up, through a
thousand difficulties and privations, to a respectable standing in the
mercantile profession. At the period mentioned, Mr. Charles had become
almost naturalized in one of our great commercial towns, was a member of
a British church, and the head of a British household; but when the
conversation happened to turn on sporting matters round his own
fireside, he related in perfect seriousness the following wild and
legend-like story of his early life in Poland:--

The year before the rising, I went from my native place in Samogitia
(Szamait), to spend Christmas at the house of my uncle, situated in the
wooded country of Upper Lithuania. He was a nobleman who boasted his
descent from one of the oldest houses in Poland, and still held the
estate which his ancestors had defended for themselves through many a
Tartar invasion--as much land as a hunting-train could course over in a
summer's day. But ample as his domain appeared, my uncle was by no means
rich upon it. The greater portion had been forest-land for ages;
elsewhere it was occupied by poor peasants and their fields; and in the
centre he lived, after the fashion of his forefathers, in a huge timber
house with antiquated fortifications, where he exercised liberal
hospitality, especially at Christmas times. My uncle was a widower, but
he had three sons--Armand, Henrique, and Constantine--brave, handsome
young men, who kept close intimacy and right merry companionship with
their nearest neighbors, a family named Lorenski. Their property
bordered on my uncle's land, and there was not a family of their station
within leagues; but independently of that circumstance, the household
must have had attractions for my cousins, for it consisted of the young
Count Emerich, his sister Constanza, and two orphan cousins, Marcella
and Eustachia, who had been brought up with them from childhood.

The count's parents had died in his early youth, leaving him not only
his own guardian, but that of his sister and cousins; and the young
people had grown up safely and happily together in that forest-land. The
cousins were like most of our Polish girls in the provinces, dark-eyed
and comely, gay and fearless, and ready alike for the dance or the
chase; but Count Emerich and his sister had the praise of the whole
province for their noble carriage, their wise and virtuous lives, and
the great affection that was between them. Both had strange courage, and
were said to fear neither gh