Of the six score, fully half had seen
service before, while a fair sprinkling were men who had followed
the wars all their lives, and had a hand in those battles which
had made the whole world ring with the fame and the wonder of the
island infantry.
Six long weeks were taken in these preparations, and it was close
on Martinmas ere all was ready for a start. Nigh two months had
Alleyne Edricson been in Castle Twynham--months which were fated
to turn the whole current of his life, to divert it from that
dark and lonely bourne towards which it tended, and to guide it
into freer and more sunlit channels. Already he had learned to
bless his father for that wise provision which had made him seek
to know the world ere he had ventured to renounce it.
For it was a different place from that which he had pictured--very
different from that which he had heard described when the
master of the novices held forth to his charges upon the ravening
wolves who lurked for them beyond the peaceful folds of Beaulieu.
There was cruelty in it, doubtless, and lust and sin and sorrow;
but were there not virtues to atone, robust positive virtues
which did not shrink from temptation, which held their own in all
the rough blasts of the work-a-day world? How colorless by
contrast appeared the sinlessness which came from inability to
sin, the conquest which was attained by flying from the enemy!
Monk-bred as he was, Alleyne had native shrewdness and a mind
which was young enough to form new conclusions and to outgrow old
ones.
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