I shall not weary you with any details of the next five years of his military life, of his peace campaigns, and marches from one town to another. But his track was marked with mischief wherever he went. He had several times, from his expensive mode of living, been obliged to appeal to his uncle for assistance, which was always rendered, accompanied, of course, by long and ineffectual lectures on the necessity of reformation. But the old man was flattered at his nephew's popularity, and pleased with his varied powers and accomplishments; by plausible representations, too, he was convinced that the irregularities which occasionally reached even his ears, were but the exuberance of youth, and the effervescence of a high spirit. Latterly, however, when the applications for money became more frequent, and the rumours of his dissipated life more numerous and authentic, the Squire, after having discharged all existing debts, communicated his determination to limit his nephew strictly within the allowance for the future, and to refuse to meet any further liabilities. Cautious, cool-headed, and able as Meynell was, he was wanting in that self-command necessary to alter his mode of life; his expensive habits and vices had, through long indulgence, become almost necessaries of existence. With his eyes fully open to his danger, he still kept on in the dark path that led to the ruin to which he had ruthlessly consigned many an other, supported the while by a vague hope that some lucky chance would turn up to carry him through his difficulties. Tradesmen became pressing with their accounts,--he drew bills on his agent, renewed these when they became due, and drew others. This could not last long; the value of his commission was soon mortgaged; he borrowed money of advertising bill-discounters at enormous interest, and, in short, by the summer of 1834, Henry Meynell was a ruined man.