THE DEMON SHIP, &C.
I was the only son of a widowed mother, who, though far from affluent, was not pennyless;—you will naturally suppose, therefore, I was a most troublesome, disagreeable, spoiled child. Such I might have been, but for the continual drawback on all my early gratifieations, whieh my maternal home presented, in the shape of an old dowager countess, a forty-ninth cousin of my mother's. Whatever I was doing, wherever I was going, there was she reproving, rebuking, exhorting, and all to save me from idling, or drowning, or quarrelling, or straying, or a hundred etceteras. I grew up, went to school, to eollege—finally, into the army, and with it to Ireland; and had the satisfaetion, at five-and-twenty, to hear the dowager say I was good for nothing. She was of a somewhat malicious disposition, and perhaps I did not well to make her my enemy. At this time I had the offer of a good military appointment to India, and yet I hesitated to aceept it. There was in my native village a retired Seoteh offieer, for whom I had conceived a strong attaehment. His daughter I had known and loved from childhood, and when this gave place to womanhood, my affection ehanged in kind while it strengthened in degree. Margaret Cameron was at this period seventeen, and, eonsequently, eight years my junior. She was young, beautiful, and spoiled by a doating parent—yet I saw in her a fine natural disposition, and the seeds of many noble qualities. To both father and daughter I openly unfolded my affection. Captain Cameron, naturally, pleaded the youth of his daughter. Margaret laughed at the idea of my even entertaining a thought of her, and declared she would as soon think of marrying an elder brother as myself. I listened to her assertions with profound silence, scorned to whine and plead my cause, bowed with an air of haughty resignation, and left her.
When next I saw Margaret I was in a travelling dress at her father's residence. I found her alone in the garden, occupied in watering her flowers. 'I am come, Margaret,' I said, 'to bid you farewell.'—'Why, where are you going?'—'To London, to sea, to India.'—'Nonsense!'—'You always think there is nonsense in truth; every thing that is serious to is a jest to you'—'Complementary this morning.'—'Adieu, Margaret; may you retain through life the same heartlessness of disposition. It will preserve you from many a pang that might reach a more sensitive bosom.'—'You do my strength of mind infinite honour. Every girl
