yness and pride the boy held out his
hand, which the soldier shook cordially, saying,--

"To-morrow, then, Charley, I count upon you for my day, and so that it
be not to be passed in the library I 'll acquit myself creditably."

"I like your boy, Glencore," said he, as soon as they were alone. "Of
course I have seen very little of him; and if I had seen more I should
be but a sorry judge of what people would call his abilities. But he is
a good stamp: 'Gentleman' is written on him in a hand that any can read;
and, by Jove! let them talk as they will, but that's half the battle of
life!"

"He is a strange fellow; you'll not understand him in a moment," said
Glencore, smiling half sadly to himself.

"Not understand him, Glencore? I read him like print, man. You think
that his shy, bashful manner imposes upon me; not a bit of it; I see the
fellow is as proud as Lucifer. All your solitude and estrangement from
the world have n't driven out of his head that he's to be a Viscount one
of these days; and somehow, wherever he has picked it up, he has got a
very pretty notion of the importance and rank that same title confers."

"Let us not speak of this now, Harcourt; I'm far too weak to enter upon
what it would lead to. It is, however, the great reason for which I
entreated you to come here. And to-morrow--at all events in a day or
two--we can speak of it fully. And now I must leave you. You 'll have
to rough it here, George; but as there is no man can do so with a better
grace, I can spare my apologies; only, I beg, don't let the place be
worse than it need be. Give your orders; get what you can; and see if
your tact and knowledge of life cannot remedy many a difficulty which
our ignorance or apathy have served to perpetuate."

"I 'll take the command of the garrison with pleasure," said Harcourt,
filling up his glass, and replenishing the fire. "And now a good night's
rest to you, for I half suspect I have already jeopardied some of it."

The old campaigner sat till long past midnight. The generous wine, his
pipe, the cheerful wood-fire, were all companionable enough, and well
suited thoughts which took no high or heroic range, but were chiefly
reveries of the past,--some sad, some pleasant, but all tinged with the
one philosophy, which made him regard the world as a campaign, wherein
he who grumbles or repines is but a sorry soldier, and unworthy of his
cloth.

It was not till the last glass was drained that he arose