ROCHESTER ***




Produced by Al Haines.




[Illustration: Cover art]




[Illustration: The Fight in the Castle Yard]




                           The Adventures of
                            Harry Rochester

                             A Tale of the
                     Days of Marlborough and Eugene


                                   BY

                             HERBERT STRANG

          AUTHOR OF "TOM BURNABY" "BOYS OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE"
               "KOBO: A STORY OF THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR"



                  Illustrated by William Rainey, R.I.



                                NEW YORK
                          G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
                       27 AND 29 WEST 230 STREET
                                  1905




"Honour hath three things in it: the vantage-ground to do good; the
approach to kings and principal persons; and the raising of a man's own
fortunes."

--_Bacon_.




_My dear Tom,_

_You received my former books so kindly that I feel assured you will not
object to have this volume inscribed with your name.  I am not the less
convinced of this because you know well the country in which my opening
scenes are laid, and I had the pleasure last year of playing cricket
with you within a few miles of the village here disguised as Winton St.
Mary._

_I hope you will bear with me for one minute while I explain that in
writing this book I had three aims.  First, to tell a good story: that
of course.  Secondly, to give some account of the operations that
resulted in one of the most brilliant victories ever gained by our
British arms.  Thirdly, to throw some light--fitful, it may be, but as
clear as the circumstances of my story admitted--on life and manners two
hundred years ago.  History, as you have no doubt already learnt, is not
merely campaigning; and I shall be well pleased if these pages enlarge
your knowledge, in ever so slight a degree, of an interesting period in
our country's annals.  And if you, or any other Christ's Hospital boy,
should convict me of borrowing a week from the life of a great
personage, or of antedating by a little a development in our national
pastime--well, I shall feel complimented by such evidence of careful
reading, and not be in the least abashed._

_I take the opportunity of this open letter to acknowledge my
indebtedness to the monumental "Memoires militaires relatifs a la
succession d'Espagne" issued by the French General Staff; to Mr. Austin
Dobson for a detail which only his perfect knowledge of the 18th century
could so readily have supplied; and to Lord Wolseley's brilliant life of
Marlborough, which every student of military history must hope so
competent a hand will continue and complete._

_Yours very sincerely,_
       _HERBERT STRANG._

_Michaelmas Day, 1905._




                               *Contents*


_Chapter_ I
       The Queen's Purse-Bearer

_Chapter_ II
       Sherebiah Shouts

_Chapter_ III
       Master and Man

_Chapter_ IV
       Mynheer Jan Grootz and Another

_Chapter_ V
       A Message from the Squire

_Chapter_ VI
       My Lord Marlborough makes a Note

_Chapter_ VII
       Snared

_Chapter_ VIII
       Flotsam

_Chapter_ IX
       Monsieur de Polignac Presses his Suit

_Chapter_ X
       Bluff

_Chapter_ XI
       The Battle of Lindendaal

_Chapter_ XII
       Harry is Discharged

_Chapter_ XIII
       Concerning Sherebiah

_Chapter_ XIV
       Harry Rides for a Life

_Chapter_ XV
       The Water of Affliction

_Chapter_ XVI
       Knaves All Three

_Chapter_ XVII
       In the Dusk

_Chapter_ XVIII
       A Little Plot

_Chapter_ XXI
       Marlborough's March to the Danube

_Chapter_ XX
       The Castle of Rauhstein

_Chapter_ XXI
       Across the Fosse

_Chapter_ XXII
       The Fight in the Keep

_Chapter_ XXIII
       Blenheim

_Chapter_ XXIV
       The Wages of Sin

_Chapter_ XXV
       A Bundle of Letters

_Chapter_ XXVI
       The New Squire

_Chapter_ XXVII
       Visitors at Winton Hall




                        *List of Illustrations*


_Plate_ I
       The Fight in the Castle Yard...... _Frontispiece_

_Plate_ II
       Harry makes a Diversion

_Plate_ III
       My Lord Marlborough

_Plate_ IV
       At the Last Gasp

_Plate_ V
       "Mon Colonel, we are surrounded!"

_Plate_ VI
       The Stroke of Eight

_Plate_ VII
       "Fire and Fury!" shouted Aglionby

_Plate_ VIII
       Mein Wirth is Surprised



                             *Map And Plan*


Map of the Low Countries in 1703

Plan of the Battle of Blenheim




                              *CHAPTER I*

                       *The Queen's Purse-Bearer*


Winton St. Mary--Cricket: Old Style--Last Man In--Bowled--The Gaffer
Explains--More Explanations--Parson Rochester--"The Boy"--Cambridge in
the Field--Village Batsmen--Old Everlasting makes One--The Squire--An
Invitation--Lord Godolphin is Interested--An Uphill Game--Young
Pa'son--The Winning Hit


"Stap me, Frank, if ever I rattle my old bones over these roads again!
Every joint in me aches; every wrinkle--and I've too many--is filled
with dust; and my wig--plague on it, Frank, my wig's a doormat.  Look at
it--whew!"

