bodyguard. He'll sit in the rumble with Thomas.'

'What a shocking figure it is!' said my mother, surveying him through
her glass.

'Time doesn't improve either of us,' said Corny, with the grin of a
demon. Happily the observation was only heard by myself. 'Is it in silk
stockings I'd be trapesing about the roads all night, with the rheumatiz
in the small of my back! Ugh! the Haythina!'

My mother was at length seated in the carriage, with Julia beside
her--the hundred and one petty annoyances to make travelling
uncomfortable, by way of rendering it supportable, around her; Corny had
mounted to his place beside Thomas, who regarded him with a look of as
profound contempt as a sleek, well-fed pointer would confer upon some
mangy mongrel of the roadside; a hurried good-bye from my mother, a
quick, short glance from Julia, a whisper lost in the crash of the
wheels--and they were gone.

CHAPTER L. THE RETREAT FROM BURGOS

Few men have gone through life without passing through certain periods
which, although not marked by positive misfortune, were yet so impressed
by gloom and despondence that their very retrospect is saddening. Happy
it is for us that in after days our memory is but little retentive of
these. We remember the shadows that darkened over the landscape, but we
forget in great part their cause and their duration, and perhaps even
sometimes are disposed to smile at the sources of grief to which long
habit of the world and its ways would have made us callous.

I was almost alone in the world--bereft of fortune, separated
irrevocably from the woman I loved, and by whom I had reason to think my
affection was returned. In that home to which I should have looked for
fondness I found only gloom and misfortune--my mother grown insensible
to everything save some frivolous narrative of her own health; my
father, once high-spirited and freehearted, care-worn, depressed, and
broken; my cousin, my early playfellow, half sweetheart and half sister,
bestowing her heart and affections on one so unworthy of her. All lost
to me--and at a time, too, when the heart is too weak and tender to
stand alone, but must cling to something, or it sinks upon the earth,
crushed and trodden upon.

I looked back upon my past life, and thought over the happy hours I had
spent in the wild west, roaming through its deep valleys and over its
heath-clad mountains. I thought of her my companion through many a long
summer day by the roc