“Mrs. Crossman may go and----hang herself in her own petticoat strings!” was the uncourteous rejoinder. “Ah! I see how it is,” continued the “old soldier.” “I see all about it: you’re a young hand yet, Coverdale, and I’m an old one; take my advice. You’ve married a nice gal, and a pretty gal--don’t you go and spoil her; it’s the nature of women to like to have their own way; and one of their ways--and a most aggravating and unaccountable one it is--is always to have a fellow dangling about after them, and there they’ll keep him driving ’em out, or riding with ’em, or dawdling in shops, and paying their bills for ’em--they don’t forget that, mind you--or reading to ’em, or some such confounded humbug. Hang it, sir, I’d sooner be a galley-slave, or a black nigger at once! Well, if you begin by indulging a woman (they’re all alike in such points), she’ll be your master ever after, and your life won’t be worth a----” (As we do not know the exact value of the coin to which the Colonel alluded, we abstain from a more particular mention of it). “No; if you’re to have any peace or comfort in the married state, you must let your wife see that you’re determined to show you’re the superior. The only way to do it effectually is--come to heel, Countess, ah! would you then!” (and whack, whack went the dog-whip against poor Countess’s sides)--“the only way to break ’em in is--(whack)--to show ’em clearly whose will is the strongest, and whose must yield. I had trouble enough with Mrs. Crossman, I can assure you. She was not an easy woman to break in, sir; but she found she’d met her match. If she scolded, I stormed; if she raved, I swore; if she sulked, I whistled; if she cried, I lit a cigar; if she fainted, I laid her on the hardest board that I could pick out in the floor, and smoked till she came round again. The only time she went into hysterics I flung a pail of cold water over her--that cured her at once and for ever. I dare say you think me an old brute, but the day will come when you’ll recollect my advice, and be glad enough to act upon it. Women are all alike, more or less.” Harry _did_ think him an old brute, and thanked his stars that neither in mind nor in person did Alice in the smallest degree resemble Mrs. Crossman; he also thought that he should never remember the Colonel’s advice with any other feeling than disgust. Ah! Harry--Harry! CHAPTER XXIV.--A STORM BREWING. “Harry! My dear Harry!--Wilkins, where _is_ your master? I _told_ you I must speak to him before he went out, and now you’ve let him go without----” “Wilkins! where the d------ Oh! Wilkins, what did you do with that bag of snipe-shot I brought down from London?”