Two months later, some eleven months after their marriage, the
regiment was broken; and Captain Sterling, declining to serve
elsewhere on the terms offered, and willingly accepting such decision
of his doubts, was reduced to half-pay. This was the end of his
soldiering: some five or six years in all; from which he had derived
for life, among other things, a decided military bearing, whereof he
was rather proud; an incapacity for practicing law;--and considerable
uncertainty as to what his next course of life was now to be.

For the present, his views lay towards farming: to establish himself,
if not as country gentleman, which was an unattainable ambition, then
at least as some kind of gentleman-farmer which had a flattering
resemblance to that. Kaimes Castle with a reasonable extent of land,
which, in his inquiries after farms, had turned up, was his first
place of settlement in this new capacity; and here, for some few
months, he had established himself when John his second child was
born. This was Captain Sterling's first attempt towards a fixed
course of life; not a very wise one, I have understood:--yet on the
whole, who, then and there, could have pointed out to him a wiser?

A fixed course of life and activity he could never attain, or not till
very late; and this doubtless was among the important points of his
destiny, and acted both on his own character and that of those who had
to attend him on his wayfarings.


CHAPTER III.
SCHOOLS: LLANBLETHIAN; PARIS; LONDON.

Edward Sterling never shone in farming; indeed I believe he never took