ritated a father of far milder
character; and he declared, in the most positive terms, that he would
never see Michael's face again. In defiance of my entreaties, and of
the entreaties of his wife, he tore up, in our presence, the will which
provided for Michael's share in the paternal inheritance. Such was the
family position, when the younger son left home for Canada.

"Some months after Andrew's arrival with his regiment at Quebec, he
became acquainted with a woman of great personal attractions, who
came, or said she came, from one of the Southern States of America. She
obtained an immediate influence over him; and she used it to the basest
purpose. You knew the easy, affectionate, trusting nature of the man in
later life--you can imagine how thoughtlessly he acted on the impulse of
his youth. It is useless to dwell on this lamentable part of the story.
He was just twenty-one: he was blindly devoted to a worthless woman;
and she led him on, with merciless cunning, till it was too late to draw
back. In one word, he committed the fatal error of his life: he married
her.

"She had been wise enough in her own interests to dread the influence
of his brother-officers, and to persuade him, up to the period of the
marriage ceremony, to keep the proposed union between them a secret.
She could do this; but she could not provide against the results of
accident. Hardly three months had passed, when a chance disclosure
exposed the life she had led before her marriage. But one alternative
was left to her husband--the alternative of instantly separating from
her.

"The effect of the discovery on the unhappy boy--for a boy in
disposition he still was--may be judged by the event which followed the
exposure. One of Andrew's superior officers--a certain Major Kirke, if
I remember right--found him in his quarters, writing to his father a
confession of the disgraceful truth, with a loaded pistol by his side.
That officer saved the lad's life from his own hand, and hushed up the
scandalous affair by a compromise. The marriage being a perfectly legal
one, and the wife's misconduct prior to the ceremony giving her husband
no claim to his release from her by divorce, it was only possible to
appeal to her sense of her own interests. A handsome annual allowance
was secured to her, on condition that she returned to the place from
which she had come; that she never appeared in England; and that she
ceased to use her husband's name. Other stip