I believe it is a fault beloved by fortune.

Which of you considerate fellows would have done a thing at once so foolhardy and so wise as to make a confidant of a boy in his teens, and positively smelling of the nursery?
And when had I cause to repent it?
There is none so apt as a boy to be the adviser of any man in difficulties such as mine.

To the beginnings of virile common sense he adds the last lights of the child's imagination; and he can fling himself into business with that superior earnestness that properly belongs to play.

And Rowley was a boy made to my hand.

He had a high sense of romance, and a secret cultus for all soldiers and criminals.