Then we made the helmsman put about, and were soon back in harbour with the light breeze that had kept the vessel in sight of land in our favour.
Now in a few days Varennes returned, and it was plain that no help could be looked for from Scotland, nor was it known where the king was for many a long day. Then we must wander from place to place in hiding always, until at last, on a short sea passage on the east coast, stress of storm took us to Flanders, and then came the end of troubles, for though the Duke Of Burgundy was a foe, he was a noble one, and sent our Queen home to her own people in Angers in all honour, at last.
Here I and Annot my wife serve her yet, looking back with content to the troubled days when we first learnt to love one another. For if it must be that we shall not see England again, our home is where the Queen is, and that is enough, and has been so since we served her for the first time in the cave under the shadow of the Hexham moors.
["A FLIGHT FROM JUSTICE;"
OR, HOW I BECAME A LIGHT DRAGOON]
By Lieut.-Col. PERCY GROVES, Royal Guernsey Artillery
(late 27th Inniskillings)
CHAPTER I
I was born in 1795, at the Kentish village of Charfield, of which my father, the Rev. James Wilmot, was patron and rector. My mother died before I was a week old, commending me with her latest breath to the care of a trusted servant, the wife of our factotum John Fowles—"Corporal Jack," as the villagers commonly called him. Nancy Fowles had also charge of my sister Kate, who was six years my senior.
In his youth my father had held a cornet's commission in the 17th Light Dragoons, but being severely wounded at Bunker's Hill, he was invalided home. He then retired from the service, went to Oxford, took his degree, was ordained, got married, and on the death of his father, in 1788, succeeded to our family living.