"Indeed I am, Major Warrington!" I answered joyfully. "Thank you most heartily for the offer; you are truly 'a friend in need'!"
"And the lad Symes—will he care to go on active service?"
"Yes, sir. I can answer for that."
"Then that point is settled," said the major. "Symes will enlist in the 14th, and you shall join us as a gentleman volunteer; the colonel will, I am sure, accept you on my recommendation. Before we embark," he continued, "I will write to your father, explaining how I chanced to fall in with you, and my reasons for advising you to take this step. You, too, must send him a dutiful letter, giving full particulars of the fracas at Charfield, and stating your reasons for supposing that your tutor and the constable laid a trap for you."
"William Herd promised to tell my father everything, sir," I interposed; "but, of course, I will write as you suggest."
"I shall also send a full account of the case to Lord Buckland, and beg him to use all his influence to get the affair hushed up," the major went on. "No doubt his friendship with Mr. Wilmot will induce him to do all he can; but the fact of your having rendered me so great a service, at the risk of your life, will make him doubly anxious to help you. I feel pretty confident that the matter will be satisfactorily settled, and in a few months you will be able to return home without fear."
"I think, sir, that once in the army I should like to stick to it," I remarked. "My father would not object, as after this scrape I couldn't very well enter the Church, and if all goes well I shall beg him to get me a commission. We're at the bottom of the hill now; I will jump out and take off the shoe."
CHAPTER V
"Rock of Lisbon's just sighted, gentlemen," the steward informed us as we sat at breakfast in the cuddy of the Morning Star, a wall-sided old brig which the transport authorities considered quite good enough to convey his Majesty's troops from the Thames to the Tagus.
Three weeks and five days had elapsed since we embarked at Northfleet, and we were all heartily sick of being cooped up in our dirty "floating home." The voyage had been unusually tedious, owing to bad weather, head winds, and the wretched sailing of the brig, so the prospect of once more stretching our legs on terra firma was very welcome.