“Everything seems to be beginning there just as I go into exile!” said Mrs. Duncombe.  “It seems odd that I should have to go from what I have only just learnt to prize.  But you have taught mo a good deal—­”

“Every one must have learnt a good deal,” said Herbert wearily.  “If one only has!”

“I meant you yourself, and that is what I came to thank you for.  Yes, I did; even if you don’t like to hear it, your sister does, and I must have it out.  I shall recollect you again and again standing over all those beds, and shrinking from nothing, and I shall hold up the example to my boys.”

“Do hold up something better!”

“Can you write?” she said abruptly.

“I have written a few lines to my mother.”

“Do you remember what you said that night, when you had to hold that poor man in his delirium, and his wife was so wild with fright that she could not help?”

“I am not sure what you mean.”

“You said it three or four times.  It was only—­”

“I remember,” said Herbert, as she paused; “it was the only thing I could recollect in the turmoil.”

“Would it tire you very much to write it for me in the flyleaf of this Prayer-Book that Mr. Charnock has given me?”

Herbert pulled himself into a sitting posture, and signed to his sister to give him the ink.

“I shall spoil your book,” he said, as his hand shook.

“Never mind,” she said, eagerly, “the words come back to me whenever I think of the life I have to face, and I want them written; they soothe me, as they soothed that frightened woman and raving man.”

And Herbert wrote.  It was only—­’The Lord is a very present help in trouble.’

“Yes,” she said; “thank you.  Put your initials, pray.  There—­thank you.  No, you can never tell what it was to me to hear those words, so quietly, and gravely, and strongly, in that deadly struggle.  It seemed to me, for the first time in all my life, that God is a real Presence and an actual Help.  There!  I see Miss Bowater wants me gone; so I am off.  I shall hear of you.”

Herbert was exhausted with the exertion, and only exchanged a close pressure of the hand, and when Jenny came back, after seeing the lady to the door, she thought there were tears on his cheek, and bent down to kiss him.

“That was just the way, Jenny,” his low, tired voice said.  “I never could recollect what I wanted to say.  Only just those few Psalms that you did manage to teach me before I went to school, they came back and back.”

Jenny had no time to answer, for the feet of Philip were on the stairs.  He had been visiting Mrs. Hornblower, and persuading her that to make a dragoon of her son was the very best thing for him—­ great promotion, and quite removed from the ordinary vulgar enlistment in the line—­till he had wiled consent out of her.  And though Philip declared it was blarney, and was inclined to think it infra dig. to have thus exerted his eloquence, it was certain that Mrs. Hornblower would console herself by mentioning to her neighbours that her son was gone in compliment to Captain Bowater, who had taken a fancy to him.