," as he called it.
"Man," said he, "I'm right glad to be acquent wi' ye. I was thinking I'd
gang all the way to London without coming across a man worth fighting,
much less friending, but I was in the wrang of it. Here's to ye!"
"My lord," said I, "you match your sweet lady. Both of you have been
wondrous kind to a hard-hit man."
We gripped hands, saluted, and parted.
It was all but pitch-dark, and the moon was not due to rise for more than
an hour, but the sky was clear and the stars were out in masses for
company and guidance. Ellerton Grange was near Uttoxeter, and Uttoxeter
was a sizeable townlet just inside my own county, and some fifteen miles
from Ashbourne. The road was the usual cross-road, all of it bad and most
of it vile. I left the going to Sultan, who did the best he could, like
the gallant and experienced creature he was. There was nothing for me to
do except to keep a good look out and the north star just behind my right
hand.
My mind was busy going over all the memories of the last three days. I
tried hard, but in vain, to skip the black part, the thought of which made
me flinch as if the branding-iron was white-hot against my cheek. Mentally
I saw double--Jack's red blood with one eye and Margaret's amber hair with
the other. As I rode I fought memory with memory, mingling gall and honey,
now mumbling broken prayers and now singing snatches of country
love-songs, and so got on as best I could. In the journey of life a man
pays for what he calls for. Life had given me what I wanted, and the price
thereof had been death.
Not only was the night dark but the countryside was empty. I rode past
dim outlines of houses and through vague, dreamlike villages without
seeing a soul or hearing a sound. Once I saw a light ahead by the
roadside, but out it went as the rattle of Sultan's hoofs told of my
coming. It was no wonder, for these poor folk were living between two
armies and wanted neither, friend nor foe. For them it was only a choice
between the upper and the nether millstone. At last I came to a wayside
ale-house where lights were showing. I rode up, dismounted, ran the reins
over the catch of the shutter, and went in.
In the low, untidy room I found a man and a woman, bent over a miserable
fire, with their backs to a table whereon were set out mug and platter and
other things useful for a meal. They rose to greet me, and their faces
told me that they were expecting some one and supposed that I was he. When
they saw their mistake, the woman stepped smartly in front of the man and
said, "Lord, sir, how you frighted us! What can I get for your worship?"
"A mug of good mulled ale," said I. "Give me good mulled ale and a little
information, and you shall have a crown for your pains."
I spoke pleasantly, having no need, as a mere passer-by, to do otherwise,
but if I had been obliged to have dealings with them, I should have begun
by distrusting them outright. The man was of the common sort of ale-house
keeper, ugly, beery, and stupid, and old enough to be the father of his
wife, as I call her on account of the wedding ring on her finger. She was,
for the place and post, a complete surprise, being a jaunty, townish,
garish woman, dressed in decayed finery. He would have slit my throat for
a groat, she for a grudge. They looked that sort.
The woman went into another room, beyond the little bar where the
drinkables were stored, to get the spices for the mulling, and the man
shuffled grumpily after her. Hanging on the wall behind the bar was a
fly-sheet, the very same I had read in the "Swan with Two Necks" at
Ashbourne.
"Swift Nicks" was a much-wanted gentleman, and evidently a tobie-man with
a wide range of activities. Out of mere vacancy of mind I walked near to
read the fly-sheet again, and, by a curious chance, among the drone of
words from the other room, the only one my quick ear could pick out
distinctly was "Nicks."
This made me wary, and when the woman came out and busied herself at the
fire, and called me to see what a prime mull she was brewing, I stood over
her, to all intent watching the process but ready for anything. And not
without need, for her dirty husband crept softly out after her, thinking
to catch me unawares. I flashed at him like a jack at a minnow, wrenched a
wretched old blunderbuss out of his hands, and with the butt of it knocked
him sprawling back into the other room.
The prime muller merely cackled with false laughter and went on with her
mulling. I fetched him in by the scruff of the neck, stood him up against
the bar, and said, "I think you're in for the soundest thrashing you've
ever had in your life."
"Sarves yer right, sawney," said the woman. "Plase let him off, sir. He
thought yow was Swift Nicks."
"Yow bitch!" he growled. "Yow set me on!"
"Yow'm a ligger!" she retorted. "I towd yow the gen'leman was nowt like
Swift Nicks."
"How do you know that?" I asked.
"By the print," was the quick reply. "It tells yow all about him."
I fetched the fly-sheet down, held it out to her, and said sharply, "Read
it to me!"
I thought this would clean beat her, but she said, simply enough, "I
canna rade it mysen, but I've heard it read lots o' times."
"Have you heard it read?" I asked the man.
"Lots o' times," he echoed surlily, and I saw the woman's fingers twitch
as if she longed to furrow his ugly face with her nails.
"Then why didn't you know?"
I spoke to him but turned sharp on the woman, and saw hell in her face.
She was almost too quick for me, and answered fawningly, "The thought o'
the money made a fool on 'im, sir. Plase let him off. I've mulled th' ale
prime for her honour."
