This had set Dick thinking very seriously,
for the Corporal had always told him that no man was so bad as he that
deserted his colours and ran away from the King's service; and he had
hardly believed that such people could exist. And the bill had set
other people thinking too, for a reward of two guineas was offered for
this deserter, which made sundry poor mouths water; so that altogether
the parson's long sermon was not much listened to, many heads being
occupied with an attempt to remember some strange man five feet four
inches in height, with fair hair and grey eyes, and dressed in
regimentals.
When service was over, the Corporal solemnly packed up his bass viol in
a bag of green baize, and was about to carry it off, when he was
stopped by the village preacher, who begged the loan of it for the
evening. But the Corporal, who as a soldier and Lady Eleanor's servant
was a staunch supporter of Church and King, did not like the preacher,
who was always railing against all authority and driving silly maids
into hysterics with his ravings; so he answered him very civilly (for
he never quarrelled with any one) that he was afraid he could not. The
preacher, however, would not take no for an answer, and tried to
wheedle the Corporal, who at last told him very decidedly that his
father had played that viol in the church at Fitzdenys for forty years,
and he himself at Ashacombe for near seven years more, and that he
would be hanged if it should ever enter a chapel so long as he was
alive.
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