further, began to treat him with coldness and neg-, lect; and, although no apparent difference existed between them, his behaviour was of that kind which, while it retains the outward show of friendship, tells too clearly that friendship and confidence have passed away. The colonel was too proud to seek for an explanation where he thought he had been treated with ingratitude; he saw the real cause which had estranged from him the man he had raised from poverty, and perhaps he was not slow in letting his contempt for such behaviour be perceived; while Cumming, now that he had nothing more to hope, no longer concealed his evil qualities, and from an obsequious follower, became a selfish, rude, and obstinate adversary, whenever he could safely set himself in opposition to his commanding officer.

In the distant colonies the superior officers seldom agree among themselves, and if there should chance to be a variety of departments, the heads of them are sure to squabble together. Military, naval, legal, and civil officers all quarrel, they know not why, and all generally suffer for their disputatious inclinations; and, indeed, it is said that their superiors at home support them against each other in their contests, on the ancient principle-divide and rule; but what benefit they can derive from opposing their own servants to each other is beyond my comprehension.

A tremendous feud, of this incomprehensible description, burst forth in the colony of

in which Colonel Cameron was somehow concerned, though, as he told me, he never could exactly discover how he first became engaged in it; complaints, accusations, explanations, and recriminations, without number, were sent to London, and that which at first was a mere dispute, soon began to appear an affair of importance, because nobody could understand it. The only thing that was evident in the business was, the activity of Cumming, who now raked together all the circumstances concerning it he could recollect, and a great deal, it is said, which he could not recollect, but which he invented to the prejudice of his former benefactor, and caused to be reported in the appropriate quarter; and, in consequence of his information, he was sent for to England, to give still further explanation. What the nature of these explanations was, or what degree of credit was paid to them, I never heard, or rather, I did hear, but as they embraced a variety of details enveloped in military and official technicalities, I never could fix them in my memory. The consequence of them, however, was, that the colonel was ordered home in the hasty manner I have already described.

Although Colonel Cameron had entered the army without protection, he had made some powerful friends during the period of his active service; yet these friends had gone out of office a little before his recal. In his anger he plainly expressed his opinion to me, that he was a sacrifice to political enmity; and, though I was unwilling to think so badly of any portion of the

government, I could not but see that he had little to hope from the lenity or good will of judges who were opposed to the principles to which he was attached; for at that time party dissensions were pursued with a degree of rancour of which the present period affords no example. The idea that he should be so sacrificed, however, was strongly implanted in his mind, and at times he gave way to all that fierceness of anger which a man of strong passions must be allowed to indulge when he feels himself the object of undeserved oppression; but the ingratitude of the man who had fed and thriven on his father's bounty, and who owed him so much individually, threw him into paroxysms of rage which at times made me fear for his understanding or his existence; and when his wrath had overcome every sentiment of prudence, he swore that the serpent whom he had nourished in his bosom, to sting him, should find he had yet life enough left to crush a reptile, and he uttered many other threats equally violent.

After a long though not an unpleasant voyage, we arrived at Liverpool, and the colonel immediately proceeded to London, to which place, after having discharged my cargo, I also repaired, my owners having informed me that they had a consignment for Leith, and that they wished me to effect the voyage before I proceeded to the fishery; and as soon after my arrival as my business would allow, I called at the hotel at which the colonel had given his address, in hopes of seeing him and learning how his affairs succeeded; for, as he had adinitted me to in his confidence, of course I felt anxious to hear the progress of his difficulties. He was not in the house when I arrived, but as I was told he was expected shortly, I resolved to wait for him, and I had not sat long in the coffee-room before he came in. He walked hastily up to me as soon as he saw me, and shook hands with me, with a certain air of self-congratulation which broke through the forced exterior of stoical calmness which he had assumed, and which displayed itself in the warmth of his address and manner, as it were in spite of himself. From what I had previously observed of the colonel's disposition, I saw that something very satisfactory must have happened, and, although there were several persons present, I said, "I hope, colonel, you have been successful in the business which brought you to London;" to which he replied, "Yes, we have routed the enemy, or rather he did not stay to be routed, but he disappeared in a very singular manner. The scoundrel dared not face me nor attempt to make good his charges." He then called for a bottle of Burgundy (for joy naturally loves good wine), and filling a glass, he said, gaily, "Well, after all, I have more obligations to the fellow than he knows of, so let us hope that all similar machinations may have a similar termination!" And, having drank this by way of a toast, he gave me a slight outline of what had befallen him since he arrived in London, from which it

appeared, that he had entirely cleared his character, and that when Cumming was called upon to prove or elucidate some of the accusations he had made, he was nowhere to be found, having disappeared without obtaining leave of absence, or informing any person where he was going; "and the consequence of all this has been," continued the colonel, "that I have come off victorious, and am promised an appointment in a better climate than - so now, if you are going back again, you can bring Mrs. Cameron and the children to England, and I will write to them to wait your arrival. I pray God they may all be alive, and able to come," added he, while a shade crossed his brow, and contrasted strongly with his former air of unusual gaiety.

