"Not two per cent, sir. Some of them are pretty wild, and they make a bolt at times, but it adds to the fun, and we nearly always get them back. Did you see Nolan's Arabs?"
"I saw them--beauties. The Prince wanted to buy two or three, but I dissuaded him. They're too delicate for a winter campaign. That big brown of yours, that Deseret gave you, is worth four of them--as far as work is concerned."
"You think we're in for a winter campaign, sir?" asked Jack eagerly.
"No doubt about it, I think. We've got to do something before we go home--some of us. Our coming up here has cleared the Russians off the Danube, but our dawdling here has given them every chance of strengthening themselves in the Crimea. The biggest thing they have there is Sebastopol, on which they have squandered money. Therefore I think it will be Sebastopol, and anything but an easy job."
"We shall get our chance, then," sparkled Jack. "We did a bit at Gallipoli, but a real big siege would be grand."
"I hope your commissariat will play up better then, or we shall have to feed you," said the Colonel, with a smile.
He liked to draw them out and get their views on men and things, and watched them keenly the while, but all his watching brought him not one whit nearer a solution of the problem of Carne than had Charles Eager's and Sir Denzil's.
In the course of one such talk, however, they made a discovery and received a shock which knocked the wind out of them.
Their father was delightfully open and frank with them as regards the past, and it drew their liking.
"I have behaved shamefully to you both," he said one time, "and still worse to one of you. And I have nothing to plead in extenuation except that I did as my fellows in those days did--which is a very poor excuse, I confess. I must make such compensation as I can. One of you will have to become Carron of Carrie, and the other M. le Compte de Carne--maybe M. le Duc by that time. There's no knowing."