Chapter 2 Chapter One

I typed on the keyboard, making a clicking sound, and the letters appeared on the small screen in front of me.I have no idea who's going to read what I'm writing.If anyone had actually read it, I would have been dead by then, like Tolstoy and Shakespeare.When you read a book, does it matter that the author is alive?I think there should be a difference.If the writer is still alive, at least in theory you could send a letter and maybe have some kind of relationship with him, and I think a lot of readers feel that way.Some readers will also write letters to fictional characters in the novel, which is a little scary.

Obviously I'm not dead yet, but things could change at any moment, which is why I'm writing about these things right now.In fact, the author will never know what the fate of the work he wrote with painstaking efforts will be. After all, paper can be used for many other purposes besides displaying neatly arranged characters; The small electromagnetic wave commands issued by the computer cannot escape the ravages of time.The man Brace Ward was definitely dead, he died of his wounds at the Battle of Border Hill in the English Civil War in late October 1642, or so we thought.Although he died, a fifty-two-page manuscript written before his death has more or less messed up my life, and maybe it will kill me. Now I don't know what the result will be.Perhaps, this Andrew should be blamed more.Professor Buschrow, who dumped it on me and got murdered himself; and my college roommate, Mitch.Haas, who introduced Booth to me, and as far as I know, Mickey is alive;I am Brooke at the New York Public Library.In Astor's reading room, I peeked at her slender white neck in the collar. I wanted to kiss her neck so much that my jaw hurt.I suspect that if it weren't for this woman, I might not have jumped into this muddy water in the first place.

And Albert.Quesetti and his unusual mother, and his even more unique girlfriend Caroline.Lori (if she counts as a girlfriend), they were the ones who discovered the mystery of Brace Brawl.They also deciphered Brace Godo's letters and cracked his code.Brace Godou is my nemesis if not for him I certainly haven't forgotten who the real bad guys are, but I don't want to blame them too much.There must be bad people in the world, just like iron must rust.The motives of the bad guys are so simple that they are almost stupid, just greed or arrogance, if they are boring enough, they can almost use chemical test paper to test the bad guy index.What is even more astonishing is how easy it is for humans to avoid these bad things, but how easy it is for them to commit them knowingly.When it comes to stupidity, Mary I of Scotland needless to say, although the role she played in this incident was nothing more than pure existence, this conspiracy should also be blamed on her.Of course, blame that old wretch on my dad, why not?I blame him for everything anyway.

I think my way seems wrong.Okay, back to the point, at least reorganize the facts, let's start with self-introduction.My name is Jack.Mishkin, I'm an intellectual property attorney, and I believe there are mobsters after me right now.While some lawyers are prepared to assume some level of personal risk is part of the job, I'm not that type of lawyer, I wasn't born into it.When I was young, I knew some lawyers. After getting to know them well, I believed that some people had really been beaten. So when I chose the field of practice, I chose a more ordinary one that didn’t need to carry a gun. kind of.There are some crazy violent people in the intellectual property law field, sometimes a lot, but even when these crazy people yell curse words and threaten to kill you and your client, they usually don't mean it.

Even so, people do take out their grudges on litigators, and I'm not a litigator.I don't have the personality to be a litigator, I'm a peace-loving person.I believe that almost all cases, especially those involving intellectual property rights, are often, by their very nature, so insanely stupid that just a twenty-minute sit-down of reasonable people can resolve disputes in almost all cases.But litigators think differently.Our senior partner Ed.Geller is a litigator, a belligerent, pompous, obnoxious villain who should be the model for all the nasty jokes about lawyers.Ed, by the way, is probably the person I respect most professionally.But as far as I know, Ed has never been shot or scuffled with robbers who rob, and now I have both experiences.

