“But if he ’lists, he need not go to the bad,” said the Colonel. “I’ll speak to him if you like; but in the meantime, my ‘Army List’? Is there nobody in Tillington who has a son an officer? Nobody who——”
“Bless my soul, what am I thinking on? To be sure, there’s the Rectory!” cried the landlady, rushing out of the room in the fervour of her discovery. And the Cornel heard her immediately commission her son, who seemed to be at a distance, at the top of her voice, to run this moment to the Rectory, and ask if there was such a thing about the house as a list of all the regiments and officers, for a gentleman that was an officer himself, and a Cornel, and that was staying at the “Tillington Arms.” “And thou’ll take it in thyself, Sam,” shouted the good woman, “with thy best manners, and never tarry on the road. The Cornel wants to speak to thee himself. Now, mind what I say!—he’s something to tell ’ee lad, will put ’ee out o’ conceit with th’ Ould Hunderd—run, as if thou hadst wings to thy heels!”
The Colonel, sitting by his fire, gradually thawing, laughed to himself, and shrugged his shoulders as he heard this adjuration. Was he to be elected impromptu adviser of all the adventurous youth of Tillington? He sat in his chair, by the fire, wondering whether the ‘Army List’ could be had—whether Sir John Armitage would turn out to be Armitage of the 59th—and chuckling quietly over the Sergeant’s nickname, until, in the warmth and the silence, the old soldier nodded over cheerily into a half-hour’s sleep.
END OF VOL. I.
R. BORN, PRINTER, GLOUCESTER STREET, REGENT’S PARK.
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
MESSRS. HURST AND BLACKETT’S NEW PUBLICATIONS.
TRAVELS IN THE REGIONS OF THE AMOOR, and the Russian Acquisitions on the Confines of India and China; With Adventures among the Mountain Kirghis, and the Manjours, Manyargs, Toungouz, Touzemtz, Goldi, and Gelyaks. By T. W. ATKINSON, F.G.S., F.R.G.S., Author of “Oriental and Western Siberia.” Dedicated, by permission, to Her Majesty. Royal 8vo., with Map and 83 Illustrations. £2 2s., elegantly bound.
“Our readers have not now to learn for the first time the quality of Mr. Atkinson as an explorer and a writer. The comments we made on, and the extracts we selected from, his ‘Oriental and Western Siberia,’ will have sufficed to show that in the former character he takes rank with the most daring of the class, and that in the latter he is scarcely to be surpassed for the lucidity, picturesqueness, and power, with which he pourtrays the scenes through which he has travelled, and the perils or the pleasures which encountered him on the way. The present volume is not inferior to its predecessor. It takes us through localities, some of which are little, others not at all, known to even the best read men in the literature of travel. The entire volume is admirable for its spirit, unexaggerated tone, and the mass of fresh materials by which this really new world is made accessible to us. The followers, too, of all the ’ologies’ will meet with something in these graphic pages of peculiar interest to them. It is a noble work.”—Athenæum.