perhaps, my best policy to be as uncommunicative
as possible.

I will only say that when Charles had
been about two years absent he received a
letter from his mother, in which, alluding
to her communication of the month
before, she says, "You have recovered the
shock of my sad intelligence, I dare say. In
fact, I always wondered you were so
particular in that quarter—but there is no
accounting for tastes. Last Sunday it was so
fine that I ventured once more into the
saddle and rode over to Falder Church. An
excellent sermon from Mr. M'Tavish, but in
so strong an accent that if I had not spent
some part of my youth in the Highlands, I
should not have understood what he said.
For the first time, I saw Major Nobbs. He
is very yellow, and has been thirty years in
India in the service of a Nizam of some place
which I cannot spell, and very rich, they say.
He would wed. They say, also, he came into
the kirk under protest, as he has imbibed
some very strange notions,in the East, and some
people say he is a Mahommedan, and
proposed for all three, but George would only
consent to his marrying Nancy. So they are
off next week for their honeymoon in a ship
that sails from Liverpool; and Nancy leaves
a portrait of him, dressed in a very wonderful
uniform. It is to hang over the diningroom
mantel-piece, and looks very like the
sign of the Saracen's Head. The bride
seems quite happy, and I hope this letter
will find you the same." It did. The last mail
had knocked him down for a whole week.
But now he was in such exuberant spirits
that a report got spread in the regiment that
he had succeeded to a baronetcy and ten
thousand a-year. He attended every ball
that was given far or near—flirted in a very
violent manner with any girl who would
listen, talked disparagingly of love and
constancy on all occasions, and was observed one
night suddenly to burst into a fit of laughter
and something very like sobs. Then he laid
aside for the first time a small miniature of a
blue-eyed, red-lipped, light-haired female,
which he had always sedulously concealed
but which he now swore was a likeness of an
aunt who died young. So he was thought a
youth of strong family affection to be so
moved by a portrait of his mother's sister
and, besides, I have always heard his mother
was an only child. I have very little doubt
therefore, that the ringlets and bright eyes
belonged to Nancy Cleghorn, now Mrs.
Major Nobbs.

CHAPTER II.

THERE was a man of the name of Napoleon
Bonaparte, the son of a pettifogging lawyer
in Ajaccio, who made a remarkable disturbance
at the beginning of this century. He upset
several thrones and set them up again—
altered the balance of power, kept the world
in awe, and also made the fortunes of Brand,
Bustle, and Co., the army-contractors in
Wapping. That little Corsican adventurer
never raised an army without putting
hundreds of thousands of pounds into the pockets
of this respectable firm. If he won a battle
in Italy, there came such a flood of wealth
into Wapping that it seemed as if he must be a
sleeping partner in the concern, and thrashed
the Austrians merely on purpose to increase
profits of trade. Mr. Brand lived in
Grosvenor Square, and went down to Wapping
every day in a splendid carriage,with two footmen
on the box beside the coachman, and two
more hanging on behind. The aristocracy
flt some surprise that a man of Mr. Brand's
family should condescend to trade, but they
were reconciled to it by the immensity of the
income he realised, and the great scale on
which his transactions were carried on. If he
had dealt in single hams or disposed
occasionally of a stone or two of beef, he would
have been viewed in a very different light—
but a man who filled three large ships with
hams, which never reached their destination,
and three more with powdered beef, which
always, by some unaccountable means, was
paid for before it started, and never was
heard of again, either by the estimable government
officer who handed over the money, or
the army for whose benefit it was supposed to
be shipped. A man who did business by the
shipload and received his payments by the
twenty thousand pounds, rose out of the
category of tradesmen altogether, and
became a potentate—a power—a visible
representative of the inexhaustable wealth of
England. So Mr. Brand was looked on as an
embodiment of all the taxes; and it was felt,
while we had twenty or thirty army-
contractors rolling in such countless wealth from
the mere profits of supplying beef and hams,
that Britons never, never, never could be
slaves. I have said the aristocracy were at
first a little scandalised by pigs and oxen
being salted and sold by a person of Mr. Brand's
family. And this may perhaps be accepted
as an answer to the celebrated question of
"What's in a name?" If Mr. Brand had
been Mr. Snooks—nay, if Mr. Douglas Brand
had been Mr. Snooks Brand, no one would
have wondered at his trading in oxen and
pigs. But having had the opportunity some
years before of lending a little temporary
assistance to one of the chiefs of the Douglas
family, he received various letters of thanks
from that grateful nobleman, asking further
time for the payment of interest, and
acknowledging the near relationship that existed
between them; and as the younger branches of
that wide-spread clan applied for similar
assistance and made their acknowledgement
in the same way, it came at last to be universally
known that Mr. Brand was a cousin,
more or less removed, to many of the heads
of that illustrious house; and I happen to
know he acted the part of "uncle" to some