dental. He was well-born and well-bred, had had some quarrel with his friends, and actuated by boyish, high-spirited impulse, had run away from them, and was sowing his wild oats in a different fashion to that usually followed by young fellows of his class. Now he has returned home again, has been received by his people, and resumed his proper position. Would they," said Madge, with a sad smile, "would they so gladly have welcomed the return of the prodigal, if he had brought back with him. as his wife a stage-player, somewhat older than himself, whose family and whose antecedents were alike unknown? I think not. If I had ever for an instant been doubtful of the wisdom of the decision which I then made, the news thus brought would have settled it! Just and merciful to us both was that decision; merciful more especially to him, though bitterly hard to bear at the time, and Gerald, as it would seem from Rose's innocent account of his behaviour at the news, even now scarcely acquiesces in it. Come in!" These last words were spoken in answer to a knock at the door. Enter Captain Cleethorpe, carefully dressed, as befits a man particular about his appearance, who is going to call upon a pretty woman, and with his best manner, which is frank without being careless, and familiar without being impertinent. "Good morning, Mrs. Pickering. Don't let me disturb you," he adds, waving his cane jauntily, and pointing to the letter, which Madge still holds in her hand. "You don't disturb me in the least, Captain Cleethorpe," replied Madge; "I have already read this letter twice through." "The writer ought to be proud to command so much of Mrs. Pickering's time and attention," said Captain Cleethorpe, with old-fashioned gallantry. "The writer is an acquaintance of yours, my sister." "What, pretty Miss Rose; and how is she getting on among the dials and discs, and all the wonderful telegraphic apparatus in London ?" "She is very well, and writes in excellent spirits." "That's right; she was far too clever to waste her life in a dull provincial town." "That's scarcely complimentary to present company, is it, Captain Cleethorpe ?" said Madge, with a smile. "My dear Mrs. Pickering, your duties lay in a different sphere, one which, in my opinion, is more important and more re sponsible than your sister's. See how wonderfully it has all turned out! There is no other woman in the world whom Mr. Drage would have intrusted with the charge of his little child; there is no other woman, of my acquaintance, whom I would conscientiously recommend to Sir Geoffry Heriot to fill the position about which I spoke to you the other day." "You are very kind, Captain Cleethorpe," said Madge. "No, I am only very frank," said the captain; "and, by the way, I want your definite reply to my proposal. I ought to write to-night, or to-morrow the latest." "I am afraid I must ask you to give me till to-morrow; my own feeling is strongly to say yes, but I have not yet seen Mr. Drage since his return, and I am so much indebted to him that I should not think of deciding upon such an important matter without his advice and approval.” "Not yet seen Mr. Drage ?" said Cleethorpe; "that's strange, he was at the Bungalow last night, when we talked the matter fully out. To be sure," he said, after a minute's consideration, "I recollect I was the only person who spoke, and Captain Norman, a friend of mine, who is staying with me, joined in the conversation, so that I did not think the padre had any oppor tunity of definitely expressing his opinion." "He sent me a line saying that he would call upon me this morning, so that I shall be sure to see him.” "And within the next five minutes," said Cleethorpe, who was standing by the window, "for there he is, crossing the road, and just about to mount the steps; there is no mistaking his figure anywhere. I will not intrude upon you any longer, Mrs. Pickering, but will call upon you morrow morning, about this time, for your final decision; now adieu." to And Captain Cleethorpe took Mrs. Pickcring's hand, bent over it, and disappeared. From the window Madge saw the meeting between her late visitor and Mr. Drage. The latter had his back towards her, but Madge noticed him make an af firmative motion with his head as the captain pointed towards her house. Then she moved away, and shortly afterwards she heard the well-known, painfully slow footstep, and hard hacking cough, echo on the staircase outside. Then came a knock at the door, followed immediately by Mr. Drage's entrance. A tall, thin man, Mr. Drage, with high shoulders and narrow chest. What little וי hair he had was light in colour, and brushed off his high forehead. His features were clear cut and regular, but his grey eyes were deep sunken in his head, his close-shaven cheeks were hollow and wan, and he endeavoured in vain to hide with his long lean hand the nervous twitching of his thin dry lips. He was dressed in severest clerical costume, all in black, and, in lieu of neckcloth or collar, wore a clearstarched muslin band round his throat. A fine head his, of the ascetic intellectual type, wanting but the tonsure and the cowl to complete its outward resemblance to one of those zealot monks, whom Domenichino loved to paint. And assuredly in no monk was ever to be found a greater combination of selflessness, humility, and zeal, than animated the sickly frame of Onesiphorus Drage! A bright hectic spot rose on either cheek as Madge advanced to greet him. "I am so glad to see you back again, Mr. Drage," she said, giving him her hand; you have been away a long time, but your health is much improved, I trust ?" 