"You'd have died o' laughing, Mr. Sharkley, if you'd seen the captain my master one day--but perhaps you don't care about stories?" "By all means, Braddon," replied Sharkley, feeling in his vest pocket with a fore-finger and thumb for a phial which lurked there; "I dearly love to hear an old soldier's yarn." "Well, it was when we were fighting against the rebels in Canada--the rebels under Papineau. We were only a handful, as the saying is--a handful of British troops, and they were thousands in number--discontented French, Irish Rapparees, and Yankee sympathisers, armed with everything they could lay hands on; but we licked them at St. Denis and St. Charles, on the Chamblay river--yes, and lastly at Napierville, under General Sir John Colborne; and pretty maddish we Cornish lads were at them, for they had just got one of our officers, a poor young fellow named Lieutenant George Weir, into their savage hands by treachery, after which they tied him to a cart-tail, and cut him into joints with his own sword. Well--where was I?--at Napierville. We were lying in a field in extended order to avoid the discharge of a field gun or two, that the devils had got into position against us, when a ball from one ploughed up the turf in a very open place, and Captain Trevelyan seated himself right in the furrow it had made, and proceeded to light a cigar, laughing as he did so. " Are you wise to sit there, right in the line of fire?' asked the colonel, looking down from his horse. "'Yes,' says my master. "'How so?' "Master took the cigar between his fingers, and while watching the smoke curling upwards, said, "'You see, colonel, that another cannon ball is extremely unlikely to pass in the same place; two never go after each other thus.' "But he had barely spoken, ere the shako was torn off his head by a second shot from the field piece; so everybody laughed, while he scrambled out of the furrow, looking rather white and confused, though pretending to think it as good a joke as any one else--that was funny, wasn't it!" So, while Derrick lay back and laughed heartily at his own reminiscence, Sharkley, quick as lightning, poured into his tankard a little phial-full of morphine, a colourless but powerful narcotic extracted from opium. He then took an opportunity of casting the phial into the fire unseen, and by the aid of the poker effectually concealed it. "What a fine thing it would have been for Mr. Downie Trevelyan if that rebel shot had been a little lower down--eh, Derrick?" said he, chuckling. "Not while the proud old lord lived, for he ever loved my master best." "But he is in possession now--and that, you know, is nine points of the law."