“Love in a cot, with water and a crust, Is--Love forgive us!--cinders, ashes, dust,” it was not much more agreeable in an apothecary’s shop. Not that it had quite come to that yet; he still contrived to maintain the marmalade for breakfast; but not many weeks elapsed ere Sybilla became plainly suspicious that though he might be rich enough in drugs, the money-capital of her husband was well-nigh exhausted. Indeed, she assured herself of the fact by just looking into his desk one morning, privately and with a guilty face. Now the legacy lay vested in his uncle, the Kentish miller; and as a few months before, in a letter which came hoping that John was in good health, as it left him (the miller) at present, he had received much earnest advice against early marriage, John wished to postpone the demand as late as possible. But the darkening horizon, and a few comfortless hints thrown out by the partner of his cares, precipitated intentions; and so he started one bright morning to receive his little fortune, planning its expenditure very solemnly by the way. Drearily, Sybilla threw herself open a sofa as her husband passed out at the door, and, half extended, employed an hour in usefully painting a piece of velvet, and uselessly pondering past, present and future. Drearily, she put aside the daubed stuff, and taking up a newspaper some weeks old, concluded each listlessly-perused paragraph with a yawn, till she came to “Important from India,” and read of a bloody engagement there. How in the cold gray dawn a company of the gallant 292d, and a strong detachment of the gallant 293d, marched to reduce the contumacious Bungumshah. How, when the cold dawn kindled into blazing, blasting noon, and long-enduring men fell here and there, suddenly shot dead from the sun, it was deemed expedient to march over them against the contumacious Bungumshah. How, having mistaken the position of that Indian, they came not up with him by nightfall, for all their marching, and very gladly encamped--the greater portion on the plain, but a small detachment of some hundred men or so in a hollow at a little distance, under Ensign Hope. How, in the night sentinels were struck secretly, the camp penetrated by Indian shadows rather than Indian men, the commander killed in sleep--encampment torn from end to end, encampment channeled from end to end with tumult and blood. Ensign Hope listens in the distant hollow, rises up with his hundred men or so, bears down to the verge of the scene swift and silent, goes blazing into it like an Indian storm, and settles the matter. To the right is a ravine; and as the enemy fly, panic-struck, Ensign Hope, with consummate skill, (so the newspaper calls it,) contrives to push the main body to the edge of it--pushes a few over into it, in order to furnish argument of prompt surrender to the rest. Which is profited by; and by the time the camp is thoroughly roused from its hideous nightmare, every soldier with his