If Tony Butler's success in his new career only depended on his zeal, he would have been a model clerk. Never did any one address himself to a new undertaking with a stronger resolution to comprehend all its details, and conquer all its difficulties. First of all, he desired to show his gratitude to the good fellow who had helped him; and secondly, he was eager to prove, if proven it could be, that he was not utterly incapable of earning his bread, nor one of those hopeless creatures who are doomed from their birth to be a burden to others.

So long as his occupation led him out of doors, conveying orders here and directions there, he got on pretty well. He soon picked up a sort of Italian of his own, intelligible enough to those accustomed to it; and as he was alert, active, and untiring, he looked, at least, a most valuable assistant. Whenever it came to indoor work and the pen, his heart sank within him; he knew that his hour of trial had come, and he had no strength to meet it. He would mistake the letter-book for the ledger or the day-book; and he would make entries in one which should have been in the other, and then, worst of all, erase them, or append an explanation of his blunder that would fill half a page with inscrutable blottedness.

As to payments, he jotted them down anywhere, and in his anxiety to compose confidential letters with due care, he would usually make three or four rough drafts of the matter, quite sufficient to impart the contents to the rest of the office.

Sam M'Gruder bore nobly up under these trials. He sometimes laughed at the mistakes, did his best to remedy,—never rebuked them. At last, as he saw that poor Tony's difficulties, instead of diminishing, only increased with time, inasmuch as his despair of himself led him into deeper embarrassments, M'Gruder determined Tony should be entirely employed in journeys and excursions here and there through the country,—an occupation, it is but fair to own, invented to afford him employment, rather than necessitated by any demands of the business. Not that Tony had the vaguest suspicion of this. Indeed, he wrote to his mother a letter filled with an account of his active and useful labors. Proud was he at last to say that he was no longer eating the bread of idleness. “I am up before dawn, mother, and very often have nothing to eat but a mess of Indian corn steeped in oil, not unlike what Sir Arthur used to fatten the bullocks with, the whole livelong day; and sometimes I have to visit places there are no roads to; nearly all the villages are on the tops of the mountains; but, by good luck, I am never beat by a long walk, and I do my forty miles a day without minding it.

“If I could only forget the past, dearest mother, or think it nothing but a dream, I 'd never quarrel with the life I am now leading; for I have plenty of open air, mountain walking, abundance of time to myself, and rough fellows to deal with, that amuse me; but when I am tramping along with my cigar in my mouth, I can't help thinking of long ago,—of the rides at sunset on the sands, and all the hopes and fancies I used to bring home with me, after them. Well! it is over now,—just as much done for as if the time had never been at all; and I suppose, after a while, I 'll learn to bear it better, and think, as you often told me, that 'all things are for the best.'

“I feel my own condition more painfully when I come, back here, and have to sit a whole evening listening to Sam M'Gruder talking about Dolly Stewart and the plans about their marriage. The poor fellow is so full of it all that even the important intelligence I have for him he won't hear, but will say, 'Another time, Tony, another time,—let us chat about Dolly.' One thing I 'll swear to, she 'll have the honestest fellow for her husband that ever stepped, and tell her I said so. Sam would take it very kindly of you if you could get Dolly to agree to their being married in March.

“It is the only time he can manage a trip to England,—not but, as he says, whatever time Dolly consents to shall be his time.

“He shows me her letters sometimes, and though he is half wild with delight at them, I tell you frankly, mother, they would n't satisfy me if I was her lover. She writes more like a creature that was resigned to a hard lot, than one that was about to marry a man she loved. Sam, however, does n't seem to take this view of her, and so much the better.

“There was one thing in your last letter that puzzled me, and puzzles me still. Why did Dolly ask if I was likely to remain here? The way you put it makes me think that she was deferring the marriage till such time as I was gone. If I really believed this to be the case, I'd go away tomorrow, though I don't know well where to, or what for, but it is hard to understand, since I always thought that Dolly liked me, as certainly I ever did, and still do, her.

“Try and clear up this for me in your next. I suppose it was by way of what is called 'sparing me,' you said nothing of the Lyles in your last, but I saw in the 'Morning Post' all about the departure for the Continent, intending to reside some years in Italy.

