r brute though you called him just now, has this advantage in
the stormy times we live in, that he always does his duty before a host
of sympathising witnesses. Do you doubt that he may so do it as to be
extolled through a whole regiment, through a whole army, through a whole
country? Turn while you may yet retrieve the past, and try."

"I will! I ask for only one witness, sir," cried Richard, with a
bursting heart.

"I understand you. I will be a watchful and a faithful one."

I have heard from Private Richard Doubledick's own lips, that he dropped
down upon his knee, kissed that officer's hand, arose, and went out of
the light of the dark, bright eyes, an altered man.

In that year, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine, the French were
in Egypt, in Italy, in Germany, where not? Napoleon Bonaparte had
likewise begun to stir against us in India, and most men could read the
signs of the great troubles that were coming on. In the very next year,
when we formed an alliance with Austria against him, Captain Taunton's
regiment was on service in India. And there was not a finer
non-commissioned officer in it,--no, nor in the whole line--than Corporal
Richard Doubledick.

In eighteen hundred and one, the Indian army were on the coast of Egypt.
Next year was the year of the proclamation of the short peace, and they
were recalled. It had then become well known to thousands of men, that
wherever Captain Taunton, with the dark, bright eyes, led, there, close
to him, ever at his side, firm as a rock, true as the sun, and brave as
Mars, would be certain to be found, while life beat in their hearts, that
famous soldier, Sergeant Richard Doubledick.

Eighteen hundred and five, besides being the great year of Trafalgar, was
a year of hard fighting in India. That year saw such wonders done by a
Sergeant-Major, who cut his way single-handed through a solid mass of
men, recovered the colours of his regiment, which had been seized from
the hand of a poor boy shot through the heart, and rescued his wounded
Captain, who was down, and in a very jungle of horses' hoofs and
sabres,--saw such wonders done, I say, by this brave Sergeant-Major, that
he was specially made the bearer of the colours he had won; and Ensign
Richard Doubledick had risen from the ranks.

Sorely cut up in every battle, but always reinforced by the bravest of
men,--for the fame of following the old colours, shot through and
through, which Ensign Richa