Read "For the Defence" by Fergus Hume online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Laurence Jen was a retired major, a bachelor, and the proprietor of a small estate at Hurstleigh, in Surrey. On leaving the service, he decided -- not unwisely -- that it was better to be a Triton in the country than a minnow in town; and acting upon this theory he purchased "Ashantee" from a ruined squire. Formerly the place had been called Sarbylands, after its original owners; but Jen had changed the name, in honor of the one campaign in which he had participated.
He had been present at the downfall of King Koffee; he had contracted during the expedition an ague which tormented him greatly during his later life, and he had received a wound and a medal. In gratitude, it is to be presumed, for these gifts of fortune, the major, with some irony, had converted the name Sarbylands into the barbaric appellation of a West African kingdom; and here, for many years, he lived with his two boys.