“Let you!  Heaven knows I am more than delighted to be so.  We are no longer silly schoolboys to fight for the merest trifle.”

The reconciliation between the old rivals was complete, and the two boys chatted long together.

“But you are in a cavalry regiment, I see,” remarked George presently, “and a lieutenant.  I understood from my father’s letter that you had joined a line regiment with an ensign’s commission.”

“So I did, my boy; but there are queer turns of fortune in war, and one of them came to me—­only a week or two since, it was.”  And the lieutenant laughed pleasantly.

“Tell me how it was,” said George, eagerly.

“It is like singing my own praises, Fairburn,” the young officer went on, “but here goes.  I’ll put it in a score of words.  All last year I went as Ensign Blackett, seeing bits of service here, there, and everywhere—­at Bonn, on the Rhine, then at Huy, and again at Guelders—­but there was no chance for me.  But this summer, as we were marching here, not a man of us except the Duke himself, with a notion why we were coming this way at all, we stopped to storm the Schellenberg, a hill overlooking the Danube near Donauwoerth.  We were all dog tired—­dead beat, in fact, for we had marched till we were almost blind.  However, as it was the Duke’s, day, he set us at it.”

“Duke’s day?” interrupted George, in surprise; “isn’t every day the Duke’s day?”

“It’s a funny thing,” went on Blackett, laughing, “but as a matter of fact at that time the Duke was taking alternate days of command with the Prince of Baden.”

“A queer go!” the listener interjected.

“Well, to cut my tale short, we made two attacks on that hill, and both times were driven back.  Things began to look like a drawn game, when up comes Louis, the Prince, you know, with a lot of his Germans, and at it we went again.  In the thick of it, my colonel suddenly called out, ‘Can you ride, Blackett?’ ‘Try me, sir,’ I says.  And he gave me a note for the Duke, telling me that he had not another officer left who could ride, all our fellows had been laid low or dispersed.  I galloped off like the wind, on a big hard-mouthed brute.  Just as I was nearing the spot where the Duke stood, a dozen Bavarians suddenly blocked my path and levelled their muskets.  I was on a bit of a slope and above their heads, in a manner, so I kicked up my nag and in an instant I flew over them, guns and all.  It was a clean jump, and not a shot hit me, by good luck.  My horse managed to carry me on to the Duke, and then fell dead.  The poor beggar had caught what had been intended for me.  Well, now I’ve done.  The Duke, who had seen it all, had me transferred to a cavalry regiment, with the rank of lieutenant, and here I am.”

“Yes, and here am I, a private, talking in this off-hand sort of way to a commissioned officer.”

“That’s all right, Fairburn,” laughed Blackett, “we haven’t entered you yet.  It’ll be quite time enough to bother about that sort of thing then.  Officially we shall have to be master and man; actually we shall be brothers.”