Here the poor creature broke down, and wept at the thought of her repentant son. It was well, perhaps, that the blow was thus softened, for she almost fell on the floor when her new friend told her, in the gentlest possible manner, that Miles had that very day set sail for Egypt. They kept her at the Institute that night, however, and consoled her much, as well as aroused her gratitude, by telling of the good men who formed part of her son's regiment; and of the books and kind words that had been bestowed on him at parting; and by making the most they could of the good hope that the fighting in Egypt would soon be over, and that her son would ere long return to her, God willing, sound and well. CHAPTER SEVEN. MILES BEGINS TO DISCOVER HIMSELF--HAS A FEW ROUGH EXPERIENCES--AND FALLS INTO PEA-SOUP, SALT-WATER, AND LOVE. While his mother was hunting for him in Portsmouth, Miles Milton was cleaving his way through the watery highway of the world, at the rate of fifteen knots. He was at the time in that lowest condition of misery, mental and physical, which is not unfrequently the result of "a chopping sea in the Channel." It seemed to him, just then, an unbelievable mystery how he could, at any time, have experienced pleasure at the contemplation of food! The heaving of the great white ship was nothing to the heaving-- well, it may perhaps be wiser to refrain from particulars; but he felt that the beating of the two thousand horse-power engines--more or less-- was child's-play to the throbbing of his brain! "And this," he thought, in the bitterness of his soul, "this is what I have sacrificed home, friends, position, prospects in life for! This is--soldiering!" The merest shadow of the power to reason--if such a shadow had been left--might have convinced him that that was _not_ soldiering; that, as far as it went, it was not even sailoring! "You're very bad, I fear," remarked a gentle voice at the side of his hammock. Miles looked round. It was good-natured, lanky, cadaverous Moses Pyne. "Who told you I was bad?" asked Miles savagely, putting a wrong--but too true--interpretation on the word. "The colour of your cheeks tells me, poor fellow!" "Bah!" exclaimed Miles. He was too sick to say more. He might have said less with advantage. "Shall I fetch you some soup?" asked Moses, in the kindness of his heart. Moses, you see, was one of those lucky individuals who are born with an incapacity to be sick at sea, and was utterly ignorant of the cruelty he perpetrated. "Or some lobscouse?" he added. "Go away!" gasped Miles. "A basin of--" Miles exploded, literally as well as metaphorically, and Moses retired. "Strange," thought that healthy soldier, as he stalked away on further errands of mercy, stooping as he went to avoid beams--"strange that Miles is so changeable in character. I had come to think him a steady, reliable sort of chap."