last. My debts have hung about my neck
all through life; the extravagances of my early years have sat like a
millstone upon me; and I who began the world with a heart brimful of
hope, and a soul bounding with ambition, have lingered on my path like a
truant schoolboy. And here I am, at the age of three-and-thirty, without
having realised a single promise of my boyhood, the poorest of all
imaginable things--a gentleman without fortune, a soldier without
service, a man of energy without hope.'

'But why, Phil,' said I, 'how comes it that you never went out to the
Peninsula?'

'Alas, my boy! from year to year I have gone on expecting my gazette
to a regiment on service. Too poor to purchase, too proud to solicit, I
have waited in anxious expectancy from some of those with whom, high as
was their station, I've lived on terms of intimacy and friendship, that
notice they extended to others less known than I was; but somehow the
temperament that would seem to constitute my happiness, has proved my
bane, and those qualities which have made me a boon companion, have
left me a beggar. Handed over from one viceroy to another, like a state
trumpeter or a butt of sherry, I have been left to linger out my
best years a kind of court-jester; my only reward being, the hour of
merriment over, that they who laughed with, should laugh at me.'

There was a tone of almost ferocity in the way he spoke these words;
while the trembling lip, the flashing eye, and the swollen veins of
his temple betrayed that the very bitterest of all human
emotions--self-scorn--was racking his heart within him.

For some time we were both silent. Had I even known what to say at such
a moment, there was that comfortless expression about his face, that
look of riveted despair, which would have rendered any effort on my part
to console him a vain and presumptuous folly.

'But come, Jack,' said he, filling his glass and pushing over the
decanter to me, 'I have learned to put little faith in patrons; and
although the information has been long in acquiring, still it has come
at last, and I am determined to profit by it. I am now endeavouring to
raise a little money to pay off the most pressing of my creditors, and
have made an application to the Horse Guards to be appointed to any
regiment on service, wherever it may be. If both these succeed, and it
is necessary both should, then, Jack, I 'll try a new path, and even
though it lead to nothing, yet, at least, it