Poor Comberback's skill in horsemanship did not progress. He was always encountering accidents and troubles. So little did he often calculate for a due equilibrium, that in mounting on one side perhaps--the wrong stirrup--the probability was, especially if his horse moved, that he lost his balance, and if he did not roll back on this side, came down ponderously on the other! The men, spite of their liking for him, would burst into a laugh, and say to one another, "Silas is off again!" Silas had often heard of campaigns, but he never before had so correct an idea of hard service. From his inability to learn his exercise, the men considered him a sort of natural, though of a peculiar kind--a talking natural. This fancy he stoutly resisted, but no matter--what was it that he could do cleverly?--therefore a natural he must be. But now came a change. He had been placed as a sentinel at the door of a ball-room, or some public place of resort, when two of his officers passing in, stopped for a moment near Coleridge talking about Euripides, two lines being quoted by one of them as from that poet. At the sound of Greek the sentinel instinctively turned his ear, when, with all deference, touching his cap, he said, "I hope your honor will excuse me, but the lines you have repeated are not quite accurately cited. These are the lines;" which he gave in their true form. "Beside," said Comberback, "instead of being in Euripides they will be found in the second antistrophe of the OEdipus of Sophocles." "Why, who the d---l are you?" said the officer, "old Faustus ground young again?"--"I am only your honor's humble sentinel," said Coleridge, again touching his cap.