“Well, it can be done in a moment, so there need be no hurry about it. In the meantime, let me see--I should like to leave some remembrances to the fellows in the regiment. There’s that sabre--how game the old white-bearded chief died!--I almost wish I hadn’t cut him down. ‘Faith, I shall see him too. I expect he won’t give me so warm a welcome as Harry--it’s a pity I can’t take him his sword back again. Well, Lacquers always admired it, and I’ll leave it him. Poor Lacquers, he’s a good fellow, though a fool. I’ll leave a note, too, asking him to take care of the white horse, and shoot him when he’s done with him: let him follow his master, poor old fellow! Yes; there’s very little to arrange--one advantage in having got through a good property. I don’t think there’ll be much quarrelling over _my_ will. And now, to consider the journey. I must have been very near it often before; and yet, somehow, I never looked at it in that light. ’Tis a different thing in action, with the excitement of duty, and watching the enemy, and keeping the men in hand, and that confounded smoke preventing one from seeing what is going on. No, I’ve never been _quite_ so near as now; but I must some day, even if I should put it off--I _must_ go at last--and why not now? What matter whether at forty or seventy? Time is not to be reckoned by years. I am old, and fit for nothing else. When the fruit is ripe, it had better be plucked; why should people let it hang and rot, till it drops off the tree, all spoilt and decayed? How do I know I may not want some of my manly energy where I am going? _Going_--how strange it sounds! Well, now to ticket the sabre, and write a line to poor Lacquers”--(D’Orville indited a few words in his firm, bold hand; if anything, firmer and bolder than usual)--“and now for ‘a leap in the dark’--face the Styx, if there be such a place, just like any other _yawner_; and so, steady, steady!”