*chapter Xlvii.*

In this manner we all sat ruminating upon schemes of vengeance, when our little boy came running in to tell us that Mr. Burchell was approaching at the other end of the field. It is easier to conceive than describe the complicated sensations which we felt from the pain of a recent injury and the pleasure of approaching vengeance.—VICAR OF WAKEFIELD.

It was fully three weeks after the affair of the Belbeck river, when I found myself sharing Jack Studhome’s quarters in Balaclava, after duly reporting myself to Colonel Beverley, and making special inquiries for Berkeley, who had already procured a few days’ sick leave, prior to returning to Britain on “urgent private affairs,” and was not with his regiment, but was very snug on board his own yacht, which for his convenience had come all the way from Cowes to Balaclava harbour.

“Leave—leave already—when we have barely broken ground before Sebastopol!” I exclaimed, with profound disgust.

“Already,” said Studhome, with a grim smile, as he twisted up a cigarette, a luxury unknown to the “gentlemen of England” until introduced by returned Crimeans. “You may remember that I went home from India on sick leave, just before that Rangoon business.”

“That was annoying.”

“Not at all—I thought it would be a stupid concern, and I had a heavy book on the Oaks.”

“But you were, of course, ill.”

“What a Griff! Those who get home on sick leave are always in the best health. It is just like the ‘urgent private affairs’ of those who have swell friends in high places. Uncles who are grooms of the backstairs, and aunts who are ladies of the bedchamber. Take care of Dowb, you know, and Dowb will take deuced good care of himself.”

“Home to England!” I was almost stupefied with rage at the prospect of his escaping the speedy vengeance I had schemed out for him, after Studhome told me that he had had the daring effrontery to accuse me of shooting my own horse!

“But now, Newton,” said Jack, “for to-night, at least, not a word about Berkeley. The colonel, Travers, Wilford, the paymaster, Jocelyn, and Harry Scarlett are all coming here to sup with us jollily, in honour of your safe return, providing their own plates and spoons, of course. I omitted Scriven, because he is Berkeley’s particular chum. To-morrow I’ll get a boat and board his yacht. Confound the fellow! we must parade him—we must have him out now?”

“Or I shall shoot him in front of the line!” said I, grinding my teeth.

“Your Russian uniform would be quite in keeping with so melodramatic a situation. By Jove, you are a figure!” exclaimed Jack, turning me round, and surveying my Tambrov uniform with more amusement than admiration; but his own “turn out” was the most comical of the two, for the kind of work undergone since we landed had made serious alterations in the gay uniforms of our troops.

Studhome had not enjoyed the luxury of washing his hands, perhaps, for a week; and as for shaving, that was never thought of now. All our officers had disembarked in their full uniforms. They had marched, fought, and slept in them; the lace was frayed, the gorgeous box-epaulettes all crushed, broken, and torn; the coats and trousers were a mass of mud; shakos and regulation caps had all disappeared, or, at least, the fez, the turban, the shawl, and the wide-awake were rapidly replacing them.

Every officer had a canvas havresack wherein to carry those edibles he was lucky enough to beg, borrow, or find; a revolver, with belt and pouch, was strapped to his waist, and all had become bronzed, hairy, gaunt, and brigand-like in visage and expression. “Oh for the mantle of Fortunatus,” says one in his letters, “to place such an officer all at once into his London haunts, and among the old familiar faces. Put him down in Pall Mall, or Piccadilly, or on the swelling carpets of the Junior United Service!”

Such was the aspect of Lionel Beverley, that tall and stately soldier, and polished English gentleman; of Frank Jocelyn, our lisping dandy; of the usually clean-shaven M’Goldrick, our quaint old Scotch paymaster; of dashing young Sir Harry Scarlett, and all the rest of our once splendid lancer mess, most of whom came crowding into Jack’s very queer bunk at Balaclava, to welcome me back among them, and hear the story of my adventures since I fell among the Russians.

Seated on boxes, chests, the camp bed, and even on the floor, they jested, laughed, and smoked, while the din of the distant cannonade told how the work of death was going on ceaselessly at Sebastopol.

“We are now, Norcliff, fairly in for the business of the siege,” said the colonel.

“Ugh! and a jolly and lucrative business it is likely to prove,” added the paymaster, with a grimace.

“Welcome back, Norcliff, old fellow!” said Travers, shaking me warmly by the hand; “we must look up a kit for you somehow, and a remount too. Beverley has a second horse; but I think its tail was eaten off by Scarlett’s bay mare when the corn fell short.”

