Meantime the old soldier, with his faithful cloak wrapped closely
round him once more, was fighting his way through the sharp winds
and over the moors again. But a battle against something a
thousand times sharper and colder was going on in his breast.
"A thief!" he was saying over and over to himself, "me, who
fought close to the side of the 'Iron Duke'! And yet, can I look
one of them in the face and tell him he lies?"
The walk that had been gone over so merrily was a terrible one to
retrace, and when the cottage was reached, instead of the pride
and good luck the poor invalids had been watching for, a gloom
deadlier than the fever followed him in. He sat in the doorway
as he used, but sometimes he hung his head on his breast, and
sometimes started up and walked proudly about, crying--
"Peggy! I say no one shall call me a thief! I am a soldier of
the Iron Duke!"
But they did call him a thief, though, for a very strange thing,
after his lordship had sorrowfully ordered the cottage and little
garden spot to be searched no box was found, and the gloom and
the mystery grew deeper together.
Good nursing could not balance against trouble like this; the
beautiful daughters faded and died, the house was too gloomy to
stay inside, and if he escaped to the door, he had to hear the
passers say--
"There sits the soldier who stole the Blucher diamonds from his
host!"
And as if this was not enough, one day the sound of hoofs was
heard again, and a rider in uniform clattered up to the door
saying:
"Comrade, I am sent to tell you that your pension is stopped!
His Majesty cannot count a thief any longer a soldier of his!"
After this the old soldier hardly held up his head at all, and
his hair, that had kept black as a coal all these years, turned
white as the moors when the winter snows lay on them.
Pages:
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108