Scarcely had the words escaped his lips before the "regulation" spit of his impetuous opponent fell rattling about his ears in startling cotempt of the minor ordinances of "L'Escrime." In another minute the worthless piece of cold iron was snapped in two across the steel gur of his adversary, inflicting in its fracture, however, a deep wound on Williamson's cheek, and, quick as thought, the keen rapier passed through the young soldier's side, and he fell heavily on the grass.

It is almost needless to advert to the painful and perplexing predica ment in which the colonel of the regiment was placed by the occurrences above narrated. On one hand stared him in the face an "article d war," delivering over to the mercies of a court martial every officer who shall give, send, convey, promote, or accept a challenge from or t another officer, or who shall upbraid another for refusing, or for nat giving a challenge, &c.: on the other, the honour of his regiment an profession were at stake; and although the chaplain's solemn pledge favour of Lawrence's courage and character, and his own good opinio convinced the worthy chief that all would eventually be explained to the satisfaction of the corps, still he could not help perceiving that the charitable view was not taken by the majority of the society, and military.

As soon, therefore, as our hero had become convalescent from the fever into which he had been thrown by the agonizing conflict of mind he had undergone, the commanding officer summoned him to his pre sence, and without attempting to shake his resolution of silence, nounced his desire that he should withdraw himself from the station leave of absence until the time he had specified for affording public planation should arrive.

Captain Lawrence bowed, and, his heart bursting with wounded pr and tortured feelings, returned towards his solitary quarters; and as rode on his way, not only was he compelled to observe the faces more than one acquaintance studiously averted, but he noticed that eve the private soldiers of his regiment avoided him, in order that the might escape the necessity of a salute.

The following day found him sailing down the stream of the Ganges. and on the deck of his vessel, side by side with the exile, stood faithful friend, the chaplain.

Other more ordinary circumstances soon began to occupy the atte tion of the quidnunes of -pore, and in less than six weeks af Mr. Fitzgerald's very presentable person had been perforated by ruthless rapier of the young merchant, an event happened which was itself a perfect windfall to the tittle-tattledom of this celebrated inla city, and which-like many other events when discussed by that sharp sighted public, who, in nine cases out of ten, are hood-winked by th really concerned few-found this aforesaid public in what may h vulgarly described as a state of " Who'd have thought it?”

This event was no less than the sudden and simultaneous disappe ance of the generally supposed half-dead subaltern and Miss Gr

Merritch.

"My dear, it can't be, I tell you," insisted the fat and fussy lady of regimental surgeon; "for only yesterday Dr. Drain himself told Mrs Rummage and Miss Smallhopes, in my presence, that Mr. Fitzger was as well as could be expected, but that he had a great deal to 2 through before we should see him again."

"Confound it, my dear fellow," exclaimed Cornet Scrimjaw, of the Bengal Light Cavalry, addressing a circle of his messmates, "the thing is not on the cards-it can't be done for the money-a fellow may be a deuced good fellow, and a deuced fast fellow, and all that; but when he has just been pinked right through the midriff, he cannot run away with a girl, and a girl of any gumption would not run away with him."

The society of -pore were, as I have above hinted, once more in an interesting puzzle. The impenetrable doctor smiled a grim smile, and said nothing, although he looked unutterable satire. All the arguments of the most ingenious or matter-of-fact disputants could not gainsay the physical absence of the two personages, male and female, named in the indictment.

"The displacement of matter is clearly demonstrated,” remarked old Rummage, the pedagogue and public lecturer; "it only remains for us to trace the effect up to the cause."

Time advanced. The 30th of June, the day on which William Lawrence had promised an explanation to his brother officers, and a meeting à l'outrance to Mr. Williamson, was drawing near. The morning of the 28th had scarcely dawned when a carriage drove up to the bungalow rented by the captain. A gentleman advanced in years, a beautiful young woman, and the reverend chaplain, our old acquaintance, alighted from it, whilst Captain Lawrence, the fourth occupant of the vehicle, drove off to the commandant's quarters to report his return.

After a few minutes' conference the worthy colonel ordered a cover for Lawrence at his breakfast table, and, about an hour later, was seen to shake hands heartily with him at the door of his residence. The good old chief having dismissed the morning parade of the regiment, then summoned his officers to a meeting, and laid before them the narrative he had just received from our hero.

