He had always won: that was the terror of it.

The Fates seemed to be behind him.

And now we knew that he lay upon the northern coast with a hundred and fifty thousand veterans, and the boats for their passage.

But it is an old story, how a third of the grown folk of our country took up arms, and how our little one-eyed, one-armed man crushed their fleet.
There was still to be a land of free thinking and free speaking in Europe.
There was a great beacon ready on the hill by Tweedmouth, built up of logs and tar-barrels; and I can well remember how, night after night, I strained my eyes to see if it were ablaze.

I was only eight at the time, but it is an age when one takes a grief to heart, and I felt as though the fate of the country hung in some fashion upon me and my vigilance.