to seek his
bed, and presently humming some old air to himself, he slowly mounted
the stairs to his chamber.

CHAPTER V. COLONEL HARCOUUT'S LETTER

As we desire throughout this tale to make the actors themselves,
wherever it be possible, the narrators, using their words in preference
to our own, we shall now place before the reader a letter written by
Colonel Harcourt about a week after his arrival at Glencore, which will
at least serve to rescue him and ourselves from the task of repetition.

It was addressed to Sir Horace Upton, Her Majesty's Envoy at Stuttgard,
one who had formerly served in the same regiment with Glencore and
himself, but who left the army early to follow the career of diplomacy,
wherein, still a young man, he had risen to the rank of a minister.
It is not important, at this moment, to speak more particularly of his
character, than that it was in almost every respect the opposite of his
correspondent's. Where the one was frank, open, and unguarded, the other
was cold, cautious, and reserved; where one believed, the other doubted;
where one was hopeful, the other had nothing but misgivings. Harcourt
would have twenty times a day wounded the feelings, or jarred against
the susceptibility, of his best friend; Upton could not be brought to
trench upon the slightest prejudice of his greatest enemy. We might
continue this contrast to every detail of their characters; but enough
has now been said, and we proceed to the letter in question:

Glencore Castle. Dear Upton,--True to my promise to give you early
tidings of our old friend, I sit down to pen a few lines, which if a
rickety table and some infernal lampblack for ink should make illegible,
you 'll have to wait for the elucidation till my arrival. I found
Glencore terribly altered; I 'd not have known him. He used to be
muscular and rather full in habit; he is now a mere skeleton. His hair
and mustache were coal black; they are a motley gray.

He was straight as an arrow--pretentiously erect, many thought; he is
stooped now, and bent nearly double. His voice, too, the most clear and
ringing in the squadron, is become a hoarse whisper. You remember what a
passion he had for dress, and how heartily we all deplored the chance of
his being colonel, well knowing what precious caprices of costly costume
would be the consequence; well, a discharged corporal in a cast-off
mufti is stylish compared to him. I don't think he has a hat--I have
only seen