"Humph! so you want to get on active service again, eh?" he said, after a long chat. "Well, after what you went through, I think you might wait for a few years." "You misunderstand me," I said. "I don't want that kind of active service, but something more to do." "It'll come," he said; and then he laughed. "What are you laughing at?" I said. "At you." "Why?" "At the idea of their promoting such a boy as you." "What? promoted?" I cried. "Yes; but I oughtn't to have let it out. It was told me as a secret." "Oh, I am glad," I cried. "But I say, doctor, I can't help being such a boy." "Don't try, Gil," he said; "you don't grasp it, but to be a boy, sir, is the grandest thing in the world. Never be discontented because you have no moustache. It will come." "I am not discontented," I said maliciously, "only because we have such a bad doctor in the troop." "Bad! Why, what do you mean?" "My arm pained me horribly this morning, and poor old Dost nearly cried as he bathed it, I was in such agony." "Bah! stuff!" "And, then, look at poor Brace," I said. "You don't cure him a bit." "Ha, ha! Ho, ho!" laughed the doctor. "I like that. Why, between you and me, Gil, old man," he whispered, "Brace is a sham. He could be well enough, at least nearly, if he liked." "What do you mean?" I said. "Go and tell him I say he's to be promoted to major, and he'll grow strong at once. No, he will not. Can't you see what's going on?" he added jocosely, as he took my arm, for of late the doctor and I had grown quite chums, and Brace had drifted away. "No," I said; "only that he keeps very low-spirited." "Not a bit of it, boy. You're too young to understand these things. But poor Brace once lost his fair young wife." "Yes, I know that," I said. "Well, he is waiting till he is quite well again, and then he is going to ask a certain beautiful young lady, who is about as near an angel of mercy among wounded soldiers as a woman can be; and I ought to know." "Ask a certain beautiful young lady what?" I said. "To shed light on his dark life, boy, and be his wife." "Why, you don't mean to say that he loves our Grace?" I said. "Look there, then." He pointed to the window through which, by the light of the shaded lamp, I could see that in both their eyes that made me exclaim-- "Oh, doctor, I am glad!" And so was every one else, when it was fully known. Brace became, in fact, a true brother to me, and in later days, when I had long ceased to be the youngest subaltern in the horse artillery, we two saw some service, though none so full of danger and horrors as we passed through in the struggle wherein England nearly lost her proudest possessions in the East. THE END.