Jan of the Windmill: A Story of the Plains

by Juliana Horatia Ewing

The position was perplexing, if he had had a sober head to consider it with. That pickpockets abounded had been well impressed upon his slow intellect, and that there was no means of tracing property so lost, in the crowd and confusion of the mop. True, his property was worth “crying,” worth offering a reward for. But the pocket-book was not his, and the letter was not addressed to him; and it was doubtful if he even dare run the risk of claiming them.

His first despair was succeeded by a sort of drunken fury, in which he accused the men sitting with him of robbing him, and then swore it was the Cheap Jack, and so raved till the landlord of the King’s Arms expelled him as “drunk and disorderly,” and most of the company refused to believe that he had had any such sum of money to lose.

Exactly how or where, after this, the sergeant found him, George could not remember, but his general impression of the sergeant’s kindness was strong. He could recall that he pumped upon his head in the yard of the King’s Arms, to sober him, by George’s own request; and that it did somewhat clear his brain, his remembrance of seeing the sergeant wipe his fingers on a cambric handkerchief seems to prove. They then paced up and down together arm in arm, if not as accurately in step as might have been agreeable to the soldier. George remembered hearing of prize money, to which his own loss was a bagatelle, and gathering on the whole that the army, as a profession, opened a sort of boundless career of opportunities to a man of his peculiar talents and appearance. There was something infectious, too, in the gay easy style in which the soldier seemed to treat fortune, good or ill; and the miller’s man was stimulated at last to vow that he was not such a fool as he looked, and would “never say die.” To the best of his belief, the sergeant replied in terms which showed that, had he been “in cash,” George’s loss would have been made good by him, out of pure generosity, and on the spot.

As it was, he pressed upon his acceptance the sum of one shilling, which the miller’s man pocketed with tears.

What recruit can afterwards remember which argument of the skilful sergeant did most to melt his discretion into valor?

The sun had not dried the dew from the wolds, and the sails of the windmill hung idle in the morning air, when George Sannel made his first march to the drums and fifes, with ribbons flying from his hat, a recruit of the 206th (Royal Wiltshire) Regiment of Foot.

As the Cheap Jack and his wife hastened home from the mop, Sal had some difficulty in restraining her husband’s impatience to examine the pocket-book as they walked along.

Prudence prevailed, however, and it was not opened till they were at home and alone.

In notes and money, George’s savings amounted to more than thirteen pounds.

“Pretty well, my dear,” said the Cheap Jack, grinning hideously. “And now for the letter. Read it aloud, Sal, my dear; you’re a better scholar than me.”