This was true and I enjoyed it greatly. I sent the man out to rub Sultan
down while she prepared for him under my eyes a warm drench of ale and
meal.
"Be y'r honour going far?" she asked.
"That depends how far it is to Ellerton Grange. Do you know it?"
"Oh aye, y'r honour. Sir James Blount lives there. It's three miles out'n
Tutcheter on the Burton road."
"Is it a straight road to Uttoxeter?"
"Half a mile on yow'll come to a fork. Tek the road on the right and just
ride after y'r nose. Fetch the drench, Bob!"
She carried it off well, but I felt there was a deep strain of roguery in
her. Still, willing to part on a lighter note, I gave her the crown,
saying, "You deserve a better trade."
"It's none so bad," she said.
"And a better husband."
"Oddones! D'ye think...."
She stopped abruptly, plainly caught out for the first time.
A minute later I was off again. At the fork Sultan made for the left, and
I had to pull him sharply to the right. The road got steadily worse, but
Orion was clear in view ahead of me, dropping down behind Uttoxeter, and I
pushed on. If a man is to turn back because of a bad road, he'll not
travel far in the Shires. Soon, however, there was no road at all, and I
was plump in open country. Sultan stopped and sniffed, and then turned his
head round as if to tell me, what I already felt was the truth, that I had
been an ass for not leaving it to him.
"So ho! Sultan!" said I, patting his warm neck. "I deserve all you say,
my beauty! I've put you in for a nice job."
The right road must lie somewhere to my left. I turned him that way and
he walked on suspicious and sniffing. Fortunately the moon had risen, and
the Jezebel's lie would only cost me a trifling delay. She would have lied
with a purpose, and I puzzled myself in trying to reason it out. In a few
minutes we came to the side of a spinney with a low wall of rough stones
cutting it off from the field. I was intently looking ahead, when on a
sudden Sultan swerved so powerfully that I rocked in the saddle. I
wouldn't have touched him with the spur, short of utter necessity, for a
fistful of guineas, and I soothed him, and then turned to look for what
had upset him.
To be candid I swerved myself. Most of us in these days are pleased to
laugh at superstitions, provided we are in good company round a roaring
fire. I was here alone in a lonely field, at nine of the clock on a winter
night, and there, flittering and gliding through the spinney was a
something in white. Virgil believed in ghosts, and so did Joe Braggs, and
I, by oft reading the one and listening to the other, had preserved an
open mind. Apparently Sultan had his doubts, for he shivered and whinnied.
I pulled his head round away from the ghost, drew out a pistol, and
watched the unchancy thing's movements. It was evidently meant for me, for
it made a slight turn and came straight towards me. Then my man's logic,
as Margaret twittingly called it, came to my aid. Gloomy as it was, I saw
the outlines of some steps by which the low wall could be crossed, and
ghosts, both my authorities being in agreement on this, were independent
of such purely human contrivances. So, waiting till the ghost was climbing
down on my side, I said sternly, "Stop, or I fire!" Whereon it heaved a
great sob and tumbled full length to the ground.
I jumped down, slipped the reins over Sultan's head, and pulled him up to
the spot. The ghost was a well-grown girl, dressed in nothing but a white
night-gown, for I could see her bare feet beyond the hem of it.
"Don't be afraid, dear," said I soothingly, for she was dumb and half
dead with fright. "What can I do for you? Say it, and it's done. Come now,
be brave!"
She sat up, leaning on her right hand, and turned her pallid, quivering
face up to mine.
"Robbers, sir!" she gasped. "They're murdering father and mother. For
God's sake, sir, go and stop them."
"Of course," I replied cheerfully, slipping off my jacket. "Come on, my
brave lass!"
I helped the lass to her feet, put her into my jacket, jumped into the
saddle, and lifted her astride behind me.
"Clip me tight! Which way?"
"Round the spinney first, sir!"
Off we went, and this time I touched Sultan with the spur and he flew
along. Round the spinney; slantways across a field; up and over a gate,
the girl clinging to me like a leech; down a lane; up and over another
gate; and then the girl's shaking right arm was thrust over my shoulder.
"There's th' ouse! 0', God, if we anna in time!"
"How many are there?"
"Two, sir."
I pulled Sultan up at the farmyard gate, helped her down, and jumped
after her. Hitching the horse, we started across the yard.
Luckily the low-down moon was on the far side of the house, and we could
run softly up in the pitch dark. As I write I feel that brave girl's hard
grip of my hand as we raced on. At a half-open door we halted; she loosed
hold of me, and I tiptoed on alone. From within I heard the crash of one
pot and then another on the brick floor of the kitchen, as the villain,
searching for hidden money, smashed them to the ground. Bitten to the
vitals by his want of success, he yelled, "I'll burn the sow's eye out!
That'll open her mouth."
