The mess was over, and the officers of H. M.'s —th were grouped in little knots and parties, sipping their coffee, and discussing the arrangements for the evening. Their quarter was that pleasant city of Dublin, which, bating certain exorbitant demands in the matter of field-day and guard-mounting, stands pre-eminently first in military favor.

“Are you going to that great ball in Merrion Square?” asked one., “Not so lucky; not invited.”

“I got a card,” cried a third; “but I 've just heard it's not to come off. It seems that the lady's husband is a judge. He's Chief something or other; and he has been called away.”

“Nothing of the kind, Tomkins; unless you call a summons to the next world being called away. The man is dangerously ill. He was seized with paralysis on the Bench yesterday, and, they say, can't recover.”

There now ensued an animated conversation as to whether, on death vacancies, the men went up by seniority at the bar, or whether a subaltern could at once spring up to the top of the regiment.

“Suppose,” said one, “we were to ask the Colonel's guest his opinion. The old cove has talked pretty nigh of everything in this world during dinner; what if we were to ask him about Barons of the Exchequer?”

“Who is he? what is he?” asked another.

“The Colonel called him Sir Brook Fossbrooke; that's all I know.”

“Colonel Cave told me,” whispered the Major, “that he was the fastest man on town some forty years ago.”

“I think he must have kept over the wardrobe of that brilliant period,” said another. “I never saw a really swallow-tailed coat before.”

“His ring amused me. It is a small smoothing-iron, with a coat-of-arms on it. Hush! here he comes.”

The man who now joined the group was a tall, gaunt figure, with a high narrow head, from which the hair was brushed rigidly back to fall behind in something like an old-fashioned queue. His eyes were black, and surmounted with massive and much-arched eyebrows; a strongly marked mouth, stern, determined, and, except in speaking, almost cruel in expression, and a thin-pointed projecting chin, gave an air of severity and strong will to features which, when he conversed, displayed a look of courteous deference, and that peculiar desire to please that we associate with a bygone school of breeding. He was one of those men, and very distinctive are they, with whom even the least cautious take no liberties, nor venture upon any familiarity. The eccentricities of determined men are very often indications of some deep spirit beneath, and not, as in weaker natures, mere emanations of vanity or offsprings of self-indulgence.

If he was, beyond question, a gentleman, there were also signs about him of narrow fortune: his scrupulously white shirt was not fine, and the seams of his well-brushed coat showed both care and wear.

He had joined the group, who were talking of the coming Derby when the Colonel came up. “I have sent for the man we want, Fossbrooke. I'm not a fisherman myself; but they tell me he knows every lake, river, and rivulet in the island. He has sat down to whist, but we 'll have him here presently.”

“On no account; don't disturb his game for me.”

“Here he comes. Trafford, I want to present you to a very old friend of mine, Sir Brook Fossbrooke,—as enthusiastic an angler as yourself. He has the ambition to hook an Irish salmon. I don't suppose any one can more readily help him on the road to it.”

The young man thus addressed was a large, strongly, almost heavily built young fellow, but with that looseness of limb and freedom that showed activity had not been sacrificed to mere power. He had a fine, frank, handsome face, blue-eyed and bold-looking; and as he stood to receive the Colonel's orders, there was in his air that blending of deference and good-humored carelessness that made up his whole nature.

It was plain to see in him one easy to persuade, impossible to coerce; a fellow with whom the man he liked could do anything, bat one perfectly unmanageable if thrown into the wrong hands. He was the second son of a very rich baronet, but made the mistake of believing he had as much right to extravagance as his elder brother, and, having persisted in this error during two years in the Life Guards, had been sent to do the double penance of an infantry regiment and an Irish station; two inflictions which, it was believed, would have sufficed to calm down the ardor of the most impassioned spendthrift. He looked at Fossbrooke from head to foot. It was not exactly the stamp of man he would have selected for companionship, but he saw at once that he was distinctively a gentleman, and then the prospect of a few days away from regimental duty was not to be despised, and he quickly replied that both he and his tackle were at Sir Brook's disposal. “If we could run down to Killaloe, sir,” added he, turning to the Colonel, “we might be almost sure of some sport.”

