ch he
never could do--I would, he was certain, rise to be a serjeant. In
brief, such were the terms on which Johnstone and I learned to live ever
after, that, had I constructed a _score_ of traps for the Colonel's
cattle, I believe he would have winked at them all. Poor fellow! he got
into difficulties a good many years after, and, on the accession of the
Whigs to power, mortgaged his pension, and emigrated to Canada. Deeming
the terms hard, however, as he well might, he first wrote a letter to
his old commander, the Duke of Wellington--I holding the pen for him--in
which, in the hope that their stringency might be relaxed in his behalf,
he stated both his services and his case. And promptly did the Duke
reply, in an essentially kind holograph epistle, in which, after stating
that he had no influence at the time with the Ministers of the Crown,
and no means of getting a relaxation of their terms in behalf of any
one, he "earnestly recommended William Johnstone, _first_, not to seek a
provision for himself in Canada, unless he were able-bodied, and fit to
provide for himself in circumstances of extreme hardship; and, _second_,
on no account to sell or mortgage his pension." But the advice was not
taken;--Johnstone did emigrate to Canada, and did mortgage his pension;
and I fear--though I failed to trace his after history--that he suffered
in consequence.

CHAPTER VIII.

"Now, surely, thought I, there's enou
To fill life's dusty way;
And who will miss a poet's feet,
Or wonder where he stray!
So to the woods and wastes I'll go,
And I will build an ozier bower;
And sweetly there to me shall flow
The meditative hour."--HENRY KIRKE WHITE.

Finlay was away; my friend of the Doocot Cave was away; my other
companions were all scattered abroad; my mother, after a long widowhood
of more than eleven years, had entered into a second marriage; and I
found myself standing face to face with a life of labour and restraint.
The prospect appeared dreary in the extreme. The necessity of ever
toiling from morning to night, and from one week's end to another, and
all for a little coarse food and homely raiment, seemed to be a dire
one; and fain would I have avoided it. But there was no escape; and so I
determined on being a mason. I remembered my Cousin George's long winter
holidays, and how delightfully he employed them; and, by making choice
of Cousin George's profession, I trusted to find, lik