"You shall hear if you will sit down; for, as I knew him well, and was his most intimate friend, he made me his confidant in everything. He was always of a restless spirit; and when he left his father and friends, he had no settled plan in his mind. He enlisted in the 33rd regiment of Foot, which was then going out to India; and that his relatives and friends might not grieve about him, he gave his name to the parochial authorities of St. Mary Elms, at Ipswich, as Jacob Dedham, the name of a boy who, he knew, was not alive. The parish-officer gave him a shilling, and he took another shilling of the recruiting-officer. "He was sworn in, and took his departure with many others for Portsmouth, at which place he embarked for India, and joined the 33rd regiment at Bombay. He was always of an aspiring and inquisitive turn of mind. He became an active and orderly soldier, and assisted the sergeant-major in all his writings and accounts. He soon became an adept in all the cunning and customs of the various castes of natives in India; was remarkable for the quickness with which he mastered the different idioms of the different territories of the East; and at length became so noticed by Sir William Forbes, that he introduced him to Lord Cornwallis, who employed him upon the frontier of Persia. "Here he became a spy, and was actively engaged for that highly honourable and intelligent Governor-General. He readily entered into his lordship's views; and, receiving from him a purse well stored, to provide himself with disguises, he assumed the garb of a Moorish priest, and with wonderful tact made himself master of all the requisites of his office. I have here a sketch of him, in the very dress in which he travelled through the country." Taking out a roll from his coat-pocket, he unfolded the canvas wrapper in which it was enclosed, and presented it to Margaret, asking her if she recognized her brother. With eager and interested glance she looked at the sketch, but not a feature could she challenge. She then looked up at the stranger, and, as she did so, said-- "It is much more like you, sir, than it is like my brother." "I think it is full as like me as it is like him. But, such as it is, you have it; for he commissioned me to give it to you, together with a sketch of a fortress in which he resided a long time as the priest of the family. This is Tabgur, on the frontiers of Persia. His master and family are walking on the rampart-garden of the fort." Here the old clerk could not help bursting out with an exclamation of astonishment at the wonderful talent of his former pupil. "I always said he would be a wonderful man, did I not, Master Catchpole,--did I not? Did he teach himself this art, sir?"