That night Mrs Blair confessed to Jack that her reconciliation with her brother and her family had given her more pleasure than she could tell; and, thanks to the colonel’s business acumen, on going over her late husband’s affairs with Mr Bailey he found that the old lawyer had much neglected and muddled things, and that Mrs Blair was much better off than she had supposed. Judicious changes and speculations made by the colonel, and a lawsuit successfully undertaken, had more than trebled her income. ‘So that, my dear Jack,’ she said, ‘as I am afraid I shall soon lose Molly, for she and Harry Leland seem to have made a match of it, I shall have more than enough for myself and the other two girls to live on in ease and comparative luxury.’ CHAPTER XLVIII. ‘FOR VALOUR!’ A glorious summer morning, Friday, 26th June 1857. Thousands upon thousands of spectators have wended their way to Hyde Park to see her Majesty the Queen present to the sixty-two heroes of the navy and army the newly instituted reward of bravery--the Victoria Cross. Manufactured of bronze, cast from cannon taken at Sebastopol, the intrinsic value is fourpence halfpenny; but millions of money could not buy the right to wear that little Maltese cross. Underneath the lion-surmounted crown are the words, ‘For Valour!’ and valour alone, valour on the battlefield, can win for the soldier or sailor the proudest decoration a British subject can wear. Amongst the sixty-two heroes to be decorated that day were two men wearing the handsome blue and white of the ‘Death or Glory Boys.’ They were Cornet Blair and Sergeant-major Barrymore. The _Gazette_ records the deeds by which they earned the cross as follows: ‘For distinguished bravery at Balaclava on 25th October 1854, in rescuing Captain Norreys under a heavy fire; and, while both wounded, at the risk of their own lives in gallantly bringing him out of danger.’ Never will Jack forget the roaring, cheering thousands the little band passed through as they marched from Portman Barracks to the Park. There were assembled representative regiments of the different branches which had served in the Crimea, while the ground was kept by infantry and cavalry of the Household Brigade. Jack and his comrades, officers and privates all together, were drawn up in line; and, just before ten, her Majesty, dressed in a sort of uniform, and mounted on horseback, appeared on the scene. Then the heroes were presented to her by name by the Secretary of State for War, and her Majesty, with a few kind words, pinned to each man’s breast the coveted cross. Among them was one old comrade of Jack’s, Parkes the giant trooper of the 4th Light Dragoons, who had been in prison at Voronesh with him.