d for more than to see any city but
Berlin, and should be delighted to be free of the odious military
service. Indeed, I thought, from his splendour of appearance, the
knickknacks about the room, the gilded carriage in the remise, that my
uncle was a man of vast property; and that he would purchase a dozen,
nay, a whole regiment of substitutes, in order to restore me to freedom.

But I was mistaken in my calculations regarding him, as his history of
himself speedily showed me. 'I have been beaten about the world,' said
he, 'ever since the year 1742, when my brother your father (and Heaven
forgive him) cut my family estate from under my heels, by turning
heretic, in order to marry that scold of a mother of yours. Well, let
bygones be bygones. 'Tis probable that I should have run through the
little property as he did in my place, and I should have had to begin
a year or two later the life I have been leading ever since I was
compelled to leave Ireland. My lad, I have been in every service;
and, between ourselves, owe money in every capital in Europe. I made a
campaign or two with the Pandours under Austrian Trenck. I was captain
in the Guard of His Holiness the Pope, I made the campaign of Scotland
with the Prince of Wales--a bad fellow, my dear, caring more for
his mistress and his brandy-bottle than for the crowns of the three
kingdoms. I have served in Spain and in Piedmont; but I have been a
rolling stone, my good fellow. Play--play has been my ruin; that and
beauty' (here he gave a leer which made him, I must confess, look
anything but handsome; besides, his rouged cheeks were all beslobbered
with the tears which he had shed on receiving me). 'The women have made
a fool of me, my dear Redmond. I am a soft-hearted creature, and this
minute, at sixty-two, have no more command of myself than when Peggy
O'Dwyer made a fool of me at sixteen.'

''Faith sir,' says I, laughing, 'I think it runs in the family!' and
described to him, much to his amusement, my romantic passion for my
cousin, Nora Brady. He resumed his narrative.

'The cards now are my only livelihood. Sometimes I am in luck, and then
I lay out my money in these trinkets you see. It's property, look you,
Redmond; and the only way I have found of keeping a little about me.
When the luck goes against me, why, my dear, my diamonds go to the
pawnbrokers, and I wear paste. Friend Moses the goldsmith will pay me a
visit this very day; for the chances have been again