o
his sovereign's ally that he prayed that the sequestration of your
father's estates should be annulled. I myself added a memorandum
saying that, as you had saved my life at Zorndorf, and rendered me
other valuable services, I should view it as a personal favour if
his request was granted. The thing would have been managed in a
couple of days, in this country; but in England it seems that
matters move more slowly, and his excellency has only today
received an official intimation that the affair has been completed,
and that your father's estates have been restored to you."

Fergus was, for the moment, completely overwhelmed. He had never
thought for a moment that the estate would ever be restored, and
the sudden news, following that of his promotion, completely
overwhelmed him.

It was of his mother rather than of himself that he thought. He
himself had been too young to feel keenly the change in their life
that followed Culloden; but although his mother had borne her
reverses bravely, and he had never heard a complaint or even a
regret cross her lips, he knew that the thought that he would never
be chief of their brave clansmen, and that these had no longer a
natural leader and protector, was very bitter to her.

"Your majesty is too good.

"Your excellency--" and he stopped.

"I know what you would say," the king said kindly, "and there is no
occasion to say it. I have only paid some of the debt I owe you,
and his excellency's thought gave me well-nigh as much pleasure as
it does you. Now, be off to your camp.

"You see, Sir John, between us we have done what the Austrians and
Russians have never managed between them--I mean, we have shaken
Colonel Drummond's presence of mind.

"There, go along with you, we have matters to talk over together."

Fergus saluted almost mechanically, bowed gratefully to Mitchell,
and then left the room in a whirl of emotion. To be the head of his
clan again was, to him, a vastly greater matter than to be a
colonel in even the most renowned and valiant army in Europe. Of
the estates he thought for the moment but little, except that his
mother would now be able to give up her petty economies and her
straitened life, and to take up the station that had been hers
until his father's death.

There was another thought, too--that of Countess Thirza Eulenfurst.
Hitherto he had resolutely put that from him. It was not for him, a
soldier of fortune, without a penny beyond his pay, to as