rutting about like
unto a mighty Bashaw; which peaceful idea I sincerely hope will be
realized, some day or other, if it pleases God to spare me so long; ...
my only desire is now that blessed time may be near at hand or even that
I could afford to set out to Murray Bay without any further delay.
However it is proper to drown that wish, for the present, amongst the
noise of arms, as the whole world is up against us, and my assistance,
though little enough, God knows, may be of some use. At all events it
would be tasting the sweets of this life before I had ever felt the
miseries of it." He ends by asking that nothing of which he is possessed
may be spared "towards making Alick Ker pass a pleasant time in Canada."

The fear which the old aunt had ingenuously expressed that Tom might
prove too good to live was happily belied, for he appears to have been a
sufficiently idle young fellow, though, as his watchful guardian wrote,
"a good economist"; the same guardian thought this extremely opportune,
since "Bona Parte," with all Europe under his heel, was making it lively
for the fortunate islands, and forcing them to levy a tax of 10% on
incomes. "This tax," writes the indignant banker, "is one of the many
blessed fruits of the French Revolution, and of the horrible tyranny and
perfidy of their rascally Emperor."

Not long did Tom remain in England. Soon he was off with his regiment to
Sicily, at this period garrisoned by British troops, and saved by a
strip of inviolate sea from the grasp of the master of Italy. The
sojourn in Sicily must have been dull. He was stationed at Syracuse, but
his school training had not gone deep enough to interest him in
Thucydides's marvellous story of the siege of that place or in the
antiquities of Sicily. The chief surviving record of his sojourn in
Sicily is an account from his washerwoman, "Mrs. De Lass," dated at
Syracuse the 8th of March, 1809. His distaste for the army was now
complete. His sister Polly had ended her school days and, by a fortunate
circumstance, had gone out to Canada "under the protection of Sir
William Johnstone's lady" and to Canada Tom was himself resolved to go.
Early in 1810, he was back in Edinburgh, taking a few weeks' holiday
with the Kers, resolved to go on half pay at once, if possible, or,
failing this, to sell out, and after a delay of fourteen or fifteen
months, to go home to Murray Bay. The intervening time he intended to
spend in the study of farming;