. Well,
Heaven's will be done! My duty is to my king."

Meanwhile, the two boys were laughingly making a few cuts and guards
with the clumsy old weapons; but directly after they started apart in
confusion, as Sir Godfrey said aloud--

"Boys, do you remember the words of Scripture!"

Neither answered; but, with the points of the swords resting on the old
oak floor, they stared at him abashed.

"`They that take the sword shall perish with the sword.'"

There was silence in the grand old hall for a brief space, as the two
boys stood there in the centre, with the bright lights from the
stained-glass windows showering down upon them, and the portraits of
Scarlett's warlike ancestors seeming to be watching intently all that
was taking place.

Then Sir Godfrey moved slowly across the hall, paused and looked back,
and then said gently--

"Put the weapons away, my lads. Warfare is too terrible to be even
mimicked in sport."

He sighed and passed through the farther door, leaving the boys gazing
at each other in silence.

"How serious he is!" said Scarlett, at last. "Let's put them away. I
thought he was going to scold us for taking them down."

"Yes, I thought that," said Fred. "But I should like to be a soldier,
all the same, only without any war. Ugh! only fancy giving a man a chop
with a thing like that," he added, as he replaced the weapon. "Here,
I'm off home," he cried, as he ran to the door.

"Good-bye, old soldier without any war. I say, Fred."

"Well?"

"That will be a capital place for you to hide in when you are a soldier,
and the war comes."

"That's right," said Fred, good-humouredly; "laugh away. I dare say I
am a coward, but I don't believe everybody is brave. Coming over
to-night?"

"Perhaps," was the reply; and Fred went off homeward at a trot, thinking
of how delightful it would be to grow into a man, and carry a sword and
ride about on a horse like Captain Miles.

He thought a good deal about Captain Miles as he went home, and wondered
whether he had gone to Plymouth.

"Because he might have been going to Tavistock or Barnstaple."

The recollection of the sturdy, keen-eyed soldier seemed to oust every
other thought from the boy's brain, and he saw in imagination the
distant figure as it mounted the rising ground, and, passing over,
disappeared.

"I wonder what he came for?" thought Fred. "It didn't seem like the
visit of a friend, and it could not be about business, becaus