66 "I am better, much better," said Mr. Drage, after a pause; "but those steps outside, and the steep bank, are a little trying to me. I have breath enough left, however, dear Mrs. Pickering, to thank you for the care you have taken of little Bertha during my absence, and the wonderful improvement you have effected in her." They were seated by this time, she in the chair she had been occupying by the table in the window, he facing her at a little distance. "Bertha is an apt pupil, and a very good child," said Madge, with some little constraint, as though the subject just introduced would probably lead to discussion which she was desirous of avoiding. "You arrived the night before last, Mr. Drage ?" 'Yes, I fully intended calling on you yesterday, but I was a little overcome with fatigue after my journey; and, besides, I found a letter from Captain Cleethorpe awaiting me, a letter which affected you, and demanded a certain amount of deliberation on my part." Rocks a-head showing themselves again, and now scarcely any chance of steering away from them! "From Captain Cleethorpe ?" repeated Madge; "oh, yes." "In it Captain Cleethorpe informed me -addressing me, he was pleased to say, and rightly, as one who had a particular interest in your welfare-that he had just submitted to you a proposition, which he thought it would be greatly for your advantage to accept. You follow me?" asked Mr. Drage, looking at her earnestly, and nervously passing his hand across his brow. "Oh, yes," said Madge, "it is quite correct. I heard from Captain Cleethorpe some days since." "Exactly," said Mr. Drage. "I did not quite understand the details of the proposed arrangement from Captain Cleethorpe's letter, and as it was an important matter to me"-the hectic spots flushed out on his cheek again, and he had to pause a moment before he continued-" as it was an important matter to me, I thought it better to see him and talk it out, before I came to you. Accordingly, I called upon him last night." "Yes," said Madge, "so Captain Cleethorpe told me. He was here just now." There was a pause for a few minutes, and then Mr. Drage said, with hesitating voice and strange manner: "It was very good of Captain Cleethorpe to ask my opinion on this question. It has given me a little time to think, and— not that I know that the blow would have been less fatal if it had come upon me unawares. See," he said, rising to his feet, but bending over her as he leaned across the table at which she sat-" see," he said, speaking in a low tone, but very rapidly, "if you go from me, I die!" Madge started, and looked up at him in affright. 'You-you must not speak to me like that," she said. "And why not," he continued, "when what I say to you is the truth? Ever since I have been away I have been pursued with this one same idea, the hope of making you my wife. I have striven against it, fought with it, but in vain. Each simple letter written by you, telling only of the child's doings and progress, has shown me how completely you were fitted to guide her in her future life, to cheer and comfort what remains to me of mine. On every side I find, unsought, She paused a moment, and then said: "You know nothing of me, nor of my former life. Before I married I was-I was an actress." He started back, and clutched the table tightly. "An actress!" he repeated. "But you were good and virtuous, I am sure; you could not have been otherwise. Is there no other reason ?" "Yes," she said, very quietly, "there is. I will tell it you now, for after what you have said to me you deserve to know it, though when I lay on my death-bed, as you and I thought when you first knew me, I would never have suffered it to pass my lips. I am no widow, but a deserted wife. My husband is alive." tively by their American opponents. Our tactics were slow and complicated compared with those of Prussia, which then, as now, was esteemed the model of military perfection. In the midst of these doubts and perplexities, arose the old wolf-cry of "the French are coming," and the spirit of the nation was thoroughly aroused. `Additional regiments were raised; the militia was called out; large bodies of troops were ordered to be put under canvas in the southern and south-eastern districts; reviews and military displays were the order of the day. It has appeared to the writer of this paper that a few scraps of military intelligence of "news from the camps"selected from the public journals of this now forgotten time, might prove amusing and suggestive to readers of our own day. It may be here observed that the practice of placing large bodies of troops in camps during the summer season, was more common in the early part of the seventeenth century than it has been of later years. Blackheath, and other open spaces around London, Barham Downs, near Canterbury, Shirley Common (Southampton), Salisbury Plain, and certain parts of the Isle of Wight, were the sites of large encampments during the reigns of the first and second Georges. Upon Coxheath, near Maidstone, lay twelve thousand men-guards, line, and artilleryof the Hanoverian army, during their brief sojourn in England, in the year 1756. At the same period, nine regiments and a train of artillery-in all nine thousand men-belonging to the army of the Electorate of Hesse-Cassel, were under canvas about a mile from Winchester, upon