Derrick Vaughan - Novelist

"Was Cromwell really once there?" he asked with breathless interest.

"So they say," replied my father, looking with an amused smile at the face of the questioner, in which eagerness, delight, and reverence were mingled. "Are you an admirer of the Lord Protector?"

"He is my greatest hero of all," said Derrick fervently. "Do you think--oh, do you think he possibly can ever have come to Mondisfield?"

My father thought not, but said there was an old tradition that the Hall had been attacked by the Royalists, and the bridge over the moat defended by the owner of the house; but he had no great belief in the story, for which, indeed, there seemed no evidence.

Derrick's eyes during this conversation were something wonderful to see, and long after, when we were not actually playing at anything, I used often to notice the same expression stealing over him, and would cry out, "There is the man defending t