Boyce took a speedy opportunity of transference, and got into the thick of some fighting.

Then he served with distinction and actually got mentioned in dispatches for pluckily rescuing a wounded man under fire.
For a long time Somers kept his mouth shut; but at last he began to talk.

The ugly rumour spread.

It even reached my battery which was a hundred miles away; for Johnny Dacre, one of my subs, had a brother in Boyce's old regiment.

For my own part I scouted the story as soon as I heard it, and I withered up young Dacre for daring to bring such abominable slander within my Rhadamanthine sphere.