I thanked the colonel for his good intentions, but I told him that I could not have the pleasure of bringing his family to Europe, as I was bound to Scotland, and afterwards must proceed to the Arctic Ocean.

"That is singular enongh," said the colonel; "I am going to Scotland, too, to visit my parents, both of whom are alive, though I have not seen either of them since I left them fifteen years ago. When do you sail? I will go with you."

I replied that I should depart almost immediately, and the colonel promised to send his packages on board, and, after some further conversation, we parted, as the necessary preparations for my voyage would not allow me to lose many moments.

It had been determined by my owners, that instead of returning to London after discharging my cargo at Leith, I should direct my course from that port to Shetland; and, accordingly, I had to take in all the stores and implements for the fishery. The season being somewhat advanced, I experienced considerable hurry and consequent confusion, and, as is generally the case on such occasions, the impediments which the stowage of two different ladings at the same time produced, were double what they would separately have been. Our preparations, therefore, went forward more slowly than they might otherwise have done. One morning, during this period, when I was going on board, I saw lying on the quay several boxes, ticketted with the name of Colonel Cameron, and close beside them was a large trunk, simply addressed, "Mr. Murdock, Edinburgh-by the Leviathan;" on the outside of which was marked glass in large and conspicuous letters. I inquired of my mate to whom this package belonged; but he could not tell. "The carter who brought it," he said, "had told him that I knew all about it," and he had not thought it necessary to inquire further. Nothing is more common than for goods to be sent to the docks in a careless manner. I supposed Mr. Murdock would inquire for his property at Leith, and I thought no farther about the trunk, except to give orders that it should be carefully stowed away.

We were on that day getting in "shakes" for our barrels, which were to be placed under

our cargo in the hold, that they might not be in the way, and of course we could not then ship luggage for Leith; the colonel's boxes, therefore, together with this trunk, were placed under cover, till we were ready to receive them, and from unforseen delay, several days elapsed before we were able to take them on board. In the meantime, the labourers, when in the mornings they opened the warehouse wherein these boxes were deposited, observed that the store-room had acquired a close and somewhat unpleasant smell, which, however, ceased to be noticed after the fresh air was admitted; but by degrees this scent increased, till at length it became extremely nauseous and painfully predominant at all times. This naturally excited curiosity, and the smell was ascertained to exhale from the trunk directed to Mr. Murdock; this immediately excited suspicion; a meddling police officer scented some business, and of course profit, for himself in this disagreeable smell, and applied to me for permission to break open the box, which I refused to grant without the warrant, or at least the directions of a magistrate. These were then obtained, and the trunk, on being opened, was found to contain a dead body, which had been subjected to some preserving process, and in the throat of whieh was a deep gash, sufficient, in the opinion of every beholder, to have caused instantaneous death. I will own that I was very much shocked at this discovery, for I thought, with everybody else, that the unfortunnte object before us had met with foul play, and that he had been sent on board with intention of concealment, and probably in hopes that, by the time he arrived at Leith, the features would be too much altered to be recognized; and, indeed, it was improbable that any person there should recognize them, if they were not changed at all. You may suppose this discovery threw us all into consternation, and especially me, for I feared my crew might draw some fatal omen from the occurrence, and relax in their endeavours to promote the success of the voyage. I, therefore, with the consent of the police officer, directed it to be conveyed to the nearest bone-house, and I shortly afterwards received a summons to attend the coroner's jury to give what information I could concerning it.

