‘It is so, and since you’re here amongst us in the flesh I’ll make you a present of it. Put it with your bugle. When you’re a colonel you’ll show them with pride to your friends.’ ‘I don’t suppose that day will ever come,’ laughed Jack; ‘but anyway I’ll accept it, and will give it to my mother as a relic of the Balaclava charge.’ So far as the cavalry was concerned the war was over. The troops would have to be kept in the Crimea till peace was finally declared, but there seemed to be no further use for cavalry; and in November the ‘Death or Glory Boys’ embarked for Ismail, where they went into comfortable quarters. For several months they had a very easy time. The anniversaries of the three big battles were kept up in the army with great celebrations, and at Christmas they had a gay time. Jack had many letters from his friends, and amused himself by writing an account of all that had happened to him since he had come out. One other honour came to him. The men of the different regiments had to choose so many of their comrades who were to be given the French war medal, and Jack was one of those chosen by his comrades. With the cavalry, the great battle had been Balaclava, and for Jack’s unique experience in having ridden in both charges, and for having, as all the survivors of the 17th asserted, ‘brought the regiment out of action,’ to say nothing of him and Barrymore having rescued Captain Norreys, he had won the name of ‘Blair of Balaclava,’ which had ever since stuck to him. So he was one of those selected for the French war medal, which was presented to him at the same time as the Sardinian one. ‘I shall be decorated all over soon,’ he laughed to Will as he surveyed the three glittering medals on his breast. ‘I’m carrying quite a weight of metal.’ ‘And I only wish that every man who carried metal,’ said Will with a laugh, ‘deserved it half as much as you do.’ One day, when Jack was reading in his quarters, he heard a tremendous cheering from some men of the regiment. He went out, book in hand, to see what was the matter. ‘What’s the row?’ he asked of a private who had been out only six months. ‘We’re under orders for home,’ shouted the lad; ‘we start in three days.’ ‘Well,’ growled a grizzled veteran named Penn--who had nearly twenty years’ service, and who, besides having ridden beside Jack in the ‘death ride,’ wore five medals on his breast--‘well, you needn’t open your mouth so wide. If you had come out with us two years ago you’d perhaps think more of the chums you were leaving out here than the mincing miss you think’s waiting for you at home.’ And somehow the old soldier’s words found an answering echo in Jack’s heart.