Tender thoughts of her brother still further calmed the spirit of Miriam; the troubled waters were becoming quiet as a mirror again, and the excited mind could once more reflect. Miriam began now to think that she had come on a useless errand, for it was likely enough that she might not be able to have a word with her brother, who did not expect in the least to see her at such a time, and who would probably be engaged in performing military duty. Besides this, Miriam was by far too modest and well-conducted a girl to go to the barracks alone, without any proper protection. How was she to let her brother know that she was waiting to see him, and wishing to ask his advice? "I do believe that I shall have to go back again just as wise as I came. I've been acting the part of a foolish, ill-tempered child," thought Miriam, as she slackened her pace, walking up Albany Street towards the barracks. Here, however, Miriam was mistaken, for the thought had scarcely crossed her mind, when her glance fell on a tall form in uniform that she knew well, on the opposite side of the street. "Oh! This is fortunate indeed," exclaimed Miriam, "to think that Hamil should be the first soldier whom I should meet!" She had little time for self-gratulation, however, for as she spoke Hamil turned aside from the pavement, and disappeared within the door of a public-house. Miriam had been heated by exercise and excitement, but now she turned suddenly cold. The terror which had struck her two months before when she had looked at that same dear form staggering under the influence of drink, came over her again, and almost overpowered her. Was her brother, the brave noble-hearted brother, whom she so fondly loved, he of whom she had been so proud, was he yielding again to that deadly vice, which would sink him lower than the brutes! Miriam's anxiety for Hamil's safety during the campaign in Abyssinia had been light and easy to be borne compared with what she felt now; for had not her brother owned that a taste for drinking was his besetting weakness, and to what must that taste, if indulged, inevitably lead in the end? To shame, disease, and misery, condemnation before God, things a thousandfold worse than death! Hamil was entering on the steep downward incline, and what a precipice lay before him! The full extent of her brother's peril flashed on the mind of Miriam, and every other feeling yielded to the one desire to save him, as she quickened her steps almost to a run. The modest young maiden had never crossed the threshold of a public-house, nor had she even thought of doing so before; Miriam had a natural shrinking from going amongst strangers, and into a place where it would be unseemly for her to appear—and yet, to the no small surprise of Hamil, as he stood at the bar with a glass of gin in his hand, he heard a voice nervously pronounce his name, and, turning, beheld his twin at his side!