An old one takes to his heels, leaving a young one in arms.--The dessert does not always follow the last course of--a goose.--Goes to the war, and ends in love. In those days, the life of a soldier was a stirring and an active one. I had not joined the regiment above a fortnight when the 1st battalion received orders for immediate active service, and General Graham was to make his appearance on the morrow, to inspect them prior to their embarkation. Every man destined for service was to appear in the ranks, and as my turn had not yet come, I was ordered, the previous evening, to commence my career as a rifleman, in charge of the guard; and a most unhappy _debut_ I made of it, and one that argued but little in behalf of my chances of future fame in the profession. My guard was composed of the Lord knows who, for, excepting on the back of the sergeant, I remember that there was not a rag of uniform amongst them. I was too anxious to forget all about them to think of informing myself afterwards; but, from what I have since seen, I am satisfied that they must either have been a recent importation from "the first gem of the sea," or they had been furnished for the occasion by the governor of Newgate;--however, be that as it may, I had some ten or a dozen prisoners handed over to me; and as my eye was not sufficiently practised to distinguish, in such a group, which was the soldier and which the prisoner, I very discreetly left the whole affair to the sergeant, who seemed to be a man of _nous_. But while I was dozing on the guard-bed, about midnight, I was startled by a scramble in the soldier's room, and the cry of "guard, turn out;" and, on running out to ascertain the cause, the sergeant told me that the light in the guard-house had been purposely upset by some one, and, suspecting that a trick was intended, he had turned out the guard; and truly his suspicions were well-grounded, although he took an erroneous method of counteracting it; for, the sentry over the door, not being a much shrewder fellow than myself in distinguishing characters in the dark, in suffering the guard to turn out, had allowed some of the prisoners to turn out too, and, amongst the rest, one who had been reserved for an especial example of some sort or other, and whose absence was likely to make a noise in the neighbourhood.