For Fortune and Glory

For Fortune and Glory
A Story of the Soudan War
By Lewis Hough
CHAPTER ONE.
A MYSTERIOUS RELATIVE.
It is nice to go home, even from Harton, though we may be leaving all
our sports behind us. It used to be specially nice in winter; but you
young fellows are made so comfortable at school nowadays that you
miss one great luxury of return to the domestic hearth. Why, they tell
me that the school-rooms at Harton are warmed! And I know that the
Senate House at Cambridge is when men are in for their winter
examinations, so it is probable that the younger race is equally
pampered; and if the present Hartonians' teeth chatter at six o'clock
lesson, consciousness of unprepared lessons is the cause, not cold.
But you have harder head-work and fewer holidays than we had, so you
are welcome to your warm school-rooms. I am not sure that you have
the best of it: at any rate, we will cry quits.
But the superior material comforts of home are but a small matter in the
pleasure of going there after all. It is the affections centred in it which
cause it to fill the first place in our hearts, "be it never so humble."
Harry Forsyth was fond of Harton; fond of football, which was in full
swing; fond of his two chums, Strachan and Kavanagh. He rather liked
his studies than otherwise, and, indeed, took a real pleasure in some
classical authors--Homer and Horace, for example--as any lad who has
turned sixteen who has brains, and is not absolutely idle, is likely to do.
He was strong, active, popular; he had passed from the purgatorial state

of fag to the elysium of fagger. But still his blood seemed turned to
champagne, and his muscles to watch-springs, when the cab, which
carried him and his portmanteau, passed through the gate into the drive
which curved up to the door of Holly Lodge. For Holly Lodge
contained his mother and Trix, and the thought of meeting either of
them after an absence of a school-term set his heart bounding, and his
pulse throbbing, in a way he would not have owned to his best friends
for the choice of bats in the best maker's shop. He loved his father also,
but he did not know so much of him. He was a merchant, and his
business had necessitated his living very much abroad, while Cairo did
not suit his wife's health. His visits to England were for some years but
occasional, and did not always coincide with Harry's holidays. Two
years previously, indeed, he had wound up his affairs, and settled
permanently at home; but he was still a busy man--a director of the
Great Transit Bank, and interested in other things, which took him up
to London every day. He was also fond of club-life and public dinners;
and, though he was affectionate with his wife and children, too much of
their society rather bored him.
When she heard the cab-wheels crunching the gravel, Beatrice Forsyth
ran out without a hat, and Harry seeing her, opened the door and
"quitted the vehicle while yet in motion," as the railway notices have it,
whereby he nearly came a cropper, but recovered his balance, and was
immediately fitted with a live necklace. Beatrice was a slight, fair,
blue-eyed, curly-haired girl of fifteen; so light and springy that her
brother carried her, without an effort, to the hall steps, where, being set
down, she sprang into the cab and began collecting the smaller
packages, rug, umbrella, and other articles, inside it, while Harry
hugged his mother in the hall.
"Your father will be home by four," said Mrs Forsyth, when the first
greetings and inquiries as to health were over.
"And Haroun Alraschid has taken possession of his study," added Trix,
with a sort of awe.
"Haroun, how much?" asked Harry.

"Don't be absurd, Trix!" said Mrs Forsyth. "It is only your uncle, Ralph
Burke."
"Burke, that was your name, mother; this uncle was your brother then?"
"Of course, Harry. Have you never heard me speak of your uncle
Ralph?"
"Now you mention it, yes, mother. But I had a sort of idea that he was
dead."
"So we thought him for some time," said Mrs Forsyth, "for he left the
Indian Civil Service, in which he had a good appointment, and
disappeared for years. He met with disappointments, and had a
sunstroke, and went to live with wild men in the desert, and, I believe,
has taken up with some strange religious notions. In fact, I fear that he
is not quite right in his head. But he talks sensibly about things too, and
seems to wish to be kind. We were very fond of one another when we
were