appear he did not wish to have his name known, but we found
him out, and such a letter as we sent him! It's little liking he'll
have to buy a Galway gentleman's estate over his head, that same Sir
George Dashwood! Godfrey offered to meet him anywhere he
pleased, and if the doctor thought he could bear the sea voyage,
he'd even go over to Holyhead; but the sneaking fellow sent an
apologetic kind of a letter, with some humbug excuse about very
different motives, etc. But we've done with him, and I think he
with us.

When I had read thus far, I laid down the letter, unable to go on; the
accumulated misfortunes of one I loved best in the world, following so fast
one upon another, the insult--unprovoked, gratuitous insult--to him upon
whom my hopes of future happiness so much depended, completely overwhelmed
me. I tried to continue. Alas, the catalogue of evils went on; each line
bore testimony to some farther wreck of fortune, some clearer evidence of a
ruined house.

All that my gloomiest and darkest forebodings had pictured was come to
pass; sickness, poverty, harassing unfeeling creditors, treachery, and
ingratitude were goading to madness and despair a spirit whose kindliness
of nature was unequalled. The shock of blasted fortunes was falling upon
the dying heart; the convictions which a long life had never brought
home--that men were false and their words a lie--were stealing over the
man upon the brink of the grave; and he who had loved his neighbor like a
brother was to be taught, at the eleventh hour, that the beings he trusted
were perjured and forsworn.

A more unsuitable adviser than Considine, in difficulties like these, there
could not be; his very contempt for all the forms of law and justice was
sufficient to embroil my poor uncle still farther; so that I resolved at
once to apply for leave, and if refused, and no other alternative offered,
to leave the service. It was not without a sense of sorrow bordering on
despair, that I came to this determination. My soldier's life had become
a passion with me. I loved it for its bold and chivalrous enthusiasm, its
hour of battle and strife, its days of endurance and hardship, its trials,
its triumphs; its very reverses were endeared by those they were shared
with; and the spirit of adventure and the love of danger--that most
exciting of all gambling--had now entwined themselves in my very nature. To
surrender all these at once, and to