ying."

"Ah, but they did."

"Not a bit of it."

"Ay, but they did. What do you wager but that the major asks your
intentions, as he calls it, the moment he hears the transport has arrived?"

"By Jove! now you remind me, he asked this evening, when he could have a
few minutes' private conversation with me to-morrow, and I thought it was
about some confounded military chest or sea-store, or one of his infernal
contrivances that he every day assures me are indispensable; though, if
every officer had only as much baggage as I have got, under his directions,
it would take two armies, at least, to carry the effects of the fighting
one."

"Poor fellow!" said he, starting upon his legs; "what a burst you've made
of it!" So saying, he began in a nasal twang,--

"I publish the banns of marriage between Charles O'Malley, late of his
Majesty's 14th Dragoons, and ------ Dalrymple, spinster, of this city--"

"I'll be hanged if you do, though," said I, seeing pretty clearly, by this
time, something of the estimation my friends were held in. "Come, Power,
pull me through, like a good fellow,--pull me through, without doing
anything to hurt the girls' feelings."

"Well, we'll see about it," said he,--"we'll see about it in the morning;
but, at the same time, let me assure you, the affair is not so easy as
you may at first blush suppose. These worthy people have been so often
'done'--to use the cant phrase--before, that scarcely a _ruse_ remains
untried. It is of no use pleading that your family won't consent; that your
prospects are null; that you are ordered for India; that you are engaged
elsewhere; that you have nothing but your pay; that you are too young or
too old,--all such reasons, good and valid with any other family, will
avail you little here. Neither will it serve your cause that you may
be warranted by a doctor as subject to periodical fits of insanity;
monomaniacal tendencies to cut somebody's throat, etc. Bless your heart,
man, they have a soul above such littlenesses! They care nothing for
consent of friends, means, age, health, climate, prospects, or temper.
Firmly believing matrimony to be a lottery, they are not superstitious
about the number they pitch upon; provided only that they get a ticket,
they are content."

"Then it strikes me, if what you say is correct, that I have no earthly
chance of escape, except some kind friend will undertake to shoot me."

"That has been also tried."

"Why, how do you m