'You pretend to sing, Pierrepoint! you will be trying next to persuade me that you can read and write! It is an alarming fact, however, and quite certain, that I have already squandered, of my five hundred a-year income, no less than four hundred and ninety-nine pounds nineteen and elevenpence farthing. The rest I really must keep for contingencies.'

"I hate contingencies! You never carry about a wooden leg, Bouverie, in case one of your own should be broken! Never anticipate beyond the day after to-morrow. Those who have the spirit to

spend always find the means. It has been the result of my long and very deep observation on human life, that if the most penniless of younger brothers will only set himself up on a certain scale of expense, it goes flourishingly on to the end of time, by some magical process, quite of itself.'

"Yes! By that mysterious art which is commonly called "living, nobody knows how!"'

6

Exactly. Fortune favors those who defy her. Some secret is evidently imparted to men who boldly spend their last shilling, which we who timidly hover on the mere brink of ruin, are never worthy to learn. Poverty is like a nettle, which stings when apprehensively touched, but only take a good bold grasp of it, and the danger vanishes.'

I am sorry to interrupt your improving

dissertation, Pierrepoint, but here is the house where my poor old aunt burrowed all her life. Adieu, au revoir! I am sadly afraid poor Bustle, my Skye terrier, is dying. I would sooner have lost ten thousand of my nearest relations.'

Several windows in Baker Street were peopled with gossiping maid-servants, watching to see the procession move off, and a hearse, attended by three mourning coaches, had drawn up before the house where Captain Bouverie entered. It was with a feeling of very considerable condescension that he gracefully advanced into the half-dark sitting-room, a perfect model of neatness, where the party had already assembled who were to attend the dead to her final resting-place. It consisted of the doctor, an attorney, and a clergyman, all wearing a suitable gravity of dress and demeanor. The lawyer was discussing, in a melancholy under-tone, the probable value of the premises, and glanced at the furniture with the eye of an appraiser. The doctor looked impatiently at his watch, grudging, evidently, to waste that time on a deceased patient which might have been more advantageously bestowed on a living sufferer: and the clergyman silently glanced over the title pages of several books, all religious, which were ranged on a shelf beside him.

After Captain Bouverie arrived, the ceremony

was instantly commenced, as all were in haste to have it concluded. When the body was about to be borne into the street, and to pass for the last time over the threshold of a human dwelling, one countenance, and one only, wore an aspect of real heart-felt sorrow. It was a very humble friend, whose tears consecrated the memory of her now slowly carried to her last retreat. An aged maidservant, clad in homely black, but of singularly respectable appearance, stood silently gazing at the final progress of her deceased mistress, with a look of grief so desolate and forlorn, that Captain Bouverie, thoughtless and indifferent as he had hitherto been, suddenly paused. The pallid face and quivering lip, the averted eye, and the speechless anguish of her whole aspect, touched his heart with momentary compassion, and for an instant he felt a sentiment of awe. It seemed to him as if he had, for the first time, become conscious how solemn a thing it is to attend the dead towards that place whence none can return, and to lay one of his own kindred with his mouldering forefathers, where he must himself hereafter finally sleep until the last trumpet shall summon a buried world from the grave.

While the simple unadorned coffin of his deceased relative was about to be placed in the hearse, Captain Bouverie paused beside the deeply afflicted

old servant, and, fancying she seemed anxious to address him, he said, in a tone almost approaching to kindness

'You were long in the service of my aunt, I suppose?'

"Yes, sir,' she said, in a voice both solemn and respectful-long enough to remember you, when you had no other home but this house, and no other friend but her. It was indeed long, long ago! You would never have lived to see this day, but for her care. Many a dreary hour, by night as well as by day, did she watch over you formerly, when no other had a hope that you could survive. My good, kind mistress! How gentle, how liberal, how pious, none but myself can now remember, and none were here to close her eyes but me!oh! it was sad-sad-sad. But she has taken the wings of the morning, and got away to a happier world. Her last wish was, sir, that if we ever met, I should give this parcel into your own hands. Take it, then. It comes from one who loved you to the last, who thought of you often, and whose dying prayers may yet bring a blessing on your head.'

As the old woman hurried away, Captain Bouverie glanced with surprise at the small packet so unexpectedly placed in his possession, and then thrust it hastily into his pocket. The whole

circumstance afterwards escaped his recollection, till, sitting alone in his barrack-room at night, he drew the parcel forth by mistake for his cigar case, and with a momentary impulse of curiosity broke the seals.

How many lines or pages of the following narrative Captain Bouverie read, no one need inquire; but he was found long after midnight comfortably asleep in his arm-chair, and the manuscript, which had evidently dropped from his hand, lay prostrate on the floor.

Who can tell what a day may bring forth, and still less what the events of a week may be! The horse which Captain Bouverie purchased at Tattersall's on the day of his aunt's interment having proved restive, and having shied at one of the carriages in Hyde Park on the following Sunday, reared and fell. The accident was but the work of a moment, and yet most fatal in its result. Captain Bouverie being thrown on the head, his skull was fractured, and after lingering hopelessly for a few hours, without regaining his consciousness, he expired.

Nothing could exceed the grief and consternation of Captain Bouverie's numerous friends and brother officers on this most melancholy occasion, for he had been universally beloved, and was allowed, by all who knew him, to be the best fellow upon earth.'