“And that is more than I 'd do if I owned Lyle Abbey, and had eighteen blood-horses in my stable, and a clipper cutter in the Bay of Curryglass. I suppose the truth is, people never do know when they're well off.”

The moral reflection, not arrived at so easily or so rapidly as the reader can imagine, concluded Tony's letter, to which in due time came a long answer from his mother. With the home gossip we shall not burden the reader, nor shall we ask of him to go through the short summary—four close pages—of the doctor's discourses on the text, “I would ye were hot or cold,” two sensations that certainly the mere sight of the exposition occasioned to Tony. We limit ourselves to the words of the postscript.

“I cannot understand Dolly at all, and I am afraid to mislead you as to what you ask. My impression is—but mind, it is mere impression—she has grown somewhat out of her old friendship for you. Some stories possibly have represented you in a wrong light, and I half think you may be right, and that she would be less averse to the marriage if she knew you were not to be in the house with them. It was, indeed, only this morning the doctor said, 'Young married folk should aye learn each other's failings without bystanders to observe them,'—a significant hint I thought I would write to you by this post.”

When Tony received his epistle, he was seated in his own room, leisurely engaged in deciphering a paragraph in an Italian newspaper, descriptive of Garibaldi's departure from a little bay near Genoa to his Sicilian expedition.

Nothing short of a letter from his mother could have withdrawn his attention from a description so full of intense interest to him; and partly, indeed, from this cause, and partly from the hard labor of rendering the foreign language, the details stuck in his mind during all the time he was reading his mother's words.

“So that 's the secret, is it?” muttered he. “Dolly wishes to be alone with her husband,—natural enough; and I'm not the man to oppose it. I hope she'll be happy, poor girl; and I hope Garibaldi will beat the Neapolitans. I 'm sure Sam is worthy of a good wife; but I don't know whether these Sicilian fellows deserve a better government. At all events, my course is clear,—here I mustn't stay. Sam does not know that I am the obstacle to his marriage; but I know it, and that is enough. I wonder would Garibaldi take me as a volunteer? There cannot be much choice at such a time. I suppose he enrolls whoever offers; and they must be mostly fellows of my own sort,—useless dogs, that are only fit to give and take hard knocks.”

He hesitated long whether he should tell Sam M'Gruder of his project; he well knew all the opposition he should meet, and how stoutly his friend would set himself against a plan so fatal to all habits of patient industry. “And yet,” muttered Tony to himself, “I don't like to tell him that I hate 'rags,' and detest the whole business. It would be so ungrateful of me. I could say my mother wanted to see me in Ireland; but I never told him a lie, and I can't bear that our parting should be sealed with a falsehood.”

As he pondered, he took out his pistols and examined them carefully; and, poising one neatly in his hand, he raised it, as marksmen sometimes will do, to take an imaginary aim. As he did so, M'Gruder entered, and cried out, laughing, “Is he covered,—is he dead?”

Tony laid down the weapon, with a flush of shame, and said, “After all, M'Gruder, the pistol is more natural to me than the pen; and it was just what I was going to confess to you.”

“You 're not going to take to the highways, though?”

“Something not very unlike it; I mean to go and have a turn with Garibaldi.”

“Why, what do you know about Garibaldi or his cause?”

“Perhaps not a great deal; but I've been spelling out these newspapers every night, and one thing is clear, whether he has right or wrong on his side, the heavy odds are all against him. He's going in to fight regular troops, with a few hundred trampers. Now I call that very plucky.”

“So do I; but courage may go on to rashness, and become folly.”

“Well, I feel as if a little rashness will do me a deal of good. I am too well off here,—too easy,—too much cared for. Life asks no effort, and I make none; and if I go on a little longer, I 'll be capable of none.”

“I see,” said the other, laughing, “Rags do not rouse your ambition, Tony.”

“I don't know what would,—that is, I don't think I have any ambition now;” and there was a touch of sorrow in the last word that gave all the force to what he said.

