These were the earliest impressions of Gibraltar prevailing among the officers of the Duke’s Own. But our friends eventually changed their tone. By their first contemptuous abstention, they found, in the first place, that they lost all the fun that was going, and, next, that, although the sport was second-rate, they could not excel in it even when they tried. One or two of the Duke’s Own, who were said to be in all the secrets of the Dawson and John Scott stables, went in for some of the plates and cups at the autumn meeting, and signally failed in everything. Later on, when the hunting season really began, and they turned out in a body in red coats and the most undeniable tops, to cut everybody down, they were chagrined to find that it was much more difficult to follow than they supposed. Red coats and mahogany tops were nowhere at the end of the first burst. One or two men were completely thrown out; a few tried the breakneck country between ‘the Rivers’ only to crane at length and turn back from the precipices and steep inclines. After that first day the Duke’s Own spoke more respectfully of the Calpe Hunt. By and bye they became less critical in other respects, and at length, when they had been some six months on the Rock, entered as fully into its amusements, and enjoyed them as thoroughly as the oldest stagers in the place. There was one person, however, connected with the Duke’s Own who highly appreciated Gibraltar from the first. Mrs. Cavendish-Diggle found the station extremely to her taste. A bride still in the hey-day of her married life, full of satisfaction at the importance of her position as the commanding officer’s wife, with the attention she thereby received from all the Duke’s Own, Letitia found soldiering, particularly at Gibraltar, everything that could be desired. But what she enjoyed most of all was the chance she now had of bullying the brother who hitherto had had it all his own way at home. Ernest might be the most worthy at Farrington Hall, but in the Duke’s Own he was under Colonel Diggle’s command, and Colonel Diggle was now unquestionably under that of his wife. How the exquisite and self-sufficient Diggle had succumbed was a mystery which will probably remain unexplained till the curtain lectures of the Diggle couple are given to the world. Then it will no doubt transpire that in the exercise of those inquisitorial functions which every wife naturally arrogates to herself, Letitia had come across certain damaging facts connected with the Colonel’s antecedents which put him completely under his partner’s thumb. That Mrs. Diggle would come ere long to command the regiment was already plainly apparent to all, and the fact was not hailed with particular joy in the corps. Petticoat government in a regiment is not the most successful with, nor is it the most palatable to, those most closely concerned. Letitia’s temper was a little too imperious to be pleasant. She made nipping remarks, and snubbed and