"Then you should do as I do."
"How is that?"
"Make it a friend. Here, boy, the smallest drop in life won't do you the least harm; a hair of the dog—you know the rest."
Thus urged, I took a draught of brandy-and-water from the sergeant's canteen, and thereafter became considerably invigorated and more communicative.
"Did you know Captain Ellis, of the Fusiliers," I asked.
"Ellis—Ellis, who served with Burgoyne, and was killed on the banks of the Hudson?"
"Yes."
"Know him—odd's life, lad, and that I did! A kind good friend he was to me, and saved me once from the halberts, when found asleep on my post on a cold and wintry American night. A better officer or a braver one never wore a red coat! I was by his side when the death-shot struck him, and I was one of those who buried him at the foot of a tree before we retired, and just as night was coming on, for we all loved the captain too well to leave him without a soldier's grave. Was he a relation of yours, my lad?"
Touched by what the sergeant said in his blunt honest way, my eyes filled with tears, and I replied,—
"I am his only son."