"The deuce you have, brother! My dear, we must look to this. These captains are dangerous gentlemen in an orderly household. Pray, where could you have had the opportunity of such private communications with Mrs. Primmins?" "Once," said my uncle, readily, "when I went into her room, while she mended my stock; and once--" He stopped short, and looked down. "Once when? Out with it." "When she was warming my bed," said my uncle, in a half-whisper. "Dear!" said my mother, innocently, "that's how the sheets came by that bad hole in the middle. I thought it was the warming-pan." "I am quite shocked!" faltered my uncle. "You well may be," said my father. "A woman who has been heretofore above all suspicion! But come," he said, seeing that my uncle looked sad, and was no doubt casting up the probable price of twice six yards of holland, "but come, you were always a famous rhapsodist or tale- teller yourself. Come, Roland, let us have some story of your own,-- something which your experience has left strong in your impressions." "Let us first have the candles," said my mother. The candles were brought, the curtains let down; we all drew our chairs to the hearth. But in the interval my uncle had sunk into a gloomy revery; and when we called upon him to begin, he seemed to shake off with effort some recollections of pain. "You ask me," he said, "to tell you some tale which my own experience has left deeply marked in my impressions,--I will tell you one, apart from my own life, but which has often haunted me. It is sad and strange, ma'am." "Ma'am, brother?" said my mother, reproachfully, letting her small hand drop upon that which, large and sunburnt, the Captain waved towards her as he spoke. "Austin, you have married an angel!" said my uncle; and he was, I believe, the only brother-in-law who ever made so hazardous an assertion. CHAPTER VII. MY UNCLE ROLAND'S TALE. "It was in Spain--no matter where or how--that it was my fortune to take prisoner a French officer of the same rank that I then held,--a lieutenant; and there was so much similarity in our sentiments that we became intimate friends,--the most intimate friend I ever had, sister, out of this dear circle. He was a rough soldier, whom the world had not well treated; but he never railed at the world, and maintained that he had had his deserts. Honor was his idol, and the sense of honor paid him for the loss of all else.