When Conyers had learned from Colonel Hunter all that he knew of his father's involvement, it went no further than this, that the Lieutenant-General had either resigned or been deprived of his civil appointments, and Hunter was called upon to replace him. With all his habit of hasty and impetuous action, there was no injustice in Fred's nature, and he frankly recognized that, however painful to him personally, Hunter could not refuse to accede to what the Prince had distinctly pressed him to accept.

Young Conyers had heard over and over again the astonishment expressed by old Indian officials how his father's treatment of the Company's orders had been so long endured. Some prescriptive immunity seemed to attach to him, or some great patronage to protect him, for he appeared to do exactly as he pleased, and the despotic sway of his rule was known far and near. With the changes in the constitution of the Board, some members might have succeeded less disposed to recognize the General's former services, or endure so tolerantly his present encroachments, and Fred well could estimate the resistance his father would oppose to the very mildest remonstrance, and how indignantly he would reject whatever came in the shape of a command. Great as was the blow to the young man, it was not heavier in anything than the doubt and uncertainty about it, and he waited with a restless impatience for his father's letter, which should explain it all. Nor was his position less painful from the estrangement in which he lived, and the little intercourse he maintained with his brother-officers. When Hunter left, he knew that he had not one he could call friend amongst them, and Hunter was to go in a very few days, and even of these he could scarcely spare him more than a few chance moments!

It was in one of these flitting visits that Hunter bethought him of young Dill, of whom, it is only truth to confess, young Conyers had forgotten everything. “I took time by the forelock, Fred, about that affair,” said he, “and I trust I have freed you from all embarrassment about it.”

“As how, sir?” asked Conyers, half in pique.

“When I missed you at the 'Fisherman's Home,' I set off to pay the doctor a visit, and a very charming visit it turned out; a better pigeon-pie I never ate, nor a prettier girl than the maker of it would I ask to meet with. We became great friends, talked of everything, from love at first sight to bone spavins, and found that we agreed to a miracle. I don't think I ever saw a girl before who suited me so perfectly in all her notions. She gave me a hint about what they call 'mouth lameness' our Vet would give his eye for. Well, to come back to her brother,—a dull dog, I take it, though I have not seen him,—I said, 'Don't let him go to India, they 've lots of clever fellows out there; pack him off to Australia; send him to New Zealand.' And when she interrupted me, 'But young Mr. Conyers insisted,—he would have it so; his father is to make Tom's fortune, and to send him back as rich as a Begum,' I said, 'He has fallen in love with you, Miss Polly, that's the fact, and lost his head altogether; and I don't wonder at it, for here am I, close upon forty-eight,—I might have said forty-nine, but no matter,—close upon forty-eight, and I 'm in the same book!' Yes, if it was the sister, vice the brother, who wanted to make a fortune in India, I almost think I could say, 'Come and share mine!'”

“But I don't exactly understand. Am I to believe that they wish Tom to be off—to refuse my offer—and that the rejection comes from them?”

“No, not exactly. I said it was a bad spec, that you had taken a far too sanguine view of the whole thing, and that as I was an old soldier, and knew more of the world,—that is to say, had met a great many more hard rubs and disappointments,—my advice was, not to risk it. 'Young Conyers,' said I, 'will do all that he has promised to the letter. You may rely upon every word that he has ever uttered. But bear in mind that he's only a mortal man; he's not one of those heathen gods who used to make fellows invincible in a battle, or smuggle them off in a cloud, out of the way of demons, or duns, or whatever difficulties beset them. He might die, his father might die, any of us might die.' Yes, by Jove! there's nothing so uncertain as life, except the Horse Guards.' And putting one thing with another, Miss Polly,' said I, 'tell him to stay where he is,'—open a shop at home, or go to one of the colonies,—Heligoland, for instance, a charming spot for the bathing-season.”

“And she, what did she say?”

“May I be cashiered if I remember! I never do remember very clearly what any one says. Where I am much interested on my own side, I have no time for the other fellow's arguments. But I know if she was n't convinced she ought to have been. I put the thing beyond a question, and I made her cry.”

“Made her cry!”

“Not cry,—that is, she did not blubber; but she looked glassy about the lids, and turned away her head. But to be sure we were parting,—a rather soft bit of parting, too,—and I said something about my coming back with a wooden leg, and she said, 'No! have it of cork, they make them so cleverly now.' And I was going to say something more, when a confounded old half-pay Major came up and interrupted us, and—and, in fact, there it rests.”

“I 'm not at all easy in mind as to this affair. I mean, I don't like how I stand in it.”

“But you stand out of it,—out of it altogether! Can't you imagine that your father may have quite enough cares of his own to occupy him without needing the embarrassment of looking after this bumpkin, who, for aught you know, might repay very badly all the interest taken in him? If it had been the girl,—if it had been Polly—” “I own frankly,” said Conyers, tartly, “it did not occur to me to make such an offer to her!”

“Faith! then, Master Fred, I was deuced near doing it,—so near, that when I came away I scarcely knew whether I had or had not done so.”

“Well, sir, there is only an hour's drive on a good road required to repair the omission.”

“That's true, Fred,—that's true; but have you never, by an accident, chanced to come up with a stunning fence,—a regular rasper that you took in a fly a few days before with the dogs, and as you looked at the place, have you not said, 'What on earth persuaded me to ride at that?'”

“Which means, sir, that your cold-blooded reflections are against the project?”

