little stiffly. His call had lasted its allotted time;
nevertheless, under other conditions, it might have lasted even
longer. He liked Ethel Dent absolutely; yet now and then she had a
curious fashion of antagonizing him. The alternations of her cordial
moments with her formal ones were no more marked than were the
alternations of her viewpoint. As a rule, she looked on life with
the impartial eyes of a healthy-minded boy; occasionally, however,
she showed herself hidebound by the fetters of tradition, and, worst
of all, she wore the fetters as if they lay loosely upon her. At
such moments, he longed acutely to impress her with his own point of
view, as the only just one possible.

"I think perhaps you don't fully understand Carew, Miss Dent," he
said courteously, yet with a slight accent of finality. "He laughs
at life like a child; but he lives it like a man. I have known him
since we were boys together; I have never known him to shirk or to
funk a difficult point. If the Scottish Horse ever sees the firing
line, it will hold no better trooper than Harry Carew."

He bowed in farewell and turned away. Looking after him, Ethel Dent
told herself that Weldon's simple words had been descriptive, not
only of his friend, but of his loyal, honest self.

Half-way across the heart-shaped bit of lawn enclosed within the
curve of the drive, Weldon met another guest going towards the
steps. There was no need of the trim uniform of khaki serge to
assure him that the man was also a soldier. The starred shoulder
straps were needless to show him that here was one born to command.
Glancing up, Weldon looked into a pair of keen blue eyes exactly on
a level with his own, took swift note of the full, broad forehead,
of the black lashes contrasting with the yellow hair and of the
resolute lines of the shaven chin. Then, mindful of his frock-coat
and shining silk hat, he repressed his inclination to salute, and
walked steadily on, quite unconscious of the part in his life which
the stranger was destined to play, during the coming months.

CHAPTER FOUR

Sitting in the lee of the picket fence which bounded Maitland Camp
on the west, Paddy the cook communed with himself, and Weldon and
Carew communed with him.

"Oh, it's long and long yet before a good many of these ones will be
soldiers," he, observed, with a disrespectful wave of his thumb
towards the awkward squad still manoeuvering its way about over the
barren stretch of