"I will, sergeant," answered Owen earnestly. "As you say, I have learned a lot since I came to the regiment, and thanks to your teaching I shall have no fear, but a great deal of confidence, should it ever come to my lot to take part in a hand-to-hand contest. And that I hope to have the fortune to do before very long, or else what's the good of being a soldier?" "You're likely to meet with that in other walks of life," was the answer. "Soldiering isn't everything, and you'll learn that Mr. Halbut thinks so too." "At any rate I have learned the use of my fists and other weapons," went on Owen, "and thanks to the opportunities which have been given me I believe my manners are a little different from those of the other fellows. I don't say that boastfully, sergeant. It is a fact, I believe." "And you've to thank Mr. Tasker for that," was the sergeant's comment. "He took up the work willingly, and he's done well. He himself says he is more than pleased." Mr. Tasker was a gentleman who lived in a small house in the town, and who had once been the principal of a school for the sons of gentlemen. He had, owing to ill-health, to give up his school, and had eagerly undertaken to educate Owen Jones whenever his duties would allow him to attend at his house. And so, at the direction of Mr. Halbut, Owen had spent a couple of hours with Mr. Tasker every day, and it was thanks to the teaching of this quiet and courtly gentleman that the young corporal of the 64th had a polish about him which was lacking in his comrades. "It will all help you to take the place Mr. Halbut has selected for you," said the sergeant. "You know he's one of the powerful directors of the East India Company--John Company as it's often called. As such he is able to find a place for any protégé, and he is sending you out to India by the next boat to take a commission in the native horse or infantry. There, lad, that's the news, and you can get further particulars from him yourself. You'll be formally discharged from the regiment to-morrow, and will go to London at the end of the week. After that I fancy you'll have a day or more to prepare for the passage out." The news came as a great surprise to Owen, for he had never even imagined that he would rise to the commissioned ranks, and the statement that he was now to prepare to sail for India, there to join a regiment as an ensign, filled him with huge excitement and delight. The prospect of going to India at all was sufficiently pleasant, for the older he got the more had he cogitated over the mystery of his birth, and the more sure had he become that his recollection of early events was correct, and that he had actually been born abroad, in India most likely, and had been sent home for some reason.