Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-03-16


1t was the year of the Indian mutiny.
Twenty years had come and gone since ''the
solemn league and covenant of eternal
friendship in Harrow Churchyard. and the
years had brought with them many changes.
Lowndes was a sun-burnt warrior in the tar
East who had seen much service, gained
some renown, and reaped little benefit to
himself If promotion had gone by merit,
he would long since have received the col
onelcy of his regiment. As it was he had
to put up with the rank of captain and ad-
jutant of the -th. The friend whose
patronage had procured for him his commits
sion, and who promised to push his inter-
terests in the service, for his dead fathers
sake, died soon after the young ensign sailed
for Bombay. Lowndes' fate-by no means
an uncommon one, witness Havelock-had
been to see striplings with powerful friends
behind them promoted over his head, SO
that while the hard work fell to his share
the plums were dropped into other mouths.
A great disappointment had overtaken
Pierce Wharton. His uncle, who was
childless, though married in the old Har-
row days, lost his wife and took to himself
another mate, many years younger than
himself, who presented him with a numer-
GUS progeny Mr.. Wharton the elder con-
sidered that after disbursing the cost of his
nephew's education and providing him with
a stool in his office he had paid his debts in
full to Mr.. Wharton the younger. Pierce
stayed on with his uncle, earning a modest
salary until he was 80, when the return of
Mark Westlake to his native land, from
which he had long been absent in the hum
BILE capacity of ships surgeon, altered his
whole prospects.
"You had better marry my sister, Whar-
ton, he said; "she has a snug little fortune
of her own-a matter of $4,000 or "a, 000--
and leave mine uncle to fend for himself. %
Westlake made this suggestion more in
jest than earnest, but it so fell out that soon
afterward Pierce Wharton and Alice West
lake met, and Wharton's suggestion proved
an unconscious prophecy. They were mar
ried, after a brief courtship, and having
taken a snug little house at Brixton, Whar-
ton obtained suite of Offices and set up for
himself as a stock and share broker, His
first client was his old school friend, Charlie
Lowndes, who forwarded to him his little
savings from time to time to invest at his
own discretion.
Mark Westlake had passed through a
more checkered career. He ran through a
successful and brilliant course at GUYS.
and then went to Paris to continue his
studies there. Later he accepted sue
cession of appointments as ships surgeon,
less IN the interests OF his profession than to
crafty his tastes as naturalist, employing
his time at every foreign port in adding to
his biographical specimens. After his re-
turn, when he had succeeded in getting his
sister off his hands, he returned to Paris,
where he gave himself up to the study of
nervous diseases Next, returning to En-
gland, he invested his fortune in purchas-
ing a lunacy practice, and settled down in
gloomy, barrack-like building on the Nor
folk coast The practice was paying one
and for some time Westlake made money;
but his tastes were expensive, and the
money disappeared as fast as it was earned.
The special subject to which he had de-
voted his life possessed for him singular