The main points of the important, passage in the life of William Lawrence which had so suddenly plunged him into a concatenation of difficulties so distracting to his feelings, were, after all, capable of easy and simple elucidation.

On leaving England to join his regiment, he was engaged to a young lady considerably his superior in fortune, whose guardian obstinately objected to the, in his eyes, unsuitable match; when, one fine day, the fair one, becoming of age, asserted, in affectionate but resolute terms, her independence, and announced her intention to join her betrothed in India, and become his wife.

She laid before the old gentleman a letter from William, in which he represented to her the utter impossibility of his returning to England, when the services of every available soldier were required for the defence of her eastern colonies, and in the most moving terms besought his lady-love to share his pilgrimage rather than submit to the separation which might endure until both their youth and their happiness had suffered ruin and passed away.

Mr. Rivers, the uncle and guardian, was a hale old bachelor of seventy, closely connected with a commercial house in Calcutta, where, in his early youth, he had first wielded the quill, thumbed the ledger, and balanced at the same time his books and his person on the top of a tall office stool.

Affluent beyond his wants, he had no near relative in Europe with

the exception of his dearly-loved niece; and, finding, as usual in such cases, that love was deaf to argument, the kind-hearted old manconfidently expected by his sharp-sighted little ward-not only ceased all opposition, but zealously and warmly entered into her views, at our announcing his readiness to be her companion and escort to India, iv which country, be it added, his early associations had left him a latest but decided yearning.

Alice Rivers had lost both her parents during her childhood, a although at their death her paternal uncle was appointed to her guar dianship, she was brought up by and lived almost entirely with the re tives of her lost mother who was the daughter of a noble house. The most affectionate protectors of her infancy and youth, once assured thr the happiness of their beloved Alice depended on her union with Will |Lawrence, raised no obstacle to its accomplishment. In permitting be however, to accede to his urgent solicitations to join him in the East lrdies, they for many obvious reasons required her to bind him by ap mise to reveal to no one, with the sole exception of the clergyman wh he might select to perform the ceremony on her arrival, nor to sufer transpire through any means which he could control, this most disinte rested resolve of the beautiful and high-born girl to relinquish ho friends, and country, for a distant colony and a husband liable to all t chances and changes of military life, and who had little but his love offer in exchange for all she sacrificed.

This most natural and reasonable stipulation was readily and solem ratified by the happy Lawrence; and the worthy chaplain became t immediate and sole depository of a secret which Lawrence felt to bel not to him, but to be the sacred property of another, and that other t adored and generous-hearted Alice.

forts:

Could, we ask, a high-souled young soldier actuated by keenly ceptible and chivalrous feelings of honour, have been forced by a tous and unlooked-for combination of circumstances into a more paint and perplexing position? Could he deliberately invite nearly cer death when the honest-hearted, trusting, and loving girl, won by prayers, was braving the horrors and dangers of the ocean, suppeted | only by her trust in God, and the hope to end her perils in the ar of him on whom she had bestowed the rich gift of her affection?

On the other hand, how was this same honourable and really bi spirited soldier not merely to slur over without notice a wantonly fered insult, but to recoil from a hostile meeting actually invoked himself in reparation of an intentional and ostentatious affront pas upon him in public?

William Laurence and his staunch friend, the chaplain, were at Cr cutta when Mr. Rivers and his niece arrived. The wedding took p privately at the Presidency, and the party travelled together to

The

-pore, where they arrived in safety as has been narrated. The morning gun had just boomed over the cantonment on the named by the Captain for his encounter with Williamson. was damp and chill, and dense wreaths of fog hung on the palms prickly pears on one side, and the tall reeds of a swamp on the ot framing in a level space of sward, where several figures were seen ployed in the very significant preliminaries of a duel. There we carriage and two or three Arab horses among the trees, with ha dozen native servants, some of whom were already squatted on

ground smoking their kulliauns in sleepy indifference as to the intentions of their English masters.

At length the mist partially lifted itself from the earth, and two individuals, accompanied by a like number, approached and confronted each other in the centre of the open space; and the first beams of the rising sun glanced on the bright blades of a couple of rapiers as they were drawn from their sheaths.

