My father smiled, and stood by my side watching them make their way down the coombe.
"I shall have to consult your mother about it," he said. "I almost think that I may venture it," he added, in a lower tone and thoughtfully, as though to himself.
"Venture it! What could there be adventurous in it," I wondered, "to a well-read, scholarly man such as I knew him to be!" But I did not dare to ask.
Presently he turned to me with a much graver look in his face.
"Hugh!" he said, "these people interrupted our conversation. There is something which I must say to you at once. I do not wish you to become a soldier. When you feel that you can stay here no longer, and that this country life is too quiet for you, you must choose some other profession. But a soldier you can never be."
I was bitterly disappointed, and not a little curious, and an idea which had often occurred to me swept suddenly into my mind with renewed strength.
"Father, may I ask you a question?"
He hesitated, but did not forbid me.
"I have heard it said down in the village—every one says that you must once have been a soldier. You walk and hold your head like one, and—father, what is the matter?" I broke off all at once, for his face had become like a dead man's, and he had sunk heavily on to the seat.
I would have sprung to his side, but my mother was there before him. She had passed one arm around his neck, and with the other she motioned me to go into the house.