At this moment the gig came alongside the schooner, the lieutenant offered his hand to Miss Lydia, and then helped the colonel to swing himself up on deck.  Once there, Sir Thomas, who was still very much ashamed of his blunder, and at a loss to know what he had better do to make the man whose ancestry dated from the year 1100 forget it, invited him to supper, without waiting for his daughter’s consent, and with many fresh apologies and handshakes.  Miss Lydia frowned a little, but, after all, she was not sorry to know what a corporal really was.  She rather liked there guest, and was even beginning to fancy there was something aristocratic about him—­only she thought him too frank and merry for a hero of romance.

“Lieutenant della Rebbia,” said the colonel, bowing to him, English fashion, over a glass of Madeira, “I met a great many of your countrymen in Spain—­they were splendid sharp-shooters.”

“Yes, and a great many of them have stayed in Spain,” replied the young lieutenant gravely.

“I shall never forget the behaviour of a Corsican battalion at the Battle of Vittoria,” said the colonel; “I have good reason to remember it, indeed,” he added, rubbing his chest.  “All day long they had been skirmishing in the gardens, behind the hedges, and had killed I don’t know how many of our horses and men.  When the retreat was sounded, they rallied and made off at a great pace.  We had hoped to take our revenge on them in the open plain, but the scoundrels—­I beg your pardon, lieutenant; the brave fellows, I should have said—­had formed a square, and there was no breaking it.  In the middle of the square—­I fancy I can see him still—­rode an officer on a little black horse.  He kept close beside the standard, smoking his cigar as coolly as if he had been in a cafe.  Every now and then their bugles played a flourish, as if to defy us.  I sent my two leading squadrons at them.  Whew!  Instead of breaking the front of the square, my dragoons passed along the sides, wheeled, and came back in great disorder, and with several riderless horses—­and all the time those cursed bugles went on playing.  When the smoke which had hung over the battalion cleared away, I saw the officer still puffing at his cigar beside his eagle.  I was furious, and led a final charge myself.  Their muskets, foul with continual firing, would not go off, but the men had drawn up, six deep, with their bayonets pointed at the noses of our horses; you might have taken them for a wall.  I was shouting, urging on my dragoons, and spurring my horse forward, when the officer I have mentioned, at length throwing away his cigar, pointed me out to one of his men, and I heard him say something like ’Al capello bianco!’—­I wore a white plume.  Then I did not hear any more, for a bullet passed through my chest.  That was a splendid battalion, M. della Rebbia, that first battalion of the Eighteenth—­all of them Corsicans, as I was afterward told!”