It is far from my wish to laugh at what I consider one of the most valuable institutions of our country, for I am sensible that a coroner's jury affords a degree of protection to the subject, which no person can appreciate who has not observed the manner in which a prisoner, suspected of murder, is treated in a foreign land. Nevertheless, on this occasion, when no one was suspected, and when nobody knew or could discover any circumstance connected with the deceased, I could not but feel amused with the variety of expressions exhibited by the twelve honest householders assembled to deliberate solemnly on they scarcely knew what. Some appeared to be perfectly horrow-struck that a man should be found

which I had been a witness. The details were passably correct, a little exaggerated for the sake of effect (as our surgeon hath it). Peculiar notice was, however, taken of the colonel's words and conduct, and, by our names being mentioned together in a particular way, a sort of ambiguous connexion seemed established between us, which displeased me, I hardly knew why, though I felt as if aware that someone had endeavoured to affront me in a covert manner. This was, of course, the report of a morning paper. What I had read rankled in my mind all day, and I fancied, when conversing on the subject, that other persons had placed the same construction upon it as I had done; and I imagined something peculiar in the tone in which they inquired a further solution of the circumstances. I kept my suspicions to myself, however, and as soon as the business of the day was over, I ran to the nearest coffee-house to get sight of the evening journals. The first I took up contained quite enough to gratify my curiosity. All that had been only indicated in the morning was now spoken plainly out, and what was worse, it was asserted to have been given in evidence.

The writer was apparently well acqainted with the former connexion and dispute between the colonel and the deceased, and he made one witness depose not only to the enmity that had existed between them, but even to the threats the colonel had uttered during his fits of anger, when first he arrived in London. Then, "for the sake of effect," for I will not suspect him of a worse intention, the witness most irregularly entered into the merits of the dispute, and represented Cumming as a poor and honest officer, zealous for the honour of the service, and shocked at the alleged misconduct of the colonel, who was, however, said to have borne down his accusation by mere dint of parliamentary in terest. The next witness was made to speak of the method by which the chest containing the body was brought to the docks. He was stated to have mentioned, in a particular manner, that it arrived on the same day with the colonel's property, that the porter had said " Captain Shafto knew all about it," and then it was invidiously observed, that it was placed in the same warehouse with the rest of the colonel's baggage. Cameron's surprise and agitation at the sight of the body was next mentioned, in the most marked manner, and the whole concluded by expressions of great astonishment, that the coroner had thought it necessary to adjourn the inquest, when the jury were of opinion that evidence enough was before them to enable them to find a verdict.

You may suppose I was not a little shocked and angered at the malice and impudence that pervaded the whole of this account, and that I felt my bile raised by the unblushing falsehood of the details. Though I had seen a good deal of the world, I knew nothing of writers. I was aware, indeed, that there were men who had so long habituated themselves to romantic and exaggerated ideas that they could no longer relish

simple truth, and who, consequently, whenever they repeated the plainest tale or the most ordinary oecurrence, decked it out in all the trappings of fiction; but I looked upon the writers for the public press as men infinitely beyond such paltry contrivances; I considered them, indeed, as in a manner the guardians of the liberty and honour of those individuals who might, but for the publicity they gave their cases, have been injured and oppressed by the powerful or the ignorant; and I should as soon have expected to have heard a judge upon the bench making a false recapitulation to the jury, as to have read a report so grossly perverted as that which now met my eyes. I had, in fact, no conception that, in order to "give effect," to excite interest in the minds of their readers, and consequently to sell their productions, men could be base enough to alter, suppress, enlarge, and confound evidence given on oath, till they obscured the simplest facts, and wrought something like a novel out of the most common cir

cumstances.

But, if such were my meditations upon what I had already read, you will guess what were my feelings, when, upon running my eye further down the column in which I had seen the account of the inquest, I encountered a paragraph, stating that two persons, who had lately rendered themselves peculiarly conspicuous at a certain inquest, had been heard some days before, in a hotel at the west-end of the town, speaking of the sudden disappearance of the individual on whose body the inquity alluded to above was held; and immediately afterward followed another paragraph, containing an account of the ancient method of examining suspected murderers, by obliging them to place their hand upon the corpse, in which case it was supposed the blood would flow afresh from the wounds. If I was angry before, I was now doubly enraged, and I believe, if I had known any person in the room, I should have vented my passion in threats against my unknown persecutor, as furious as those the colonel had uttered against Cumming. I held my peace, as it happened, and I went home, resolved to see Cameron in the morning, and consult with him on the best manner of rebutting all these calumnies.

As I was issuing out with this intention, I was stopped by a police-officer, who delivered me a polite message from a magistrate, the purport of which was, that he desired my immediate attendance at the office, where he was sitting. Of course I attended without loss of time to this invitation, and, indeed, I was glad that the matter began to assume something like a tangible form, for I knew my own innocence, and I hoped that the business-habits of the magistrate would aid me to prove it. The first person I met at the office was the colonel, who, it appeared, had, like me, received a request to attend upon his worship, and as nothing but the most vague suspicion could attach to us, the examination was private. I call it an examination, though it was rather a friendly con