The Spirit of Waterloo

By Bryce McBryce

A terror from Britain's glory days arrives to haunt the garrison school. The Colonel fumes, the Padre swoons, and Wee Charlie is a last forlorn hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Darling Newspaper Press
• Release date: Nov 6, 2009
• ISBN: 9781452309729

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SPIRIT OF

WATERLOO

by Bryce McBryce

© copyright Charles Bryce

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Smashwords Edition 2009

Published by Darling Newspaper Press

http://www.booktaste.com

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PO box 176, Kalamunda, Western Australia 6926.

First published Darling Newspaper Press 2006 in Short Trips, tales that entertain isbn 095906303X

Extracted from Wee Charlie's World by Bryce McBryce, 2006, isbn 0959063048, CIP A823-4

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Cover artwork: Wellington at Waterloo by Robert Alexander Hillingford. (courtesy Wikipedia).

ALPHONSE haunted the garrison school because it was there. It was heavily there, on his grave.

The Colonel had ordered that work proceed notwithstanding the soldier’s remains, after the builders unearthed a coffin while digging the school’s foundat-ions. A brass plate identifying a French officer was unscrewed from the mahogany lid and sent to a military museum in Paris, then the grave was filled again, with cement, encasing the bones in a concrete shroud.

In death, the fort’s ghost had retained Alphonse’s philosophical outlook in life. It accepted the needs of the living, and emanated no wrath when its last resting place was disturbed. Eh bien, was it not an honeur to have this new shrine of learning to crown one’s tomb? The great and beloved Emperor Napoleon himself had no monument to equal this, nor all the kings and popes. It was true the pyramids of the Nile might outsize Alphonse’s imposing edifice, yet these lacked the vibrant chatter of children, the closeness of the