dark days in the Tower, my Lord Marlborough had passed through hours
which had caused him to look back upon the past with some regret and
doubting, and when among those who crowded about him when fortune
smiled once more--friends, sycophants, place-hunters, and new
admirers--he beheld a figure whose youth and physical gifts brought
back old memories to him, 'tis possible they awakened in him curious
reflections.

"You," he said to Roxholm one day at St. James, "begin the game with
all the cards in your hand."

"The game, my lord?" said the youthful Marquess, bowing.

"The game of life," returned the Earl of Marlborough (for so William of
Orange had made him nine years before), and his eagle eye rested on the
young man with a keen, strange look. "You need not plan and strive for
rank and fortune. You were born to them--to those things which will aid
a man to gain what he desires, if he is not a flippant idler and has
brain enough to create ambitions for him. Most men must spend their
youth in building the bridge which is to carry their dreams across to
the shore which is their goal. Your bridge was built before you were
born. You left Oxford with high honours, they tell me; you are not long
of age, you come of a heroic race--what do you think to do, my lord?"

Roxholm met his scrutinizing gaze with that steadiness which ever
marked his own. He knew that he reddened a little, but he did not look
away.

"I am young to know, my Lord Marlborough," he returned, "but I think to
live--to live."