But, mingled with those thoughts, there came plenty of memories of the past; as my eyes lit on the woods and fields, with a glint of one of the General’s ponds where we boys had fished.
Oh, how lovely it all looked that sunny morning, with the rays flashing from the dewy grass and leaves, and how impossible it seemed that I could be so unhappy, shut up there like a prisoner, and looked upon by every one as a thief!
What should I do? Wait for the truth to come out, or behave like any high-spirited boy would,—high-spirited and gallant from my point of view,—set them all at defiance, wait for my opportunity, and escape—go right away and seek my fortune?
No, I did not want any fortune. My uncle wished me to be a soldier, as my father had been, and that meant study for years, then training perhaps at Woolwich, and at last a commission.
“I will not wait for that,” I said to myself; “I’ll be a soldier at once. I’ll go and enlist, and rise from the ranks, and in years to come, when I am a captain or a major, I will go back home, and tell them that I was perfectly innocent, and they’ll be sorry they believed that I was a thief.”
These romantic thoughts put me in better spirits, and I began to plan what I would do, and how I could get away, for I could not see in my excitement what a young donkey I was to fill my head with such nonsense, and what a mean, cowardly thing it would be to go off, and make my supposed guilt a certainty with my uncle, break my mother’s heart, and generally throw all my future to the winds—always supposing it possible that I could have found any recruiting sergeant who would have taken such a slip of a boy, as, of course, I could not; for to a certainty I should have been laughed at, and come away like a frightened cur, with my tail between my legs.
I was mentally blind then, puffed up with vanity, and as bitter and angry as it is possible for a boy to be, and all I can say in extenuation is that I had had good cause to be upset by the trouble I had gone through.
“I’ll go,” I said excitedly. “To-night as soon as it is dark, and—”
I stopped short, for I saw a familiar figure going along the road in front of the great house. It was Lomax, having his morning pipe and walk before going back to his garden, and the sight of the old sergeant made me feel sorry for my determination. He had been so friendly, and under his stiff military ways there had been so much kindliness. He had been so proud of the way in which I had acquired the things he taught; and as he went on, tall, upright, and manly-looking, I began to wonder what he would say, and I exclaimed eagerly,—
“He’ll know that I have gone off to join the army, and say I have done well.”