“At all events, you are tired of this sort of thing,” said the other, good-humoredly, “and it's not to be much wondered at. You began life at what my father used to call 'the wrong end.' You started on the sunny side of the road, Tony, and it is precious hard to cross over into the shade afterwards.”

“You 're right there, M'Gruder. I led the jolliest life that ever man did till I was upwards of twenty; but I don't believe I ever knew how glorious it was till it was over; but I must n't think of that now. See! this is what I mean to do. You 'll find some way to send that safely to my mother. There's forty-odd pounds in it, and I 'd rather it was not lost I have kept enough to buy a good rifle—a heavy Swiss one, if I can find it—and a sword-bayonet, and with these I am fully equipped.”

“Come, come, Tony, I'll not hear of this; that you are well weary of the life you lead here is not hard to see, nor any blame to you either, old fellow. One must be brought up to Rags, like everything else, and you were not. But my brother writes me about starting an American agency,—what do you say to going over to New York?”

“What a good fellow you are!” cried Tony, staring at him till his eyes began to grow clouded with tears; “what a good fellow! you 'd risk your ship just to give me a turn at the tiller! But it must n't be,—it cannot be; I 'm bent on this scheme of mine,—I have determined on it.”

“Since when? since last night?”

“Well, it's not very long, certainly, since I made up my mind.”

The other smiled. Tony saw it, and went on: “I know what you mean. You are of old Stewart's opinion. When he heard me once say I had made up my mind, he said, 'It does n't take long to make up a small parcel;' but every fellow, more or less, knows what he can and what he cannot do. Now I cannot be orderly, exact, and punctual,—even the little brains I have I can't be sure of keeping them on the matter before me; but I defy a horse to throw me; I 'll bring you up a crown-piece out of six fathoms water, if it 's clear; I'll kill four swallows out of six with a ball; and though these are not gifts to earn one's bread by, the man that has them need n't starve.”

“If I thought that you had really reflected well over this plan,—given it all the thought and consideration it required—”

“I have given it just as much consideration as if I took five weeks to it. A man may take an evening over a pint of ale, but it's only a pint, after all,—don't you see that?”

M'Gruder was puzzled; perhaps there was some force in the illustration. Tony looked certainly as if he thought he had said a clever thing.

“Well, Tony,” said the other, after a moment of grave thought, “you 'll have to go to Genoa to embark, I suppose?”

“Yes; the committee sits at Genoa, and every one who enrolls must appear before them.”

“You could walk there in four days.”

“Yes; but I can steam it in one.”

“Ay, true enough; what I mean to ask of you is this, that you will go the whole way on foot; a good walker as you are won't think much of that; and in these four days, as you travel along,—all alone,—you 'll have plenty of time to think over your project. If by the time you reach Genoa you like it as well as ever, I 've no more to say; but if—and mark me, Tony, you must be honest with your own heart—if you really have your doubts and your misgivings; if you feel that for your poor mother's sake—”

“There, there! I've thought of all that,” cried Tony, hurriedly. “I 'll make the journey on foot, as you say you wish it, but don't open the thing to any more discussion. If I relent, I 'll come back. There's my hand on it!”

“Tony, it gives me a sad heart to part with you;” and he turned away, and stole out of the room.

“Now, I believe it's all done,” said Tony, after he had packed his knapsack, and stored by in his trunk what he intended to leave behind him. There were a few things there, too, that had their own memories! There was the green silk cap, with its gold tassel, Alice had given him on his last steeple-chase. Ah, how it brought back the leap—a bold leap it was—into the winning field, and Alice, as she stood up and waved her handkerchief as he passed! There was a glove of hers; she had thrown it down sportively on the sands, and dared him to take it up in full career of his horse; he remembered they had a quarrel because he claimed the glove as a prize, and refused to restore it to her. There was an evening after that in which she would not speak to him. He had carried a heavy heart home with him that night! What a fund of love the heart must be capable of feeling for a living, sentient thing, when we see how it can cling to some object inanimate and irresponsive. “I'll take that glove with me,” muttered Tony to himself; “it owes me some good luck; who knows but it may pay me yet?”