"Ah, laddie! it was a bad day when we marched from the old billets; for the word had gone round that we weren't going back. I had taken the liberty of telling the lassie ye ken of something about your private position and your worldly affairs, of which it seems you had left her entirely ignorant. Of course, with my native Scottish caution, and my knowledge of human nature gained in the academies of prosperity and the ragged schools of adversity, I did not touch on certain matters of a delicate nature. That is no business of mine. If there is discretion in this world in which you can trust blindly, it is that of Phineas McPhail. I just told her of Denby Hall and your fortune, which I fairly accurately computed at a couple of million francs. For I thought it was right she should know that you weren't just a scallywag private soldier like the rest of us. And I am bound to say that the lassie was considerably impressed. In further conversation I told her something of your early life, and, though not over desirous of blackening my character in her bonnie eyes, I let her know what kind of an injudicious upbringing you had been compelled to undergo. '_Il a ete eleve_,' said I, '_dans_----' What the blazes was the French for cotton-wool? The war has a pernicious effect on one's memory--I sometimes even forget the elementary sensations of inebriety. '_Dans la ouate_,' she said. And I remembered the word. '_Oui, dans la ouate_,' said I. And she looked at me, laddie, or, rather, through me, out of her great dark eyes--you mind the way she treats your substance as a shadow and looks through it at the shadows that to her are substances--and she said below her breath--I don't think she meant me to hear it--'_Et c'est lui qui a fait cela pour moi_.'