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 TALES
 FROM
 "BLACKWOOD"

 Contents of this Volume

 _My English Acquaintance._  _By F. Hardman, Esq._

 _The Murderer's Last Night._  _By T. Doubleday, Esq._

 _Narration of Certain Uncommon Things that did formerly
 happen to me, Herbert Willis, B.D._

 _The Wags_

 _The Wet Wooing: A Narrative of '98_

 _Ben-na-Groich_


 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON




TALES FROM "BLACKWOOD."




MY ENGLISH ACQUAINTANCE.

BY FREDERICK HARDMAN, ESQ.


[_MAGA._ FEBRUARY 1848.]

"I believe I have the pleasure of seeing Mr ----," said a voice in
English, as I paused for a moment, my breakfast concluded, before the
door of a Palais Royal coffee-house, planning the disposal of my day.

I looked at the person who thus addressed me; and, although I pique
myself on rarely forgetting the face of an acquaintance, in this
instance my memory was completely at fault. But for his knowledge of
my name, I should have concluded my interlocutor mistaken as to my
identity. I was at least as much surprised at the perfectly good
English he spoke, as at having my acquaintance claimed by a person of
his profession and rank. He was a young man of about five-and-twenty,
attired in the handsome and well-fitting undress of a sergeant of
French light dragoons. His brown hair curled short and crisp from
under his smart green forage-cap, cavalierly placed upon one side of
his head; his clear blue eyes contrasted with the tawny colour of his
cheek, a tint for which it was evidently indebted to sun and weather;
his face was clean shaven, save and except small well-trimmed
mustaches and a chin-tuft. Altogether, he was as pretty a model of a
light cavalryman as I remember to have seen: square in the shoulder,
slender in the hip, well limbed, lithe and