“Our horses have no nosebags. Those infernal red-tape-worms in London are doing their best to destroy us,” said Sir Harry Scarlett.

“Are Sir Nigel’s suspicions to be right, after all?” thought I.

“You forget my Arab horse—my spoil from the enemy.”

“Well, gentlemen,” said Studhome, who had been uncorking several bottles, “you shall sup a la carte. I have a hare which is being jugged in that identical warming-pan which we picked up at Eskel; two golden plovers and a gallant bustard are being stewed with it. I shot the latter; the hare was caught by Travers’ Kurdistan dog—a rough brute, like your Scotch staghounds, M’Goldrick. That is my kitchen,” he added, pointing to a hole before the tent, in which some ashes were smouldering. “This is true Crimean fashion. Make a hole as a grate, and when you have aught to put in your kettle light a fire under it. ‘Dost like the picture?’ But here come the viands!”

The stew, which had been prepared by Pitblado and Studhome’s servant (both of whom officiated in their stablejackets), was certainly savoury enough in odour, though not quite such as we might have welcomed at the home mess-table. It steamed and spattered bravely in two large tin dishes; and with their contents, and some biscuits of Trieste flour from the bakery-ship Abundance (on board which twenty thousand pounds of bread were made daily, and yet the army starved), a piece of cheese, some fruit, and several bottles of Bass, sherry, and brandy, we resolved to make a night of it.

“‘Od, it’s a queer mess, this!” said that constitutional grumbler, M’Goldrick, as he fished away with his fork. “I doubt whether the mastodon or the megatherium of antediluvian times would have faced it. What do you call this, Studhome?”

“Come, don’t mock the blessings of war, most learned Scot! That is the gizzard of a wild bustard. Help yourself and pass the sherry. Pitblado, uncork the Bass.”

“Wood is frightfully scarce here,” said Travers. “Our fellows seized and burnt all the tent-poles and pegs of Hadji Mehmet’s regiment of Bono Johnnies, and old Raglan made a devil of a row about it.”

“We are put to odd shifts, certainly,” added the colonel, laughing; “and it is seldom a supper like this comes our way, Norcliff. The green coffee, pounded between two stones, is not the worst thing we have to encounter; for, after it is pounded, we have no fuel wherewith to boil it, and men are actually flogged for taking dry-wood from the beach. We must do our best to keep ourselves alive, though the Russians and red-tapists are doing theirs to make an end of us.”

“I have actually been thinking of turning Tartar, and speculating seriously on the merits of horseflesh,” said Scarlett, as he tore away at a drumstick of the bustard. “I suppose you know that the chargers of the Heavies are dying like sheep with the rot?”

“Now, M’Goldrick, pass the bottle, will you!” said Jack. “By Jove! you Scotchmen are such slow fellows!”

“Slow or fast,” growled the paymaster, “I don’t know how in this war you would get on without us. You have the two Dundases, Charley Napier, Sir George Cathcart, two Campbells—Sir John and Sir Colin—Jamie Simpson, and Sir George Browne.”

“Anything you like; but pass the wine from right to left,” said the jovial adjutant, who began to sing—

Amid this kind of merriment and banter, we heard ever and anon the thunder of the heavy guns from the batteries of Sebastopol, as they fired on the lines where our brave troops were working to get under cover—working with old spades and mattocks, which the Iron Duke had sent home as unserviceable from Spain—and I felt saddened by the idea that every boom which pealed in the distance was, perhaps, the knell of at least one human soul. I had other thoughts that made me grave and stern.

No letters had reached me from home; nor had anything come, save an old Punch or two, addressed in my uncle’s handwriting. Even Cora was forgetting me!

My blood was boiling against Berkeley. A long debt of cowardly wrong was about to be paid off, if he did not elude me by a hasty departure on leave. The clear grey eye of the colonel was fixed on me at times. He knew my thoughts; but he and the others, with the intuitive delicacy peculiar to well-educated and highly-bred men, forbore to speak of Berkeley, and the grave obligation which they were aware I was about to clear off in a manner that had become unusual now.

“You are listening to the cannon of the siege train,” said Beverley. “We cavalry are in clover here, when compared to our poor infantry, who are potting the Russians like partridges, from amid the mud of the trenches.”

