In all probability the emigration plan might have been carried out in this sense that very winter, if an emigration agent could have been got to take Jacob and Jane, had not misfortune once more found the labourer and smitten his hopes. Jacob enlisted. He was by no means a bad boy, but like all youths, enjoyed what is called a bit of fun; and, in fun, he had betaken himself to a kind of hiring fair held in Warwick, in November, and called the "Mop." There was no need for him to go, as he was not out of work, but the day was a kind of prescriptive holiday, and others were going, so why not Jacob? Idle, careless, and brisk as a lark, the lad followed where others led; drank for the sake of good companionship more than his unaccustomed head could carry; and when in a wild, devil-may-care mood was picked up by a recruiting sergeant, who soon joked and argued him into taking the shilling. A neighbour saw the boy, half-tipsy, following the sergeant and his party through the fair with recruit's ribbons fluttering round his head, and rushed home to tell Thomas as fast as his legs could carry him. The old man was horror-struck; and the boy's mother broke into bitter wailing. Thomas, however, wasted no time in useless grief, but took the road for Warwick, within three minutes of hearing the news, in the hope of being in time to buy his boy off. He had an idea that if he managed to pay the smart-money before Jacob was sworn in, the lad might escape with little difficulty. But he was too late. The sergeant was too well up to his work to wait in Warwick all night, in order that parents might come in the morning and beleaguer him for their betrayed children. Long before Thomas reached the town and began his search for his son the sergeant had gone off with his entire netful to Birmingham. As soon as Thomas found this to be the case he made for the railway station, intending to follow his boy without asking himself whether it would do any good. But there again he was baulked. The cheap train to Birmingham had passed long before, a porter told him, and there was nothing that night but the late and dear express. For this Thomas had not enough money in addition to what would be required to buy off Jacob, so he had no help for it but to go home. This he did with a heart heavy enough. Well did he know that ere he could reach Birmingham to-morrow he would be too late. Recruiting sergeants do not linger at their work, especially after the army had been reduced by war and disease as it then had been in the Crimea. Before ten o'clock next morning Jacob, still dazed with yesterday's unwonted debauch, was sworn in before a Birmingham J.P., and not all the money his father possessed could then release him. Henceforth, till his years of service were out, he must go and kill or be killed at the bidding of these "sovereigns and statesmen," whose business it still, alas, is to make strife in the world.