I have the honor to be, Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant, GEORGE BORROW.
[Illustration: GEORGE BORROW From a portrait by his brother John Thomas Borrow taken in early youth when his hair was black.

This portrait is now in the National Portrait Gallery, London.] The last of these letters is in another handwriting than that of Borrow, who by this time had started for St.Petersburg for the Bible Society.
The officials were adamant.

To one letter the War Office replied that they could not consider any claims until Lieutenant Borrow of the West Norfolk Militia should have arrived in England to attend the training of his regiment.

These five letters are, as we have said, in the Rolls Office, although the indefatigable Professor Knapp seems to have dropped across only two of them there.

Their chief interest is in that they are the earliest in order of date of the hitherto known letters of Borrow.
There is one further letter on the subject written somewhat later by old Mrs.Borrow.She also appeals to the War Office for her son's allowance.[22] It would seem clear that the arrears were never paid.
To the Rt.Hon.The Earl of Orford WILLOW LANE, NORWICH, _26 May 1834._ MY LORD,--I a few days since received the distressing intelligence of the death of my dear son John, a lieutenant in your Lordship's West Norfolk Regiment of Militia, after the sufferings of a protracted and painful illness; the melancholy event took place on the 22nd November last at Guanajuato in Mexico.