when I stumbled against a gentleman, who
looked about seven-eighths soldier and one-
eighth civilian.

"He was a little, dapper, clean-limbed, young-
looking old man, with a yellow face, and grey
hair and whiskers. Soldiers, save in the cavalry,
didn't wear moustaches then. He wore a blue
uniform coat, rather white at the seams, and a
silver medal with a faded ribbon on his breast.
He had a bunch of parti-coloured streamers in his
undress cap; he carried a bamboo-cane under
his arm; on each sleeve he wore golden stripes,
much tarnished; on his scarlet collar was
embroidered a golden lion; and on his shoulders
he had a pair of little, light, golden epaulettes,
that very much resembled two sets of teeth
from a dentist's glass-case, covered with bullion.

"And how are you, my hearty?" said the
military gentleman, cheerily.

I answered that I was the most miserable
wretch in the world; upon which the military
gentleman, slapping me on the back and calling
me his gallant comrade, asked me to have a pint
of beer, warmed with a little spice, and a dash of
Old Tom in it, for the sake of Christmas.

"You're a roving buck," observed my new
friend. "I'm a roving buck. Yon never
happened to have a twin-brother named Siph, did
you?"

"No," I answered, moodily.

"He was as like you as two peas," continued
the military gentleman, who had by this time
taken my arm, and was leading me all shaking
and clattering towards a mouldy little tavern, on
whose door-jambs were displayed a couple of
coloured cartoons, framed and glazed and much
fly-blown, and displaying, the one, the presentment
of an officer in sky-blue uniform much
belaced with silver, and the other a bombadier
with an enormous shako ramming the charge
into a cannon: the whole surmounted by a
placard setting forth that smart young men were
required for the Honourable East India
Company's infantry, cavalry, and artillery, and
earnestly exhorting all smart young men, as
aforesaid, to apply forthwith to Sergeant-Major
Chutnee, who was always to be heard of at the
bar of the "Highland Laddie," or at the office
in Bateman's-buildings.

"The last time I saw him," went on the man
with the yellow face and the grey whiskers,
when he had tilted me into the "Highland
Laddie," pinned me, shaking, against the bar-
counter, and ordered a pint of sophisticated
beer, "he had left our service, and was a field-
marshal in the army of the King of Oude.
Many's the time I've seen him with his cocked-
hat and di'mond epulets riding on a white
elephant, with five-and-twenty black- fellows
running after him to brush the flies away and draw
the soda-water corks. Such brandy he'd have
with it, and all through meeting me promiscuous
in this very public."

It is useless to prolong the narrative of my
conversation with the military gentleman;
suffice it to say, that within an hour I had taken
the fatal shilling, and enlisted in the service of
the Honourable East India Company. I was
not a beggar. I possessed property, over which
my uncle Bonsor had no control. I had not
committed any crime ; but I felt lost, ruined, and
desperate, and I enlisted. For a wonder, when I
was brought before a magistrate to be attested,
and before a surgeon to be examined respecting
my sanitary fitness for the service, my ague
seemed entirely to have left me. I stood firm
and upright in the witness-box, and under the
measuring standard, and was only deterred by
shame and anguish at the misconstruction put
upon my conduct at Dover from negotiating for
my discharge.

I had scarcely reached the East India recruiting
depôt at Brentwood, however, before the
attacks of ague returned with redoubled severity.
At first, on my stating that I had an ear for music,
they began to train me for a bandsman, but I
could not keep a wind instrument in my hands,
and struck those that were played by my
comrades from their grasp. Then, I was put into
the awkward squad among the recruits, and the
sergeants caned me; but I could never get
beyond the preliminary drill of the goose-step,
and I kept my own time, and not the squad's,
even then. The depôt surgeons wouldn't place
the slightest credence in my ague, and the
sergeant-major of my company reported that I was
a skulking, "malingering" impostor. Among
my comrades who despised, without pitying me,
I got the nickname of "Young Shivery-Shakery."
And the most wonderful thing is, that, although
I could have procured remittances at any time,
the thought of purchasing my discharge never
entered my poor, shaking, jarring head.

How they came to send such a trembling,
infirm creature as a soldier to India, I can't make
out; but sent I was, by Iong sea, in a troop-ship,
with seven or eight hundred more recruits. My
military career in the East came to a very
speedy and inglorious termination. We had
scarcely arrived at Bombay when the battalion
of the European regiment into which I was
draughted was sent up-country to the banks of
the Sutlej, where the Sikh war was then raging.
It was the campaign of Aliwal and Sobraon,
but it was very little that I saw of that glorious
epoch in our military annals. In contemptuous
reference to my nervous disorder, I was only
permitted to form part of the baggage-guard,
and one night, after perhaps ten days' march,
throughout which I had shaken most awfully,
an attack was made on our rear for mere
purposes of plunder by a few rascally budmashes
or thieves. Nothing was easier than to put
these paltry scoundrels to the rout. I had been
brave enough as a lad and as a young man. I
declare that on the present occasion I didn't
run away; but my unhappy disease got the
mastery of me. I shook my musket out of my
hands, my shako off my head, and my knapsack
off my back, and my wretched legs shook and
jolted me, as it seemed, over miles of arid
country. There was some talk of shooting me
afterwards, and some of flogging me; but
corporal punishment did not exist in the Company's