ed him to study law,
though not to practice it: in Canada, he thought, there was no lucrative
opening for any one trained in the law unless he was made a judge. Old
Malcolm Fraser, Tom's adviser after his father's death, would have had
him, for safety's sake, adopt a civilian life; he was the last male of
his house and therefore ought not to be exposed to a soldier's dangers.
Tom's Edinburgh friends wished him to become a Writer to the Signet or,
at any rate, to learn something about business since, as a landed
proprietor, he must be a man of affairs. But the youth took the matter
in his own hands. For his father's character and career he had always a
great reverence; soldier's blood was in his veins, and nature had her
way. Tom became a soldier and, when the school days are ended, we find
the boy, not yet eighteen, Lieutenant in the 10th Regiment of Foot.
Fraser wrote to Tom protesting against what he had done and from Maldon
Barracks, in Essex, on April 5th, 1805, Tom answers his godfather's
objections. Perhaps to add solemnity to his argument the old man had
assumed the tone of a valetudinarian and Tom replies: "I would fain hope
you had no reason for saying you would soon follow my dear Father. I
hope God will spare you to us since he has thought proper to take my
Father to Himself. Your loss would be irreparable, I having no other
person to protect my mother and sisters as I have chosen a line of life
in which I may never have the fortune of being near them." In spite of
Fraser's appeal, Tom's resolution to remain in the army was unshaken.

It was an amazing era in Europe and well may Fraser have feared for the
young Lieutenant's safety. While the boy was writing, Napoleon
Bonaparte, with the lustre fresh upon him of a recent gorgeous
coronation at Paris as Emperor of the French, was gathering at Boulogne
a great army and hundreds of small boats with which this army might, he
hoped, be thrown across into England within twenty-four hours. That
country was very nervous but, for some reason, Tom's regiment, instead
of being kept at home to meet the invader, was sent to Gibraltar. Here
he remained inactive while world-shaking events were happening, while
Trafalgar and Austerlitz and Jena were fought, and Pitt stricken with
"the noblest of all sorrows," grief for the seeming ruin of his country,
told those about him to "roll up the map of Europe," and died
heartbroken. Not unnaturally at such a time Gibraltar seemed dull