"I might give that as an address, to be sure."

"Damme!" cried Ben, as a bright thought struck him, "why couldn't I adopt you?"

"The lady might find that an inducement," said I modestly.

"I wasn't exactly seeing it in that light," he confessed. "But, with a boy apiece, she and I might start fair. You could punch his head, brother like."

The _c.u.mberland_ weighed anchor on the 2nd of May, and dropped it again under Staddon Heights on the 29th of that month. To my delight, the garrison surgeon at Plymouth p.r.o.nounced me fit to travel: my foot only needed rest, he said; and he asked me where my home lay.

I had antic.i.p.ated this, and answered that a letter addressed to me under care Miss Amelia Plinlimmon, at the Genevan Foundling Hospital, would certainly find me. And so I was granted two months' leave of absence to recover from my wound.

"But you don't mean to tell me," said Mr. Jope as we strolled down Union Street together, "that you haven't a home or relations in this world?"

"Neither one nor the other," said I; "but I have picked up a few friends."

As he drew westward I noticed that he sensibly r.e.t.a.r.ded his pace: but he had forsworn visiting Symonds's until, as he put it, we knew the worst; and I marched him relentlessly up to the door of doom with its immaculate bra.s.s knocker. And when, facing it, he shut his eyes, I put out a hand and knocked for him.

But it was I who shrank back when the door opened: for the person who opened it was--Mr. George!--in pigtail and wooden leg unchanged, but in demeanour (so far as agitation allowed me to remark it) more saturnine than ever.

"Do the Widow Babbage live here?" stammered Mr. Jope.

"She do not," answered Mr. George slowly, and added, "worse luck!"

"Is--is she dead?"

"No, she ain't," answered Mr. George, and pulled himself up.

"Then what's the matter with her?"

"There ain't nothing the matter with _her_, as I know by," answered Mr. George once more, in a non-committal tone. "But I'm her 'usband."

"You--Mr. George?" I gasped.

Thereupon he recognised me, and his eyes grew round, yet expressed no immoderate surprise.

"A nice dance _you've_ led everybody!" he said slowly: "but I was never hopeful about you, I'm thankful to say."

"Where is Miss Plinlimmon living?" I asked. "Has she left the Hospital too?"

"She didn't leave it," he answered. "It left her. The Hospital's scat."

"Eh?"

"Bust--sold up--come to an end. Scougall's retired on the donations. He feathered _his_ nest. And Miss Plinlimmon's gone down into Cornwall to live with a Major Brooks--a kind of relation of hers, so far as I can make out. They tell me she've come into money."

I had a question on my lips, but Mr. Jope interrupted.

"I haven't the pleasure of your acquaintance, sir," he began politely, addressing Mr. George, "and by the look of 'ee, you must date from before my time. But speakin' as one man to another, how do you get along with that boy?"

The door was slammed in our faces.

Mr. Jope and I regarded one another. "Ben," said I, "it's urgent, or I wouldn't leave you. I must start at once for Minden Cottage."

His face fell. "And I was planning a little kick-up at Symonds's,"

he said ruefully; "a fiddle or two--to celebrate the occasion; nothing out o' the way. The first time you dropped on us, if you remember, we was not quite ourselves, owing to poor dear Bill: and I'd ha' liked you to form a cheerfuller idea of the place. But if 'tis duty, my lad, England expec's and I'm not gainsaying. Duty, is it?"

"Duty it is," said I. "You walked up to yours n.o.bly, and I must walk on to mine."

So we shook hands, and I turned my face westward for the ferry.

I had over-calculated my strength, and limped sorely the last mile or two before reaching Minden Cottage. Miss Plinlimmon opened the door to me, and I forgot my pain for an instant and ran into her arms.

But behind her lay an empty house.

"The Major is in the garden," she said. "You will find him greatly changed, I expect. Even since my coming I have noticed the alteration."

I walked through to the summer-house. The Major was fingering his Virgil, but laid it down and shook hands gravely. I had much to tell him, and he seemed to listen; but I do not think that he heard.

Miss Plinlimmon--dear soul, unknowingly--had prepared for me the very room to which Isabel had led me on the night of my first arrival, and in which she had knelt beside me. Miss Plinlimmon had scarcely known Isabel, and I found her cheerfulness almost distressing when she came to wish me good night.

"And I have composed a stanza upon you," she whispered, "if you care for such things any longer. But you must understand that it has been, so to speak, improvised, and--what with the supper and one thing and another--I have had no time to polish it."

I said sleepily that, unpolished though it were, I wished to hear it thus; and here it is:

"Wounded hero, you were shattered In the ankle--do not start!

Much, much more it would have mattered In the immediate neighbourhood of the heart.

The bullet sped comparatively wide; And you survive, to be Old England's pride."