done everything; not for the fresh spirit of youth, eager to taste,
to learn, and to enjoy. A man of your stamp ought to have a wider and
better field,--a sphere wherein his very vitality will have fair play.
Try it; follow it if you can, Butler," said he; "but I'm much mistaken
in you, if you 'll be satisfied to sit down with a station that only
makes you a penny-postman magnified." Very few of us have courage to
bear such a test as this,--to hear the line we are about to take, the
service we are about to enter, the colony we are about to sail for,
disparaged, unmoved.

The unknown has always enough of terror about it without the dark
forebodings of an evil prophet.

"I like Maitland's project better," said Tony, after a long night's
reflection. "At all events, it's the sort of thing to suit _me_. If I
should come to grief, it will be a sad day for poor mother; but the same
might happen to me when carrying a despatch-bag. I think he ought to
have been more explicit, and let me hear for whom I am to fight,
though, perhaps, it does n't much signify. I could fight for any one but
Yankees! I think I 'll say 'done.' This Maitland is a great 'Don;' has,
apparently, fortune and station. It can't be a mistake to sail in the
same boat with _him_. I'll certainly say 'done.'" With this resolve he
jumped out of bed, and wrote the following brief note:--

"Burnside, Tuesday morning.

"Dear Sir,--I'll not take the three days you gave me
to consider your offer; I accept it at once.--Yours truly,

"Tony Butler.

"Norman Maitland, Esq., Lyle Abbey."

"I'll have to write to Skeffy," said he to himself, "and say you may
tell my noble patron that I don't want the messengership, and that when
next I call at the Office I 'll kick Willis for nothing. I don't suppose
that this is the formal way of resigning; but I take it they 'll not
be sorry to be quit of me, and it will spare the two old coves in white
cravats all the trouble of having me plucked at the examination. Poor
Skeffy won't be pleased, though; he was to have 'coached me' in foreign
tongues and the Rule of Three. Well, I 'm glad I 'm in for a line of
life where nobody asks about Colenso's Arithmetic, nor has so much as
heard of Ollendorff's Method. Oh dear! how much happier the world must
have been when people weren't so confoundedly well informed!--so awfully
brimful of all knowledge as they now are! In those pleasant days,
instead of being a bla