d, "with the
ingratitude of mankind," whilst I set forth to go my grand rounds.

Next morning, having been relieved from guard, I had returned home, and
was taking my ease in my camp chair, luxuriously whiffing away at my
after-breakfast cheroot, when who should step gingerly into the room but
Manager Fred Gahagan. The clouds of the previous evening had entirely
disappeared from his ingenuous countenance, which was puckered up in the
most insinuating manner, with what I was wont to call his 'borrowing
smile;' for Fred was oftentimes afflicted with impecuniosity--a complaint
common enough amongst us subs;--and when the fit was on him, in the spirit
of true friendship, he generally contrived to disburthen me of the few
remaining rupees that constituted the balance of my last month's pay.

Fred brought himself to an anchor upon a bullock trunk, and, after my boy
had handed him a cheroot, and he had disgorged a few puffs of smoke, thus
delivered himself--

"This is a capital weed, Wilmot. I don't know how it is, but you always
manage to have the best tobacco in the cantonment."

"Hem," said I, drily. "Glad you like it."

"I say, Peter, my dear fellow," quoth he, "Fitzgerald, Grimes, and I, have
just been talking over what we were discussing last night, about Lady
Macbeth you know."

"Yes," said I, somewhat relieved to find the conversation was not taking
the turn I dreaded.

"Well, sir," continued Fred, plunging at once "in medias res,"and speaking
very fast, "and we have come to the conclusion that you are the only
person to relieve us from all difficulty on the subject; Fitzgerald will
take your part of Banquo; and you shall have Lady Macbeth, a character for
which every one agrees you are admirably fitted."

"I play Lady Macbeth!" cried I, "with my scrubbing-brush of a beard, and
whiskers like a prickly-pear hedge; why, you mast be all mad to think of
such a thing."

"My dear friend," remarked Gahagan mildly, "you know I have always said
that you had the Kemble eye and nose, and I'm sure you won't hesitate
about cutting off your whiskers when so much depends upon it; they'll soon
grow again you know, Peter; as for your dark chin that don't matter a
rush, as Lady Macbeth is a dark woman."

The reader will agree with me in thinking that friendship can sometimes be
as blind as love, when I say with respect to my "Kemble eye and nose,"
that the former has been from childhood affected with a decided tendency
to st