However Frank might please himself with these speculations, they afforded little consolation to his mother. But there was no helping the matter; he was obliged to bid his friends adieu, and march to join the depot in Chatham, the regiment being in the East Indies. Shortly after his arrival, a draft was selected for embarkation to join the regiment. Frank was among the number, and he wrote home, taking a farewell of his friends. The time of his embarkation was fast approaching, but he had received no answer to the letter he had sent home; he felt grieved at this. ‘Could I but see them for one half hour,’ thought he, ‘or at least get a letter from them before I go, I would feel satisfied;’ but the day previous to the intended embarkation arrived without any letter. As he was sitting melancholy in the barrack-room, pondering over this unaccountable neglect, one of his comrades told him that some one wanted him outside the barrack gate. Frank’s heart leaped to his mouth, he made haste to obey the summons, and entering a room of the public-house to which he was directed, he was struck mute with astonishment on perceiving his mother and two of his sisters, who flew into his arms, clung round him, and cried and laughed by turns. ‘When do you go, my child?’ said his mother. ‘To-morrow,’ replied Frank. ‘For God’s sake, is that true! O Frank! what will I do? You are going where I will never see you again; you’ll never live to get there, and what will become of your poor mother, when she hears of your death?—but she’ll never live to hear of it, if you go.’ Poor Frank was sadly perplexed. ‘I have walked a hundred miles in Ireland, and two hundred and fifty in England,’ said his mother, ‘besides crossing the salt ocean, and your poor sisters walking foot for foot with me—and God knows we hadn’t much to live on—our money wasn’t very plenty, and the people in this country are not so ready stretching out their hands as the poor Irish. Now, Frank, you’re going to leave us for ever, and if you do, your poor mother will never see Ireland again, for she’ll die on the road, in a strange country, and what will become of your poor sisters?’ This was touching Frank on a tender point—a vague resolution flitted through his mind—he had found the life of a soldier not so much to his liking as he at first expected. ‘I wouldn’t wish to advise you to desert,’ said one of the sisters, who saw Frank wavering; ‘but how can you leave us and your poor mother forlorn here.’ ‘Och, the king, God bless him!’ said his mother, ‘will never miss you out of so many, and the Lord knows your poor mother would miss you all the days of her life.’