"I went out with Tom Sparks and the Roman-nosed bay horse; and we ran a thousand miles in sixty-three hours. And at Devna we got wood-pigeons; and the cornet went down and dined with the 42nd at Varna; and I rode the Roman-nosed bay, and he carried me through it capitally, I ask your pardon, sir, but I am only a poor discharged trooper. I would not beg, sir, if I could help it; but pain and hunger are hard things to bear, sir."
"Charles, Charles, don't you know me?"
"That is my name, sir. That is what they used to call me. I am no common beggar, sir. I was a gentleman once, sir, and rode a-horseback after a blue greyhound, and we went near to kill a black hare. I have a character from Lord Ascot, sir. I was in the light cavalry charge at Balaclava. An angry business. They shouldn't get good fellows to fight together like that. I killed one of them, sir. Hornby killed many, and he is a man who wouldn't hurt a fly. A sad business!"
"Charles, old boy, be quiet."
"When you speak to me, sir, of the distinction between the upper and lower classes, I answer you, that I have had some experience in that way of late, and have come to the conclusion that, after all, the gentleman and the cad are one and the same animal. Now that I am a ruined man, begging my bread about the streets, I make bold to say to you, sir, hoping that your alms may be none the less for it, that I am not sure that I do not like your cad as well as your gentleman, in his way. If I play on the one side such cards as my foster-brother William and Tom Sparks, you, of course, trump me with John Marston and the cornet. You are right; but they are all four good fellows. I have been to death's gate to learn it. I will resume my narrative. At Devna the cornet, besides wood-pigeons, shot a francolin——"
It is just as well that this sort of thing did not come on when Charles was going home alone across the bridge; that is all I wished to call your attention to. The next morning, Lord and Lady Hainault, old Lady Ascot, William, Mary, and Father Tiernay, were round his bed, watching the hot head rolling from side to side upon the pillow, and listening to his half-uttered delirious babble, gazing with a feeling almost of curiosity at the well-loved face which had eluded them so long.
"Oh, Hainault! Hainault!" said Lady Ascot, "to find him like this after all! And Saltire dead without seeing him! and all my fault, my fault. I am a wicked old woman; God forgive me!"
Lord Hainault got the greatest of the doctors into a corner, and said:—
"My dear Dr. B——, will he die?"
"Well, yes," said the doctor; "to you I would sooner say yes than no, the chances are so heavy against him. The surgeons like the look of things still less than the physicians. You must really prepare for the worst."