am going to say to you, mind, I express no wish even of the slightest. I
simply state that I require two officers for a service of extreme danger.
I want to send a message into Lucknow. None of the officers of the English
regiments can speak the language with any fluency, and those of the Madras
Fusiliers speak the dialects of Southern India. Therefore it is among the
volunteers, who all belong to the northwest, that I must look. I have no
doubt that there are many of them who would undertake the service, and
whose knowledge of the language would be nearly perfect, but there are
reasons why I ask you whether you will volunteer for the work. In the
first place, you have already three times passed, while in disguise, as
natives; and in the second, your figures being slight, and still a good
deal under the height you will attain, render your disguise far less easy
to be detected than that of a full-grown man would be. If you undertake
it, you will have a native guide, who last night arrived from Lucknow with
a message to me, having passed through the enemy's lines. You understand,
young gentlemen, the service is one of great honor and credit if
accomplished, but it is also one of the greatest risk. I cannot so well
intrust the mission to the native alone, because I dare not put on paper
the tidings I wish conveyed, and it is possible, however faithful he may
be, that he might, if taken and threatened with death, reveal the message
with which he is charged. I see by your faces what your answer is about to
be, but I will not hear it now. Go first to your father. Tell him exactly
what I have told you, and then send me the answer if he declines to part
with you--bring it me if he consents to your going. Remember that in
yielding what I see is your own inclination, to his natural anxiety, you
will not fall in the very least from the high position in which you stand
in my regard. In an hour I shall expect to hear from you. Good-night, if I
do not see you again."

"Of course father will let us go," Dick said when they got outside the