Explore "Micah Clarke" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Decimus Saxon refused to avail himself of Master Timewell's house and / table for the reason, as I afterwards learned, that, the Mayor being a / firm Presbyterian, he thought it might stand him in ill stead with the / Independents and other zealots were he to allow too great an intimacy / to spring up between them. Indeed, my dears, from this time onward this / cunning man framed his whole life and actions in such a way as to make / friends of the sectaries, and to cause them to look upon him as their / leader. For he had a firm belief that in all such outbreaks as that in / which we were engaged, the most extreme party is sure in the end to gain / the upper hand. 'Fanatics,' he said to me one day, 'mean fervour, and / fervour means hard work, and hard work means power. ' That was the centre / point of all his plotting and scheming.
And first of all he set himself to show how excellent a soldier he was, / and he spared neither time nor work to make this apparent. From morn / till midday, and from afternoon till night, we drilled and drilled until / in very truth the shouting of the orders and the clatter of the arms / became wearisome to our ears. The good burghers may well have / thought that Colonel Saxon's Wiltshire foot were as much part of the / market-place as the town cross or the parish stocks. There was much to / be done in very little time, so much that many would have thought it / hopeless to attempt it. Not only was there the general muster of the / regiment, but we had each to practise our own companies in their several / drills, and to learn as best we could the names and the wants of the / men. Yet our work was made easier to us by the assurance that it was not / thrown away, for at every gathering our bumpkins stood more erect, / and handled their weapons more deftly. From cock-crow to sun-down the / streets resounded with 'Poise your muskets! Order your muskets! Rest / your muskets! Handle your primers! ' and all the other orders of the old / manual exercise.