"Not a bit of it," said Sir John. "Telegraph reaches the ship in half-an-hour--'Young man, Roger Musgrave, enlisted among the troops on board the "Prince Regent," to be detained. To the officer in command.' We shall be there by noon to-morrow all right. Why do you suppose now that Fortune should make up her mind to spite us? Why shouldn't the wind stay for twenty-four hours in that quarter, and all be well?" "Why, indeed?" said the Colonel, with a sigh; "why should not everything serve our caprice when we lose the true opportunity, and then make a fictitious one?--but they don't, Armitage. I shall never forgive myself; however, while there is still a hope let us go." For the Colonel's fears had been literally fulfilled. Roger had enlisted in a regiment about to sail for the Cape, where there was at present raging one of the many Caffre wars. He wrote to take leave of his friend, believing well to be out of reach before any late succour could reach him. A certain shade of proud and forlorn melancholy was in his farewell. The young man felt to his heart a pang which he would not confess--he had been taken at his word. CHAPTER XV. By the same evening train--for they were too late for any other--which had carried the Colonel not very long before to that little rural world which included Tillington and Marchmain, Horace Scarsdale and Roger Musgrave, the two gentlemen that night rushed to London. As they went their darksome way in the dimly-lighted carriage, which, as it chanced, they occupied alone, each leaned back into a corner, occupied with his own thoughts. Sir John, totally refusing to accept the uncomfortable chance of being too late, looked out at every station with an anxious eye upon the wind, and cried, "Hurrah for the sou'-wester!" as they dashed into London in the cheery spring morning which brightened the grimy face of even that overgrown enchantress. Colonel Sutherland said nothing; his interest in the wind was very limited; he had made up his mind to misfortune, and blamed himself deeply. The old man understood, as by a revelation, the mind of the youth who had addressed to him that letter. The feeling of secret disappointment, without anything to complain of, the forlorn success of his experiment, the perfect acquiescence which everybody seemed to have given to his self-disposal; while, at the same time, it was quite true that he had put himself out of everybody's way, and "that nobody was to blame," as people say, all shone through his melancholy leave-taking. If they did succeed in finding him, would he return? the Colonel asked himself. If they came to the rescue at last, after he had made his plunge, and had borne the bitterest part of it, would he consent to be bought off, and owe his improved rank to Sir John's tardy benevolence? The message itself--was that judicious?--might not its only effect be to leave a certain stigma upon the character of the young soldier? Thus one subject of reflection