hip, well limbed, lithe and muscular. His carriage was
soldierly, without the exaggerated stiffness and swagger commonly
found amongst non-commissioned officers of dragoons; and altogether he
had a gentlemanly air which, I doubt not, would have made itself as
visible under the coarse drugget of a private soldier, as beneath the
garb of finer materials and more careful cut, which, in his capacity
of _marechal des logis_, or sergeant, it was permitted him to wear.
But my admiration of this pretty model of a man-at-arms did not assist
me to recognise him, although, whilst gazing at him, and especially
when he slightly smiled at my visible embarrassment, his features
seemed not totally unfamiliar to me. I looked, I have no doubt,
considerably puzzled. The stranger came to my assistance.

"I see you do not remember me," he said. "Not above four years since
we met, if so much; but four years, an African sun, and a French
uniform, have made a change. I met you in Warwickshire, at George
Clinton's. I have seen you once or twice since; but I think the last
time we spoke was when cantering over Harleigh Downs. My name is Frank
Oakley."

I immediately recollected my man. About four summers previously,
whilst on a flying visit at a country house, I had formed a slight
acquaintance with Mr Frank Oakley, who had then just come of age, and
into possession--by the death of his father, which had occurred a
twelvemonth previously--of a few thousand pounds. The interest of this
sum, which would have been an agreeable and sufficient addition to a
subaltern's pay or curate's stipend, or which would have enabled a
struggling barrister to bide his briefs, was altogether insufficient
to supply the wants and caprices of an idler, especially such an idler
as Oakley. Master Francis was what young gentlemen fresh from school
or at college, sucking ensigns, precocious templars, _et id genus
omne_, are accustomed to call a "fast" man; the said fastness not
referring, as Johnson's dictionary teaches us it might do, to any
particular strength or firmness of character, but merely to the
singular rapidity with which such persons get through their money and
into debt. At the time I speak of, Oakley was going his fastest--that
is to say, spending the utmost amount of coin, for the least possible
value; indeed he could hardly have run madder riot with his moderate
patrimony, had he cast his sovereigns into bullets and made
pipe-lights of his bank-notes.