spirits, and snored through his nights so loudly, as very seriously to disturb the rest of Cuthbert: nor was it possible, with so irritating an accompaniment, to comfort his wakeful hours with those meditations with which he had often solaced his night watches at Milverton while confined by his wound. However, his spirit, though fretted, did not sink under these annoyances: he rose constantly with the first glimmer of dawn: he did his utmost to perfect himself in all matters of drill and discipline. He gave his best attention to all his instructors, and he performed all his duties with manly cheerfulness, and in the best possible spirit. Colonel Maxwell saw this with silent satisfaction; but he was not a man for lavish praises and sudden intimacies, nor was he without a clear perception that Cuthbert would never make a thorough soldier; indeed his immovable gravity was sometimes very near being altogether conquered by a burst of laughter at the mode in which Cuthbert exhibited the solemn earnestness of his desire to learn his exercises thoroughly, and to command his men properly. One day, for instance, very soon after Cuthbert’s arrival, as he rode through the different squads of recruits who were learning their facings, he found Cuthbert in one corner of the field, with his head in the air, and a corporal giving him private instructions; and, unperceived by the former, he heard the following strange query:--“Now, my brave man, pray have the goodness to explain to me, very exactly, how it is, that is, upon what principle it is, that, if I place my feet in this extraordinary manner, I shall come to what you call ‘the right about face?’” “Principle! God save you, master! I know nothing at all about principles; but I know, if you do as I bid you, and put the ball of your right toe to your left heel, and raise the fore part of your feet, and come smartly, heel round, on your two heels, and bring back your right sharply and square with the left, you will come to the right about like a man and a musketeer.” Again, at an after period, as the Colonel passed the spot where a company of pikemen was parading under the orders of Cuthbert, the warlike student, who was just fresh from the perusal of a military treatise in Greek, having taken post at a farther distance than usual in the front, and noticing a little whispering and unsteadiness, called out with most innocent seriousness,--“Silence, men, silence: the Lacedæmonians never spoke in the ranks.” The pikemen seeing the Colonel near became silent, rather in respect to his presence than obedience to their simple-hearted lieutenant, and wondered the while what county militia these Lacedæmonians might be. The commanding officer, averting his head to conceal his irrepressible smiles, went forward; and Cuthbert, quite unconscious of any thing strange or ridiculous, proceeded to number off, and prove his pikemen according to the intricate system of the slow and cumbrous movements of those days.