“Yes, sir,” cried Cyril, “I was very much down a while ago; but I’ve had something to eat now, and a sleep and—What! give up to a pack of savages, and let them rob you of all we have worked so hard to get? That I wouldn’t while there was a charge of powder left.”
“Humph!” ejaculated the colonel, looking at the boy searchingly.
“That’s what my father would say if he were here. I wish he were.”
“To thrash you for leaving home in that cowardly way?”
“No, sir,” said Cyril quietly. “My father never thrashed me, and he never would. He always said it was degrading a boy to beat him, and that he was a poor parent who could not rule his children without blows. He told me he thought he could hurt me a good deal more by his words, and so he always could.”
“Perhaps so, sir,” said the colonel sternly; “but see what a mistake he has made, and what a miserable young dog you have turned out.”
Cyril was silent for a few moments.
“I hope I’m not all bad, sir,” he said. “I’m sure I’ve bitterly repented what I have done.”
“And been severely punished, too, my lad,” said the colonel kindly. “Your father is quite right, and when I tell him how you have behaved—as, please God, I hope I shall—if he is the man I believe him to be, he will shake hands with you as I do now, and say, ‘Let’s forget the past!’”
“Colonel Campion!” cried Cyril, snatching at the hand extended to him.