“Well, he was a great cavalry officer,” answers the Colonel, “and he left a great collection of prints—_that_ you know. How Clive will delight in them! The boy’s talent for drawing is wonderful, sir, wonderful. He sent me a picture of our old school—the very actual thing, sir; the cloisters, the school, the head gown-boy going in with the rods, and the Doctor himself. It would make you die of laughing!” He regaled the ladies of the regiment with Clive’s letters, and those of Miss Honeyman, which contained an account of the boy. He even bored some of his bearers with this prattle; and sporting young men would give or take odds that the Colonel would mention Clive’s name, once before five minutes, three times in ten minutes, twenty-five times in the course of dinner, and so on. But they who laughed at the Colonel laughed very kindly; and everybody who knew him, loved him; everybody, that is, who loved modesty, and generosity, and honour. At last the happy time came for which the kind father had been longing more passionately than any prisoner for liberty, or schoolboy for holiday. Colonel Newcome has taken leave of his regiment, leaving Major Tomkinson, nothing loth, in command. He has travelled to Calcutta; and the Commander-in-Chief, in general orders, has announced that in giving to Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Newcome, C.B., of the Bengal Cavalry, leave for the first time, after no less than thirty-four years’ absence from home, “he (Sir George Hustler) cannot refrain from expressing his sense of the great and meritorious services of this most distinguished officer, who has left his regiment in a state of the highest discipline and efficiency.” And now the ship has sailed, the voyage is over, and once more, after so many long years, the honest soldier’s foot is on his native shore. CHAPTER VI. Newcome Brothers