Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/368

 338 THE LANDING. CHAP. He gave him a vast territory, but omitted to •^^^^' give him a home. So, left isolated in the midst of the forest, aud with no better shelter than a log-hut half-built, the staff-of&cer, hitherto expert in the prim tradi- tions of the Horse Guards, now found himself so circumstanced that the health, nay, the very life of those most dear to him, was made to depend upon his power to become a good labourer. He could not have hoped to keep his English servants a day if he had begun by sitting still himself and order- m<y them to do the rough work to which they were unaccustomed ; so he worked with his own hands, in the faith that his example would make every kind of hard work seem honourable to his people; and being endued with an almost violent love of bodily exertion, he was not only equal to this new life, but came to delight in it. Clad coarsely during the day, he was only to be distinguished from the other workmen by his greater activity and greater power of endurance. Many English gentlemen have done the like of this, but com- monly they have ended by becoming altogether just that which they seemed in their working hours — by becoming, in short, mere husbandmen. It was not so with Airey. When his people came to speak to him in the evening, they always found him transformed. Partly by the subtle change which they were able to see in his manner, partly even by so outward a thing as the rigorous change in his dress, but most of all perhaps by his natural ascendant, they were prevented from forgetting