All these decisive results arose from the victory of Blenheim.  Had the British Government during the winter acceded to Marlborough’s request, and voted men and money, he would have been able to march to Paris in the next campaign, and could have brought the war to an end; but the mistaken parsimony then, as often since, crippled the British general, allowed the French to recover from their disaster, prolonged the war for years, and cost the country very many times the money and the men that Marlborough had asked for to bring the war to a decisive termination.

But while the English and Dutch governments refused to vote more money or men, and the German governments, freed from their pressing danger, became supine and lukewarm, the French, upon the contrary, set to in an admirable manner to retrieve the disasters they had suffered, and employed the winter in well-conceived efforts to take the field with a new army, to the full as strong as that which they had lost; and the fruits of Blenheim were, with the exception of the acquisition of a few fortresses, entirely thrown away.

At the battle of Blenheim, Rupert Holliday escaped untouched, but Hugh was struck with a fragment of shell, and severely wounded.  He was sent down the Rhine by water to the great military hospital which had been established at Bonn; and Rupert, who was greatly grieved at being separated from his faithful follower, had the satisfaction of hearing ere long that he was doing well.

Rupert had assigned him as orderly a strong, active young fellow, named Joe Sedley, who was delighted at his appointment, for the “little cornet” was, since his defeat of the German champion, the pride of the regiment.  Joe was a Londoner, one of those fellows who can turn their hand to anything, always full of fun, getting sometimes into scrapes, but a general favourite with his comrades.

The campaign over, Rupert, who was now a lieutenant, asked and obtained leave to go home for the winter; he had long since been reconciled with his mother; and it was two years and a half since he had left home.  Hugh and Joe Sedley had also obtained leave, upon Rupert’s application on their behalf.

On his way down Rupert resolved to pay a visit for a few days to his kind friends at Dort.  They had written begging him to come and see them; and a postscript which Maria had put in her last letter to him, to the effect that she had reason to believe that her old persecutor was in the neighbourhood, and that her father had taken renewed precautions for her safety, added to his desire to visit Dort.

“That fellow’s obstinacy is really admirable in its way,” Rupert said, on reading this news.  “He has made up his mind that there is a fortune to be obtained by carrying off Maria van Duyk, and he sticks to it with the same pertinacity which other men display in the pursuit of commerce or of lawful trade, or that a wild beast shows in his tireless pursuit of his prey.”