"I!" said Gaspar, with ever-increasing astonishment; "why, that can't be so!"
"Why do you say it can't be so? If the substitute is already accepted and enrolled it is so."
"But who is he?" asked Gaspar, amazed.
"That young man, there," answered the officer, pointing to the man whom his parents, in their beneficence, had brought up as a son.
"Michael, what have you done?" exclaimed Gaspar, strongly moved.
"What my mother charged me on her death-bed to do," answered Michael; "I have paid a debt.'
"You owed me nothing," answered Gaspar; "but I now owe you a debt; and God grant me the opportunity to pay it, brother; if the occasion presents itself, you may be sure I will not let it pass; that I will not."
CHAPTER IV.
Two years after the events just recorded, a still greater sorrow befell this worthy family, so united and so affectionate, as the families of the peasantry usually are. Michael drew the lot in a second conscription, as Gaspar had done before; and as he was thus obliged to serve on his own account, the son of his adopted parents, whom he could not now serve as a substitute, was once more called to the ranks. Four years more
