It was about a week after this event when Sam M'Grader received a few lines from Tony Butler, saying that he was to sail that morning with a detachment for Garibaldi. They were bound for Marsala, and only hoped that they might not be caught by the Neapolitan cruisers which were said to swarm along the coast. “I suppose,” he writes, “there's plenty of 'fight' amongst us; but we are more picturesque than decent-looking; and an honest countryman of mine, who has attached himself to my fortunes, tells me in confidence that 'they 're all heathens, every man of them.' They are certainly a wild, dare-devil set, whom it will be difficult to reduce to any discipline, and, I should fear, impossible to restrain from outrage if occasion offers. We are so crowded that we have only standing-room on deck, and those below are from time to time relieved in squads, to come up and breathe a little fresh air. The suffering from heat and thirst was bad yesterday, but will, perhaps, be less at sea, with a fresh breeze to cool us. At all events, no one complains. We are the jolliest blackguards in the world, and going to be killed in a better humor with life than half the fine gentlemen feel as they wake in the morning to a day of pleasure.

“I shall be glad when we put foot on land again; for I own I 'd rather fight the Neapolitans than live on in such close companionship with my gallant comrades. If not 'bowled' over, I 'll write to you within a week or two. Don't forget me.—Yours ever,

“Tony Butler.”

M'Gruder was carefully plodding his way through this not very legible document, exploring it with a zeal that vouched for his regard for the writer, when he was informed that an English gentleman was in the office inquiring for Mr. Butler.

The stranger soon presented himself as a Mr. Culter, of the house of Box & Culter, solicitors, London, and related that he had been in search of Mr. Anthony Butler from one end of Europe to the other. “I was first of all, sir,” said he, “in the wilds of Calabria, and thence I was sent off to the equally barbarous north of Ireland, where I learned that I must retrace my steps over the Alps to your house; and now I am told that Mr. Butler has left this a week ago.”

“Your business must have been important to require such activity,” said M'Gruder, half inquiringly.

“Very important, indeed, for Mr. Butler, if I could only meet with him. Can you give any hint, sir, how that is to be accomplished?”

“I scarcely think you 'll follow him when I tell you where he has gone,” said M'Gruder, dryly. “He has gone to join Garibaldi.”

“To join Garibaldi!” exclaimed the other. “A man with a landed estate and thirty-six thousand in the Three per Cents gone off to Garibaldi!”

“It is clear we are not talking of the same person. My poor friend had none olthat wealth you speak of.”

“Probably not, sir, when last you saw him; but his uncle, Sir Omerod Butler, has died, leaving him all he had in the world.”

“I never knew he had an uncle. I never heard him speak of a rich relation.”

“There was some family quarrel,—some estrangement, I don't know what; but when Sir Omerod sent for me to add a codicil to his will, he expressed a great wish to see his nephew before he died, and sent me off to Ireland to fetch him to him; but a relapse of his malady occurred the day after I left him, and he died within a week.”

The man of law entered into a minute description of the property to which Tony was to succeed. There was a small family estate in Ireland, and a large one in England; there was a considerable funded fortune, and some scattered moneys in foreign securities; the whole only charged with eight hundred a-year on the life of a lady no longer young, whom scandal called not the widow of Sir Omerod Butler. M'Grader paid little attention to these details; his whole thought was how to apprise Tony of his good-luck,—how call him back to a world where he had what would make life most enjoyable. “I take it, sir,” asked he, at last, “that you don't fancy a tour in Sicily?”

“Nothing is less in my thoughts, sir. We shall be most proud to act as Mr. Butler's agents, but I 'm not prepared to expose my life for the agency.”

“Then, I think I must go myself. It's clear the poor fellow ought to know of his good fortune.”

“I suspect that the Countess Brancaleone, the annuitant I mentioned, will not send to tell him,” said the lawyer, smiling; “for if Mr. Butler should get knocked over in this ugly business, she inherits everything, even to the family plate with the Butler arms.”

“She sha'n't, if I can help it,” said M'Gruder, firmly. “I'll set out to-night.”

Mr. Culter passed a warm eulogium on this heroic devotion, enlarged on the beauty of friendship in general, and concluded by saying he would step over to his hotel, where he had ordered dinner; after which he would certainly drink Mr. M'Grader's health.

“I shall want some details from you,” said M'Grader,—“something written and formal,—to assure my friend that my tidings are trustworthy. I know it will be no easy task to persuade him that he is a man of fortune.”

“You shall have all you require, sir,—a copy of the will, a formal letter from our house, reciting details of the property, and, what will perhaps impart the speediest conviction of all, a letter of credit, in Mr. Butler's favor, for five hundred pounds for immediate use. These are the sort of proofs that no scepticism is strong enough to resist. The only thing that never jests, whose seriousness is above all levity, is money;” and so M'Grader at once acknowledged that when he could go fortified with such testimonies, he defied all doubt.

His preparations for departure were soon made. A short letter to his brother explained the cause of his sudden leaving; a longer one to Dolly told how, in his love for her, he could not do enough for her friend; and that, though he liked Tony well for his own sake, he liked him far more as the “adopted brother and old playfellow of his dearest Dolly.” Poor fellow! he wrote this from a full heart, and a very honest one too. Whether it imparted all the pleasure he hoped it might to her who read it, is none of our province to tell. It is only ours to record that he started that night for Genoa, obtained from a friend—a subordinate in the Government employment—a letter to Garibaldi himself, and sailed with an agent of the General's in charge of a supply of small-arms and ammunition.

They were within thirty miles of Sicily when they were boarded by the Neapolitan corvette the “Veloce,” and carried off prisoners to Palermo,—the one solitary capture the royal navy made in the whole of that eventful struggle.

The proofs that they were Garibaldians were too strong and many for denial; and for a day and a half their fate was far from hopeful. Indeed, had the tidings of the first encounters between the King's forces and the buccaneers been less disastrous than they were, the prisoners would have been shot; but already a half doubt had arisen as to the fidelity of the royal troops. This and that general, it was rumored, had resigned; and of those who remained, it was said, more than one had counselled “concessions.” Ominous word at such a moment, but the presage of something darker and more ominous still.

M'Gruder bore up with a stout heart, and nothing grieved him in all his calamity more than the thought that all this time Tony might be exposing his life as worthless and hopeless, while, if he only knew it, he had already succeeded to what men are content to pass their whole existence to grasp and gain.

Nor was he inactive in his imprisonment He wrote letters to Garibaldi, enclosing others to Tony; he wrote to all the consuls he could think of; to the Minister at Naples, or to his representative; and he proclaimed his right as a “civis Romanus,” and threatened a Palmerstonian vengeance on all and every that had a hand in curtailing his freedom.

In this very natural and British pursuit we must now leave him, and betake ourselves to other cares and other characters.