was a younger hero who might fill his place.  At the news of each battle, whether it ended in victory or not, old Rowe rang the bells at Camylott, rejoicing that even if the enemy was not routed with great slaughter, my lord Marquess was still alive to fight another day.  At Blenheim he so bore himself that the Duke talked long and gravely with him in private, laying before him all the triumphs a career of arms would bring to him.

“Twenty years hence, Roxholm,” he said, watching him with his keen glance as he ever did, “you might take my place, had England such questions to settle as she has to-day.  In twenty years I shall be seventy-four.  You were hammered from the metal nature cast me in, and you could take any man’s place if ’twas your will.  I could have taken any man’s place I had chosen to take, by God, and so can you.  If a man’s brain and body are built in a certain way he can be soldier, bishop, physician, financier, statesman, King; and he will have like power in whatsoever he chooses to be, or Fate chooses that he shall be.  As statesman, King, or soldier, the world will think him greatest because such things glitter in the eye and make more sound; but the strong man will be strong if Fortune makes him a huckster, and none can hide him.  If Louis XV is as great a schemer as the fourteenth Louis has been, you may lead armies if you choose; but you will not choose, I think.  You do not love it, Roxholm—­you do not love it.”

“No,” answered Roxholm; “I do not love it.  I can fight—­any man can fight who has not white blood—­and ours has been a fighting house; but mowing men down by thousands, cutting their throats, burning towns, and desolating villages filled with maddened men and shrieking women and children, does not set my blood in a flame as it does the blood of a man who is born for victorious slaughter.  I loathe so the slaughter that I hate the victory.  No; there are other things I can do better for England, and be happier in doing them.”

“I have known that,” said the Captain-General, “even when I have seen you sweep by, followed by your men, at your most splendid moment.  I have known it most when we have sate together and talked—­as ’tis not my way to talk to much older men.”

They had so talked together, and upon matters much more important than the world knew.  His Grace of Marlborough’s years had been given to other things than letters.  He could win a great victory with far greater ease than he could pen the dispatch announcing it when ’twas gained.  “Of all things,” he once said to his Duchess, “I do not love writing.”  He possessed the faculty of using all men and things that came into his way, and there were times when he found of value the services of a young nobleman whose education and abilities were of the highest, and who felt deeply honoured by his unusual confidence, and was also silent and discreet both through taste and by nature.  Older men were oftenest privately envious and ambitious;