"Not a doubt of that. As I have just said, and repeat, we can never forget it. From that day you became the dearest friend of our family, if you will let us call you so."
"Let you! Heaven knows I am more than delighted to be so. We are no longer silly schoolboys to fight for the merest trifle."
The reconciliation between the old rivals was complete, and the two boys chatted long together.
"But you are in a cavalry regiment, I see," remarked George presently, "and a lieutenant. I understood from my father's letter that you had joined a line regiment with an ensign's commission."
"So I did, my boy; but there are queer turns of fortune in war, and one of them came to me—only a week or two since, it was." And the lieutenant laughed pleasantly.
"Tell me how it was," said George, eagerly.
"It is like singing my own praises, Fairburn," the young officer went on, "but here goes. I'll put it in a score of words. All last year I went as Ensign Blackett, seeing bits of service here, there, and everywhere—at Bonn, on the Rhine, then at Huy, and again at Guelders—but there was no chance for me. But this summer, as we were marching here, not a man of us except the Duke himself, with a notion why we were coming this way at all, we stopped to storm the Schellenberg, a hill overlooking the Danube near Donauwörth. We were all dog tired—dead beat, in fact, for we had marched till we were almost blind. However, as it was the Duke's, day, he set us at it."
"Duke's day?" interrupted George, in surprise; "isn't every day the Duke's day?"
"It's a funny thing," went on Blackett, laughing, "but as a matter of fact at that time the Duke was taking alternate days of command with the Prince of Baden."
"A queer go!" the listener interjected.