For the Defence

Thank you for checking out this book by Theophania Publishing. We appreciate your business and look forward to serving you soon. We have thousands of titles available, and we invite you to search for us by name, contact us via our website, or download our most recent catalogues. 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.