n Cavalry, knew that, by every law of birthright,
he was now a Peer of England.

His first thought was for the dead man. True, there had been little
amity, little intimacy, between them; a negligent friendliness, whenever
they had met, had been all that they had ever reached. But in their
childhood they had been carelessly kind to one another, and the memory
of the boy who had once played beside him down the old galleries and
under the old forests, of the man who had now died yonder where the
southern sea-board lay across the warm, blue Mediterranean, was alone on
him for the moment. His thoughts had gone back, with a pang, almost ere
he had read the opening lines, to autumn mornings in his youngest years
when the leaves had been flushed with their earliest red, and the brown,
still pools had been alive with water-birds, and the dogs had dropped
down charging among the flags and rushes, and his brother's boyish face
had laughed on him from the wilderness of willows, and his brother's
boyish hands had taught him to handle his first cartridge and to fire
his first shot. The many years of indifference and estrangement were
forgotten, the few years of childhood's confidence and comradeship alone
remembered, as he saw the words that brought him in his exile the story
of his brethren's fate and of his race's fortunes. His head sank, his
face was still colorless, he sat motionless with the printed sheet in
his hand. Once his eyes flashed, his breath came fast and uneven; he
rose with a sudden impulse, with a proud, bold instinct of birth and
freedom. Let him stand here in what grade he would, with the badge of
a Corporal of the Army of Africa on his arm, this inheritance that had
come to him was his; he bore the name and the title of his house as
surely as any had ever borne it since the first of the Norman owners of
Royallieu had followed the Bastard's banner.

The vagabond throngs--Moorish, Frank, Negro, Colon--paused as they
pushed their way over the uneven road, and stared at him vacantly where
he stood. There was something in his attitude, in his look, which swept
over them, seeing none of them, in the eager lifting of his head, in the
excited fire in his eyes, that arrested all--from the dullest muleteer,
plodding on with his string of patient beasts, to the most volatile
French girl laughing on her way with a group of fantassins. He did not
note them, hear them, think of them; the whole of the Algerine scene had
faded