With wrath flaming in my heart I stepped into the doorway leading to the
kitchen. My eyes lit on a poor woman bound hard and fast in a chair, and a
masked beast, his big white teeth showing through lips thrust wide apart
in a grin of hellish rage, approaching a red-hot poker towards her face. I
shot him, and he tumbled into a squirming heap. The other villain raced
for dear life through the open front door. My second bullet got him on the
very threshold, for he yelped and sprang into the air like a stricken
buck, but he held on. I e'en let him go, not daring to leave the unkilled
scoundrel on the floor, for he had a regular battery of pistols in his
belt. The girl was already untying her mother, and her father, bound and
gagged in his chair in the ingle-nook, could bide a while. So I plucked
the pistols out, there were six of them, and rattled them down on the
table. The man was bleeding like a stuck pig, and his purpling face and
heaving throat showed that he was choking. As I destined him for the
gallows, I picked him up, flung him face down on the table, and thumped
him violently in the back, whereupon he coughed up a tooth. My bullet had
stripped out all his grinning front teeth clean and clear, just as our
Kate's dainty thumb strips the row of peas out of a peascod. Once the
tooth was up he was not greatly hurt, and, holding one of his own pistols
to his head, I bade him unstrap the farmer. As soon as the latter was
free, I ordered him to strap the robber to a kitchen chair, which he did
very thoroughly. The instant this job was done, he leaped to fondle and
hearten his wife. She kissed him back and, without a word, feebly pointed
to me, whereupon he turned and thanked me.
"Thank your brave daughter," said I, and then he jumped at her and hugged
her in his big arms, blubbing out, "My bonny, bonny Nance!"
At my wish he lit a lantern, and we went out and stabled Sultan. We went
back through the kitchen to make a search of the front of the house. A
pretty sight awaited me within doors. The good wife was sipping at a cup
of parsnip wine, and the girl was again wearing nothing but her
nightdress. With crimson face and downcast eyes, she stood there holding
my coat out.
"Hallo, ghostie!" said I, smiling at her. "You want to frighten me again,
do you?"
Too confused to say a word, she lackeyed me into my coat and then ran
upstairs. To cut short her mother's tearful thanks, I led the way to the
door, and we started our examination.
Some two yards from the door-sill the feeble rays of the lantern were
reflected from something on the ground. To my great satisfaction it was
fair booty to me, nothing less than my closest need, a rare good hat made
of the finest beaver. The band was buckled with gold, and there was a
taking and surely very fashionable cock to the brim. I sent my old one
spinning into the blackness and clapped my new treasure on my head. Now I
could walk side by side with Margaret and not be ashamed, at any rate not
of my hat.
"The rogue jerked it off when I winged him," said I.
"Gom! He did jump, that's sartin," said the farmer, whose name, I ought
to say, I had learned was Job Lousely.
It was quite a step down to the road, and we made no further discovery
till we got to the gate. Here it was his turn to be lucky, for there was
an excellent nag hitched to a rail. It was on Job's ground and he gave it
a home in his stable.
"It'll mak up for the crockery," he said, with great delight.
Back in the kitchen we found Nance fully dressed and busy laying a meal
on the table. She was so taken aback when I declared I was not hungry and
couldn't stay if I had been, that, to save her distress, I had a bite and
a sup of ale, while Job fetched Sultan round to the door. She was a sweet,
comely maiden, and it did my heart good to see her put a horn of ale to
the bleeding lips of the robber. He drank ravenously, like a dog after a
hard run. He was where he deserved to be, with his feet in the short,
straight path to the gallows, and I pitied him not. Nance did, and it's
good for the world that women are made that way.
"How far is it to Ellerton Grange?" I asked Job, who came in to tell me
Sultan was ready.
"A matter of six miles, sir. Three from here to Tutcheter, and three more
on to the Grange."
"How funny, father," interposed Nance. "This is the second time tonight a
gentleman has asked the road to Ellerton Grange."
It would hardly have struck Job as funny if it had been the
twenty-second, but Nance was quick and shrewd.
"Ho! Ho!" said I. "Tell me about it, little woman!"
"I was wishing my Jim good night at the gate, just before father came
home, when a man riding by pulled up and asked the road to Ellerton
Grange."
"Did you make him out, Nance?" I asked.
"Not much of him, sir, but the moon shone on his face when he took his
hat off to wipe his forehead, and it looked for all the world like an
addled duck-egg."
"Well put, Nance," said I, laughing. "First time I saw that face I
thought it was like a bladder of lard."
"You know him, sir?"
"I think I do, Nance, and I must be after him."
Out of the robber's string of pistols I selected a pair for myself. They
were lawful prize, and equal in quality to those Master Freake had given
me, so that the rascal had probably stolen them. I saw that all the others
were loaded, and advised Job to watch him all night and to lift him, chair
and all, into a cart the next morning and drive him off to the nearest
Justice.
Job and his wife renewed their thanks when I was in the saddle. Nance
insisted on coming to open the gate, and on the way there she gave me full
and careful directions as to the way to Tutcheter and thence to the Grange.
She swung the gate open and let me through. Then she came to my sword
side and held up her face to be kissed.
"Good-bye, ghostie!"
"Good-bye, sir! God bless you!"
Kissing and blessing were reward enough for my service, and I rode on
lighter at heart for them.