He left nothing to his wife but his house, his debts, and his only child, a son.

From that time to the present little had been known, though much had been conjectured, concerning the deserter.

For the first few years they traced, however, so far of his fate as to learn that he had been seen once in India; and that previously he had been met in England by a relation, under the disguise of assumed names: a proof that whatever his occupations, they could scarcely be very respectable.

But, of late, nothing whatsoever relating to the wanderer had transpired.

By some he was imagined dead; by most he was forgotten.