'Three cheers for Captain Goring!' was now the cry, and many men crowded gratefully forward to salute him and shake his hand, while he felt now that he could spend some of the rupees of Bevil Goring of Chowringee to good purpose; and sure enough he met his strange detachment at the station next morning; and after giving them a hearty breakfast, including buns and cans of milk galore for the little ones, he brought them all into camp, while the transport was steaming down the waters of the Solent, and heading for the Channel. But in this part of our narrative we are anticipating certain events which occurred at Southampton, and which Dalton and Goring, but more particularly the former, were destined to have long in their memory. CHAPTER X. THE SECRET OF DALTON'S LIFE. 'I cannot understand the terms on which you say you and Mrs. Trelawney have parted,' said Goring, to whom his most valued friend Dalton had been, as a sort of relief to his own mind, apparently making what he called 'a clean breast of it,' and detailing his relations with the fair widow of Chilcote Grange. 'You seem to have made love enough to her--that I saw for myself often. You seemed to have expressed admiration enough for her, to all of which she appears to have listened with patience and pleasure in some instances; with impatience and petulance in others; and yet you seem to have wound up with a kind of quarrel at last!' 'She acknowledged that she had only been amusing herself and befooling me.' 'It would also seem by your own account that amid all the curious love-making you never made her a direct proposal of marriage.' 'No.' 'Why?' 'I dared not,' said Dalton, sadly. 'You dared not--and why?' 'Because--because I am a married man--there now, the murder is out!' 'A married man--you, Tony Dalton!' exclaimed Goring, in utter bewilderment. 'I, Tony Dalton--the biggest fool in Her Majesty's service,' replied that personage, with a groan. 'Does Mrs. Trelawney know of this state of affairs?' asked Goring, after a long pause. 'I have more than once feared as much.' 'She hinted to me once that there was a secret in your life that precluded her reception of your addresses. Then it is so?' 'Yes, that I am a married man,' replied Dalton, as he threw open his dark green and silk-braided patrol jacket (which he had resumed after the march) as if its collar choked him, tossed his half-finished cigar into the blazing fire, and drained his glass only to replenish it again. It was in a hotel at Southampton, not far from where the transport lay, when they were having a 'farewell drink' after a cutlet or so, that Dalton made this astounding revelation to his friend--one that seemed fully to account for many peculiarities which the latter had remarked in Dalton's intercourse with Mrs. Trelawney. 'Why, in the name of all that is wonderful, have you concealed this so long?' 'An emotion of shame perhaps--shame at my own egregious folly tied my tongue.'