ensuing month for Halifax, to relieve the 99th.”  While it did not take a moment’s consideration to show me that though the regiment there mentioned was the one I belonged to, I could have no possible interest in the announcement; it never coming into my calculation that I should submit to such expatriation; yet it gave me a salutary warning that there was no time to be lost in making my application for leave, which, once obtained, I should have ample time to manage an exchange into another corps.  The wonderful revolution a few days had effected in all my tastes and desires, did not escape me at this moment.  But a week or two before and I should have regarded an order for foreign service as anything rather than unpleasant—­now the thought was insupportable.  Then there would have been some charm to me in the very novelty of the locale, and the indulgence of that vagrant spirit I have ever possessed; for, like Justice Woodcock, “I certainly should have been a vagabond if Providence had not made me a justice of the peace”—­now, I could not even contemplate the thing as possible; and would have actually refused the command of a regiment, if the condition of its acceptance were to sail for the colonies.

Besides, I tried—­and how ingenious is self-deception—­I tried to find arguments in support of my determination totally different from the reasons which governed me.  I affected to fear climate, and to dread the effect of the tropics upon my health.  It may do very well, thought I, for men totally destitute of better prospects; with neither talent, influence or powerful connexion, to roast their cheeks at Sierra Leone, or suck a sugar-cane at St. Lucia.  But that you, Harry Lorrequer, should waste your sweetness upon planters’ daughters—­that have only to be known, to have the world at your feet!  The thing is absurd, and not to be thought of!  Yes, said I half aloud—­we read in the army list, that Major A. is appointed to the 50th, and Capt.  B. to the 12th; but how much more near the truth would it be, to say—­“That His Majesty, in consideration of the distinguished services of the one, has been graciously pleased to appoint him to—­a case of blue and collapsed cholera, in India; and also, for the bravery and gallant conduct of the other, in his late affair with the ‘How-dow-dallah Indians,’ has promoted him to the—­yellow fever now devastating and desolating Jamaica.”  How far my zeal for the service might have carried me on this point, I know not; for I was speedily aroused from my musings by the loud tramp of feet upon the stairs, and the sound of many well-known voices of my brother officers, who were coming to visit me.

“So, Harry, my boy,” said the fat major as he entered; “is it true we are not to have the pleasure of your company to Jamaica this time?”

“He prefers a pale face, it seems, to a black one; and certainly, with thirty thousand in the same scale, the taste is excusable.”

“But, Lorrequer,” said a third, “we heard that you had canvassed the county on the Callonby interest.  Why, man, where do you mean to pull up?”