d the
great man smiled.

He rapped smartly on the table and an aide-de-camp entered the tent,
saluting.

"Here, Mr. Blackett," Marlborough gave the order, "take this lad to
your captain, who will see that he is enrolled in your company."

The next moment George Fairburn was shaking the other hard by the
hand, the astonishment on both sides too great to admit of a word
between them.

CHAPTER VII

BLENHEIM

"Now I can thank you, my dear Fairburn! We shall never forget it!"
were the first words Blackett uttered, and he pressed George's hand
once more in his warm grip.

"Forget what, Blackett?" the other asked in surprise, "and for what do
you thank me?"

"Surely you have not forgotten it all, my dear fellow--Mary--the
fire--your splendid rescue!"

"Ah!" cried George, "and you have been keeping that in mind all this
time?"

"Not a doubt of that. As I have just said, and repeat, we can never
forget it. From that day you became the dearest friend of our family,
if you will let us call you so."

"Let you! Heaven knows I am more than delighted to be so. We are no
longer silly schoolboys to fight for the merest trifle."

The reconciliation between the old rivals was complete, and the two
boys chatted long together.

"But you are in a cavalry regiment, I see," remarked George presently,
"and a lieutenant. I understood from my father's letter that you had
joined a line regiment with an ensign's commission."

"So I did, my boy; but there are queer turns of fortune in war, and
one of them came to me--only a week or two since, it was." And the
lieutenant laughed pleasantly.

"Tell me how it was," said George, eagerly.

"It is like singing my own praises, Fairburn," the young officer went
on, "but here goes. I'll put it in a score of words. All last year I
went as Ensign Blackett, seeing bits of service here, there, and
everywhere--at Bonn, on the Rhine, then at Huy, and again at
Guelders--but there was no chance for me. But this summer, as we were
marching here, not a man of us except the Duke himself, with a notion
why we were coming this way at all, we stopped to storm the
Schellenberg, a hill overlooking the Danube near Donauwoerth. We were
all dog tired--dead beat, in fact, for we had marched till we were
almost blind. However, as it was the Duke's, day, he set us at it."

"Duke's day?" interrupted George, in surprise; "isn't every day the
Duke's day?"

"It's a funny thing," went on Blackett, la