Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/158

 Rh paralysis, she went on, and of what she said this is the epitome.

"Suddenly ordered on service (his regiment had taken part in the Sutledj campaign), he, like so many others, had to leave his wife behind, and alone. One they knew had, in the long weariness of those lonely days, wormed himself into her confidence, her affection, had triumphed and remained exultant. On her fell sickness, repentance, confession, death; on her husband, solitude, without even a loving regret to mitigate its bitterness—he remaining unscathed.

"Well, well: and Nemesis? Listen. A January afternoon, a broad expanse of level yellow-green (a crop of wheat and pease; these things ripen then in India), a line of coolies, two Englishmen, gun in hand, away buzz the quail—brrr, brrr,—piff, paff—‘my bird,’ ‘your eye wiped, old fellow,’ ‘hold on, load,’ &c., &c., ‘all right,’ ‘line bandho,’ ‘chulo,’—brrr, brrr,—piff, paff,—piff, paff,—‘Oh, my God!’ and a hurry of feet, and a man down, and blood on the trampled corn, not blood of quail!

"And while men of dark skin hurry away on foot to seek aid, one fair-skinned and fair-haired man, unharmed, bends over another who lies prone in the ripening harvest. The wounded man is very pale, the sound man, with fingers compressing the wound in his companion's thigh, to all appearance very earnest for his welfare. Brown-hued humanity is hurrying hither and thither. The white man, unhurt, watches closely the injury done by his unlucky shot (his uncocked gun had exploded suddenly), a space is left around the twain. Then speaks he who is unscathed.

Bryan, you will never more mislead wife of mine.'

"And he removes his finger from the severed artery.

"And straightway the wounded man, who, with every fibre in his shot-shattered frame has been holding on to life, abjures existence; looks up in his friend's face, sees in it what extinguishes all vitality in him, tries to speak and fails, and in the sudden horror—dies.

"And murder will out? Bon à savoir! Bottega! un gelato di limonada."

He ate his ice, looking just a little pale, for he had excited himself as he went on. We strolled round the Piazza; and then, passing in front of the cathedral and the palace, parted at the corner of the Piazzetta. In a day or two afterwards, the rail rolled me away toward Milan and Turin.

This odd story has since recurred to me, while, at times, I recall scraps of my quondam associate's conversation, which had in them hints of many years spent abroad, and in torrid climes. And again, he had a way of looking at the Austrian troops, whenever he saw them under arms, and a quick appreciation of defects or good points in their tenue or their manœuvres, that had in it a smack of the barrack yard and parade ground.

Had he ever lived in India, I wonder? Was it, perchance, his own story which he had thus half-scoffingly sketched?—who knows? He was just the kind of man whom I should decline to trust, if feeling that I had played him any trick for which he was likely to bear me malice.

too often falls to our lot to be weary, exhausted, nervous, and irritable through over much mental exertion, and the best counter-irritant and relief which we have ever found is the fish-rod, the gun, and the country inn. Fashionable watering-places, heavy hotel bills, and listless promenades, sometimes make one worse instead of better; and besides, they are too expensive, and not sufficiently vigorous. The cheap, simple, and innocent recreations of fishing and shooting bring one into fellowship with nature. The influence of the sun and wind, the fresh air and the bracing breeze, the new sights and the varying objects which every where arrest the eye and strike the senses, form a wholesome and refreshing contrast to rejected manuscripts, half finished articles, and piles of books waiting to be read. The broad and bright expanse of the heavens is a relief from the study ceiling, dim with tobacco smoke; and to eat your bread and cheese with a voracious appetite at the foot of the mountain stream is a healthier meal than a raw mutton chop eaten by the dull embers of a fire which you have forgotten to keep burning.

Returning from an evening walk, in a very dyspeptic condition, we found a note upon the study table, and a glance at the caligraphy showed it to be the hand-writing of a hale and geuerous man, whom we may as well call the Baron, or, to use the mock-heroic style, a baron of high degree. The note was not a cynical criticism from some captious editor, but a hearty invitation to a couple of days with the grouse. To write a grateful acceptance of an invitation so considerately and kindly given, was to fire the imagination with fresh inspiration and new life. Fancy speedily shook the heavy slumber from her wings and roved about in merry flight. The prospect of long shots, the exciting cripple chase, a rapid right and left cleverly dealt, and both birds well brought down; the hopes of heavy game bags, and