ur vexations, if such there be, more safely
than with your old tutor?"

I was taken unawares; and not having yet formed a distinct conception of
my own grievances, promptly denied that I had any.

"It may be so," said my friend; "and yet once or twice this evening I
saw your cheek alternately flush and grow pale, with a suddenness that
alarmed me for your health. In one of your pleasantest stories, while
you were acting the narrative with a liveliness evidently unconscious,
and giving me and mine a treat which we have not had for a long time, I
observed your voice falter, as if some spasm of soul had shot across
you; and I unquestionably saw, that rare sight in the eyes of man, a
tear."

I denied this instance of weakness stoutly; but the old man's
importunities prevailed, and, by degrees, I told him, or rather his
good-natured cross-examination moulded for me, a statement of my
anxieties at home.

The Vicar, with all his simplicity of manner, was a man of powerful and
practical understanding. He had been an eminent scholar at his
university, and was in a fair way for all its distinctions, when he
thought proper to fall desperately in love. This, of course, demolished
his prospects at once. I never heard his subsequent history in detail;
but he had left England, and undergone a long period of disheartening
and distress. Whether he had not, in those times of desolation, taken
service in the Austrian army, and even shared some of its Turkish
campaigns, was a question which I heard once or twice started at the
Castle; and a slight contraction of the arm, and a rather significant
scar which crossed his bold forehead, had been set down to the account
of the Osmanli cimeter.

* * * * *

Vincent had never told the story of either, but a rumour reached his
college of his having been seen in the Austrian uniform on the
Transylvanian frontier, during the campaigns of the Prince of Coburg and
Laudohn against the Turks. It was singular enough, that on this very
evening, in arguing against some of my whims touching destinies and
omens, he illustrated the facility of imposture on such points by an
incident from one of those campaigns.

"A friend of mine," said he, "a captain in the Lichtenstein hussars,
happened to be on the outpost service of the army. As the enemy were in
great force, and commanded by the Vizier in person, an action was daily
expected, and the pickets and videttes were ordere