It should be said that intellectual property rights can be roughly divided into two categories: the first is business, such as trademarks and patents, software may also be included in this category; the other is copyright, including all human art music, written works, Movies, images of every genre, Mickey Mouse and more.Note that as soon as Mickey Mouse's name was mentioned, I subconsciously tapped a special key on my keyboard to put a sacred © symbol after the little rodent's name.But now I went back and deleted this symbol, because the person who is writing now is a new me.My firm is called Geller, Linz, Grossbart & Mishkin, and it is a law firm that specializes in copyright. Even though each partner can handle various types of copyright work, of course, we are all different. specialty projects.Martin.Linz is in charge of television and film; Xue Li.Grossbart in the field of music; and as I said, Ed.Geller is our main litigator; I myself deal with the literary field, which means I spend a lot of time with writers long enough for me to know that I'm not writer material and never will be .Some writers have often told me, in a self-righteous tone, that every lawyer has a strangled poet inside him.But the sources they cite vary.I don't really mind them talking to me like that, because these people are living in their own imaginary world, but in real life they are as helpless as cats.I could hit them back with sarcastic remarks if I wanted to, but usually I don't because honestly, I admire them as hell.I mean, they have a way of coming up with a story in their head and writing it so that some stranger can read it and not only understand it, but emotionally connect with these fictional characters!Don't know if you've ever had the experience of getting on a full plane or train and sitting in front of a few jerks chattering unluckily, and you're bored to death, or want to kill them.And while I've said it before, I'll repeat it here: I mean, it's damn hard to tell a coherent story.I have a writer client who said that to write a story, you must first write everything that happened to everyone, and then delete the things that don't fit.Actually this is a joke, but I seem to be doing something similar.

That being said, maybe I'm just too insecure.The work of lawyers is not without creativity. We often write things, but probably only other lawyers will read the things we write; we are also responsible for telling stories, designing scenes, and listing the facts and assumptions behind the case.Great writer Charles.When Dickens was young, his first job was as a court clerk. Scholars believe that this work experience influenced the elements of human drama in his works, and many of his works are related to crime, most of which are white-collar crimes.These things are Mickey.Haas told me that, as a professor of English literature at Columbia University, he naturally knew these things, and he was also the source of this story.

What do you need to know about Mickey?Well, his name can reveal a little mystery: few people continue to use their childhood nicknames after they grow up.Like me, my name Jack is not such a nickname at all.Mitch is definitely my longest friend, he's not a serious guy, if he was a little more serious, he probably wouldn't have called that professor to come to me, and then this whole thing wouldn't have happened.I'm staying at Mickey's cabin right next to Lake Henry deep in New York's Adirondack National Park.I'm here now Well, I guess I'm hiding, but I really don't want to say such dramatic words.Let's just say I'm living in seclusion, hiding with weapons.

I've known Mitch since I was young. His real name was Melville.Haas, whose name appears on the covers of his books.When I was a sophomore at Columbia, I saw an ad for roommates looking to share an apartment on the fourth floor at 113rd Street near Amsterdam Avenue, with no elevator.The ad was posted in the window of a Chinese-American laundry, not on a bulletin board for student associations or the university’s department that manages housing.That's Mickey's style.When I later asked him why he did this, he said he wanted to find a roommate with clothes that had been professionally washed and ironed.Oddly enough, I'm not that kind of person.I only had one white shirt for formal occasions, a Depina shirt that my dad didn't want, and I was going to interview for a job, so I took it to the store to have it ironed.

I used to live in a dirty one-room dormitory, I was eighteen years old, I had just escaped from my family, and I was poor as hell.A single room costs fifteen yuan a day, and the kitchen and bathroom are outside the corridor. Although the smells are different, they are all the same.The inside of the room was just as smelly, so I was in a bit of a hurry to move out.Besides, Mickey's apartment is very nice. It has two bedrooms and can see part of the Catholic Church. Although it is a bit dark, it is still clean. Mickey seems to be a gentleman.I've seen him on campus before, because he's quite noticeable: almost as tall as me, with red hair, drooping lips, slightly protruding blue eyes with slightly drooping upper eyelids, rare in Europe The aristocratic characteristics of the Boothsburg dynasty.He wears a duffel jacket and flannel trousers, and in colder weather a hooded coat made of camel hair in solid royal navy blue with horn buttons.His accent was pure, with charming pauses to imitate a British accent.There are many well-known English literature professors on the Columbia University campus who were unfortunate enough to be born in the United States, so they all speak in this way.

