until I have earned it. You know I would love to stay here now with
you and Aunt in the old house, but I have no time to mope and be
petted. If you fall down, you must not lie in the road and cry over
your bruised shins; you must pick yourself up and go on again, even if
you are a bit sore and dirty."

We said nothing more, but my mind was made up, and when we reached the
house I went at once to my room and repacked my trunk for a long
journey. It was a leather trunk in which my grandfather used to carry
his sword and uniform, and in it I now proudly placed the presentation
sword he had bequeathed to me in his will, and my scanty wardrobe and
$500 of the money he had left to me. All the rest of his fortune, with
the exception of the $2,000 a year he had settled upon me, he had, I
am glad to say, bequeathed with the house to Aunt Mary and Beatrice.
When I had finished my packing I joined them at supper, and such was
my elation at the prospect of at once setting forth to redeem myself,
and to seek my fortune, that to me the meal passed most cheerfully.
When it was finished, I found the paper of that morning, and spreading
it out upon the table began a careful search in the foreign news for
what tidings there might be of war.

I told Beatrice what I was doing, and without a word she brought out
my old school atlas, and together under the light of the student-lamp
we sought out the places mentioned in the foreign despatches, and
discussed them, and the chances they might offer me.

There were, I remember, at the time that paper was printed, strained
relations existing between France and China over the copper mines in
Tonkin; there was a tribal war in Upper Burmah with native troops;
there was a threat of complications in the Balkans, but the Balkans,