ic notions, you will
smile at this advice, but I assure you, as your mother, that it will
prove an infallible cure. Never sit in a draught when you can avoid it.
If you ever come under fire, which I trust you never may, be sure to
get behind a house, or a wall, or a stone, if possible; if you cannot do
so, get behind a soldier, one larger than yourself would be preferable
of course, but if you have not the opportunity of doing this, then turn
your side to the enemy, because in that position you are a much narrower
target, and more likely to escape their bullets. I need not caution you
not to run away. I would rather see you, dear boy, in a premature
grave, than hear that you had run away. But you _could not_ run away.
No Childers ever did so--except from school.

"Let the phial of globules which I gave you at parting be your bosom
friends, till their friendship is required in another and a lower
region. They are a sovereign remedy against rheumatism, catarrh,
bronchitis, dyspepsia, lumbago, nervous affections, headaches, loss of
memory, debility, monomania, melancholia, botherolia, theoretica, and,
in short, all the ills that flesh is heir to, if only taken in time."

It struck me, as I folded my mother's letter and that of the editor,
that there never was a man who went into any course of action better
guarded and advised than myself. At the moment when this thought
occurred to me, my friend Nicholas burst into my room in a state of
unusual excitement.

"Come, Jeff," he said, "I'm detailed for another secret duty. People
seem to have inordinate faith in me, for all my duties are secret! Are
you willing to go with me?"

"Go where?" I asked.

"That I may not tell," he replied; "anywhere, or nowhere, or everywhere.
All I can say is, that if you go, it will be to act as surgeon to a
squadron of cavalry. I see you have letters. Good news from home--eh?
What of Bella?"

"Yes" I replied, "good news and good advice--listen."

I reopened the letters and read them aloud.

"Capital!" exclaimed Nicholas, "just the thing for you. No doubt my
expedition will furnish a column and a half, if not more, of
unquestionable facts for the _Scottish Bawbee_. Get ready, my boy; I
start in half-an-hour."

He swung off in the same hearty, reckless manner with which he had
entered; and I immediately set about packing up my surgical instruments
and note-books, and making other preparations for a journey of unknown
extent