'That your name is in the _Gazette_; but here you are, as large as life,' added Freeport, reading aloud: '"Lieutenant Cecil Falconer to be Captain, vice Brevet Major Balerno seconded for service on the Staff." I congratulate you.' 'And so do we all!' cried Acharn, a frank, jolly captain, though not yet eight-and-twenty. 'Thanks; I knew not that Balerno was leaving us so soon,' said Falconer, whose first thoughts were of Mary Montgomerie. 'This will rouse your spirits,' resumed Freeport. 'Do they want rousing?' 'Well, you looked rather glum last night. Been spoony on some girl in the West, I suppose?' 'Perhaps I was,' replied Cecil, laughing, with a chivalrous idea that to deny his secret love might prove that he was not worthy of it; 'you know that I varied the tedium of country quarters by a visit to the general--old Sir Piers Montgomerie. But I wish you would fall in love, in downright earnest, yourself, Freeport.' 'What harm have I done you that you should wish me this, Falconer?' asked Dick, drily. 'Any fine girls there--at the general's, I mean?' asked a cheeky young sub, of Falconer, who coloured with annoyance, though the boy--a man in his own estimation and that of fast chums, touting tradesmen and money-lenders--was but a boy after all. 'I have heard that his niece, or grand-niece rather, is a stunner. By Jove, he grows absolutely red! Were you writing verses to her eyebrows, and sighing like a furnace, Falconer?' 'You would have sighed like two or three had _you_ tried the process,' said Falconer, turning away. 'I do wish you joy, Falconer,' said his friend Fotheringhame, in a low voice; 'and your promotion puts me one step nearer the rank I held when I first knew Annabelle Erroll, and--and--well, played the fool, or worse!' Cecil thought, would Mary see the _Gazette_? The general, he knew, was certain to do so; and Mrs. Garth too, who read it as regularly as an old Chelsea pensioner; but neither might speak of the event, or deem it wise to revive his name at Eaglescraig.