CHAPTER I.

Soon after the end of the war that was concluded by the peace of 1763, two gentlemen belonging to a corps that had returned from the Havannah, leaving their regiment in the South of England, were journeying northwards to visit the place of their nativity. Neither had in the course of their campaigns acquired opulent fortunes; but they had both made such progress in the road to wealth, that without any reasonable charge of prodigality or imprudence, in revisiting