t in words but in a smile now and then and a general
air when safe from his sister's eyes, of being passably amused by her
high-fangled nonsense. His business of beating up recruits took him
away from us for days together; and we missed him on Christmas Eve
when we christened the apple-trees as usual. It was I who discovered
and kept it from Margery--who supposed him as far away as St. Austell,
and tried to find that distance a sufficient excuse--that he had spent
the night a bare mile away, hobnobbing with the owner of Lantine, a
rich man who had used to look down on our family but thought it worth
while to make friends with this promising young soldier.

"And I mean to be equal with him and his likes," said Mark to me
afterwards by way of excuse. "A man may rise by soldiering as by any
other calling--and quicker too, perhaps, in these days."

The same thought clearly was running in his head a week later, when he
took leave of us once more by the ford.

"Come back to us, Mark!" Margery wept this time, with her arms about
his neck.

"Ay, sweetheart, and with an estate in my pocket."

"Ah, forget that old folly! Come back with body safe and honour
bright, and God may take the rest."

He slapped his pocket with a laugh as he shook up the reins.

Then followed five quiet anxious months. 'Twas not until early in
June that, by an express from Ashburton in Devon, we heard that our
brother's fortune was still rising, he having succeeded to the command
of his company made vacant by the wounding of Captain Sir Harry
Welcome. "And this is no mean achievement for a poor yeoman's son," he
wrote, "in an army where promotion goes as a rule to them that have
estates to pawn. But I hope in these days some few may serve his
Majesty and yet prosper, and that my dear Margery may yet have her
wish and be mistress in Lantine." Margery read this letter and knit
her brow thoughtfully. "It was like Mark to think of writing so," said
she; "but I have not thought of Lantine for this many a day."

"And he might have left thinking of it," said I, "until these troubles
are over and the King's peace established."

"Tut," she answered smiling, "he does not think of it but only to
please me. 'Tis his way to speak what comes to his tongue to give us
pleasure."

"For all that, he need not have misjudged us," I grumbled; and then
was sorry for the pain with which she looked at me.

"It is you, Jack, who misjudged!" She spoke it sharply. We s