“Which means that you want two days' leave, Trafford.”

“No, sir, four. It will take a day at least to get over there; another will be lost in exploring; all these late rains have sent such a fresh into the Shannon there's no knowing where to try.”

“You see, Fossbrooke, what a casuistical companion I've given you. I 'll wager you a five-pound note that if you come back without a rise he 'll have an explanation that will perfectly explain it was the best thing could have happened.”

“I am charmed to travel in such company,” said Sir Brook, bowing. “The gentleman has already established a claim to my respect for him.”

Trafford bowed too, and looked not at all displeased at the compliment. “Are you an early riser, sir?” asked he.

“I am anything, sir, the occasion exacts; but when I have an early start before me, I usually sit up all night.”

“My own plan too,” cried Trafford. “And there's Aubrey quite ready to join us. Are you a whister, Sir Brook?”

“At your service. I play all games.”

“Is he a whister?” repeated the Colonel. “Ask Harry Greville, ask Tom Newenham, what they say of him at Grahams? Trafford, my boy, you may possibly give him a hint about gray hackles, but I 'll be shot if you do about the odd trick.”

“If you 'll come over to my room, Sir Brook, we 'll have a rubber, and I 'll give orders to have my tax-cart ready for us by daybreak,” said Trafford; and, Fossbrooke promising to be with him so soon as he had given his servant his orders, they parted.

“And are you as equal to this sitting up all night as you used to be, Fossbrooke?” asked the Colonel.

“I don't smoke as many cigars as formerly, and I am a little more choice about my tobacco. I avoid mulled port, and take weak brandy-and-water; and I believe in all other respects I 'm pretty much where I was when we met last,—I think it was at Ceylon?”

“I wish I could say as much for myself. You are talking of thirty-four years ago.”

“My secret against growing old is to do a little of everything. It keeps the sympathies wider, makes a man more accessible to other men, and keeps him from dwelling too much on himself. But tell me about my young companion; is he one of Sir Hugh's family?”

“His second son; not unlike to be his eldest, for George has gone to Madeira with very little prospect of recovery. This is a fine lad; a little wild, a little careless of money, but the very soul of honor and right-mindedness. They sent him to me as a sort of incurable, but I have nothing but good to say of him.”

“There 'a great promise in a fellow when he can be a scamp and a man of honor. When dissipations do not degrade and excesses do not corrupt a man, there is a grand nature ever beneath.”

“Don't tell him that, Fossbrooke,” said the Colonel, laughing.

“I am not likely to do so,” said he, with a grim smile. “I am glad, too, to meet his father's son; we were at Christ Church together; and now I see he has the family good looks. 'Le beau Trafford' was a proverb in Paris once.”

“Do you ever forget a man?” asked the Colonel, in some curiosity.

“I believe not. I forget books, places, dates occasionally, but never people. I met an old schoolfellow t'other day at Dover whom I never saw since we were boys. He had gone down in the world, and was acting as one of the 'commissionnaires' they call them, who take your keys to the Custom-house to have your luggage examined; and when he came to ask me to employ him, I said, “'What! ain't you Jemmy Harper?' 'And who the devil are you?' said he. 'Fossbrooke,' said I. 'Not “Wart”?' said he. That was my school nickname, from a wart I once had on my chin. 'Ay, to be sure,' said I, 'Wart.' I wish you saw the delight of the old dog. I made him dine with us. Lord Brackington was with me, and enjoyed it all immensely.”

“And what had brought him so low?”

“He was cursed, he said, with a strong constitution; all the other fellows of his set had so timed it that when they had nothing to live on they ceased to live; but Jemmy told us he never had such an appetite as now; that he passed from fourteen to sixteen hours a day on the pier in all weathers; and as to gout he firmly believed it all came of the adulterated wines of the great wine-merchants. British gin he maintained to be the wholesomest liquor in existence.”

“I wonder how fellows bear up under such reverses as that,” said the Colonel.

