He went out presently, swinging his thin cane, and whistling all the triplets and cadences of an elaborate _scena_; he was an amateur musician and an amateur artist, playing more or less upon two or three different instruments, and painting more or less in half-a-dozen different styles. He could ride across country to the astonishment of burly Leicestershire squires, who were inclined to think contemptuously of his small waist and pretty blue eyes, his amber-tinted, jockey-club perfumed whiskers, trim tops, and unstained “pink.” He was a good shot, and long ago at Harrow had been renowned as a cricketer. He spoke three or four modern languages, and had that dim recollection of his classic studies which is sufficient for a man of the world who knows how to make much out of little. He was altogether a very accomplished gentleman; but with him intellectual pursuits were a means rather than an end, and he took very little pleasure in the society of books or bookmen. He wanted to be in the world, foremost in the perpetual strife, amid the crash of drums and trumpets, the roaring of cannon, and glitter of emblazoned standards flaunting gallantly in the wind. He wanted to be one of the conquerors in the universal tournament, and to ride up to the Queen of Beauty flushed and triumphant after the strife, to be admired and caressed. This is why the inaction of his present existence was so utterly intolerable to him. He had a supreme belief in himself, and in the indisputable nature of his right to the best and brightest amongst earth’s prizes. The time must be indeed out of joint in which there was nothing better for such as he than a dreary convict settlement in the island of Tasmania. Unluckily, the time _was_ out of joint. Robert Lowther, of Lowther Hall, Hampshire, had given his younger son an aristocratic name and a gentlemanly education; and then, having nothing more to bestow upon him, had been forced to leave the lad to fish for himself in the troubled waters of life. The prospects of the junior had always been more or less sacrificed to those of the senior of Robert Lowther’s two sons, and Harcourt bore a hearty grudge against his father and his brother on this account. Plainly told that he was to expect no more assistance from the parent purse, the young man had elected to become a barrister; but after a three years’ course of reading, in which the cultivation of light literature and modern languages was diversified by a slight sprinkling of legal study, he had grown heartily sick of his shabbily-furnished third floor in Hare Court, Temple, and had gladly accepted the price of a commission in one of Her Majesty’s light infantry regiments from an affectionate maiden aunt, believing that the regiment would be speedily under orders for India, where glory and loot no doubt awaited a dashing young soldier with a very high opinion of his own merits.