"Well, thank God, we are back again. Still I am glad to have been
through it."

"So am I, sir. It will be something to look back on, and it is
curious to think that while we have been seeing and doing so much,
father and my brother Bob have just been going about over the farm,
and seeing to the cattle, and looking after the animals day in and
day out, without ever going away save to market two or three times
a month at Chippenham."

"And you have quite made up your mind to stay with me, Lechmere?"

"Quite, sir. Short of your turning me out, there is nothing that
would get me away from you. No one could be happier than I have
been, ever since I rejoined after that wound. It has not been like
master and servant, sir. You have just treated me as if you had
been the squire and I had been your tenant's son, and that nothing
had ever come between us. You have made a man of me again, and I
only wish that I had more opportunities of showing you how I feel
it."

"You have had opportunities enough, and you have made the most of
them. You were by my side when I entered that house where there
were a score of desperate rebels, and it would have gone hard with
us if aid had not come up. You stood over me when I was knocked
down by that charge of rebel cavalry, and got half a dozen wounds
before the Hussars swept down and drove them back."

"I was well paid for that, sir," the man said with a smile.