THE DESERTER.

Ir was with a heavy heart that Joe joined his quondam friends of the form yesterday outside, and the journey to their first destination was performed in cheerless silence, for Joe's friends did not seem in much lighter spirits than himself. This destination was Ashbourne, a distance from Alstonfield of but a few miles, the district depôt of the recruiting service for the eighth regiment of foot. Arrived here, it was not long before Joe had a taste of military humiliation, in a visit for examination to the surgeon. The humiliation by which he had been trapped into the service was but the preparative for the life that was to follow. That life had now commenced, and the medical examination was the first step therein.

There were three candidates, and they were before the surgeon and the sergeant. They had to strip, and they severally underwent the tapping and the probing, and the poking of the surgeon's fingers, and the ordeal of an interrogatory as to their habits and previous manner of life, blushing the while the deep crimson of shame, at an exposure which, in a civilized and well-regulated mind, is insult and indignity, because it is unnecessary.

This examination by the surgeon, is to enable the military officials of the government to judge whethe

the man is a bargain at a shilling a-day, and can be likened only to the examination that a butcher or a horse-dealer would be required to make by a gentleman, before his purchase of a fat sheep or a useful hack.

This act of initiation over, and Joe pronounced a safe investment, he was not many days before he found himself in Derby, at head-quarters, and under the active superintendance of the drill-corporal. His time was pretty well occupied in learning the mysteries of right faces and left faces, left half-faces and right about faces, right and left shoulders forward, marchings, quick marchings, and double quick marchings, dressings by the right or left, forming two deep, taking open order, making eschalon movements, advancing by files or in lines, forming squares, and the sundry other scientific manœuvres of the field; but with all his employment he often thought of Lizzy and the children at home. Barrack life was new to him, and not at all to his taste. He had been used to the simple society of his fellows at home, or the affection of his family, and here he was forced into the companionship of vicious and profane men. The rooms were common to the drunkard and the swearer, as they were to the sober and virtuous. Husbands and wives undressed and slept in the same room with others. Decency was outraged, morality almost scorned, and Joe loved his wife too well to think for a moment of submitting her to such trials, if they could possibly be avoided. He often wrote

spare

letters in his hours to comfort all at home, and to enclose the scanty pittance he could save to supply their wants. He told of the wretchedness of his company, and the depravity in a barrack, to urge Lizzy not to think of embracing such a life; and he received Lizzy's laboriously written notes in return, blotted with tears, but cheering him always to hope.

These simple reminders of the world without— messengers from his loved home, were at first Joe's only solace; they were like the bright beams of the moon breaking from behind a cloud upon the wanderer, and telling him that night was not always dark! But the running stream will wear the roughest stone. Joe's heart was not of adamant to resist the influence of surrounding circumstances, and at last he learned to bear with the vices of his comrades, not as good pleasantries, but as evils, existing, to be endured. He was settled, and his life of dull monotony continued for some time. Two years found him still a soldier, and might have found him perhaps a happier man, if he had not had a wife, a family, and a home, which had depended upon his toil and care for its support. Two years found him a soldier still, without any change of condition save a move from one barrack to another, the barter of one dreariness for another; but two years worked their changes in his home-two years marked forcibly their course upon the heart and on the face of Lizzy.

Poor girl! on the sunny morning when she had

accepted Joe's name, and embraced Joe's fate for her own in simplicity and faith, could she but have dreamt of the thorny path before her, she would have shrunk with terror and despair from the encounter; but she was now too far upon the road for retreat, and when the clouds of misfortune gathered round her she had others to care for, and in her love for them was courage, the courage of a mother, whose soul abides no longer in herself, but in her children!

She could not part from Joe without laceration to her heart. The closing door seemed to shut her in a dark wilderness of death, and his parting footsteps sounded like the last thrilling cadences of the music of hope! Her heart-strings were strained, and their melody was gone; their discord rived her soul, and she could but weep when she would have died. The sorrow of her cold widowhood however did gradually settle into placid melancholy, and then she began to think of the future. Long and anxious consultations were held between her mother and herself upon their fast approaching destitution. Baby was very sickly, and the little store that Joe had left at their command was grown so very small that the price of another day's bread would exhaust it. But unheeding time brought round that day, and it was with a heavy heart, a tearful eye, and a mute appeal to the bounty of Providence against the bitter necessity that compelled her to sacrifice the wants of her sick infant to the wants of her strong son, her mother,

and herself, that poor Lizzy went down the village to buy the last loaf. Fortunately whilst she was out upon this errand, a brilliant thought possessed old granny at home, and she began to bustle about to execute the thought as soon as she had it.

The old woman put on her bonnet, and away she hobbled with "baby" to the doctor. She told the doctor the sad story of their woes, of their plight at home, begged some relief for the ailing child, and did her work so well that she returned to Lizzy a happy woman. She had succeeded in interesting the doctor and his wife so far in Lizzy's behalf, that a substantial looking half-a-crown was sent to her, medicine for baby was supplied, and Lizzy was to call round during the day herself to obtain some needlework the lady could give her. The doctor had attended Lizzy, and knew her husband as an honest and industrious young man; he was sorry to hear of the disastrous change at Joe's home, and being of a benevolent disposition, he hastened to minister comfort to the distresses of the poor woman whom he had before visited as an humble patient for a fee. Lizzy went up in the course of the day to the doctor's house, and with a thankful heart received the work prepared for her, which in due time she finished and returned. She had the benefit of the lady's recommendation, and she was able to procure work for some time, which kept her hands employed, and scantily supplied the little wants of her home, and it seemed like a ghastly gleam of sunshine through the darkening cloud.