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 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 tent. Ned did not reply.

"Dick, old boy," he said presently, as they walked along, "don't you think if I go alone it would be better? It would be an awful blow to father to lose both of us."

"No, Ned," Dick said warmly, "I hope he will not decide that. I know I can't talk the lingo as you can, and that so I add to your danger; still sometimes in danger two can help each other, and we have gone through so much together—oh, Ned, don't propose that you should go alone."

Major Warrener—or Colonel Warrener as he should