“Not exactly that, either,” said he, in a sort of confusion; “but when a man speculates on doing something for which the first step must be an explanation to this fellow, a half apology to that,—with a whimpering kind of entreaty not to be judged hastily, not to be condemned unheard, not to be set down as an old fool who couldn't stand the fire of a pair of bright eyes,—I say when it comes to this, he ought to feel that his best safeguard is his own misgiving!”

“If I do not agree with you, sir, it is because I incline to follow my own lead, and care very little for what the world says of it.”

“Don't believe a word of that, Fred; it's all brag,—all nonsense! The very effrontery with which you fancy you are braving public opinion is only Dutch courage. What each of us in his heart thinks of himself is only the reflex of the world's estimate of him; at least, what he imagines it to be. Now, for my own part, I 'd rather ride up to a battery in full fire than I'd sit down and write to my old aunt Dorothy Hunter a formal letter announcing my approaching marriage, telling her that the lady of my choice was twenty or thereabouts, not to add that her family name was Dill. Believe me, Fred, that if you want the concentrated essence of public opinion, you have only to do something which shall irritate and astonish the half-dozen people with whom you live in intimacy. Won't they remind you about the mortgages on your lands and the gray in your whiskers, that last loan you raised from Solomon Hymans, and that front tooth you got replaced by Cartwright, though it was the week before they told you you were a miracle of order and good management, and actually looking younger than you did five years ago! You're not minding me, Fred,—not following me; you 're thinking of your protÉgÉ, Tom Dill, and what he 'll think and say of your desertion of him.”

“You have hit it, sir. It was exactly what I was asking myself.”

“Well, if nothing better offers, tell him to get himself in readiness, and come out with me. I cannot make him a Rajah, nor even a Zemindar; but I 'll stick him into a regimental surgeoncy, and leave him to fashion out his own future. He must look sharp, however, and lose no time. The 'Ganges' is getting ready in all haste, and will be round at Portsmouth by the 8th, and we expect to sail on the 12th or 13th at furthest.”

“I 'll write to him to-day. I 'll write this moment.”

“Add a word of remembrance on my part to the sister, and tell bumpkin to supply himself with no end of letters, recommendatory and laudatory, to muzzle our Medical Board at Calcutta, and lots of light clothing, and all the torturing instruments he 'll need, and a large stock of good humor, for he'll be chaffed unmercifully all the voyage.” And, with these comprehensive directions, the Colonel concluded his counsels, and bustled away to look after his own personal interests.

Fred Conyers was not over-pleased with the task assigned him. The part he liked to fill in life, and, indeed, that which he had usually performed, was the Benefactor and the Patron, and it was but an ungracious office for him to have to cut the wings and disfigure the plumage of his generosity. He made two, three, four attempts at conveying his intentions, but with none was he satisfied; so he ended by simply saying, “I have something of importance to tell you, and which, not being altogether pleasant, it will be better to say than to write; so I have to beg you will come up here at once, and see me.” Scarcely was this letter sealed and addressed than he bethought him of the awkwardness of presenting Tom to his brother-officers, or the still greater indecorum of not presenting him. “How shall I ask him to the mess, with the certainty of all the impertinences he will be exposed to?—and what pretext have I for not offering him the ordinary attention shown to every stranger?” He was, in fact, wincing under that public opinion he had only a few moments before declared he could afford to despise. “No,” said he, “I have no right to expose poor Tom to this. I 'll drive over myself to the village, and if any advice or counsel be needed, he will be amongst those who can aid him.”

He ordered his servant to harness his handsome roan, a thoroughbred of surpassing style and action, to the dog-cart,—not over-sorry to astonish his friend Tom by the splendor of a turn-out that had won the suffrages of Tattersall's,—and prepared for his mission to Inistioge.

Was it with the same intention of “astonishing” Tom Dill that Conyers bestowed such unusual attention upon his dress? At his first visit to the “Fisherman's Home” he had worn the homely shooting-jacket and felt hat which, however comfortable and conventional, do not always redound to the advantage of the wearer, or, if they do, it is by something, perhaps, in the contrast presented to his ordinary appearance, and the impression ingeniously insinuated that he is one so unmistakably a gentleman, no travesty of costume can efface the stamp.

It was in this garb Polly had seen him, and if Polly Dill had been a duchess it was in some such garb she would have been accustomed to see her brother or her cousin some six out of every seven mornings of the week; but Polly was not a duchess: she was the daughter of a village doctor, and might, not impossibly, have acquired a very erroneous estimate of his real pretensions from having beheld him thus attired. It was, therefore, entirely by a consideration for her ignorance of the world and its ways that he determined to enlighten her.

At the time of which I am writing, the dress of the British army was a favorite study with that Prince whose taste, however questionable, never exposed him to censure on grounds of over-simplicity and plainness. As the Colonel of the regiment Conyers belonged to, he had bestowed upon his own especial corps an unusual degree of splendor in equipment, and amongst other extravagances had given them an almost boundless liberty of combining different details of dress. Availing himself of this privilege, our young Lieutenant invented a costume which, however unmilitary and irregular, was not deficient in becomingness. Under a plain blue jacket very sparingly braided he wore the rich scarlet waistcoat, all slashed with gold, they had introduced at their mess. A simple foraging-cap and overalls, seamed with a thin gold line, made up a dress that might have passed for the easy costume of the barrack-yard, while, in reality, it was eminently suited to set off the wearer.

Am I to confess that he looked at himself in the glass with very considerable satisfaction, and muttered, as he turned away, “Yes, Miss Polly, this is in better style than that Quakerish drab livery you saw me last in, and I have little doubt that you 'll think so!”

“Is this our best harness, Holt?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right!”