“Mud, thickened by blood, and fragments of shot and shell—a veritable Slough of Despond!” added the paymaster.

“There, in the rifle-pits, our advanced parties have fired till the grooves of their barrels are lined with lead, and their aching shoulders are black and blue with the kicking of the butt.”

“Yes, colonel; and if any one wishes to study the theory of sounds and atmospheric effects, my wigwam in the cavalry quarter is the very place,” said Studhome. “Boom! there goes that Lancaster gun again. It must be playing old gooseberry with the Russians by moonlight. Only think of ten-inch shells, fired at point-blank range! I was up this morning at the trenches, and saw a long sixty-eight pounder from the Terrible brought into position by the blue-jackets, to bear on a heavy gun on the left embrasure of the Mamelon. It was trained by a naval officer—a fine young fellow. The practice he made was perfect! The first shot tore away the left of the embrasure; the second struck the great gun full on the muzzle, shattering it, and then the eyes of the young officer flashed with delight! ‘Bravo, my lads! load he again!’ he exclaimed; and with the third shot he dismounted the gun completely. Lord Raglan then telegraphed to fire the sixty-eight every half hour, and effectually breach the Mamelon.”

“But before the order came, a shot struck our brave young sailor, and killed him on the spot,” added the Colonel.

“His fall was sudden, and his interment as rapid as his demise,” said Studhome; “he was buried beside the gun.”

“Poor fellow!” observed the Colonel, thoughtfully; “few would like to die thus. Yet that which was his fate to-day may be mine or yours to-morrow. This idea makes the memory, the heart, go home. We number those who love us there, and those whom we love. Their faces come before us, and their voices fall again on the ear. Little expressions and little episodes come vividly to mind. Shall we ever see them again, those home circles—those loved and treasured ones! Well, well; every bullet has its billet—duty is duty—(another old saw), and the first obligation of a soldier is obedience. And so we console ourselves, and hope on for the best, drowning dull care in the bottle, or boldly treading him under foot.”

The poor Colonel’s words often came back to memory long after he led us to that terrible charge through the Valley of Death!

Thus their conversation and anecdotes were all connected with the great siege then in progress; but after they had all retired, Studhome and I reverted, all at once, to the matter which was uppermost in my mind—the punishment of Berkeley.

“Take a caulker of cognac, Norcliff, and then turn in. Keep your head and your hand cool. I’ll take a boat for his yacht after reveillez to-morrow, and though he has got sick leave for a few days, he is not so sick that he can’t hold a pistol.”

“Arrange this for me, Jack, and you shall win my lasting gratitude,” said I, fervently.

Jack shook me warmly by the hand, and then we betook us to our not over-luxurious couches for the night.

When I awoke in the morning, Studhome had mounted and ridden off to the harbour.

*CHAPTER XLVIII.*

I awaited his return with impatience, while our servants were pounding the green coffee for breakfast. After the lapse of an hour or so he cantered up to the door of our wigwam—for such it was, being half tent and half hut—sprang off and threw his reins to Lanty O’Regan.

“Berkeley?” I inquired.

“Has given you the slip for this time.”

“The devil!—how?”

“Whether he has heard of your return or not I cannot say; but the yacht has left her moorings, and stood away towards the Straits of Yenikale. We shall have better luck another time; but meanwhile, here is something to solace you for your disappointment.”

“His sick leave—“

“Was extended to the 17th of this month; but he was not to leave Balaclava harbour, it was presumed. I met Beverley as I was riding back, and he gave one of his quiet and significant laughs, on hearing that the yacht had put to sea.”

“He then divined your errand?”

“Of course—the affair is pretty patent to the whole corps now; but here, I say, is something to console you in the meantime.”

“Something—what?”

“The Sultan Abdul Medjid has already sent several medals for distribution among the officers of the Allies, and here is an announcement that to you—you only of all our corps as yet—he has accorded his star of Medjidie; and here also is the Colonel’s memorandum concerning it for insertion in this day’s regimental orders, stating that it is given for the bravery and zeal displayed by you in assisting the quartermaster-general to procure trains of waggons—those blessed kabitkas—before we advanced on the Alma.”

