“That is true enough, Charlie,” Harry said, becoming serious.  “Well, I have no doubt you will do it just as well as another, and after all, there will be some fun in it, and you will be in a big city, and likely to have a deal more excitement than will fall to our lot here.”

“I don’t think it will be at all the sort of excitement I should care for, Harry.  However, my hope is, that the colonel will be able to dissuade him from the idea.”

“Well, I don’t know that I should wish that if I were in your place, Charlie.  Undoubtedly, it is an honour being chosen for such a mission, and it is possible you may get a great deal of credit for it, as the king is always ready to push forward those who do good service.  Look how much he thinks of you, because you made that suggestion about getting up a smoke to cover our passage.”

“I wish I had never made it,” Charlie said heartily.

“Well, in that case, Charlie, it is likely enough we should not be talking together here, for our loss in crossing the river under fire would have been terrible.”

“Well, perhaps it is as well as it is,” Charlie agreed.  “But I did not want to attract his attention.  I was very happy as I was, with you all.  As for my suggestion about the straw, anyone might have thought of it.  I should never have given the matter another moment’s consideration, and I should be much better pleased if the king had not done so, either, instead of telling the colonel about it, and the colonel speaking to the officers, and such a ridiculous fuss being made about nothing.”

“My dear Charlie,” Harry said seriously, “you seem to be forgetting that we all came out here, together, to make our fortune, or at any rate to do as well as we could till the Stuarts come to the throne again, and our fathers regain their estates, a matter concerning which, let me tell you, I do not feel by any means so certain as I did in the old days.  Then, you know, all our friends were of our way of thinking, and the faith that the Stuarts would return was like a matter of religion, which it was heresy to doubt for an instant.  Well, you see, in the year that we have been out here one’s eyes have got opened a bit, and I don’t feel by any means sanguine that the Stuarts will ever come to the throne of England again, or that our fathers will recover their estates.

“You have seen here what good soldiers can do, and how powerless men possessing but little discipline, though perhaps as brave as themselves, are against them.  William of Orange has got good soldiers.  His Dutch troops are probably quite as good as our best Swedish regiments.  They have had plenty of fighting in Ireland and elsewhere, and I doubt whether the Jacobite gentlemen, however numerous, but without training or discipline, could any more make head against them than the masses of Muscovites could against the Swedish battalions at Narva.  All this means that it is necessary that we should, if possible, carve out a fortune here.  So far, I certainly have no reason to grumble.  On the contrary, I have had great luck.  I am a lieutenant at seventeen, and, if I am not shot or carried off by fever, I may, suppose the war goes on and the army is not reduced, be a colonel at the age of forty.