The fact of the matter is, the valet was infinitely less dependent upon his master’s companionship than his master upon his. There were a hundred ways in which Francis Tredethlyn could amuse himself; and there was not a cloud in the sky, a wave of the sea, a leaf in the garden, out of which he could not take some scrap of pleasure, and which had not a deeper and truer meaning for him than for the idle young officer who lay yawning upon his narrow couch with his feet in the air, and nothing better to do than to admire the shape of his boots, obtained on credit from a confiding West-end tradesman. Francis had that wide sympathy with his fellow-creatures which is a special attribute of some men; and was on the friendliest possible terms with the two convict gardeners, both of whom had achieved some renown as the most incorrigible and execrable specimens of the criminal class. Every dog in the little settlement fawned upon Frank Tredethlyn, and ran to rub his head against his knees, and slaver his hand with its flapping tongue. He had made a kennel for two or three of these canine acquaintances in a shady corner of the big garden, much to the disgust and annoyance of the ensign, who only cared for such dogs as are calculated to assist the sports of their lord and master. Staghounds and beagles, foxhounds and terriers, setters, pointers, and retrievers, clever ratting Scotch terriers, well-bred and savage bulls, even little short-eared toy terriers, or fawn-coloured and black-muzzled pugs, were all very well placed in the scheme of creation: but Mr. Lowther could find no explanation for the existence of those mongrel creatures who seem to have nothing to do in the world but to attach themselves with slavish devotion to some brutal master, or to lie in the most disreputable courts and alleys of a city in hot weather and catch flies. But, somehow or other, Francis Tredethlyn seemed generally to do pretty much as he liked, in spite of military despotism and Mr. Harcourt Lowther. The dogs were unmolested in their shady corner; and the ensign was so good as to say that a little aviary of wicker-work and wire, which Tredethlyn constructed in his leisure hours, and duly filled with tiny feathered inhabitants, that kept up a faint twittering in the sunshine, was an improvement to the cottage. Francis was very handy, and could do wonders with a hammer and a handful of tin tacks; and was, indeed, altogether a great acquisition to his master, as Mr. Corbett, the police-magistrate, sometimes remarked to Harcourt Lowther. “Yes,” Harcourt answered, indifferently, “the fellow is a cut above most of his class. He is a Cornishman, it seems, and the son of a small farmer in that land of Tre, Pol, and Pen; and he tells me that he has an old miser uncle who is supposed to be preternaturally rich. Egad! I wish I had such an uncle! All my uncles are misers for the matter of that; but then, unluckily, the poor devils are misers because they’re preternaturally poor.”