His figure wasted, and his colour became a deeper tinge of orange, and all around averred that there would soon be a "move up" in the corps, for the major had evidently "got his notice to quit" this world, and its pomps and vanities.

He felt "that he was dying," to use Haines Bayley's beautiful and apposite words, and meditated an exchange, but that, from circumstances, was out of the question.

At last, subdued by grief, and probably his spirit having chafed itself smooth by such constant attrition, he became, to all seeming, calmer; but it was only the calm of a broken and weary heart.

Such was Major Jones at the time, when, "suadente diabolo," it seemed meet to Fathers Mooney and D'Array to make him the butt of their raillery.

At first, he could not believe it; the thing was incredible--impossible; but when he looked around the table, when he heard the roars of laughter, long, loud, and vociferous; when he heard his name bandied from one to the other across the table, with some vile jest tacked to it "like a tin kettle to a dog's tail," he awoke to the full measure of his misery--the cup was full.