right, Cashel. At your age a man can accustom himself to any and
everything; at mine--a little later--at mine, for instance, the task is
harder. I remember myself, some years ago, fancying that I should enjoy
prodigiously that life of voluptuous civilization they possess in
the Old World, where men's wants are met ere they are well felt, and
hundreds--ay, thousands--are toiling and thinking to minister to the
rich man's pleasures. It so chanced that I took a prize a few weeks
after; she was a Portuguese barque with specie, broad doubloons and gold
bars for the mint at Lisbon, and so I threw up my command and went
over to France and to Paris. The first dash was glorious; all was
new, glittering, and splendid; every sense steeped in a voluptuous
entrancement; thought was out of the question, and one only could wonder
at the barbarism that before seemed to represent life, and sorrow for
years lost and wasted in grosser enjoyment. Then came a reaction, at
first slight, but each day stronger; the headache of the debauch,
the doubt of your mistress's fidelity, your friend's truth, your own
enduring good fortune,--all these lie in wait together, and spring out
on you in some gloomy hour, like Malays boarding a vessel at night, and
crowding down from maintop and mizen! There is no withstanding; you must
strike or fly. I took the last alternative, and, leaving my splendid
quarters one morning at daybreak, hastened to Havre. Not a thought of
regret crossed me; so quiet a life seemed to sap my very courage, and
prey upon my vitals; that same night I swung once more in a hammock,
with the rushing water beside my ear, and never again tried those
dissipations that pall from their very excess; for, after all, no
pleasure is lasting which is not dashed with the sense of danger."

While he was yet speaking, a female figure, closely veiled, passed close
to where they stood, and, without attracting any notice, slipped into
Cashel's hand a slip of paper. Few as the words it contained were, they
seemed to excite his very deepest emotion, and it was with a faltering
voice he asked the captain by what step he could most speedily obtain
his release from the service?

A tiresome statement of official forms was the answer; but Roland's
impatience did not hear it out, as he said,--

"And is there no other way,--by gold, for instance?"

A cold shrug of the shoulders met this sally, and the captain said,--

"To corrupt the officials of the Gove