“It is ludicrous, perfectly ludicrous!” he said, that being the strongest adjective he knew to express pure impossibility. “A gallant young fellow to be cashiered without even a court-martial! How dare you tell me such a thing, sir? I am not a man to be rough-ridden. Nobody ever has imposed on me. And the boy is almost a sort of cousin of my own. The first family in the kingdom, sir.” The colonel flew into so great a rage, twisting his white hair, and stamping his lame heel, that the officer who had brought the news, being one of his own subalterns, wisely retired into doubts about it, and hinted that nobody knew the reason, and therefore that it could not be true. “If I mention that absurd report about young Lorraine,” thought Colonel Clumps, when writing to Lady de Lampnor, “I may do harm, and I can do no good, but only get myself laughed at as the victim of a stupid hoax. So I will say no more about him, except that I have not seen him lately, being so far from head-quarters, and knowing how Old Beaky is driving the staff about.” And before the brave Colonel found opportunity of taking the pen in hand again, he was heavily wounded in a skirmish with the French rear-guard, and ordered home, as hereafter will appear. It also happened that Mr. Capper’s friends, those two officers who had earned so little of Mabel’s gratitude by news of Hilary, were harassed and knocked about too much to find any time for writing letters. And as the _Gazette_ in those days neglected the smaller concerns of the army, and became so hurried by the march of events, and the rapid sequence of battles, that the doings of junior officers slipped through its fingers until long afterwards, the result was that neither Coombe Lorraine nor Old Applewood farm received for months any news of the young staff officer. Neither did he yet present himself at either of those homesteads. For, as the ancient saying runs, misfortunes never come alone. The ship in which Hilary sailed for England from the port of Cadiz--for he found no transport at Malaga--_The Flower of Kent_, as she was called, which appeared to him an excellent omen, was nipped in the bud of her homeward voyage. She met with a nasty French privateer to the southward of Cape Finisterre. In vain she crowded sail, and tried every known resource of seamanship; the Frenchman had the heels of her, and laid her on board at sundown. Lorraine, and two or three old soldiers, battered and going to hospital, had no idea of striking, except in the British way of doing it. But the master and mate knew better, and stopped the hopeless conflict. So the Frenchman sacked and scuttled the ship in the most scientific manner, and, wanting no prisoners, landed the crew on a desolate strand of Gallicia, without any money to save them.