the left of the Basingstoke road. Large encampments of English line troops were also formed at Sherborne, in Dorsetshire, and at Chatham. But as the British arms triumphed abroad, these demonstrations at home became less frequent, and at the peace of 1763, they were discontinued altogether. Hence the NINETY-THREE years ago, in the early summer camps of 1778 were as much obsummer time of 1778, there was a pro-jects of public curiosity as are the "autumn digious fuss in the English military world. manoeuvres" of to-day. The conduct of the war in America had given rise, in many quarters, to a vague, uneasy feeling that our army was not what it should be; that it was unsafe to rely, exclusively, upon the prestige of past successes on the traditional glories of Minden and Quebec, of Belleisle, Louisburg, and the Havannah. Our officers were oldfashioned in their ideas, our soldiers wholly untrained in the duties of light troops, which were performed, as it were, instinc NEWS FROM THE CAMPS, 1778. At the period of which we write-May, 1778-small encampments, of two to six regiments each, were formed, for the cavalry, at Bury St. Edmunds, Stowmarket, and Salisbury; and for the infantrymilitia as well as regulars-at Chatham, Portsmouth, Winchester, and Plymouth. In addition to these, a corps of about fifteen thousand men, comprising a regiment of dragoons, six regiments of the line, fifteen of militia, and a train of artillery, under command of a veteran officer, General Keppel, was encamped upon Coxheath, an open tract of country situated close to Maidstone, upon the right of the Faversham road, and commanding the road running through Ashford to the south coast; whilst another body of line and militia troops, numbering about nine thousand men, was posted on Warley Common, near Brentwood, in Essex, under command of a General Pierson. The movements of troops were comparatively slow in those days, and the ordinary channels of press intelligence few and restricted. It was some time before the camps were brought into working order, and longer still before intelligence was received from them with regularity by the London papers. At first, in the columns of the latter, we find only vague accounts of the severities of the duties and discipline in the camps-rumours of irregularities in which the rank and file were not the only culprits, of frequent desertions from the newly-formed militia corps, and of a good deal of corporal punishment. By degrees, affairs appear to have shaken down into better trim, and the accounts from the camps became more regular, and more specific in their details. The following is a description of the encampment on Coxheath in the month of July, 1778. an approaching visit from the king, and a removal of the camp to the coast. There were frequent councils of war in the general's tent, consequent upon the arrivals of mounted expresses from London, which must have been sorely tantalising to "our correspondents," inasmuch as they are invariably obliged to confess their utter inability to discover what transpired on these occasions. We also learn that officers' working-parties, relieved weekly, were engaged in improving the roads between Coxheath and Chatham, and between Tilbury Fort and Warley, so as to bring the camps within two days' easy march of each other. Good beef and mutton were selling at Coxheath at fourpence per pound; bacon, sixpence; Cheshire cheese, fourpence; fresh butter, eightpence per pound; peas and beans at twopence per peck. There is no fresh water within a mile of the camp, so that all the water required for use is fetched in tin camp-kettles. Respecting the Essex camp, we are told that the objections often urged against holiday-camps, to wit, that they are scenes of idleness and dissipation, are not applicable to Warley. The men rise at five A.M., and are often under arms until noon. When there is no evening parade, they are employed during the remainder of the day in clearing the common, hitherto a mass of almost impenetrable furze. A correspondent sends an account of a trip to Warley. He describes the road from London as thronged with holidayseekers, all of them, like true Londoners, displaying a keenly appreciative enjoyment of the combined delights of an outing and an anticipated military show. All the wayside inns were crowded with travellers, doing ample justice to the liberal supplies of cold provisions prepared for them. The proximity of the camp could be detected at a distance of several miles by the abundance of newly-washed linen lying out to dry, giving to the neighbouring country the appearance of a vast bleaching-field. The camp is situated to the south of, and nearly fronting, the village of Loose. It forms a straight line, upwards of three miles in length, and nearly half a mile in breadth. At the head of each regiment are two field-pieces, with three ammunition waggons. The head of each militia corps is also marked by a silken flag bearing the county arms. The sergeants' tents are in front of each regiment; the privates' in lines forming streets; and the officers' marquees in the centre. In each tent are two sergeants, or two corporals and two drummers, or five privates. They are supplied with good clean straw to lie on. In rear of each regiment is an earthen building for cooking purposes, and for stabling the artillery The camp, we are told, is situated upon a and sutlers' horses. In the distance are slope, and the prospect which it affords is a number of dirt hovels