With equal astonishment and pleasure I heard of this unexpected honour, though no way inclined to indulge in self-glory, when a Turkish officer of rank, a fat old fellow, wearing a blue surtout, a scarlet fez, and gold-hilted Damascus sabre—an aide-de-camp of the Seraskier Pasha—brought me the Order of the Medjidie—a silver star, inscribed, in Turkish characters, “Zeal and ardent sentiments of Honour and Fidelity,” around the Sultan’s cypher, which closely resembled the cabalistic figures on the side of a tea-chest—when he hung it on my breast, I say, the natural emotions of pride which rose in my heart were blended with joy at the pure satisfaction it would afford my dear friends at home.

A jolly cooper of old port would be started at Calderwood, and I already saw in fancy my uncle (to whom I instantly wrote of my safety and success) receiving the congratulations of his neighbours and old servants. And what of Louisa? Surely this would be soothing to her inordinate pride!

It was accompanied by a little diploma in Turkish, to the effect that “Captain Newton Calderwood Norcliff, of her Britannic Majesty’s service, having distinguished himself prior to the battle of the Alma, as a gift in appreciation of his worthily-performed duty, his Imperial Majesty the Sultan grants him the fifth degree of the Medjidie medal, together with this warrant. Dated in the year of the Hejira, 1271.”

Medals, save those of the old Waterloo veterans, were scarcely known in our service, as yet—thus a decorated man was a man of mark. Yet, amid the excitement of campaigning, this gift was but the gratification of an hour, and the dull craving at my heart to punish Berkeley and to hear from Louisa still remained unsatisfied.

Reduced by service, sufferings, starvation, and cholera, our regiment was very weak now, so all servants and grooms were turned into the ranks. Our chief duty was to watch the Russian forces that were gathered for the relief of Sebastopol. Their outposts were only four miles distant from the little secluded harbour of Balaclava, where under the shadow of an old round Genoese tower, several line-of-battle ships (including the gallant Agamemnon), and some dozen of transports, were daily disembarking troops and stores, as they lay within ten yards of the red and white marble rocks that rise into mountains and overlook the inlet, as the steep hills enclose a Highland loch at home.

To harass us, the Cossacks frequently galloped forward, causing a general turn-out of the whole line of British cavalry. Then the trumpets blew “Boot and saddle,” lance and sabre were assumed, and arms were loaded; but our ranks would barely be formed, when they would ride quietly back again. We swept all the valleys of everything we could find either to eat or burn, and our patrol duties were incessant. We always slept in our dress-jackets, with boots and spurs on, our cloaks over us, and arms and accoutrements at hand, ready to turn out at the first note of the alarm trumpet: and though the days were sometimes hot, the nights were cold now, and the dews were chilly and dangerous.

Once I had a narrow escape.

On the hilly grounds above the Monastery of St. George, seeing a Turkish officer busy with an old rusty bombshell, the fuse of which had long since burned out, and the contents of which he was investigating by sedulously poking them with the point of his sabre, as he sat cross-legged with the missile in his lap, I drew near. At that moment it exploded, blowing him nearly to pieces, while a splinter tore away my left epaulette!

“Allah be praised! so ends thy black and most unholy magic!” exclaimed a Turkish onbashi, who stood near; and then, in the mutilated dead man, I recognised the hakim Abd-el-Rasig, the magician and chief doctor of the 10th regiment of the Egyptian Contingent; and in the speaker, who coolly proceeded to search his remains for coins or valuables, the corporal whose mother’s image he had failed to produce in the necromantic shell at Varna!

Squalid, dirty, and miserable, the sentinels of the once splendid 93rd Highlanders, with frayed tartans, patched jackets, and tattered plumes, while guarding Balaclava, presented a very different aspect now from that which they showed when their grand advance along the slopes of the Kourgane Hill struck terror to the souls of the Muscovites.

The Black Watch and the gay Cameron Highlanders were in the same condition. I saw the latter erecting a cairn above the grave of one of their officers—young Francis Grant, of Kilgraston, who had died at Balaclava, and it made me think of the words of Ossian: “We raised the stone, and bade it speak to other times.”

So the time passed quickly in our cavalry quarters at Balaclava, while the siege was being pressed, amid misery, blood, and disaster, by the infantry of the Allies. Our duties were the reverse of monotonous, and were frequently varied by most desperate rows among the Montenegrins, Albanians, Arnauts, Greeks, and Koords, who all hated each other cordially, and were always ripe and ready for mischief, as they swaggered about, each with a barrowful of pistols and yataghans in the shawl that formed his girdle; or it might be the alarm of fire, broken out none knew how. Then the trumpets were blown loudly; the gathering pipes of the Highland Brigade would send up their yells; and the fire-drum would be beaten on board the war-ships in the harbour. Then their boats would come off, full of marines and seamen, chorusing “Cheer boys, cheer,” while rumours were rife of incendiary Greeks hovering about our stores and powder with lucifer matches and fusees; shots might be fired, a few men cut down, and then we would all dismiss quietly to quarters again.

