As the night wore on, I wrapped myself in my cloak and lay down beneath the bulwark. The whole of my past life came in review before me, and I thought over my first meeting with Lucy Dashwood; the thrill of boyish admiration gliding into love; the hopes, the fears, that stirred my heart; the firm resolve to merit her affection, which made me a soldier. Alas, how little thought she of him to whose whole life she had been a guide-star and a beacon! And as I thought over the hard-fought fields, the long, fatiguing marches, the nights around the watch-fires, and felt how, in the whirl and enthusiasm of a soldier’s life, the cares and sorrows of every day existence are forgotten, I shuddered to reflect upon the career that might now open before me. To abandon, perhaps forever, the glorious path I had been pursuing for a life of indolence and weariness, while my name, that had already, by the chance of some fortunate circumstances, begun to be mentioned with a testimony of approval, should be lost in oblivion or remembered but as that of one whose early promise was not borne out by the deeds of his manhood. As day broke, overcome by watching, I slept, but was soon awoke by the stir and bustle around me. The breeze had freshened, and we were running under a reefed mainsail and foresail; and as the little craft bounded above the blue water, the white foam crested above her prow, and ran in boiling rivulets along towards the after-deck. The tramp of the seamen, the hoarse voice of the captain, the shrill cry of the sea-birds, betokened, however, nothing of dread or danger; and listlessly I leaned upon my elbow and asked what was going forward. “Nothing, sir; only making ready to drop our anchor.” “Are we so near shore, then?” said I. “You’ve only to round that point to windward, and have a clear run into Cork harbor.” I sprang at once to my legs. The land-fog prevented my seeing anything whatever, but I thought that in the breeze, fresh and balmy as it blew, I could feel the wind off shore. “At last,” said I,--“at last!” as I stepped into the little wherry which shot alongside of us, and we glided into the still basin of Cove. How I remember every white-walled cottage, and the beetling cliffs, and that bold headland beside which the valley opens, with its dark-green woods, and then Spike Island. And what a stir is yonder, early as it is; the men-of-war tenders seem alive with people, while still the little village is sunk in slumber, not a smoke-wreath rising from its silent hearths. Every plash of the oars in the calm water as I neared the land, every chance word of the bronzed and hardy fisherman, told upon my heart. I felt it was my home. “Isn’t it beautiful, sir? Isn’t it illigant?” said a voice behind me, which there could be little doubt in my detecting, although I had not seen the individual since I left England. “Is not what beautiful?” replied I, rather harshly, at the interruption of my own thoughts.