This was a melancholy end of our brave setting out, and everybody blamed every one else; and several of us wanted to have the whole thing over again, as then we must have righted it.  But upon one point all agreed, by some reason not clear to me, that the root of the evil was to be found in the way Parson Bowden went up the hill, with his hat on, and no cassock.

[Illustration:  494.jpg Tailpiece]

CHAPTER LV

GETTING INTO CHANCERY

[Illustration:  495.jpg Devonshire Town]

Two of the Devonshire officers (Captains Pyke and Dallan) now took command of the men who were left, and ordered all to go home again, commending much the bravery which had been displayed on all sides, and the loyalty to the King, and the English constitution.  This last word always seems to me to settle everything when said, because nobody understands it, and yet all can puzzle their neighbours.  So the Devonshire men, having beans to sow (which they ought to have done on Good Friday) went home; and our Somerset friends only stayed for two days more to backbite them.

To me the whole thing was purely grievous; not from any sense of defeat (though that was bad enough) but from the pain and anguish caused by death, and wounds, and mourning.  “Surely we have woes enough,” I used to think of an evening, when the poor fellows could not sleep or rest, or let others rest around them; “surely all this smell of wounds is not incense men should pay to the God who made them.  Death, when it comes and is done with, may be a bliss to any one; but the doubt of life or death, when a man lies, as it were, like a trunk upon a sawpit and a grisly head looks up at him, and the groans of pain are cleaving him, this would be beyond all bearing—­but for Nature’s sap—­sweet hope.”

Jeremy Stickles lay and tossed, and thrust up his feet in agony, and bit with his lipless mouth the clothes, and was proud to see blood upon them.  He looked at us ever so many times, as much as to say, “Fools, let me die, then I shall have some comfort”; but we nodded at him sagely, especially the women, trying to convey to him, on no account to die yet.  And then we talked to one another (on purpose for him to hear us), how brave he was, and not the man to knock under in a hurry, and how he should have the victory yet; and how well he looked, considering.

These things cheered him a little now, and a little more next time; and every time we went on so, he took it with less impatience.  Then once when he had been very quiet, and not even tried to frown at us, Annie leaned over, and kissed his forehead, and spread the pillows and sheet, with a curve as delicate as his own white ears; and then he feebly lifted hands, and prayed to God to bless her.  And after that he came round gently; though never to the man he had been, and never to speak loud again.