"They are going to the Grange, then?"
"Yes, as soon as they are married; and that will be on New Year's Day."
[ROBERT BUCHANAN]
[The Shadow of the Sword]
Robert Buchanan, poet, novelist, and playwright, was born on Aug. 18, 1841, at Caverswall, Staffordshire, England, the son of a poor journeyman tailor from Ayrshire, in Scotland, who wrote poetry, and wandered about the country preaching socialism of the Owen type, afterwards editing a Glasgow journal. Owing, perhaps, in part to his very unconventional training, Robert Buchanan entered on life with a strange freshness of vision. Nothing in ordinary human life seemed common or mean to him, and this sense of wonder, combined with a power of judgment much steadier than his father's, made him a poet of considerable genius. "Undertones," published in 1863, and "Idylls and Legends of Inverburn," which appeared two years later, made him famous. The same qualities which he displayed in his poetry Buchanan exhibited in his earliest and best novels. "The Shadow of the Sword," published in 1876, was originally conceived as a poem, and it still remains one of the best of modern English prose romances. In his latter years Robert Buchanan, tortured by the long and painful illness of his beautiful and gentle wife, wrote a considerable amount of work with no literary merit; but this does not diminish the value of his best and earliest work, which undoubtedly entitles him to a place of importance in English literature. He died on June 10, 1901.
I.--The King of the Conscripts
"Rohan Gwenfern!" cried the sergeant, in a voice that rang like a trumpet through the length of the town hall.
No one answered. The crowd of young Kromlaix men looked at each other in consternation. Was the handsomest, the strongest, and the most daring lad in their village a coward? It was the dark year of 1813, when Napoleon was draining France of all its manhood. Even the only sons of poor widowed women, such as Rohan Gwenfern was, were no longer exempted from conscription. Having lost half a million men amid the snows of Russia, Napoleon had called for 200,000 more soldiers, and the little Breton fishing village of Kromlaix had to provide twenty-five recruits.
"Rohan Gwenfern!" cried the sergeant again.