My lord Godolphin took off his cocked hat, removed his full periwig, and
shook it over the side of the calash, wrying his lips as the horse of
one of his escort started at the sudden cloud.  My lord had good excuse
for his petulance.  It was a brilliant June day, in a summer of glorious
weather, and the Wiltshire roads, no better nor worse than other English
highways in the year 1702, were thick with white dust, which the autumn
rains would by and by transform into the stickiest of clinging mud.  The
Lord High Treasurer, as he lay back wearily on his cushions, looked,
with his lean, lined, swarthy face and close-cropt grizzled poll, every
day of his fifty-eight years. He was returning with his son Francis, now
nearly twenty-three, from a visit to his estates in Cornwall.  Had he
been a younger man he would no doubt have ridden his own horse; had he
been of lower rank he might have travelled by the public coach; but
being near sixty, a baron, and lord of the Treasury to boot, he drove in
his private four-horsed calash, with two red-coated postilions, and four
sturdy liveried henchmen on horseback, all well armed against the perils
of footpads and highwaymen.

It was nearing noon on this bright, hot morning, and my lord had begun
to acknowledge to himself that he would barely complete his journey to
London that day.

"Where are we now, Dickory?" he asked languidly of the nearest rider on
the off-side.

"Nigh Winton St. Mary, my lord," replied the man. "Down the avenue
yonder, my lord; then the common, and the church on the right, and the
village here and there bearing to the left, as you might say, my lord."

"Look 'ee, Frank, we'll draw up at Winton St. Mary and wet our whistles.
My lady Marlborough expects us in town to-night, to be sure; but she
must e'en be content to wait.  Time was----eh, my boy?--but now, egad,
I'll not kill myself for her or any woman."

"'Twould be a calamity--for the nation, sir," said Frank Godolphin with
a grin.

"So it would, i' faith.  Never fear, Frank, I'll not make way for you
for ten years to come.  But what's afoot yonder?  A fair, eh?"

The carriage had threaded a fine avenue of elms, and come within sight
of the village common, which stretched away beyond and behind the
church, an expanse of rough turf now somewhat parched and browned,
broken here by a patch of shrub, there by a dwindling pond, and bounded
in the distance by the thick coverts of the manor-house.  My lord's
exclamation had been called forth by the bright spectacle that met his
eyes.  At the side of the road, and encroaching also on the grass, were
ranged a number of vehicles of various sizes and descriptions, from the
humble donkey-cart of a sherbet seller to the lofty coach of some county
magnate.  Between the carriages the travellers caught glimpses of a
crowd; and indeed, as they drew nearer to the scene, their ears were
assailed by sundry shoutings and clappings that seemed to betoken
incidents of sport or pastime.  My lord Godolphin, for all his coldness
and reserve in his official dealings, was in his moments a keen
sportsman; from a horse-race to a main of cock-fighting or a
sword-match, nothing that had in it the element of sport came amiss to
him; and as he replaced his wig and settled his hat upon it his eyes lit
up with an anticipation vastly different from his air of weary
discontent.

"Split me, Frank," he cried in a more animated tone than was usual with
him; "whatever it is, 'twill cheer us up.  John," he added to the
postilion, "drive on to the grass, and stop at the first opening you
find in the ring. Odsbodikins, 'tis a game at cricket; we'll make an
afternoon of it, Frank, and brave your mother-in-law's anger, come what
may."

The postilions whipped up their horses, wheeled to the right, and drove
with many a jolt on to the common, passing behind the row of vehicles
until they came to an interval between one of the larger sort and a dray
heaped with barrels of cider.  There they pulled up sideways to the
crowd, over whose heads the occupants of the calash looked curiously
towards the scene of the game.  It was clearly an exciting moment, for
beyond a casual turning of the head the nearest spectators gave no heed
to the new-comers.  A space was roped in at some distance in front of
the church, and within the ring the wickets were pitched--very primitive
compared with the well-turned polished apparatus of to-day.  The stumps
were two short sticks forked at the top, stuck at a backward slant into
the turf about a foot apart, with one long bail across them. Nothing had
been done to prepare the pitch; the grass was short and dry and stubby,
with a tuft here and there likely to trip an unwary fielder headlong.
There was no crease, but a hole in the ground.  Nor was there any
uniformity of attire among the players: all had the stockings and
pantaloons of daily wear, and if there was any difference in their
shirts, it was due merely to their difference in rank and wealth.