Despite these affectations, Mitch was different from me.Like most of New York's elite, he was actually an out-of-towner.I can never remember the name of his hometown, but it is a medium-sized industrial city in the Midwest anyway.When I first met him, he said he was the scion of some small business empire that made industrial fasteners; I remember asking him what fasteners were, and he laughed and said he didn't know, but he always imagined into a gigantic zip like a train.The family started from the great-grandfather's generation, and Mickey's father and uncle just needed to be directors, played golf often, and were important figures in the local community.Of course, there are thousands of such families across the country. The ancestors of these people have accumulated a large amount of wealth long before the emergence of the government's exorbitant taxes and globalization. property. After he finished speaking, it was my turn to speak.His candor irked me, and I got the feeling he wanted a metropolitan roommate.So I said I was Isaiah.Mishkin's son, my dad is called Accountant Isai or Digital Isai, is a licensed accountant but keeps accounts for mobs, organized criminals from Las Vegas to New York City here and the feds Everyone knows my father.Mitch's response sounded familiar: I didn't know there were gangsters among Jews!I told him about the murder group formed by the American Jewish Mafia and the famous Jewish criminals among them, one of whom was my father's mentor and predecessor of the gang.I think this is the first time I've used family history as a conversation piece, before I used to be ashamed to talk about my family in high school.Why am I telling Mitch these things?Because he doesn't know what these represent, he just thinks of it as a legend, like a circus or a gypsy.Of course, there's more to it than that. so you are jewishMitch asked me that naturally.I said I wasn't, and I could tell he was surprised. I heard the sound of the engine of the boat on the lake, and there was a rumble in the distance. It is the middle of the night, and it is impossible for anyone to come out to fish in the middle of the night.can you?I'm not a fisherman, maybe some fish will bite the bait in the dark, like a fly; maybe night fishing is like ice fishing, it's a weird sport, but there are a lot of crazy people who like to torture themselves like this.However, it is also possible that the voice was coming from them. here we go again.I grabbed my weapon and went to the deck to listen carefully. I heard nothing. The engines of the other lake cabins must have started.There are dozens of houses here, all of which are full, and this season is between summer and ski season, and it is obvious that no one lives nearby.I know sound travels a long way on water, and it was so quiet that night.I have a flashlight and I leave the lights on in the house like an idiot.If someone is lurking in the dark, I'm the perfect prey in their eyes. Of course they don't just want to kill me, no, it's not that simple.The sky was overcast and I saw the darkness over the lake completely eating up the little light, I was terrified, the atmosphere oppressed me, it was depressing, the little light was lost in the great darkness.Is this an omen of death?Or is it just a symbol of my current extreme isolation? Rereading what I have just written, I find that I am still circling in the distant past. If I am not careful, this record will become like the eighteenth century novel "Tristan.Sandy is as stinky and long, and never gets to the damn point. Back to the topic.That particular afternoon, I told Mitch something about my family, satisfying his exotic imagination of me.No, the reason I don't want to admit that I'm Jewish has to do with my maternal blood.My mom is catholic and in a previous era if catholics married non-believers they were excommunicated unless they got a pardon from the church.An important part of the so-called leniency is the vow to convert the next generation to Catholicism.Me, my brother Paul, and my sister Miriam all received a full religious education, baptism, Sunday school, Lord's Eucharist, and we boys had altars.Of course, we all went astray in the end, except Paul: although he fell for a while, he returned to the right way and obeyed the destiny. So what's the point of the story?Well, this goes back to saying, I should have time, because I suddenly found out that they are not stupid enough to paddle across Lake Henry in the dark, so I have all night to use.My dad was an eighteen-year-old bright kid in Brooklyn training for a job as head of the sportsbook group with a bright future ahead of him.Unfortunately in 1944 he was drafted into the army and my dad went to the top people in the gambling business for help and they said he had to be in the army unless he wanted to pierce his eardrum with an ice drill then they were happy help.Dad had no choice but to decline the help of high-level officials. About a year later, Dad was assigned to work as a codec at Third Army headquarters.It's a good job for a Jewish boy, you can stay clean indoors, you won't hear the sound of crazy bombing shells, and it was already March 1945, for the US troops stationed in Europe , the exciting part of World War II is just about to begin.Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht has ceased resistance on the Western Front and is meekly on its way to a POW camp; American soldiers discover that American cigarettes can be traded for anything: antiques, heirlooms, girls, unlimited drugs.Dad soon realized that this was his once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a fortune. Baba was stationed in Umm in southern Germany, where he was tasked with deciphering telegram messages, but his real job was black market trading, taking fuel and food stored by the army outside and selling them to the starving, and he built a business so easily.Germany at the time was full of idle thugs who took off the handsome swastikas they had worn for twelve years, embraced the opportunities of the free market, and forgot about the violent state-run gangsters.Dad was of course able to help them get de-Nazification certificates, and he also used his accounting genius to help them cover up some petty crimes like theft, and used these ex-Gestapo to run errands for him without any guilt.I guess Papa was satisfied that the Germans were willing to docilely obey orders from him, a Jew.From time to time he would denounce one of his subordinates to the authorities, or, more forcefully, inform the Jewish revenge underground organizations that were active at the time, which made his German subordinates obedient. He ostensibly lived in the group barracks at III Corps headquarters, but spent most of his time in a suite at the Kaiserhof Hotel in Umm.My dad also developed a weird habit because of this: when entering any hotel in the future, he never used the gate or the normal entrance, he always used the staff entrance.I think he was like the gangsters in the 1940s, the way they walked in and out of nightclubs.This is probably related to safety, or they just want to enjoy this kind of rights, so they do this. After all, who can stop them?One winter evening in 1946, my father came back from the ballroom and was about to enter the Kaiserhof Hotel through the kitchen passage when he saw my mother among a bunch of street children and old women picking up rubbish.At that time, as usual, he turned a blind eye to these poor people, and they ignored him.Except for one girl.She looked up from the trash and said: Private Joe, give me cigarettes. When he saw it, he was astonished, although part of that face was deliberately dirty, and it was covered with a rag that was stained with mud.I've also seen pictures of my mother at that time, and it's amazing, she looks like a young glamorous actress, with blonde hair and a very delicate face, who just had her seventeenth birthday a week ago.Of course he gave her cigarettes, and of course he invited her to his suite to take a bath and change her clothes and socks.Dad was very surprised. How could such a beautiful woman escape the clutches of Germany just after the war?The answer to that question came later: she was cleansed and refreshed, wrapped in a pink silk gown, and he wanted something in return from her.Unexpectedly, she drew a pistol and pointed it at him, and said firmly that whether there was a war or not, she was a good girl, an officer's daughter, she had killed three sex monsters before, and if he wanted to defile her, she would kill her too. he.Dad was dumbfounded, completely mesmerized, after all, in this day and age, even the countess would let you go for a pound of sugar.At that time, there were a lot of refugees and fugitives who were forced to leave their homes, as well as a lot of defeated soldiers and so many victorious regiments. Under such circumstances, she was able to defend her body, which was not just ordinary courage.This is one of my father's words, boldness.According to him, the spirit of our generation is all in my sister, and my brother and I have nothing at all. Even with a pistol pointed at him, Dad relaxed.The two of them had a drink and a cigarette, exchanging stories of their lives like teenagers.Her name is Urmchud.Steve's parents were dead, her father an officer died in the summer of 1944, and her mother was bombed at Fort Regins in the final weeks of the