had called for an increase of military force. When the
riots had been suppressed, the troops, broken up into small detachments,
were quartered through the counties, as opportunity and convenience
served; Norcott s troop--for he was a captain--being stationed in
that very miserable and poverty-stricken town called Macroom. Here the
dashing soldier, who for years had been a Guardsman, mixing in all the
gayeties of a London life, passed days and weeks of dreary despondency.
His two subs, who happened to be sons of men in trade, he treated with a
cold and distant politeness, but never entered into their projects, nor
accepted their companionship; and though they messed together each day,
no other intimacy passed between them than the courtesies of the table.

It chanced that while thus hipped, and out of sorts, sick of the place
and the service that had condemned him to it, he made acquaintance with
a watchmaker, when paying for some slight service, and subsequently with
his daughter, a very pretty, modest-looking, gentle girl of eighteen.
The utter vacuity of his life, the tiresome hours of barrack-room
solitude, the want of some one to talk to him, but, still more, of some
one to listen,--for he liked to talk, and talked almost well,--led him
to pass more than half his days and all his evenings at their house. Nor
was the fact that his visits had become a sort of town scandal without
its charm for a man who actually pined for a sensation, even though
painful; and there was, too, an impertinence that, while declining the
society of the supposed upper classes of the neighborhood, he found
congenial companionship with these humble people, had a marvellous
attraction for a man who had no small share of resentfulness in his
nature, and was seldom so near being happy as when flouting some
prejudice or outraging some popular opinion.

It had been his passion through life to be ever doing or saying
something that no one could have anticipated. For the pleasure of
astonishing the world, no sacrifice was too costly; and whether he rode,
or shot, or played, or yachted, his first thought was notoriety. An
ample fortune lent considerable aid to this tendency; but every year's
extravagance was now telling on his resources, and he was forced to draw
on his ingenuity where before he needed but to draw on his banker.

There was nothing that his friends thought less likely than that he
would marry, except that, if he should, his wife wou