“Luck favoured you somewhat, Charlie, in throwing that vagabond in your way, but for all else we have to thank you both, for the manner in which you have carried the affair out, and captured your fox.  As for John Dormay, ’tis the best thing that could have happened.  I have often thought it over, while you have been away, and have said to myself that the best settlement of the business would be that you, Harry, when you obtained proofs, should go down, confront him publicly, and charge him with his treachery, force him to draw, and then run him through the body.  Charlie would, of course, have been the proper person, in my absence, so to settle the matter, but he could not well have killed my cousin’s husband, and it would have added to the scandal.

“However, the way it has turned out is better altogether.  It will be only a nine days’ wonder.  The man has been cut by all the gentry, and when it is known that he shot himself to escape arrest, many will say that it was a fit ending, and will trouble themselves no more concerning him.

“You are coming back with me, I hope, Charlie.  I have seen but little of you for the last four years, and if you are, as you say, going with the Duke of Marlborough to the war in the spring, I don’t want to lose sight of you again till then.  You can surely resign your commission here without going back to the army, especially as you have leave of absence until the end of March.”

Charlie hesitated.

“I think so, too,” Harry said.  “I know that the colonel told the king the whole story, when he asked for leave for me and obtained that paper.  He told my father that the king was greatly interested, and said:  ’I hope the young fellows will succeed, though I suppose, if they do, I shall lose two promising young officers.’  So he will not be surprised when he hears that we have resigned.

“As for me, I shall, of course, go on at once.  My father will, I am sure, be delighted to return home.  The hardships have told upon him a good deal, and he has said several times, of late, how much he wished he could see his way to retiring.  I think, too, he will gladly consent to my entering our own service, instead of that of Sweden.  He would not have done so, I am sure, had William been still on the throne.  Now it is altogether different.”

“Well, Harry, if you do see the king, as it is possible you may do, or if you do not, you might speak to the colonel, and ask him, in my name, to express to Charles my regret at leaving his service, in which I have been so well treated, and say how much I feel the kindly interest that his majesty has been pleased to take in me.  If there had been any chance of the war coming to an end shortly, I should have remained to see it out; but, now that the Polish business may be considered finished, it will be continued with Russia, and may go on for years, for the czar is just as obstinate and determined as Charles himself.”