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CHAP. VI.

Thanks are undoubtedly due to every man who does his duty in the engagement; but it is the wounded soldier who deserves the reward.'

TOWARDS the cottage of the lake, with Harriet hanging on his arm, Mr. Vernon bent his steps a few mornings after the accident had occurred. A delicacy of sentiment, not uncommon amongst the lower classes of Ireland, having prevented the fisherman and his family from making any inquiries at the parsonage, fearing that by so doing they might be supposed to seek a reward for the very essential service which had been rendered. In what man ner to bestow that reward was a consideration which somewhat perplexed Mr. Vernon, who proposed visiting their humblé

dwelling for the purpose of trying to discover, by observation, some want, or something wished for, which might afford him an opportunity to gratify those poor, yet inestimable, friends, who had positively refused to accept pecuniary compensation.

En chemin faisant, he remarked to his daughter the infinitude of that wisdom which had united man by such indissoluble ties as to often enable him, however lowly, to benefit materially his more exalted • brother of the dust;' the beauty of creation's chain, where each link needs the supporting connexion of the other; and the retaliation of good offices frequently to: be observed, where a trifling assistance, afforded to the most unimportant, has been repaid ten-fold by the person so apparently inconsiderable.

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On their arrival at the cottage they found, seated at the door and busily em-: ployed with her spinning-wheel, its mis

tress; who, at sight of her visitors, uttered an exclamation of pleased surprise and cordial welcome, with a request that they might walk in.

· Mr. Vernon inquired for her husband.

She answered, that being still but weak, she insisted on his remaining as much as possible in the open air; and that she believed he was sitting on a point of the rock, teaching one of the children her alphabet.' Then expressing a hope that Harriet had recovered her fright,' she despatched a child to call his father.

The poor man appeared, looking pale and thin, but his countenance divested of its late cadaverous bue, exhibited particular beauty of feature and expression; his dress was a faded regimental jacket, and on his head he wore a foraging-cap; which military costume Mr. Vernon remarked, and inquired had he been in the army?'

The man replied that he had served

many years; had fought in the Peninsula and at Waterloo; that the battalion to which he had belonged being reduced, he was discharged without a pension, as not having served the full time which entitled him to claim it; that his health had suffered sadly from innumerable hardships; that he had been attacked by typhus fever, and his prize-money being expended during his illness, he must have perished but for the benevolence of the family at the parsonage. He also said that when he was beginning to recover, General Milner took a Lodge in the neighbourhood for six weeks, during which time, becoming ac quainted with his melancholy situation, that gentleman had made interest to have his name placed on the pension-list, by which he was enabled to take the comfortable cottage they now inhabited ; and that the General, on leaving the country, bestowed to him the little boat which had so nearly proved fatal to Harriet, and ob

tained for him from the persons to whom the lake (the finest trout-ground in Ireland) belonged, permission to fish; which he did with success, and, by the sale, lived in comfort, and sent his children to school.

Mr. Vernon congratulated him on his improved circumstances; and perceiving him to be intelligent, put many questions relative to his adventures in the late eventful war, knowing the delight a soldier experiences in the recital of past perils; when Kennedy, encouraged by the interest his auditors evinced, gave a succinct outline of his sufferings, and those of a gentleman to whom he had been servant. He described his master to be brave, generous, and accomplished; lamenting that the necessary reduction in the military department should have deprived the service of an officer so eminently qualified, and for whom he felt an attachment, undiminished by time or absence. This attachment he