That morning—I remember it as well as if twenty long and sorrowful years had not lagged along since it dawned gay with anticipated pleasure—so well do I remember it, that not a small detail of the room in which we met before our start, not a picture or trinket, nay, not the very colors of breakfast china have faded from my memory; and I believe that my tongue could re-word our whole conversation, and my steps retrace our whole walk, though I doubt not many a rare fen has been drained, and many an acre sown and harvested, across which on that day we picked our way from bog to bog, or waded ankle-deep in coffee-colored water, with now a snipe’s shrill whistle, and now a mallard’s harsh qua-ack—qua-ack saluting our delighted ears, making our youthful hearts beat hard and hurriedly, and drawing rash, unsteady trigger-pulling from our yet inexperienced hands. That morning was a bright, calm, beautiful October’s dawning, as ever awoke sportsmen, too young and ardent to be sluggards, from college beds too hard and narrow to be very tempting, long ere the earliest cock had crowed, or the last loitering reveler ceased from vociferating to something, which he deemed a tune, most redolent of hot milk-punch or fiery bishop, “We wont go till morning, we wont go home till morning, Till daylight does appear.” I had refused an invitation to a supper party, at which a dozen jovial hearts now scattered over this world, or passed from it, were to discuss broiled bones and deviled kidneys, diluted by hot gin-punch of the strongest—refused it on the score of keeping my hand steady, and my nerves braced for the morrow, and had supped quietly in my own rooms, with my companion of the day to be recorded, on poached eggs, Edinburgh ale, and a single bottle of Carbonell’s best port, brewed into negus. With my companion of the day to be recorded—Alas! poor George Gordon! Ours was a strange introduction, whence arose an entire and uninterrupted friendship, unbroken by a single angry word, a single unkind feeling, proof against time and undissolved by distance, but severed long ago by the insatiate hand of the cold fiend, consumption.