"You!"
"I."
"You, little Oliver, whom I carried on my back on the march to Skenesborough, when the baggage-waggons broke down and were lost in the woods!" exclaimed the sergeant, grasping both my hands with friendly warmth; "well, well, what queer things do come about in this world! You have grown so much, I could never have known you; and ten years in America and Jamaica have made some change in me. I have no need for hair powder now, Master Oliver; time is powdering me fast enough. You must tell me how this came to pass; and the good lady your mother——"
"I have been most ungrateful in leaving her; though the act was somewhat involuntary."
"Too late to think of that now. Your health again, Master Oliver. I hope to see you a captain yet, like your father (as to me, I've got to the top of my profession). You will find your name a password to every heart in the Fusileers."
The sergeant took a long draught from his canteen and resumed,—
"In the hard winter of '75, when Quebec was besieged by the Yankees, we suffered horribly, though I told the general how it would be. It made one melancholy to see the poor, pale, wasted soldiers full of spirit, though their canteens and haversacks were empty, patient though suffering, sick at heart in soul and body, wolf-eyed by famine, toil, and battle, standing on their dreary posts, at Quebec, among the frozen snow, through which the bare skeletons of men and horses were everywhere visible. One night I must have died of cold (for my watchcoat was frozen like a deal board, and the flesh of my fingers stuck to the barrel of my firelock), but for your father, Master Oliver. He gave me his blanket to wrap round me, and shared with me the contents of a canteen, as I to-day am proud to do with you. God bless him, he had the heart to feel for a poor comrade. I remember the storming of Skenesborough, when he got that ugly knock on the head. We were in brigade with the old '9th and 20th.' I volunteered for the forlorn hope; for being a bit of a devil, I always went for anything desperate; and I remember, as if 'twere yesterday, the night of the 5th of July and the preparations, we stormers made for the event of the next day."
"Preparations—you would be reading your Bibles, I suppose?" said I simply.
"Bibles!" reiterated the sergeant, bursting into a loud fit of laughter.
"How, then, did you prepare?"