But the Colonel, good-natured though he was, knew too much about master James to give credit to his stories, and declined a request, made soon after their arrival in London, to purchase a commission for his late butler, with a view to enabling him to marry an heiress. Yet when he discovered that Maclean had really enlisted in Lord Albemarle's regiment of horse-guards, he consented to give him the ten pounds necessary for the purpose, which, to keep it the more safely, was placed in the hands of one of the officers. Whether Maclean ever succeeded in handling the money seems doubtful, for as soon as his papers were made out and he was ordered to join the army in Flanders, he suddenly disappeared, and the troopship sailed without him. * * * * * There must have been something very attractive about this rogue, for whatever desperate plight he was in he always contrived to fall on his feet; and when he thought it safe to emerge from the place where he was in hiding while there was a hue and cry raised after the deserter, it was in the character of a man anxious to start for the West Indies--if someone would only lend him fifty pounds! Someone _did_ lend it to him, and it was instantly spent on fine clothes which captured the heart of Miss Macglegno, the daughter of a horse-dealer, with five hundred pounds to her dowry. This time, Maclean did not dare to throw about the money as he had previously done, but with his father-in-law's eye upon him, he opened a grocer's shop in Welbeck Street, hoping that the fashionable people who had come to live in the big new houses in Cavendish Square might give him their custom. But his wife speedily saw that if the business was to prosper she must look after it herself, as her husband could be depended on for nothing. Therefore she set to work, and for three years all went well, and the neighbours said to each other that it was fortunate she was such a stirring woman, as though Master Maclean was a harmless sort of man he was apt to be lazy. At the end of this period Mrs. Maclean died, after a short illness, and her two little girls went to live with their grandmother. Left alone, James neglected the shop more and more, and at length it grew plain to himself, as well as to everybody else, that if any money was to be saved at all, the goods must be sold for what they would fetch. And once sold, it is easy to guess how quickly the gold melted in James's pocket. * * * * * It was not till he had come to his last shilling--or at any rate his last pound--that Maclean began to ask himself 'What next?' After these years of comfort and plenty--and idleness--it would be hard to become a servant again, yet he could not see any other means of keeping himself from starving. He was slowly getting accustomed to the idea of seeking for a servant's place, when one day he met in the streets an apothecary named Plunket, whom he had known in Monaghan.