The month I have said was April—the April of 1838: old James Hardy and John Coyne were walking beneath the colonnade that faces the water-garden. They were both old, yet John considered James a mere boy. John’s face had been “broken up” by a gun-shot wound at Seringapatam, which anticipated time; and James “stumped” very vigorously along on a brace of wooden legs, his eyes bright and twinkling, his laugh ringing out, at the conclusion of each of his brief, pithy stories, which he told as earnestly as if John could hear them; John, however, _had_ heard them all before he became deaf, and as James only re-drew upon his ancient store, John had no great loss. He looked up in his comrade’s face, caught the cheerful infection of his comrade’s laugh, by sight though not by sound, and laughed also—not as James laughed, but in a little quiet way, something like the rattle of a baby’s drum—and then James would wind it up by saying—“There! did you ever hear the like of that before!” and bestow a sounding slap on his friend’s shoulder. They were comrades in every sense of the word, for they inhabited the same dormitory, nest by nest; John cherishing a canary, whose song he had never heard, though he used to declare it sang like a nightingale, with a woodlark’s note—while James had ranged all manner of curious crockery on the shelf over his bed, filling up the intermediate spaces with caricatures of the French, the iron head of a halbert, the buckle of a French cuirass, a fragment of an ensign’s gorget, and a few other reliques of a “foughten field,”— “The treasures of a soldier, bought with blood, And kept at life’s expense.” As they strutted lovingly together, delighting, as children do, in sunshine, while James talked and laughed incessantly, a tall, thin, military-looking man, as hard and erect as a ramrod, marched up to them, with as measured a tread as if he were in the ranks; then, wheeling about, presented James with a leaf of laurel, one of many he held in his hand; there was a wild sparkle in his eyes, and a bright flush upon his cheek. “What for, serjeant-major?” inquired James, taking the leaf, and giving a military salute. “Toulouse!” answered the veteran, in a voice of triumph; yet the tone was full of music, and rendered ample justice to the musical word. “Toulouse! my old fellow,” he repeated. “So it is!” answered James Hardy; “it is the anniversary, sure enough. And yet, master, if we are to mount a fresh laurel for every day we gained a victory, we shall have to get as many as there are days in the year.” “Right, Hardy, right,” replied the sergeant-major. “Right; three hundred and sixty-five laurel-leaves per annum. Right, that was well said. Lucy walked out this morning and gathered me a basketful; she knew I’d want them for my old comrades, as soon as I could get down to the college. She’s worthy to be a soldier’s daughter.”