stroke on the drum sank deeper in my heart.
I however marched to the grave: but when I heard the earth rattle on the
coffin of him, whom the day before I had beheld in the pride of health;
surrounded with honour; whose words the oldest officers listened to with
respect, and whose presence could animate and lead his men to the
greatest dangers, then bereft of life, and hurried to the dust--to think
of his wife--his children!--My heart already swelled with anguish to the
utmost, could bear no more--I threw myself in the half-filled grave--in
bitter terms lamented his untimely fate, and franticly accused the hand
of Providence, that had not shielded him from the stroke of death! In
vain my fellow-soldiers endeavoured to recall me to reason, to arouse me
to a sense of apprehended danger from the scouts of the enemy: I was
insensible to all but the remembrance of my master! At last they tore me
from the sacred spot, and hurried me back to the battery, where I was
suffered unmolested to indulge in my grief.

"Some days after, the General sent for me; he praised my honest
affection, as he termed it, for my deceased master, and would have
received me into his own service; but, finding me averse to the
proposal, consented to my bearing the intelligence of the Colonel's
death to my Lady. The property belonging to my master was therefore
entrusted to my care, and I once more returned to Wales; when I found an
account of his death had reached his wife by means of the public papers.
She bore her loss with that meek resignation which marked her character,
and, being then destitute of other support than her pension, determined,
for the sake of her children, to humble herself before their stern
grand-sire, and entreat his pity and protection. But his heart was too
obdurate to yield to the orphan's or widow's tears; and that forgiveness
he had refused to his own child, he vowed never to extend to hers.

"She then applied to his sons, my late master's brothers, the eldest of
whom had a very large fortune, which he inherited from a relation: but
they, like the old gentleman, were deaf to her claim of relief or
protection; their pride of blood, indeed, would not let them stoop to
acknowledge the poor descendants of an obscure country clergyman.

"My Lady returned to Sir James, who, on being informed of her
unsuccessful application, said--'It is not more, Mrs. Booyers, than I
expected from the well-known character of his Lordship and his