war.She wandered around in the last days of the empire with the little suitcase she had kept in the hospital locker before.In those days, people did plan ahead, and if something happened, she would at least not be left with nothing.She carries two things that help build friendship, and she decides which one to take out depending on the political attributes of the fleeing civilians around her at any time.One is the yellow Star of David that the Nazis asked the Jews to wear; the other is a narrow black cloth strip with the word Reich embroidered on it, which was worn by soldiers of the Second Armored Division of the Nazi Waffen-SS. On the sleeve on the lower left half of the uniform.Mom never told my dad where she got the yellow Star of David, but the armbands of the SS Armored Division got it from her dad Hamt.Steve, who had the rank of a captain in the Nazi army and died fighting for his country in Normandy. This story reveals the cleverness and cunning of my parents, and I think I have inherited this character, because I chose to tell Mitch in the apartment on 113th Street this afternoon.Haas the story, to please or to impress him.Usually, many people don't want to say anything about this kind of thing.On a side note, my mom denies the cute encounter, saying she met my dad at a dance and thought he was a gentleman; she never rummaged through the trash or killed anyone.She admitted that her father was indeed an SS officer, but she was careful to tell us children that the Waffen SS was very different from the ordinary SS that was responsible for the massacres in the concentration camps. The Waffen SS was against the terrible Russian Communists brave soldiers. Off topic again.Basically, who cares in this life-or-death situation?I think the only thing that is certain is that for my parents, there was never just one truth, a lot of room for interpretation; not just these distant pasts, they could argue about what happened last night.This also made me skeptical about the so-called historical facts since I was a child.As a result, it is too ironic that I might lose my life because of what happened four hundred years ago. Now fast forward the time twenty years.I became an intellectual property lawyer, and Mitch, who is now a professor of English literature at Columbia University, looks much the same as when we first met.Mitch is obviously making quite a splash in literary criticism circles, he was president of the Modern Language Association a few years ago, which I think is a very important position, and he seems to be well respected, the separate schools of literary criticism are kings, They all hated him to varying degrees.His field of study is Shakespeare's plays, which is why he knew Professor Boothrow.Professor Booth, from Oxford, is a visiting scholar at Columbia University and an expert on Shakespeare plays.It would seem that one day Bustrall went to Mickey: Hey, man, you just happen to know some intellectual property lawyer, don't you?Then Mickey responded: Yes.That's probably it. Let me think back to that day.It was Wednesday, October 11th, and the weather was a bit chilly, summer was over, and there was a feeling in the air that it was going to rain.My office is small for a partner, but comfortable.Our building is at the intersection of Madison Avenue and the second half of 50th Street. From the window, you can see the steeple of St. Patrick's Cathedral. This view is probably the only connection between me and the Catholic faith in my youth. up.My office is very modestly decorated with a touch of modernity.I hung my diploma, certificate of license, and three other yellow-framed photos on the wall: a formal bust of my two young children from a few years ago, and a photo of me and my son, Neil. But, in the picture he is learning to ride a bicycle and I am running beside him, it is a great picture, it was taken by his mother.The only thing that would seem unusual in my office is the third photo, a tall young man with straw-colored hair, wearing a red-white-blue weightlifting suit, lifting a bar so heavy that the sides of the bar are slightly down Bending, this athlete is in the eighty-kilogram class, the heaviest category.The weight lifted in the picture is more than two hundred and thirty kilograms, two hundred and forty-one kilograms to be precise.This is me, the photo was taken in Mexico in 1968, when I was a member of the US Olympic team, this weight is heavier than the clean and jerk I have ever lifted, and it will probably win me the bronze medal , but I screwed up.Since then, I have not stopped training. Although it is a relatively low poundage, I can still lift things over 230 kilograms above my head. Lifting weights is a completely