By the time that Laurence Alsager was gazetted as captain and lieutenant-colonel, he had had quite enough of regimental duty, quite enough of transition from Portman Barracks to Wellington Barracks, from Winchester to Windsor; quite enough of trooping the guard at St. James's and watching over the treasures hidden away in the Bank-cellars; of leaning out of the little window in the old Guards Club in St. James's Street; quite enough of Derby drags and _ballet_ balls, and Ryde pier and Cowes regatta, and Scotch moor and Norway fishery, and Leamington steeple-chase and Limmer's, and all those things which make up the life of a properly-regulated guardsman. The younger men in the Household Brigade could not understand this "having had quite enough." They thought him the most enviable fellow in the world. They dressed at him, they walked like him, they grew their whiskers as nearly like his as they could (mutton-chop whiskers were then the fashion, and beards and moustaches were only worn by foreign fiddlers and cavalry regiments), they bragged of him in every possible way, and one of them having heard him spoken of, from the variety of his accomplishments, as the Admirable Crichton, declared that he was infinitely better than Crichton, or any other admiral that had ever been in the sister service. The _deux-temps_ valse had just been imported in those days, and Alsager danced it with a long, quick, swinging step which no one else could accomplish; he played the cornet almost as well as Koenig; while at Windsor he went into training and beat the Hammersmith Flyer, a professional brought down by the envious to degrade him, in a half-mile race with twelve flights of hurdles; he was a splendid amateur actor; and had covered the rough walls of the barrack-room at Windsor with capital caricatures of all his brother officers. He knew all the mysteries of "battalion drill" too, and had been adjutant of the regiment. When, therefore, he threw up his commission and sold out, everybody was utterly astonished, and all sorts of rumours were at once put into circulation. He had had a quarrel with his governor, old Sir Peregrine Alsager, some said, and left the army to spite him. He was bitten with a theatrical mania, and going to turn actor ("Was he, by G--!" said Ledger, the light comedian, hitherto his warmest admirer; "we want none of your imitation mock-turtle on the boards!"); he had got a religious craze, and was going to become a Trappist monk; he had taken to drinking; he had lost his head, and was with a keeper in a villa in St. John's Wood. All these things were said about him by his kind friends; but it is probable that none of them were so near the mark as honest Jock M'Laren, of the Scots Fusiliers, a great gaunt Scotchman, but the very best ferret in the world in certain matters; who said, "Ye may depen' upon it there's a wummin in it. Awlsager's a deevil among the sax; and there's a wummin in it, I'll bet a croon." This was a heavy stake for