of sight would matter only if he was in command, in face of the enemy, and, even then, he could get assistance.  Fraser advised him to stay in the army until he attained the rank of a field officer, when he might retire on half pay to his estate at Murray Bay, “extensive but not valuable in proportion.”  In truth Tom, tired of the army, was home-sick.  He says to Fraser that he is “feeling an indescribable degree of anxiety to see my dearest mother, sisters, and yourself, not forgetting to include my estate, where I often figure myself, strutting about like unto a mighty Bashaw; which peaceful idea I sincerely hope will be realized, some day or other, if it pleases God to spare me so long; ... my only desire is now that blessed time may be near at hand or even that I could afford to set out to Murray Bay without any further delay.  However it is proper to drown that wish, for the present, amongst the noise of arms, as the whole world is up against us, and my assistance, though little enough, God knows, may be of some use.  At all events it would be tasting the sweets of this life before I had ever felt the miseries of it.”  He ends by asking that nothing of which he is possessed may be spared “towards making Alick Ker pass a pleasant time in Canada.”

The fear which the old aunt had ingenuously expressed that Tom might prove too good to live was happily belied, for he appears to have been a sufficiently idle young fellow, though, as his watchful guardian wrote, “a good economist”; the same guardian thought this extremely opportune, since “Bona Parte,” with all Europe under his heel, was making it lively for the fortunate islands, and forcing them to levy a tax of 10% on incomes.  “This tax,” writes the indignant banker, “is one of the many blessed fruits of the French Revolution, and of the horrible tyranny and perfidy of their rascally Emperor.”

Not long did Tom remain in England.  Soon he was off with his regiment to Sicily, at this period garrisoned by British troops, and saved by a strip of inviolate sea from the grasp of the master of Italy.  The sojourn in Sicily must have been dull.  He was stationed at Syracuse, but his school training had not gone deep enough to interest him in Thucydides’s marvellous story of the siege of that place or in the antiquities of Sicily.  The chief surviving record of his sojourn in Sicily is an account from his washerwoman, “Mrs. De Lass,” dated at Syracuse the 8th of March, 1809.  His distaste for the army was now complete.  His sister Polly had ended her school days and, by a fortunate circumstance, had gone out to Canada “under the protection of Sir William Johnstone’s lady” and to Canada Tom was himself resolved to go.  Early in 1810, he was back in Edinburgh, taking a few weeks’ holiday with the Kers, resolved to go on half pay at once, if possible, or, failing this, to sell out, and after a delay of fourteen or fifteen months, to go home to Murray Bay.  The intervening time he intended to spend in the study of farming; he had