useless skill, which is why I love it.I started training with a set of homemade dumbbells when I was ten and continued through high school and college.Now I am 187 centimeters tall, weigh about 69 kilograms, have a neck circumference of 45 centimeters, and a bust of 132 centimeters.Many people think I'm fat, but I'm definitely not fat.Ever since Arnold came along, people have never been able to figure out that building muscle and competitive weightlifting are two completely different fields.People who lift weights rarely have defined or beautiful bodies, not because of strength but because of a lack of subcutaneous fat.Any decent heavyweight lifter can bend a Universal Bodybuilder from his knees, of course that's just metaphorical.I've found that tall, strong people are actually usually mild-tempered, unless they're on steroids. Off topic again, I was just trying to think back to the day it happened.It was a very ordinary day. In the morning meeting, a Chinese-made T-shirt embezzled the image of a certain rock album. There are more and more cases of this kind in the field of intellectual property law.Quiet meetings, paid time slots, expert hand-to-hand combat.I euphemistically reminded them that it would be a waste of time to litigate this case, because in this depraved world of doing business, it is inevitable for Chinese products to steal the cover of rock albums.After the meeting, when passing the secretary's office, my secretary Olivia.Miss Macdonald stopped me.She is beautiful and capable, and many people in the office are interested in her, but the iron law in the company is absolutely not to mess with colleagues.I support this provision very much.It's probably the only virtue I've displayed in this department, and it's silly, but I'm proud of it. I remember one of her outfits that I particularly liked: a slightly tight gray dress, a dusty pink cardigan with two of the pearl buttons open.Her shiny dark hair, pulled back and held in place by an amber comb, revealed a small coffee-colored birthmark at the base of her neck; she smelled faintly of irises. She told me someone was waiting for me and he didn't have an appointment, can I get a slot?A Mr. Boothrow.Temporary counseling is rare here. After all, we are not engaged in bail, so I am a little curious. I went back to the office, and Miss Macdonald came in with Buscher.He was carrying a suitcase, and was tall and well-built, wearing a brown three-piece suit with some frayed fabrics; he wore tortoiseshell glasses on his short nose, an old Burberry check trench coat on his arm, and he wore High-end Oxford shoes, a paisley leaf handkerchief in the breast pocket, and thin gray hair of about medium length, combed down the scalp, looking very boring.His face was red from neck to cheek.He winked at me with his dull eyelashes as we shook hands (limp and wet).I guessed in my heart: Professor.I got it right, and he introduced himself as Andrew.Buszrow, indeed a professor, is from Oxford, England, recently visited Columbia University, Mitch.professor haas kindly tell me your name I sat him down and after some pleasantries I asked him what I could do for him, he said he needed some intellectual property law advice and I said he was in the right place.He was going to ask me a hypothetical question.I don't like hypotheticals, because whenever a person talks about a hypothetical situation, it usually means that he is hiding the truth, but I say yes.So he said: Suppose I found a lost manuscript of a literary work, who has legal title to it?I say it depends.Is the author dead?died.Did he die before 1933 or after?Before.Is there an heir or is it assigned to?No.I told him that according to the 1978 Amendment to the Copyright Act of the United States, for manuscripts that were not published before January 1, 1978, as long as the author died before 1933, the copyright would be in 20 〇 After January 1, three years, it will be owned by the public.Upon hearing this, Buszjoo's face collapsed a bit, I guess the answer I gave him should be different from his expectation.He might want to own the copyright to what he finds.He then asked me if I knew the relevant laws in the UK, and I happily said I certainly did, as our company does a lot of business on the other side of the gray Atlantic.I told him that from the standpoint of creators, the UK is friendlier to the issue of intellectual property rights than the US. Authors have perpetual rights to unpublished works. Fifty years from the performance.I went on to say that in our case, the author is dead, so the copyright will be valid for fifty years from the day when the amendment to the Copyright Law in 1988 came into effect, that is, January 1, 1990. . He