led that he should leave in a few
weeks. Dick was rather triumphant, Elsie rather jealous, the Corporal
in secret rather sad, and Lady Eleanor very melancholy.

So one day early in September Lady Eleanor promised the children that
for an unusual treat they should have a ride with the Corporal rather
further than usual on to the moor. She would not ride herself, for her
favourite horse was lame, but settled that she would drive them some
way up the valley in the afternoon, and there meet the Corporal, who
would go on before them leading the ponies, and ride with them on to
the moor. Accordingly on the appointed day the Corporal rode through
the village on old Billy, leading a pony on each side. Not a soul
wished him good-day, and the Corporal felt that all were making
unpleasant remarks--indeed he caught the words, "Dear! to think that
they sweet children should be trusted to such as he."

But he trotted on without taking any notice, up the valley to the
appointed meeting-place.

Lady Eleanor drove up rather late, for the horse-flies had been very
troublesome; and the children seeing the grey pony which drew them
covered all over with little flecks of blood, had constantly entreated
her to stop while they jumped down and knocked the flies off him. At
last, however, she came. The children mounted their ponies, Dick very
proud of a new saddle and stirrups to which he had been promoted after
leaping the bar bare-backed, and they rode away up a grass path to the
covert, kissing their hands as they went.

And then Lady Eleanor turned round and drove down the valley, feeling
very lonely and unhappy over the prospect of losing Dick. Her thoughts
wandered back to her first meeting with Richard Bracefort, the handsome
captain of Light Dragoons, her engagement, her wedding in a London
drawing-room, and her first visit to Bracefort Hall. Then had come
some two years of happy life in country-quarters. Those were pleasant
days to look back on, when her husband would come in from parade and
say that he believed he had in his troop as good officers and men as
were to be found in the service; while George Fitzdenys, the
lieutenant, would tell her that there were few such officers as her
husband to be found in the Army, and the little cornet, who was little
more than a boy, would be lavish in praise of both. Her maid again was
always repeating to her what Brimacott, then her husband's
soldier-servant, said of the devotion o