captain's split skull and the blood pouring down on the white jacket and waistcoat; but if he did, it is certain that he was not seized with a desire to be an actor in a similar tragedy; his soul recoiled from the dreadful thought, and the most that he even wished for was to immerse Ensign Hardyman for a few minutes in the tank behind the mess-bungalow. This would have afforded him some satisfaction; but he never thought of perpetrating it for a moment. He smiled on-they were ghastly, writhing smiles, it is true; but he thought that they answered his purpose-thought that they made him look as though he were enjoying the fun and taking it all very composedly.

But before dinner was over matters had proceeded to a pitch, which poor Doleton's powers of endurance, great as they were, could not surmount. They had attacked him with weapons of almost every description-laughed at him, threatened him, filled him with fears. But he had borne it; almost every nerve within him was quivering with intense emotion, but he did not utter a word of complaint or retaliation—he laughed when the rest laughed and was silent. There was one nerve, however, which had not been touched, and that the most sensitive of all. But the trial was not yet come.

Come it did though at last-jarringly-crushingly, upon the poor youth. There was an assistant-surgeon in medical charge of the regiment, a bachelor, and rather a favourite. He was a fine, good-look

ing man, and was very often at the commandant's, much oftener than any body else; and Doleton had perceived, though without thinking there was any thing remarkable in it, that the doctor and his mother were on a very familiar footing, talked freely together, and seemed pleased at meeting one another. He had never suspected, however, that their intimacy had in any way passed the bounds of decorum, he looked upon his mother as an angel of perfection, and to have doubted it would have been death to him. His horror, therefore, may easily be conceived, when it is stated that the following conversation actually passed in the presence of the unhappy youth. Had he fallen naked from a housetop on an inverted harrow, the anguish would have been as nothing to this.

"What has become of Harcourt to-night?" asked Major Blab, who was sitting nearly opposite to Doleton.

"I saw him, this

"I don't know," said one. evening, near the colonel's." "Did you?" asked another. taking leave of the old gentleman—very natural— for they hate one another like bricks."

"Ah! I suppose,

We do not undertake to say how bricks hate one another; but it is very certain that the last few words spoken made poor Doleton prick up his ears.

"Yes;" remarked a third, "he is always there; what a rum dog it is-always sure to be somewhere near the colonel's, although he hates him, I know he does, with all his heart."

Nothing rum about that," cried Ensign Hardyman; "it doesn't follow that because he hates the colonel, he should hate every body belonging to him. Besides the colonel, thank God, has left us for a little; and Harcourt-"

66

Try that again, Mr. Hardyman; try that once more," sneered the adjutant of the regiment, who was rather a supporter of the colonel's, and who had a supreme contempt for the ensign.

"Ha ha!" laughed Mr. Hardyman, pretending to think that it was all a very capital joke, but in reality highly excited. "Ha ha! if Harcourt came on parade, he would be spited just as much as I have been, and more deservedly too, ha! ha! If I had been so much at the colonel's in his absence, if I had been-ha! ha! making the old boy jealous for the last ten months, I should have expected it, and no mistake."

"Right arm salute-to-to!" shouted the adjutant, highly amused.

"Salute! d-n it all," cried the incensed ensign, "the old dog spites me, like sin. Salute! if I had been saluting his wife, like Harcourt, he might, with reason, have made me salute him, but as I have not, would not"

"Could not," suggested the adjutant.

"Could not-psha! that I could," returned Mr. Hardyman-" every body could, and you know it."

This was too much for Doleton-his own mother, -his angel mother-his beloved mother, thus to

be spoken of by such a whipper-snapper. Twice he glanced at an empty beer bottle before him; twice he stretched out his hand towards it, his father's words ringing in his ears all the while, his mother's sweet image flitting before him with a radiant smile on her face, just such a smile as had always greeted him-him, who now heard her vilely insulted, without dashing his fist in the face of the insulter. But what were his father's words and his mother's smile in the balance against his overwhelming cowardice?

But he spoke he summoned courage to speak in a low voice indistinctly. Hardyman, as we have said before, was sitting next to him, so the poor boy's words reached the ensign. Falteringly, stammeringly they issued from the mouth of the wretched youth, and syllabled "What-do-do-do you mean, who-what-how salute my mother?"

"Right-arm salute-to-to-" shouted the adjutant once again.

"No-no-not that," cried the ensign hastily. "Another kind of salute altogether."

"Ho-ho! then rear rank take open order-all officers to the front-ten paces from the reviewing general, bring the sword slowly to the recover, right arm well extended

"Not that, not that," interrupted the ensign, "nothing of that kind, at all. Harcourt does not salute in that way, his salutes are not sword but lipsalutes, kisses, sir-yes, kisses, Mr. Doleton."

The nervous youth started from his seat, but in a

moment he had sunk back again, pale, quivering, with clenched teeth-such misery written on his face! The whole room seemed to whirl round, he could see nothing but a huge black bottle, which seemed to tempt him to grasp it, and an ocean of blood stretching out at his feet; but he was tied and bound; he could do nothing, his arm hung down by his side, and he felt incapable of raising it. A confused noise was in his ears, as of many voices, not of laughter, but alarm, and presently he became sensible of a sharp, cutting pain, as though his fingers were being severed from his hand; this roused him a little; he looked up, and Major Blab was standing behind him.

"Put down that knife, Doleton, and come with me," said the major, in a voice gentle but determined.

"What knife-eh?" asked the wretched youth. "Take that Mr. Hardyman away from me; I cannot bear the sight of him-there, I don't know what I have been doing."

The poor fellow had unwittingly taken a knife into his hand, perhaps, urged by a sort of unrecognized impulse, so transitory that the seizure of the knife was the only act that had resulted from it. He had not attempted to strike a blow with it, and was easily disarmed-himself being the only sufferer.

"Come with me," continued Major Blab, who was the senior officer present, and the most determined