"Well!" said Nigel, "you must drink more of it, or less of it."
"Yes, colonel! And the stagshorn dice are too light above and too heavy below!"
"Worse and worse! You'll have to give up play!"
"It'll give me up," said Blick. "And the wenches, colonel!"
"I am not a bad-looking fellow, colonel! But if I stay here ... they're the very devil ..." groaned Sergeant Blick.
"You want to get back to Count Tilly? Is that it?"
"I want to be sergeant in your new regiment!"
"What do you know of cavalry?" asked Nigel.
"I know men," said Blick stubbornly. "I can drill them. I know horses. I can break them in. My father was a smith, and my uncle a horse-dealer. My grandfather was hung for stealing horses. It's in the blood. In three days I will have that mob of rascals at my heel. I am Sergeant Blick! I say it!"
Nigel looked at Sergeant Blick with a good deal of interest. He had looked at him before, as he had looked at interminable ranks of soldiers, and had never observed that in Blick, as in himself, although Blick knew no reading or writing, grew the stubborn thistle of ambition. He also remembered a dozen instances of good sergeantry which Blick had displayed. It dawned upon his mind that, as it takes years to make a good ploughman, so it takes years to produce the good sergeant; and that without good sergeants it is impossible to make good regiments.
Sergeant Blick, despite his words, stood stiffly at attention, awaiting the settlement of his destiny. There were at least two scars on his face, which were an abiding proof that he had faced both pike and sword, and his complexion, originally fair (he was a North German from Münster), had been tanned and weather-beaten. The light-blue eyes, somewhat hard in the glint, were full of resolution and vigour, if the cheeks and the mouth did smack somewhat of the beer-can, as did the great girth of his waist, hardly counterbalanced by the greater girth of his shoulders.
"Sergeant is it? You can have it! You begin to-morrow; and keep all the corporals sober till we are ready to start, four days from now."
"Four days! The devil himself couldn't bring that mob of wild Zigeuners and half-cooked hinds into the likeness of a regiment in four days."
"Nevertheless it must be done!" said Nigel.