for the soldiers' delightful beyond description. wives "to wash and lie in." Several inn out in three divisions, or separate camps, and tavern-keepers have mess-huts for the and between these and around the whole officers close to the camp. Pickets are are huts for the soldiers' wives. These mounted night and day as in front of the huts form streets, which are all named enemy. There are two parades daily--Queen-street, Pye-corner, Glo'ster-lane, morning and evening-and divine service and the like. The number of publicfor all the troops is performed in the open houses is incredible; there cannot be less air on Sundays. Camp "shaves" appear than one hundred and fifty of them. The to have abounded, the most common being soldiers' tents are ranged in rows, with legal punishment for having such money on their persons only, the general orders the coin to be cut and defaced, and the possessors to be marched out of camp under escort, with the drums beating the Rogues' March. The subaltern officers in the camps petition the king for an increase of their field allowance. His majesty expresses his desire to do all he can for them. "Some think the king can grant it by the exercise of the royal prerogative; others assert, and. indeed, 'tis more likely, that the assent of parliament will be needed." the officers' marquees in the centre. Each marquee is surrounded by a small ditch, about a foot deep, a few yards distant from the walls. The spaces between the walls of the marquees and the ditches are turned into little pleasure-gardens, with serpentine gravel-walks. On the borders of the camp are mud huts serving as coffee-houses, where the London papers are taken in. As much as a guinea a day is paid as rent for some of these huts. Hawkers cry beans, peas-pudding, hot pies, and the like, about the streets of the camp. Our correspondent was surprised to find the soldiers so well fed. He saw over three hundred of them in different parts of the camp, cook-out of eight thousand four hundred and ing good beef in gipsy fashion. But of all the curiosities on the common he considered the monstrous size of the ladies' head-dresses the greatest. He observed one lady who was unable to enter a tent. "How the devil should she?" gallantly quoth a gentleman standing by; "her head is as big as a marquee !" Upon the whole, our correspondent thought that the camp was a sight" which could not but warm the heart of an Englishman who felt for the honour of his insulted country." Amongst other items of Warley intelligence we find that the Twenty-fifth Foot is the smartest regiment in camp, but that the Liverpool Blues* are a very complete corps, considering the short time they have been formed. Visitors to the camp are very numerous on Sundays. Upon one of these occasions there were over one hundred and seventy vehicles of different descriptions upon the ground at one time. Drafts of recruits arrive for the militia; the substitutes amongst them are receiving twelve to twenty guineas apiece. In proof that the militia service is not unpopular, we are told that the greater part of the men who have completed their militia engagements have voluntarily joined the regulars, upon condition of receiving their discharge therefrom at the expiration of three years. Jean Delafosse and his wife, camp sutlers, are committed to jail for seducing two soldiers of the Liverpool Blues to enter the service of the King of France. No fewer than four Jews are apprehended by the soldiers in one day, attempting to introduce counterfeit coin to the camp. As there is no The Seventy-ninth Royal Liverpool Regiment of Foot, disbanded in 1784. The present Seventy-ninththe gallant Cameron Highlanders-was not formed until 1793. In the month of September we learn that thirty-four men in camp, only eighty-four were in hospital. Since the formation of the camp, in May, six hundred cases—most of them from the militia-had been treated in hospital. Out of these there had been eighteen deaths. Beef and mutton are selling at threehalfpence to threepence a pound - very prime bits at threepence a pound. Vege tables are proportionately cheap. This was in September. From Coxheath we hear of an attempted improvement in old Brown Bess, which appears to have escaped the notice of military chroniclers. On Sunday, August the 25th, a general inspection of arms and accoutrements took place before divine ser vice. The grenadiers and light infantry had just received new accoutrements, of the pattern issued to the newly-formed light companies of the militia. "The duty of the light infantry," we read, "being very heavy and fatiguing, and requiring the greatest alertness and expedition, which long arms often retard, has occasioned this exchange. The new arms are light and short, and peculiarly adapted for the men's ease and the good of the service. They will do execution at a great distance." We also learn that each regiment of regulars in the camp has a target in front of its paradeground, at which the soldiers practise with ball, morning and evening, small pecuniary rewards being given to the best shots. On September the 4th there arrived in camp large quantities of hay, straw, and corn for the use of the cavalry, which had previously been reduced to one-eighth of their proper allowance. Our correspondent appears specially desirous to impress upon the public that "this arose from real scarcity, and not from any artifice on the part of the contractor or the commander-inchief as has been reported." |