This was what the soldier shouted after Bertie. One or two of the troopers who were engaged in various ways, and who were all more or less undressed, looking very different from the dashing pictures of military splendour which they would shortly present upon parade, stared at the boy as he went by, but no one spoke to him. Once on the towing-path, he turned his face Kingston-wards and hastened on. These five sovereigns burnt a hole in his pocket. When his capital had been represented by the sum of one and fivepence he had been dimly conscious that it would be necessary to be careful in his outlay. He had even outlined a system of expenditure. But five pounds! They represented boundless wealth. He had been once presented by a grateful patient of his father's with a tip of half a sovereign. That was the largest sum of which he had ever been in possession at one and the same time, and no sooner had the donor's back been turned than his mother had confiscated five shillings of that. She declared that it was intended the half-sovereign should be divided among his brothers and sisters, and the five shillings went in the division. But five pounds! What were five shillings, or even half a sovereign, to five pounds. If Mr. George Washington Bankes had desired to dissipate whatever effect his words of warning might have had he could not have chosen a surer method. As the possessor of five pounds, Bertie's belief in the land of golden dreams was stronger than ever. The pieces of golden money had as good as transported him thither upon the spot. His spirits rose to boiling-pitch as he walked beside the river. The sunshine flooded all the world, and danced upon the glancing waters, and filled his heart with joy. As he looked up, the words, "five pounds," seemed streaming in radiant golden letters across the sunlit sky. Nearly opposite Ditton church he sat down on the grass to revel in his fancies. The castles which he built, the schemes he schemed, the future he foretold! No one passing by, and seeing a boy with an apparently sullen face, sprawling on the grass, would have had the least conception of the world of imagination in which, at that moment, he lived and moved, and had his being. He lay there perhaps more than an hour. He might have lain there even longer had not two things recalled him to the world of fact. The first was a growing consciousness that he was hungry; and the other, the crossing of the ferry. The Ditton ferry-boat made its first appearance, with two or three young fellows who had seemingly made the passage with a view of enjoying an early morning bathe on the more secluded Middlesex side. When they got out, Bertie got in. Not that he wanted to go to Ditton, nor that he even knew the name of the place which he saw upon the other side of the water, but that he fancied the row across the stream. When he was in the boat a thought struck him. "How much will you row me to Kingston for?"