dly excited by the journey, and calling for strong liquor
all the way home.

Those who knew the sad circumstances of poor Charles's birth (the
Major, the Doctor, and Mrs. Buckley) treated him with such kindness and
consideration, that they won his confidence and love. In any of his
Berserk fits, if his mother were not at hand, he would go to Mrs.
Buckley and open his griefs; and her motherly tact and kindness seldom
failed to still the wild beatings of that poor, sensitive, silly little
heart, so that in time he grew to love her as only second to his mother.

Such is my brief and imperfect, and I fear tedious account of Sam's
education, and of the companions with whom he lived, until the boy had
grown into a young man, and his sixteenth birthday came round, on which
day, as had been arranged, he was considered to have finished his
education, and stand up, young as he was, as a man.

Happy morning, and memorable for one thing at least--that his father,
coming into his bedroom and kissing his forehead, led him out to the
front door, where was a groom holding a horse handsomer than any Sam
had seen before, which pawed the gravel impatient to be ridden, and ere
Sam had exhausted half his expressions of wonder and admiration--that
his father told him the horse was his, a birthday-present from his
mother.

Chapter XXIII

TOONARBIN.

"But," I think I hear you say, "What has become of Mary Hawker all this
time? You raised our interest about her somewhat, at first, as a young
and beautiful woman, villain-beguiled, who seemed, too, to have a
temper of her own, and promised, under circumstances, to turn out a bit
of a b--mst-ne. What is she doing all this time? Has she got fat, or
had the small-pox, that you neglect her like this? We had rather more
than we wanted of her and her villanous husband in the first volume;
and now nothing. Let us, at all events, hear if she is dead or alive.
And her husband, too,--although we hope, under Providence, that he has
left this wicked world, yet we should be glad to hear of it for
certain. Make inquiries, and let us know the result. Likewise, be so
good as inform us, how is Miss Thornton?"

To all this I answer humbly, that I will do my best. If you will bring
a dull chapter on you, duller even than all the rest, at least read it,
and exonerate me. The fact is, my dear sir, that women like Mary Hawker
are not particularly interesting in the piping times of peace. In
volcanic a