“You scarcely know him yet,” she said, with a smile. “But when can you come again to me,--to-morrow^ early?” “I fear not We have a parade and a field-inspection, and then 'rapport' at noon.” “Leave it to me, then, dear Frank,” said she, kissing him; “I must try if I cannot succeed with the 'Field' better than you have done.” “There's the recall-bugle,” cried the boy, in terror; and, snatching up his cap, he bounded from the room at once. “A severe service,--at least, one of rigid discipline,” said D'Esmonde, with a compassionating expression of voice. “It is hard to say whether it works for good or evil, repressing the development of every generous impulse, as certainly as it restrains the impetuous passions of youth.” “True,” said Kate, pointedly; “there would seem something of priestcraft in their _régime_. The individual is nothing, the service everything.” “Your simile lacks the great element,--force of resemblance, Madame,” said D'Esmonde, with a half smile. “The soldier has not, like the priest, a grand sustaining hope, a glorious object before him. He knows little or nothing of the cause in which his sword is drawn; his sympathies may even be against his duty. The very boy who has just left us,--noble-hearted fellow that he is,--what strange wild notions of liberty has he imbibed! how opposite are all his speculations to the stern calls of the duty he has sworn to discharge!” “And does he dare--” “Nay, Madame, there was no indiscretion on his part; my humble walk in life has taught me that if I am excluded from all participation in the emotions which sway my fellow-men, I may at least study them as they arise, watch them in their infancy, and trace them to their fruit of good or evil. Do not fancy, dear lady, that it is behind the grating of the confessional only that we read men's secrets. As the physician gains his knowledge of anatomy from the lifeless body, so do we learn the complex structure of the human heart in the deathlike stillness of the cell, with the penitent before us. But yet all the knowledge thus gained is but a step to something further. It is while reading the tangled story of the heart,--its struggles, its efforts, the striving after good here, the inevitable fall back to evil there, the poor, weak attempt at virtue, the vigorous energy of vice,--it is hearing this sad tale from day to day, learning, in what are called the purest natures, how deep the well of corruption lies, and that not one generous thought, one noble aspiration, or one holy desire rises unalloyed by some base admixture of worldly motive. It is thus armed we go forth into the world, to fight against the wiles and seductions of life. How can we be deceived by the blandishments that seduce others? What avail to us those pretentious displays of self-devotion, those sacrifices of wealth, those proud acts of munificence which astonish the world, but of whose secret springs we are conversant? What wonder, then, if I have read the artless