fore they
went downstairs, and gazed up at the bold, frank bearing, and the
laughing mouth of the soldier, with wistful pity in his brown eyes.

"You served your Queen and country, but I expect you left out God," he
said, in a whisper; then he ran on to overtake the others.

After an early tea the boys were packed up in the trap to come home.

"Drive home as quickly as you can," said the general to the groom, "for
rain is not far off, and it will not do to let Master Fitz Roy get a
soaking; he looks as if a breath of wind will blow him away."

"I do hate people talking about me like that," Roy confided to Dudley as
they set off at a brisk rate; "I might just as well be a girl. I often
wonder I wasn't born one for all the good that I shall do in the world."

"That's all stuff," said Dudley, indignantly; "you'll be an awfully
strong man I expect when you grow up, you see if you aren't!"

Roy shook his head, and was unusually silent for some time. They were
driving through the outskirts of a village when down came the rain. The
groom wrapped the boys up as well as he could, and was urging the horse
on, when it suddenly shied and came to a standstill. Looking down, the
groom saw a small child seated in the middle of the road, almost
miraculously preserved from the horse's hoofs.

"Well, here's a go," he muttered; "where on earth does it come from, we
don't want no delay in such a storm as this!"

The boys had sprung down at once from the trap, and were endeavoring to
drag the child away when it burst into roars of fright and anger.

"I want mummy--oh, mummy!"

It was a little girl between three and four. She had been placidly
nursing a doll in the middle of the road, and seemed perfectly oblivious
of wind and rain.

"Where do you live?" asked Roy, but the child only continued to wail for
its mother.

"Here, Master Roy, you'll be wet through. Come back, and let Master
Dudley hoist her up to me. We can't stop all day trying to find out
where she lives. We'll take her back with us for the time."

But this did not please Roy.

"No, we must find her mother; she must come from the village we have
passed. You wait there with the horse, Sanders, and we'll take her
back."

"Let Master Dudley do it, then," said Sanders, crossly, "and you get
into the trap again."

This also Roy refused to do.

"It's an opportunity, isn't it, Dudley? And look she has taken hold of
my hand; you run on in front and ask about her at