"My DEAR MOTHER,--This is my last day at school. To-morrow I am going to Warnecliffe to join the 25th Dragoons; they call them the Black Horse. I am very glad to leave school and be a soldier like my father, but,"--and here the blurred writing was an evidence of the trouble in the boy’s heart--"but I don’t like losing my chum. You know, he is Tom Boynton, and we have been chums for more than three years. He is orderly to the dispenser, and has leave to go out almost any time. I am very fond of him, and haven’t any other chum, though he has another chum besides me. I think he likes me best. I do love him, mother; and I lay awake all last night crying. Tom cried, too, a little. He is going to the Scarlet Lancers, and I don’t know when I shall see him any more. I wish we were going into the same regiment. "I got your letter on my fourteenth birthday, the day before yesterday. Tom is seven months older than me. He would have left school before if he had not been orderly to the dispenser. We both got the V.G. Jack Green is going into my regiment. I shall come home when I get my furlough--and if Tom gets his at the same time, can I bring him too? Tom hasn’t any father or mother at all. This is a very long letter. I hope you are very well. "I am your affectionate son, EDWARD PETRES." He read the letter over, brushing his cuff across his eyes when he came to that part of the paper which showed traces of tears, and then he folded it and directed the envelope, after which he had finished. Then he got up, took his cap, and with the letter in his hand, went forlornly out of the large room. When he had got rid of it, he went in search of his chum, Tom Boynton, whom he met just coming away from his last service as "Dispenser’s Orderly" with a heaving chest and eyes almost as red and swollen as poor Ted’s own. Ted turned back with him and took hold of his arm. "Taken your last physic out, Tom?" said he, with a gallant attempt at manly indifference to the dreaded parting of the morrow. "Aye," returned Tom in a choking voice and with eyes carefully averted. The dispenser had just bade him "good-bye," and had told him in wishing him "God speed" that he was very sorry to lose him, and would most likely have to wait a long time before he again had help as efficient; and then he had given him a tip of half-a-crown, and had shaken hands with him. So Tom’s heart was quite as full as Ted’s, and of the two, being the older and bigger and stronger, he was far the most anxious to hide the emotion he felt. "Have you seen Jack?" he asked, giving his head a bit of a shake and crushing his trouble down right bravely. "Jack Green?" asked Ted shortly. He was not a little jealous of Jack Green, who was his chum’s other chum. "Aye! Where is he?" "I haven’t seen him--not all the afternoon," returned Ted curtly. "I’ll go and find him," said Tom, disengaging his arm from Ted’s close grasp.