Dreaming of cutting foreign throats, my groom and servant (until they got a dog tent) slept under a tree close by my tent, each with his martial cloak around him, as Lanty said, “Like two babbies in the wood, only the divil a cock robin ever came to cover them up with leaves.”

Lying by night in my tent, around which a wall of turf had been raised for warmth, to sleep after a day of harassing excitement was often impossible. Through the open triangular door, I could see the same bright stars and the same moon that were looking down on the quiet harvest fields at home, where the brown stubble had replaced the golden grain; the line of camp fires smoking and reddening in the breeze as it passed along the hostile hills. I could hear our horses munching as they stood unstalled close by in the open air, and the baying of the wild Kurdistan dogs in the distance far away.

From these, and the nearer objects within the tent, its queer furniture and baggage-trunks, the varnished tins of preserved fish, flesh, and fowl, the warming-pan in which Pitblado stewed my beef and boiled my potatoes (when I had either), hanging with my sword, sash, pistols, and lancer-cap on the tent-pole; a cheese and a frying-pan, side by side with a tea-kettle and writing-case; boots and buckets in one corner, a heap of straw in another; empty Cliquot bottles and a gallant leather bag for holding six quarts of cognac—from all these my thoughts would wander away in the hours of the night to home, and all its peace and comfort.

I thought—I know not why—of the village burying-ground in Calderwood Glen, where my mother and all my kindred lay, and I shuddered at the idea of being flung into one of those Crimean hecatombs that studded all the ground about Sebastopol. On the grassy graves in Calderwood, how often had I seen the summer sun shine joyously, and the summer grass waving in the warm breezes that swept the Lomond hills. The bluebell and the white marguerite, the wild gowan and the golden buttercup, were there growing above the dead; the old kirk walls and its haunted aisle, covered with ivy and the lettered tombs where laird and lady lay, with all the humble dwellers of the hamlet near them, came before me in memory, and I felt intensely sad on reflecting I might be buried here, so far from where my kindred slept, though

Often had dear Cora quoted that verse to me at the old kirk stile, when the rays of a golden sunset were falling on the Falkland woods.

A letter which the Colonel had received from Sir Nigel, had, no doubt, induced this train of thought. It was all, however, about the Fifeshire pack and the Lanark race-meeting, “anent the bond,” and Mr. Brassy Wheedleton and Messrs. Grab and Screwdriver, W.S., Edinburgh; that the bond had been got rid of, and Mr. Brassy, too, without having recourse to Splinterbar or old Pitblado’s sparrow-hail—matters beyond the Colonel’s comprehension, but of which he was to inform me, if he could, through the Russian lines, and discover whether I was well, as my friends were sorely afflicted to hear that I had been taken prisoner by Lord Aberdeen’s friends.

Mail after mail came up per steamer from the Bosphorus; but there never was a letter for me from Lady Loftus, and my heart grew sick and sore with its old doubts and apprehensions. Nor were these natural emotions untinged by jealous fear that her cold, aristocratic father, or chilly, imperious mother, had prevailed—or that a more successful suitor had urged his suit. The latter seemed not unlikely, as I heard of her having been seen at the Derby with the marquis, and his party at Brighton. That when in London she was still the cynosure of every eye; that at her opera-box every lorgnette was levelled when she entered; that she was ever smiling, gay, happy, and beautiful!

Letters to Fred Wilford and others of ours told of these things, and some hinted that a marriage was on the tapis with several persons as ineligible as myself; but, save Scriven, none ever hinted at my peculiar bugbear, the marquis.

When I lay on out-piquet, drenched with rain, and chilled by the early frosts, half dead with cold and misery of body, the fears her silence roused within me, added to other discomforts, made me reckless of my wretched life.

What would I not have given for liberty to return to Britain—the liberty which so many sought for and obtained, under a military regime so very different from that of the Iron Duke and the glorious days of Vittoria and Waterloo, until “urgent private affairs” became a byword and a scoff in the pages of Punch, as before the walls of Sebastopol; but the liberty for which I panted—liberty to return, and convince myself that I was not forgotten, and still loved by Louisa—a just sense of honour restrained me from seeking; so I remained like Prometheus on his rock, chained to my troop, with its daily round of peril and suffering.

