those who had narrowly escaped being clever; but there was an obliquity in his mind which would not admit of lucid order and arrangement.  In the small town where he resided, he continued to pick up a decent sustenance; for he had no competitor, and was looked upon as a man of considerable ability.  He was the only one of the three brothers who had ventured upon wedlock.  But of this part of our history we shall at present say no more than that he had an only child, and had married his wife, to use his own expression, because she suited his focus.

Edward Forster, the youngest, whom we have already introduced to the reader, showed strong nautical propensities; he swam nut-shells in a puddle, and sent pieces of lath with paper sails floating down the brook which gurgled by the parsonage.  This was circumstantial evidence:  he was convicted, and ordered off to sea, to return a Nelson.  For his conduct during the time he served her, Edward Forster certainly deserved well of his country; and had he been enabled to continue in his profession, would in all probability have risen by his merit to its highest grades; but having served his time as midshipman, he received a desperate wound in “cutting out,” and shortly after obtained his promotion to the rank of lieutenant for his gallant conduct.  His wound was of that severe description that he was obliged to quit the service, and, for a time, retire upon his half-pay.  For many years he looked forward to the period when he could resume his career:—­but in vain; the wound broke out again and again; fresh splinters of the bone continually worked out, and he was doomed to constant disappointment.  At last it healed; but years of suffering had quenched the ardour of youth, and when he did apply for employment, his services had been forgotten.  He received a cool negative, almost consonant to his wishes:  and returned, without feeling mortified, to the cottage we have described, where he lived a secluded yet not unhappy life.  His wants were few, and his half-pay more than adequate to supply them.  A happy contemplative indolence, arising from a well-cultivated mind, feeding rather upon its previous acquirements than adding to its store—­an equanimity of disposition, and a habit of rigid self-command—­were the characteristics of Edward Forster; whom I shall now awaken, that we may proceed with our narrative.

“Well, I do declare, Mr Forster, you have had a famous nap,” cried Mrs Beazely, in a tone of voice so loud as to put an immediate end to his slumber, as she entered his room with some hot water to assist him in that masculine operation, the diurnal painful return of which has been considered to be more than tantamount in suffering to the occasional “pleasing punishment which women bear.”  Although this cannot be proved until ladies are endowed with beards (which Heaven forfend!), or some modern Tiresias shall appear to decide the point, the assertion appears to be borne out, if we reason by analogy from