education, and other juvenile amusement: that is to say, when the
gayeties of a circle of fifteen miles in radius left her any time to
spare in such a process. The twins--a brace of boys--were born and bred
at Burleigh, and had attained severally to twenty years of age, just
before their father came home again as brevet-major-general. But both
they, and that arrival, deserve special detail, each in its own chapter.




CHAPTER II.

THE HEROES.


MRS. TRACY'S sons were as unlike each other as it is well possible for
two human beings to be, both in person and character. Julian, whose
forward and bold spirit gained him from the very cradle every
prerogative of eldership (and he did struggle first into life, too, so
he was the first-born), had grown to be a swarthy, strong, big-boned
man, of the Roman-nosed, or, more physiognomically, the Jewish cast of
countenance; with melo-dramatic elf-locks, large whiskers, and
ungovernable passions; loud, fierce, impetuous; cunning, too, for all
his overbearing clamour; and an embodied personification of those choice
essentials to criminal happiness--a hard heart and a good digestion.
Charles, on the contrary (or, as logicians would say, on the
contradictory), was fair-haired, blue-eyed, of Grecian features; slim,
though well enough for inches, and had hitherto (as the commonalty have
it) "enjoyed" weak health: he was gentle and affectionate in heart, pure
and religious in mind, studious and unobtrusive in habits. It was a