Corsica: a point on which I am
uncertain)."

I dwell on these halcyon days with Miss Plinlimmon because, as they
were the last I spent at the Genevan Hospital, so they soften all my
recollections of it with their own gentle prismatic haze. In fact,
a bare fortnight had gone by since my adventure on the spire when I
was summoned to Mr. Scougall's parlour and there found Miss
Plinlimmon in conversation with a tall and very stout man: and if her
eyelids were pink, I paid more attention to the stout man's, which
were rimmed with black--a more unusual sight. His neck, too, was
black up to a well-defined line; the rest of it, and his cheeks, red
with the red of prize beef.

"This is the boy--hem--Revel, of whom we were speaking." Miss
Plinlimmon smiled at me and blushed faintly as she uttered the name.
"Harry, shake hands with Mr. Trapp. He has come expressly to make
your acquaintance."

Somehow I gathered that this politeness took Mr. Trapp aback; but he
held out his hand. It was astonishingly black.

"Pray be seated, Mr. Trapp."

"The furniture, ma'am!"

"Ah, to be sure!" Mr. Scougall's freshly upholstered chairs had all
been wrapped in holland coverings pending his return. "Mr. Trapp,
Harry, is a--a chimney-sweep."

"Oh!" said I, somewhat ruefully.

"And if I can answer for your character (as I believe I can)," she
went on with a wan, almost wistful smile, "he is ready to make you
his apprentice."

"But I had rather be a soldier, Miss Plinlimmon!"

She still kept her smile, but I could read in it that my pleading was
useless; that the decision really lay beyond her.

"Boys will be boys, Mr. Trapp." She turned to him with her air of
gentility. "You will forgive Harry for preferring a red coat to--to
your calling." (I thought this treacherous of Miss Plinlimmon.
As if she did not prefer it herself!) "No doubt he will learn in
time that all duty is alike noble, whether it bids a man mount the
deadly breach or climb a--or do the sort of climbing required in your
profession."

"I climbed up that spire in my sleep," said I, sullenly.

"That's just it," Mr. Trapp agreed. "That's what put me on the track
of ye. 'Here's a tacker,' I said, 'can climb up to the top of
Emmanuel's in his sleep, and I've been wasting money and temper on
them that won't go up an ord'nary chimbley when they're wideawake,
'ithout I lights a furze-bush underneath to hurry them.'"

"I trust," put in Miss Plinlimmon, aghast, "y