nodded and went on to ask me about property rights.If the author of the unpublished work is deceased, who owns the copyright?I explained that under English law, unless the title is notarized, in cases like this, the copyright belongs to the Crown under the English National Property Act. Bustrow didn't like the rule either.Of course he doesn’t like it. He said that in the past, whoever found it would count as it?Why does the law say that it belongs to whomever it belongs to? I replied that his point of view is also very reasonable, but as long as he publishes or performs this work, he will be prepared to face the royal family's prosecution against him.If it were in the United States, he might have to face rampant piracy and work hard to defend his copyright.Now can he put aside the assumptions and tell me the truth? My tone was telling him: If you don't confess a little bit, then we can say goodbye, and I wish you good luck today.He thought for a while without saying a word.Even though my office was cool, there were beads of sweat on his forehead and upper lip. I thought the man was sick, but he was frightened. I've been a lawyer long enough to tell when a client is telling the truth and when they're lying.Professor Buschrow is clearly lying.He said he had taken ownership of a document (that word always gives me chills), a seventeenth-century manuscript, by a man named Richard.A letter from the man of Bracegle to his wife.He believes that this manuscript is very important, revealing the whereabouts of a certain literary work will bring great shock to the academic world, because no one has ever discovered or even suspected the existence of this literary work.This manuscript could be a new field of study in itself, but if only the original manuscript of that literary work could be obtained When he talked about his work, I heard his tone was emphatic, so I will emphasize it again here. I asked him, which work? At this point, he was reluctant, and instead began to ask me about the principle of confidentiality between the lawyer and the client.I explained that normally our charge was twenty-five hundred dollars, and as soon as I got the check, no one on earth could learn about the conversation between the two of us unless he admitted that he was about to commit a federal felony.Hearing me say that, he took out his leather-bound checkbook, wrote a check and handed it over, and he asked me if the company had any security measures in place.Of course we do, we have strong, fireproof lockable filing cabinets.But that wasn't enough for him.I had to say that the Citibank downstairs had signed a contract with us and had a big safe, so he opened his handbag, handed me a leather envelope that was taped tightly, and asked if I could keep it for him temporarily. The engine noise came again. Brace Godou's First Letter Bambury town.October 25th, 1642 A.D. My dear and good wife, may God Almighty bless you and our son.Beloved wife Xiaonan, as you predicted, my life is coming to an end.I want you to hide your precognition, or they'll take you for a witch.According to the local doctor, I was shot in the stomach and the bullet was lodged in the spine.The doctor's name was Tolson, and he was a true Christian.My assistant Tom.Chromar was a good and faithful boy, and though he slipped away during the battle, he came back and found me among the dead, and got a horse to take me to Pambbury.Dr. Tolson let me stay at two points a day, which is a rare good price at this time, but he said that my situation is not optimistic, and the final settlement of the housing fee may not cost a shilling. , in other words I will die within six days.所以，在我上天堂之前（我希望能上天堂，但更有可能會進入燃燒的地獄，因為我很確定我並非上帝的選民），寫下這最後一封信。一切都是上帝的旨意，我在祂的恩典前垂首。 Here's the thing.暮夏時候，國王否決了議會的權利，決定要用他自己的力量對抗人民，摧毀他們的自由，於是我們就從倫敦埃薩克大人的砲兵營地出發。到北漢普敦時，我們聽說國王的人馬正在渥塞斯特郡往南走，所以我們急忙繞了一下路，想在國王和倫敦之間佈下軍力。我們因為速度太慢而失敗了，軍力分散，又聽說國王要攻打班博理，我們就在班博理鎮以北靠近基頓鎮的地方重新集合，在那裡跟國王的軍隊交鋒。 現在妳知道，戰爭就像小孩玩的剪刀石頭布，布包住石頭，石頭砸碎剪刀。我想比喻的是，騎兵能夠勝過持槍步兵。我們雖能夠同時開火，但再次裝填並射擊之前，敵人的馬蹄已經在我們頭頂上了；持矛步兵能夠勝過騎兵，因為騎兵不敢闖過如牆的長矛陣，所以持矛步兵一定要好好護衛著砲台火力；然後持槍步兵可以粉碎敵人的長矛陣線使他們潰散，接著騎兵就可以踐踏他們。戰爭的原則就是讓所有事物互相配合運作。我們設好砲台，那天早晨好好演練了一番，我們的槍砲比皇家軍隊多，也瞄準了國王的部隊，但是很可惜射程不夠遠，不過我們可以看見在皇家旗幟下的國王，指揮官是德國的魯博特王子，旁邊還有其他部屬。至於我們這邊，前鋒是尼可拉斯．拜倫爵士的部隊，我們是左翼的最後一批，在樹林裡休息。 國王人馬攻擊我們的右側，可以看到戰場上煙塵滾滾，旗幟飄揚，我軍右翼被壓制，左翼轉移陣地，這在戰場上很常見，聰明的士兵會提防這種情形，但是我身邊這些同袍沒有什麼戰鬥技巧，所以他們就全都開溜了，暴露出樹林內左翼的位置，害我們四面受敵。愛妻小南，我們追擊魯博特王子的部隊是不智之舉。雖然我說過那些服事國王的人是笨蛋，但是他們畢竟還是戰士，唯一會做的事就是用劍和槍，所以他們大吼著發動攻擊，像塊亞麻布一樣包圍我們的步兵，然後他們就開槍了，打得我們潰不成軍。我搶了一枝戟護著自己的槍，雖然這把槍也沒什麼特別的，人家也說用槍的人沒有榮譽可言，但要是輕易就被拿走的話就太可恥了。有個騎兵衝過來朝我開火，我就倒下了，整天一直躺在那兒，沒有任何感覺也沒辦法移動雙腿，直到晚上年輕的湯姆才找到我，把我送到現在這個等死的地方，我甚至不知道這場仗誰贏了。 所以現在我要寫信給妳，這是我的絕筆了。我想雖然上帝沒有把我列在偉人的行列裡，我也還是個人，不是一塊爛泥。希望我的故事能陪伴著兒子長大，他一定要長成一個堂堂男子漢，千萬別像他爸爸這樣。