an oilskin cap; but his coat, his one coat, is a curiosity of
industrious patchwork; and his trousers are a pair of our old overalls,
the same pattern we wore at Hounslow when the King reviewed us.

Great as these changes are, they are nothing to the alteration in the
poor fellow's disposition. He that was generous to munificence is now an
absolute miser, descending to the most pitiful economy and moaning over
every trifling outlay. He is irritable, too, to a degree. Far from
the jolly, light-hearted comrade, ready to join in the laugh against
himself, and enjoy a jest of which he was the object, he suspects a
slight in every allusion, and bristles up to resent a mere familiarity
as though it were an insult.

Of course I put much of this down to the score of illness, and of bad
health before he was so ill; but, depend upon it, he's not the man we
knew him. Heaven knows if he ever will be so again. The night I arrived
here he was more natural, more like himself, in fact, than he has ever
been since. His manner was heartier, and in his welcome there was a
touch of the old jovial good fellow, who never was so happy as
when sharing his quarters with a comrade. Since that he has grown
punctilious, anxiously asking me if I am comfortable, and teasing me
with apologies for what I don't miss, and excuses about things that I
should never have discovered wanting.

I think I see what is passing within him; he wants to be confidential,
and he does n't know how to go about it. I suppose he looks on me as
rather a rough father to confess to; he is n't quite sure what kind of
sympathy, if any, he 'll meet with from me, and he more than half dreads
a certain careless, outspoken way in which I have now and then addressed
his boy, of whom more anon.

I may be right, or I may be wrong, in this conjecture; but certain it
is, that nothing like confidential conversation has yet passed between
us, and each day seems to render the prospect of such only less and less
likely. I wish from my heart you were here; you are just the fellow to
suit him,--just calculated to nourish the susceptibilities that _I_
only shock. I said as much t' other day, in a half-careless way, and he
immediately caught it up, and said,

"Ay, George, Upton is a man one wants now and then in life, and when
the moment comes, there is no such thing as a substitute for him." In a
joking manner, I then remarked, "Why not come over to see him?" "Leave
this!" cried he; "ven