The seconds were in the act of retiring a few paces after having measured and handed the weapons to their principals, when suddenly a heavy trampling sound in the neighbouring jungle was heard, and a huge elephant, carrying a houdah, in which were seated two gentlemen, and urged at a rapid pace by his mahout, stepped into the natural amphitheatre above described, where the young men were on the point of engaging in mortal combat.

"Hold your hands, rash boys!" cried the venerable, but much excited Mr. Rivers, while the tall and slim cooli, looking like a bronze figure of Mercury, quickly unslung and reared the ladder against the side of the docile and now kneeling animal; "hold your hands, at least until I have said my say, and then you may fight it out if you have appetite for it."

The countenance of the swarthy young merchant grew crimson with anger, and he was beginning to bluster out some words about "insolent interference," when the old gentleman cut him short

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"My fighting days are over, my young game cock-if I ever had any, so pray reserve your fire for some worthier object: meanwhile answer me one question as you value your future peace. What, sir, are your Christian and surnames?"

"Lawrence Edward Williamson," was the sullen reply. "I was sure of it," resumed earnestly Mr. Rivers. "Your Christian names," turning to the Captain, "are William Edward Lawrence; and, gentlemen both, the names of your deceased father were those of Captain Lawrence. He was the dear and intimate friend of my youth. I give you the honour of an old man, whose word was never forfeited, that what I have told you is the truth. Spill each other's blood first, if you please, then call on me for positive and incontrovertible proofs of your fraternity-and you shall have them on the spot."

Let the reader imagine the conclusion of our tale. He may find a moral perhaps among its incidents-for a moral may always be gathered from a chapter of life.

SWORN AT HIGHGATE.

IT had been a day of boisterous excitement. The gravity of the sh had been strangely disturbed. We had "crossed the line "in the mo ing, and there had been the usual Saturnalia on deck. Of these, as was returning to India, after a sick furlough, I had been only a spectate but still, when the evening came, and the fun was at an end, I £ sufficiently weary with the heat and excitement, to enjoy a quiet couser» in my own cool cabin.

My companions were, a bottle of "private" claret, and the "ch officer" of the ship. Now this chief officer was an excellent fellow, i think that I never knew a better. His name was Bloxham. He was about eight-and-twenty years of age, with a round, fresh-coloured, but intelligent face; bright, laughing eyes, and the whitest teeth in the world. There was in him a rare union of the best parts of the old 22 the new race of merchant-seamen, that is, he had all the openness an frankness, the seaman-like qualities of the old men, without the coarseness and vulgarity; and he had the more refined and gentleman manners of the new, without their dandyism and effeminacy. He w in my eyes the very pink and perfection of a sailor.

We discussed the incidents of the day, and discoursed upon the charac ter and objects of the Saturnalia, or rather, as we agreed, the Neptuna which we had been witnessing. I have no intention of describing wh has been so often described before. But there is one part of the e mony on which I must say a few words. Before the unhappy neys who has to be initiated into the mysteries of the equator is finally se in the tub of water, which by a merciful dispensation is made to fell on the begriming and befouling operation of the shaving, he is asked the operator if he has been "Sworn at Highgate." Now to be swor Highgate, is to undertake not to do certain things, when you can better, as "never to drink small beer, when you can get strong, (there is always a saving clause) "unless you like small beer better strong." I do not remember all the obligations, though they are! many, named in the recital. But one I have every reason to recole Bloxham, with his smiling face and joyous manner, was talking this part of the ceremony; and when he repeated the words of t Highgate oath, "Never to kiss the maid, when you can kiss t mistress-unless, you like the maid better than the mistress," I d see a significant twinkling in his eyes, which stimulated my curiosity I asked him what he was thinking of, and he said that he "could bely it very possible to like the maid better than the mistress," and I said "At all events," added Bloxham, it often happens that t maid is the better worth kissing of the two."

too.

I could see plainly enough from my friend's manner, that I had got at the bottom of this roguish twinkling of the eye. His whole fa was indeed one bright smile, and there was a world of meaning danc beneath it. I was determined, as sportsmen say, to "unearth" it; said at once, that I should enjoy my claret all the more, if he w impart to it the relish of a good story. Then I took the bottle off! winging tray, filled our glasses, and told him to "leave off nake Faces and begin."

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