st something a thousand times sharper and
colder was going on in his breast.

"A thief!" he was saying over and over to himself, "me, who fought close
to the side of the 'Iron Duke'! And yet, can I look one of them in the
face and tell him he lies?"

The walk that had been gone over so merrily was a terrible one to
retrace, and when the cottage was reached, instead of the pride and good
luck the poor invalids had been watching for, a gloom deadlier than the
fever followed him in. He sat in the doorway as he used, but sometimes
he hung his head on his breast, and sometimes started up and walked
proudly about, crying--

"Peggy! I say no one shall call me a thief! I am a soldier of the Iron
Duke!"

But they did call him a thief, though, for a very strange thing, after
his lordship had sorrowfully ordered the cottage and little garden spot
to be searched no box was found, and the gloom and the mystery grew
deeper together.

Good nursing could not balance against trouble like this; the beautiful
daughters faded and died, the house was too gloomy to stay inside, and
if he escaped to the door, he had to hear the passers say--

"There sits the soldier who stole the Blucher diamonds from his host!"

And as if this was not enough, one day the sound of hoofs was heard
again, and a rider in uniform clattered up to the door saying:

"Comrade, I am sent to tell you that your pension is stopped! His
Majesty cannot count a thief any longer a soldier of his!"

After this the old soldier hardly held up his head at all, and his hair,
that had kept black as a coal all these years, turned white as the moors
when the winter snows lay on them.

"Though that is all the same, Peggy," he used to say, "for it is winter
all the year round with me! If I could only die as the old year does!
That would be the thing!"

But long and merciless as the winter is, spring does come at last, if we
can but live and fight our way through the storms and cold.

One night a cry of fire roused all the country-side. All but the old
soldier. He heard them say the castle was burning, but what was that
to him? Nothing could burn away the remembrance that he had once
been called a thief within its walls! But the next morning he heard a
step--not a horse's hoof this time, but a strong man walking hastily
towards him.

"Where is the veteran of Waterloo?" asked his lordship's voice, and when
the old soldier stepped forward, he threw his arms about his neck