Hiring a chaise, they drove to Windthorpe Chace, where the delight both of Mistress Holliday and of the colonel was unbounded.  Hugh, too, was greeted very warmly by both, for Rupert had done full justice to the services he had rendered him.  It was difficult to recognize in the dashing looking young officer and the stalwart trooper the lads who but two years and a half before had ridden away posthaste from the Chace.  Hugh was driven off to the farm; and Rupert remained alone with his mother and the colonel, who overwhelmed him with questions.

The colonel had changed but little, and bid fair to live to a great age.  His eye was bright, and his bearing still erect.  He scarcely looked sixty-five, although he was more than ten years older.

Mistress Dorothy was, Rupert thought, softer and kinder than of old.  Her pride, and to some extent her heart, had met with a rude shock, but her eyes were now fully open to the worthlessness of her former suitor, who had lately been obliged to fly the country, having been detected at cheating at cards.

Colonel Holliday rejoiced when he heard of the pipe of prime Burgundy, which started from London on the day Rupert left; while Mistress Dorothy was enchanted with the stomacher, which her son produced from his trunk.

“Have you ever heard from Monsieur Dessin, grandfather?  You told me that he said he would write and tell you his real name.”

“I doubt not that he did so, Rupert; but the carriage of letters between this and France is precarious.  Only smugglers or such like bring them over, and these, except when specially paid, care but little for the trouble.  That he wrote I am certain, but his letter has not reached me, which I regret much.”

The six months at home passed rapidly.  Rupert fell into his old ways; rode and hawked, and occasionally paid state visits to the gentry of the neighbourhood, by whom, as one of Marlborough’s soldiers, he was made much of.

“I think this soldiering life makes one restless, Master Rupert,” Hugh said one day when the time was approaching for their start.  “I feel a longing to be with the troop again, to be at work and doing.”

“I feel the same, Hugh; but you would not find it so, I think, if you had come home for good.  Then you would have your regular pursuits on the farm, while now you have simply got tired of having no work to do.  When the war is over, and we have done soldiering, you will settle down on one of the farms of the Chace.  Madame says you shall have the first that falls vacant when you come home.  Then you will take a wife, and be well content that you have seen the world, and have something to look back upon beyond a six miles circuit of Derby.”

The next campaign may be passed over briefly.  The parsimony of England and Holland, and the indifference of Germany, spoiled all the plans of Marlborough, and lost the allies all the benefits of the victory of Blenheim.  The French, in spite of their heavy losses, took the field in far greater force than the allies; and instead of the brilliant offensive campaign he had planned, Marlborough had to stand on the defensive.