means of galling those whom circumstances placed beneath me.  And if he discovered my silly jealousy, he probably considered the fretting me in that sore point of my character as one means of avenging the petty indignities to which I had it in my power to subject him.  Yet an acute friend of mine gave a more harmless, or at least a less offensive, construction to his attentions, which he conceived to be meant for my daughter Julia, though immediately addressed to propitiate the influence of her mother.  This could have been no very flattering or pleasing enterprise on the part of an obscure and nameless young man; but I should not have been offended at this folly as I was at the higher degree of presumption I suspected.  Offended, however, I was, and in a mortal degree.

’A very slight spark will kindle a flame where everything lies open to catch it.  I have absolutely forgot the proximate cause of quarrel, but it was some trifle which occurred at the card-table which occasioned high words and a challenge.  We met in the morning beyond the walls and esplanade of the fortress which I then commanded, on the frontiers of the settlement.  This was arranged for Brown’s safety, had he escaped.  I almost wish he had, though at my own expense; but he fell by the first fire.  We strove to assist him; but some of these looties, a species of native banditti who were always on the watch for prey, poured in upon us.  Archer and I gained our horses with difficulty, and cut our way through them after a hard conflict, in the course of which he received some desperate wounds.  To complete the misfortunes of this miserable day, my wife, who suspected the design with which I left the fortress, had ordered her palanquin to follow me, and was alarmed and almost made prisoner by another troop of these plunderers.  She was quickly released by a party of our cavalry; but I cannot disguise from myself that the incidents of this fatal morning gave a severe shock to health already delicate.  The confession of Archer, who thought himself dying, that he had invented some circumstances, and for his purposes put the worst construction upon others, and the full explanation and exchange of forgiveness with me which this produced, could not check the progress of her disorder.  She died within about eight months after this incident, bequeathing me only the girl of whom Mrs. Mervyn is so good as to undertake the temporary charge.  Julia was also extremely ill; so much so that I was induced to throw up my command and return to Europe, where her native air, time, and the novelty of the scenes around her have contributed to dissipate her dejection and restore her health.

’Now that you know my story, you will no longer ask me the reason of my melancholy, but permit me to brood upon it as I may.  There is, surely, in the above narrative enough to embitter, though not to poison, the chalice which the fortune and fame you so often mention had prepared to regale my years of retirement.