But it was long
before he recovered his place in our esteem. Indeed, he never wholly
recovered it: since of many dire consequences there was one,
unforeseen at the time, which proved to be irreparable. Over the
immediate consequences let me drop the curtain. _Male, male feriati
Troes!_ . . . As a man at daybreak takes a bag and, going into the
woods, gathers mushrooms, so the Dragoons gathered the men of Troy.
. . . Mercifully the most of them were unconscious.
Even less heart have I to dwell on the return of the merrymakers:
"But now, ye shepherd lasses, who shall lead
Your wandering troops, or sing your virelays?"
Sure no forlorner procession ever passed down Troy river than this,
awhile so jocund, mute now, irresponsive to the morning's smile, the
cuckoo's blithe challenge from the cliff. To the Major, seated in
the stern sheets of the leading boat, no one dared to speak.
They supposed his pecuniary loss to be heavier than it actually was--
since the Dragoons had after all surprised but a portion of the
cargo, and the leafy woods of Pentethy yet concealed many scores of
tubs of _eau-de-vie_; but they knew that he brooded over no pecuniary
loss. He had been outraged, betrayed as a neighbour, as a military
commander, and again as a father of his people; wounded in the house
of his friends; scourged with ridicule in the very seat of his
dignity. Maidens, inconsolable for lovers snatched from them and now
bound for Bodmin Gaol, hushed their sorrow and wiped their tears by
stealth, abashed before those tragic eyes which, fixed on the river
reach ahead, travelled beyond all petty private woe to meet the end
of all things with a tearless stare.
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