“My astonishment is rather,” cried Fossbrooke, “how men can live on in a monotony of well-being, getting fatter, older, and more unwieldy, and with only such experiences of life as a well-fed fowl might have in a hencoop.”

“I know that's your theory,” said the other, laughing.

“Well, no man can say that I have not lived up to my convictions; and for myself, I can aver I have thoroughly enjoyed my intercourse with the world, and like it as well to-day as on the first morning I made my bow to it.”

“Listen to this, young gentlemen,” said the Colonel, turning to his officers, who now gathered around them. “Now and then I hear some of you complaining of being bored or wearied,—sick of this, tired of that; here's my friend, who knows the whole thing better than any of us, and he declares that the world is the best of all possible worlds, and that so far from familiarity with it inspiring disgust with life, his enjoyment of it is as racy as when first he knew it.”

“It is rather hard to ask these gentlemen to take me as a guide on trust,” said Fossbrooke; “but I have known the fathers of most of those I see around me, and could call many of them as witnesses to character. Major Aylmer, your father and I went up the Nile together, when people talked of it as a journey. Captain Harris, I 'm sure I am not wrong in saying you are the son of Godfrey Harris, of Harrisburg. Your father was my friend on the day I wounded Lord Ecclesmore. I see four or five others too,—so like old companions that I find it hard to believe I am not back again in the old days when I was as young as themselves; and yet I 'm not very certain if I would like to exchange my present quiet enjoyment as a looker-on for all that active share I once took in life and its pleasures.”

Something in the fact that their fathers had lived in his intimacy, something in his manner,—a very courteous manner it was,—and something in the bold, almost defiant bearing of the old man, vouching for great energy and dignity together, won greatly upon the young men, and they gathered around him. He was, however, summoned away by a message from Trafford to say that the whist-party waited for him, and he took his leave with a stately courtesy and withdrew.

“There goes one of the strangest fellows in Christendom,” said the Colonel, as the other left the room. “He has already gone through three fortunes; he dissipated the first, speculated and lost the second, and the third he, I might say, gave away in acts of benevolence and kindness,—leaving himself so ill off that I actually heard the other day that some friend had asked for the place of barrack-master at Athlone for him; but on coming over to see the place, he found a poor fellow with a wife and five children a candidate for it; so he retired in his favor, and is content, as you see, to go out on the world, and take his chance with it.”

Innumerable questions pressed on the Colonel to tell more of his strange friend; he had, however, little beyond hearsay to give them. Of his own experiences, he could only say that when first he met him it was at Ceylon, where he had come in a yacht like a sloop of war to hunt elephants,—the splendor of his retinue and magnificence of his suite giving him the air of a royal personage,—and indeed the gorgeous profusion of his presents to the King and the chief personages of the court went far to impress this notion. “I never met him since,” said the Colonel, “till this morning, when he walked into my room, dusty and travel-stained, to say, 'I just heard your name, and thought I 'd ask you to give me my dinner to-day.' I owe him a great many,—not to say innumerable other attentions; and his last act on leaving Trincomalee was to present me with an Arab charger, the most perfect animal I ever mounted. It is therefore a real pleasure to me to receive him. He is a thoroughly fine-hearted fellow, and, with all his eccentricities, one of the noblest natures I ever met. The only flaw in his frankness is as to his age; nobody has ever been able to get it from him. You heard him talk of your fathers,—he might talk of your grandfathers; and he would, too, if we had only the opportunity to lead him on to it. I know of my own knowledge that he lived in the Carlton House coterie, not a man of which except himself survives, and I have heard him give imitations of Burke, Sheridan, Gavin Hamilton, and Pitt, that none but one who had seen them could have accomplished. And now that I have told you all this, will one of you step over to Trafford's rooms, and whisper him a hint to make his whist-points as low as he can; and, what is even of more importance, to take care lest any strange story Sir Brook may tell—and he is full of them—meet a sign of incredulity, still less provoke any quizzing? The slightest shade of such a provocation would render him like a madman.”

The Major volunteered to go on this mission, which indeed any of the others would as willingly have accepted, for the old man had interested them deeply, and they longed to hear more about him.