y first meeting with Lucy Dashwood; the thrill of boyish admiration
gliding into love; the hopes, the fears, that stirred my heart; the firm
resolve to merit her affection, which made me a soldier. Alas, how little
thought she of him to whose whole life she had been a guide-star and a
beacon! And as I thought over the hard-fought fields, the long, fatiguing
marches, the nights around the watch-fires, and felt how, in the whirl
and enthusiasm of a soldier's life, the cares and sorrows of every day
existence are forgotten, I shuddered to reflect upon the career that might
now open before me. To abandon, perhaps forever, the glorious path I had
been pursuing for a life of indolence and weariness, while my name, that
had already, by the chance of some fortunate circumstances, begun to be
mentioned with a testimony of approval, should be lost in oblivion or
remembered but as that of one whose early promise was not borne out by the
deeds of his manhood.

As day broke, overcome by watching, I slept, but was soon awoke by the stir
and bustle around me. The breeze had freshened, and we were running under
a reefed mainsail and foresail; and as the little craft bounded above the
blue water, the white foam crested above her prow, and ran in boiling
rivulets along towards the after-deck. The tramp of the seamen, the hoarse
voice of the captain, the shrill cry of the sea-birds, betokened, however,
nothing of dread or danger; and listlessly I leaned upon my elbow and asked
what was going forward.

"Nothing, sir; only making ready to drop our anchor."

"Are we so near shore, then?" said I.

"You've only to round that point to windward, and have a clear run into
Cork harbor."

I sprang at once to my legs. The land-fog prevented my seeing anything
whatever, but I thought that in the breeze, fresh and balmy as it blew, I
could feel the wind off shore. "At last," said I,--"at last!" as I stepped
into the little wherry which shot alongside of us, and we glided into the
still basin of Cove. How I remember every white-walled cottage, and the
beetling cliffs, and that bold headland beside which the valley opens, with
its dark-green woods, and then Spike Island. And what a stir is yonder,
early as it is; the men-of-war tenders seem alive with people, while still
the little village is sunk in slumber, not a smoke-wreath rising from its
silent hearths. Every plash of the oars in the calm water as I neared the
land, every chance word of the br