Scholastic sojourns

Quinn sighed. "Not good. We ended up losin' the Colonies - though it weren't the fault of the soldiers, not the way I heard it. It was the fault of them higher-up, and the supply chain." He shrugged. "There was ten years of peace afore this war with the French started, though."

They'd lost the colonies? Tom quivered angrily. "Now that... that ain't right. Those traitors can't've got away with that..."

Sam lifted an eyebrow. "Now that's sommat real familiar, and all. Pa never thought well of that lot, after the war."

"I'm sorry, but there it is, lad." Quinn patted him on the shoulder. "Don't go worryin' about it now, though, lad. We ain't in the Americas." He glanced at the Rifleman. "And nor we ain't in Spain, neither, lad."

Tom glowered at nothing in particular, privately incensed that the rebellion had succeeded. It wasn't bloody natural! After everything those bastards had done... he remembered the night the rebels had sacked and burned his father's smithy.

"Well, good riddance to 'em," he snarled quietly.

"I know we ain't," Sam replied, more calmly.

"Left a deal of bad feelings all round, that war," Quinn said softly. He had been a young man when the British had lost the war with America, but he still remembered the high feelings it had caused, and the resentment among those who had remained loyal to the King.

That was putting it mildly. Tom made himself shrug. "If it's over, in whatever year this is, so be it. May Boston burn for startin' it!" He nodded at Sergeant Quinn for finding Smollett's book. "Cheers for the book, Sarn't."

Then he went out of the library, his head full to distraction with what he'd just heard.

Sam shook his head as the elder Mayden departed. "I don't unnerstand at all, Sarn't, by God I don't."

It really was too incredible for description. He couldn't wrap his head around any of it at all.

Quinn shrugged. "If we got here from the year eighteen hunnerd and nine, what's to say he didn't get here from seventeen hunnerd an' eighty-one, as he says. Which would explain why he's got both his legs, thinks the old war in the colonies is still bein' fought, an' don't know anythin' about you." He tucked Tristram Shandy under his arm. "I don't understand how it all works, neither, lad, but it has, somehow."

"Strangest sorta place ever," Sam remarked, shaking his head again. "Never thought I'd ever cross paths with Pa before he got to be Pa."

He glanced at the book under Quinn's arm and asked, "That one there any good, Sarn't?"