"Over" had just been called as Lord Godolphin and his son drove up, and
something in the attitude of the crowd seemed to show that the game was
at a crisis.  The umpires, armed with rough curved bats somewhat like
long spoons, had just taken their new places, and the batsman who was to
receive the first ball of the new over was taking his block.  A tall,
loose-limbed young fellow, he held his bat with an air of easy
confidence.

"Egad, sir, 'tis Gilbert Young," said Frank Godolphin to his father.  "I
knew him at Cambridge: a sticker. Who's the bowler?  I don't know him."

The bowler was a youth, a mere stripling of some sixteen or seventeen
years, who stood at his end of the wicket, ball in hand, awaiting the
word to "play".  His loose shirt was open at the neck; his black hair,
not yet cropt for a wig, fell in a strong thick mass over his brow; and
as he waited for the batsman to complete his somewhat fastidious
preparations, he once or twice pushed up the heavy cluster with his left
hand.

"Gibs was ever a tantalising beast," said Frank aside. "Hi, you fellow!"
he shouted to a broad-shouldered yokel who stood just in front of him by
the rope, "how stands the score?"

The man addressed looked over his shoulder, and seeing that the speaker
was one of the "quality" he doffed his cap and replied:

"'Tis ninety-four notches, your honour, and last man in. Has a'ready
twenty-vive to hisself, and the Winton boys can't get un out."

"Play!" cried the umpire.  The batsman stood to his block, and looked
round the field with a smile of confidence.  The bowler gave a quick
glance around, took a light run of some three yards, and delivered the
ball--underhand, for round-arm bowling was not yet invented. The ball
travelled swiftly, no more than two or three feet above the ground,
pitched in front of the block-hole, and was driven hard to the off
towards a thick-set, grimy-looking individual--the village smith.  He,
bending to field the ball, missed it, swung round to run after it, and
fell sprawling over a tussock of grass, amid yells of mingled derision
and disappointment.

"Pick theeself up, Lumpy!" roared the man to whom Frank Godolphin had
spoken.  But the ball had already been fielded by Long Robin the tanner,
running round from long-on.  Sir Gilbert meanwhile had got back to his
end of the wicket, and the scorer, seated near the umpire, had cut two
notches in the scoring stick.

Again the ball was bowled, with an even lower delivery than before.  The
batsman stepped a yard out of his ground and caught the ball on the
rise; it flew high over the head of the remotest fieldsman, over the
rope, over the crowd, and dropped within a foot of the lych-gate of the
church.  Loud cheers from a party of gentlemen mounted on coaches in
front of a tent greeted this stroke; four notches were cut to the credit
of the side, bringing the score to a hundred.  There was dead silence
among the crowd now; it was plain that their sympathies lay with the out
side, and this ominous opening of the new bowler's over was a check upon
their enjoyment.

Sir Gilbert once more stood to his block.  For his third ball the bowler
took his run on the other side of the wicket.  His delivery this time
was a little higher: the ball pitched awkwardly, and the batsman seemed
to be in two minds what to do with it.  His hesitation was fatal. With a
perplexing twist the ball slid along the ground past his bat, hit the
off stump, and just dislodged the bail, which fell perpendicularly and
lay across between the sticks.  Sir Gilbert looked at it for a moment
with rueful countenance, then marched towards the tent, while the crowd
cheered and, the innings being over, made for the stalls and carts, at
which ale and cider and gingerbread were to be had.

"Egad, 'twas well bowled," ejaculated Lord Godolphin; "a cunning ball, a
most teasing twist; capital, capital!"

"I'll go and speak to Gibs," said Frank.  "Will you come, sir?"

"Not I, i' faith.  'Tis too hot.  Bring him to me.  I'll drink a glass
of cider here and wait your return."

There was a cider cart near at hand, and his man Dickory brought my lord
a brimming bumper drawn from the wood.  He winced as the tart liquor
touched his palate, unaccustomed to such homely drink; but it was at
least cool and refreshing, and he finished the bumper. As he gave it
back he noticed an old man slowly approaching, leaning with one hand
upon a stout knobby stick of oak, and holding in the other a rough
three-legged stool, which he placed between my lord's calash and the
rope.  He was a fine-looking old man, dressed in plain country homespun;
his cheeks were seamed and weather-beaten, but there was still a
brightness in his eyes and an erectness in his figure that bespoke
health and the joy of life.  He sat down on the stool, took off his hat
and wiped his brow, then, resting both hands on his stick, looked
placidly around him.  There was no one near to him; the space was clear,
for players and spectators had all flocked their several ways to get
refreshment, and for some minutes the old man sat alone.  Then Lord
Godolphin, to ease his limbs and kill time, stepped out