-a man barely thirty-two--and the ball but just set
rolling! Wherefore I too am resolved to enter Quebec a
Brigadier-General, who now go carrying the colours of the 17th
to Louisbourg. We but wait Genl. Amherst, who is expected
daily, and then yeo-heave-ho for the nor'ard! Farewell, dearest
Jack! Given in this our camp at Halifax, the twelfth of May,
1758, in the middle of a plaguy fog, by your affect. cousin--
R. Montgomery."

John smiled as he folded up the letter, so characteristic of Dick.
Dick was always in perfect spirits, always confident in himself.
It was characteristic of Dick, too, to call himself Romulus and his
friend Remus, meaning no slight, simply because he always took
himself for granted as the leading spirit. It had always been so
even in the days when they had gone birds'-nesting or rook-shooting
together in the woods around John's Devonshire home. Always John had
yielded the lead to this freckled Irish cousin (the kinship was, in
fact, a remote one and lay on their mother's side through the
Ranelagh family); and years had but seemed to widen the three months'
gap in their ages.

Dick's parents were Protestant; and Dick had gone to Trinity College,
Dublin, passing thence to an ensigncy in the 17th (Forbes') Regiment.
The a Cleeves, on the other hand, had always been Roman Catholics,
and by consequence had lived for generations somewhat isolated among
the Devon gentry, their neighbours. When John looked back on his
boyhood, his prevailing impressions were of a large house set low in
a valley, belted with sombre dripping elms and haunted by Roman
Catholic priests--some fat and rosy--some lean and cadaverous--but
all soft-footed; of an insufficiency of light in the rooms; and of a
sad lack of fellow-creatures willing to play with him. His parents
were old, and he had been born late to them--twelve years after
Philip, his only brother and the heir. From the first his mother had
destined him for the priesthood, and a succession of priests had been
his tutors: but--What instinct is there in the sacerdotal mind which
warns it off some cases as hopeless from the first? Here was a
child, docile, affectionate, moody at times, but eager to please and
glad to be rewarded by a smile; bred among priests and designed to be
a priest; yet amid a thousand admonishments, chastisements,
encouragements, blandishments, the child--with a child's s