Isle now saw an orderly, whom Moodie had
officiously brought up-stairs from the door, and he hurried out to
receive the man's message, and send him off. This done, he hastily
re-entered the room to speak to Lady Mabel. But he was too late! The
bird had flown, and her old Scotch terrier was covering her retreat,
shutting the door of the next room behind her, and spitefully locking
it in L'Isle's face.

At sunrise, the next morning, L'Isle marched his regiment out of
Elvas. Setting his face sternly northward, he never once looked back
on the serried ranks which followed him, until the embattled heights
of La Lippe had hidden Elvas and its surroundings. Turning his back
upon the past, he strove to look but to the future; but at the very
moment of this resolve, memory cheated him, and he caught himself
repeating a line of Lady Mabel's song:

"All else forgotten, War is now my theme."

and the thrilling music of her intonation seemed to swell upon his
ear. He hastily exchanged his quotation for a greater poet's words:

"He that is truly dedicate to war,
Hath no self-love."

If it be possible to forget, he will have ample opportunity, amidst
the crash of armies and the crumbling of an empire, to erase from his
memory Elvas, and its "episode in winter quarters." From the heights
of Traz os Montes, Wellington was now to make an eagle's swoop upon
the north of Spain, and a lion's spring upon the herd, driven into the
basin of Vittoria. The march now begun was to lead thence to the
blood-stained passes of the Pyrennees, to Bayonne, Orthes, and
Toulouse, and later, to Paris, from the field of Waterloo. But who
shall measure, step by step, over conquered enemies and fallen
friends, this long eventful road?

"To die beneath the hoofs of trampling steeds,
That is the lot of heroes upon earth!"

CONCLUSION.

He that commends me to mine own content,
Commends me to the thing I cannot get.
I to the world am like a drop of water,
That in the ocean seeks another drop;
Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,
Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself.

Comedy of Errors.

Three eventful years have passed, and a general peace is giving rest
to exhausted Europe. The war has cut off many a brave man; but it
remained for peace to terminate the military career of a rising
soldier in L'Isle's person; and sad to say, before he was either Major
general or knight o