ese two young men will play the foremost parts in the following
pages, I will endeavour to explain, in as few words as possible, who
each of them was. As Bertram seems to have been the favourite with
fortune, I will begin with him.

His father at the time alluded to was still alive, but his son George
had seen but little of him. Sir Lionel Bertram had been a soldier
of fortune, which generally, I believe, means a soldier without a
fortune, and in that capacity he was still in some sort fighting his
country's battles. At the present moment he held a quasi-military
position in Persia, where he had been for the last five years, and
previously to that he had served in Canada, India, the Cape of Good
Hope, and on some special mission at Monte Video. He had, therefore,
seen a good deal of the world; but very little of his only child.
Mrs. Bertram, George's mother, had died early in life, and Mr.
(afterwards Sir Lionel) Bertram had roamed the world free from all
encumbrances.

The Rev. Arthur Wilkinson, vicar of Hurst Staple, on the borders
of Hampshire and Berkshire, had married a first-cousin of Mrs.
Bertram's; and when young George Bertram, at the age of nine, was
tossing about the world rather in want of a fixed home, Mr. Wilkinson
undertook to give him that home, and to educate him with his own
eldest child till they should both be sent to some school. For
three years George Bertram lived at Hurst Staple, and was educated
accordingly. During these years he used to go annually for one month
to the house of an uncle, who in due time will also be introduced to
the reader; and therefore, not unnaturally, this month was regarded
by the boy as his holidays.

Now, it may as well be explained in this place that Sir Lionel
Bertram, though a very gallant man, and peculiarly well adapted to
do business with outlandish people, had never succumbed to a habit
of punctuality in pecuniary matters. An arrangement had been perhaps
rather named than made, that one hundred and thirty pounds per annum
should be paid for young Bertram's needs; and as this was to include
pocket-money, clothing, and washing, as well as such trifles as the
boy's maintenance and education, perhaps the bargain was not a very
hard one as regarded Sir Lionel. The first seventy-five pounds were
paid; but after that, up to the end of the second year, Mr. Wilkinson
had received no more. As he was a poor man, with six children of his
own, and little besides his livin