His lordship stared, laughed a short, hoarse bellow and, becoming immediately solemn, nodded:
"That's Jack to a hair, simple, quiet and dev'lish deadly! 'Twas so he looked, I mind, when he killed the greatest rogue and duellist in the three armies. Simple and quiet! Aye, 'twas so he seemed when he led us to the storming of the counterscarp at Namur in '95, as he was when he rallied our broken ranks at Blenheim and, after, when we turned the French right at Oudenarde. He was my senior in those days and where he went I followed and they called him 'Fighting d'Arcy' though a simple soul, sir, as ya' say. I was behind him when he led us against the French left at Ramillies and broke it too. I saw him dragged, all blood and dust, out o' the press at Malplaquet. 'Done for at last,' thought I—but Gad, sirs, they couldn't kill Fighting d'Arcy for all his quiet looks and simple ways! Aye, I know Jack, we were brothers, and like brothers we drank together, slept, quarrelled, and fought together—he seconded me in my first affair of honour!"
"Od's my life!" ejaculated Sir Benjamin. "Our rustic philosopher turns out a very Mars, a thundering Jove, a paladin——"
"True blue, damme!" added the Marquis.
"And yonder he comes," said Mr. Marchdale at the window, "and Merivale with him."
"Nunky," said the Viscount as they entered the hospitable portal of the "George and Dragon," "Ben and Alvaston are set on seeing you comfortably faxed to-night."
"Foxed? Ah, you mean drunk, Tom?"
"Perfectly sir, all in the way of friendship and good-fellowship of course, still I thought I'd let you know."
"For the which I am duly and humbly grateful, Tom," answered the Major as, opening the door, the Viscount bowed and stood aside to give him precedence.
The Major's appearance was hailed with loud cheers and cries of "Fighting d'Arcy," drowned all at once in a hoarse roar as, with a tramp and jingle of heavy, spurred boots, Colonel Lord George Cleeve ran at him, thumped him and clasped him in a bear's hug: