at bay. "No!" he exclaimed, "no one shall search my pockets! Would you doubt the honor of a soldier?" "But we have all done so," said the rest, "and every one knows it is the merest accident at the most." But the old soldier only held his arms the tighter, while the color grew deeper in his face. In his perplexity his lordship thought of another expedient. "We will try another way, gentlemen," he said, "I will order a basket of bran to be brought, and propose that each one in turn shall thrust his hand into the bran. No one shall look on, and if we find the box at last, no one can guess whose hand placed it there." It was quickly done, and hand after hand was thrust in, until at last came the old soldier's turn once more. But he was nowhere to be seen. Then, at last the indignation of the company broke forth. "A soldier, and a hero of Waterloo, and willing to be a thief!" and with their distress about the affair, and his lordship's grief at his loss, the evening was entirely spoiled. Meantime the old soldier, with his faithful cloak wrapped closely round him once more, was fighting his way through the sharp winds and over the moors again. But a battle against something a thousand times sharper and colder was going on in his breast. "A thief!" he was saying over and over to himself, "me, who fought close to the side of the 'Iron Duke'! And yet, can I look one of them in the face and tell him he lies?" The walk that had been gone over so merrily was a terrible one to retrace, and when the cottage was reached, instead of the pride and good luck the poor invalids had been watching for, a gloom deadlier than the fever followed him in. He sat in the doorway as he used, but sometimes he hung his head on his breast, and sometimes started up and walked proudly about, crying-- "Peggy! I say no one shall call me a thief! I am a soldier of the Iron Duke!" But they did call him a thief, though, for a very strange thing, after his lordship had sorrowfully ordered the cottage and little garden spot to be searched no box was found, and the gloom and the mystery grew deeper together. Good nursing could not balance against trouble like this; the beautiful daughters faded and died, the house was too
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