A letter from Cora might have served to soothe me; but Cora never wrote to me. With all the love I bore Louisa, for Cora I had ever an affection that went, perhaps, beyond cousinship; for our regard had begun as companions in childhood, and no cloud had ever marred or shadowed it.

Had I loved her as I loved Lady Loftus, how much of sorrow had been spared me!

So time passed rapidly away until the evening of the 16th of October, when Studhome came to my tent, with a sparkle in his eye and a flush on his cheek.

“Jocelyn has been down to the harbour,” said he, “and he has seen Berkeley’s yacht. She is now at anchor close to the old ruined castle, and Scriven has boarded her.”

“See him at once, Jack, like a good fellow,” I exclaimed. “Delay is fatal with one so slippery.”

“All right! I’m off!” replied Studhome, seizing his forage-cap, and in a few minutes after I saw him galloping past the redoubts of Kadokoi; for we, the cavalry, with the Highland brigade, were not exactly quartered in Balaclava, but among some vineyards two miles distant from the harbour-head in the direction of Sebastopol.

Lucky for us, too, that we were so, as the harbour of Balaclava was full of dead troop-horses, whose swollen bodies were used as stepping-stones in the shallow places, while all the ground about the little town was full of half-buried soldiers, whose feet, fingers, and fleshless skulls stuck through their shallow graves.

*CHAPTER XLIX.**

“I have been on board the yacht, Newton. I have seen Berkeley and Scriven there, and the matter is all but arranged,” said Studhome, as he tossed aside his whip and forage-cap, seated himself on the edge of my camp bed, and proceeded to light a cigar.

Much though I longed for it, the information gave me a species of nervous start.

“Thanks, Jack. He will come to the scratch, then?”

“Like the muff, or rather the knave he is, in a fashion of his own. I found him surrounded by every luxury on board his yacht, and she is a beauty—the Seapink of Cowes. He was lounging indolently on a rich sofa, in a velvet smoking-cap and gorgeous brocade dressing-gown, tied with yellow silk tassels. By Jove, the fellow was as grandly got up as a Highland piper, or Solomon in all his glory; and he and Scriven were having tiffin—not as we do here, on green coffee and pounded biscuit, but on preserved grouse pie, with iced hock and seltzer water. They asked me to join them, and offered me the chair, which had just been vacated by a—a—pretty Greek girl whom he has on board. His countenance fell rather when he heard my spurs rattling on the steps of the companion-way, and lower still when he discovered my errand. Before our Sybarite of a brother officer, with his bandolined moustaches and exquisite toilette, I was weak enough to feel almost ashamed of my tattered blue surtout, with its frayed frog lace.”

“You reminded him of the arrangement made between you and Scriven at Maidstone barracks?”

“Word for word.”

“And what did he say?”

“He grew rather pale and nervous, and so forth, and muttered, ‘Aw—aw—doocid odd sort of thing. A demmed noosance to fight a fellah when he had just that morning got his leave to return home on—aw, aw—urgent private affairs.’ And then he eyed me superciliously and defiantly through his eyeglass, stroking his bandolined moustache the while, till I felt inclined to punch his well-oiled head.”

“Confounded puppy!” I exclaimed.

“One might as well sing psalms to a dead horse as appeal to the honour of such as he—the most contemptible fellow one could meet with in the longest day’s march.”

“So he has actually got his leave for England, then?”

“Yes; so I was not a moment too late. The yacht’s crew were taking in water, prior to getting under weigh again. He hummed and hawed, and puffed himself out like a pouter pigeon for a time; but ‘a change came o’er the spirit of his dream,’ when Scriven, his own peculiar chum, acknowledged that all our mess knew of, and tacitly acquiesced in, the scheme for a hostile meeting within the French lines, or rather within range of Sebastopol, to account for any mishap that might occur. You should have seen how he winced at the word ‘mishap!’ Scriven and I then retired together on deck for a few minutes, and there arranged that, after sunset to-morrow night, at seven o’clock, as there will no doubt be a brilliant moon, we are to meet on the hilly ground midway between the British left attack and the right of the French entrenchments, about a mile from the South Fort of Sebastopol. There, if necessary, two shots are to be exchanged at twelve paces each, after which we will allow no more firing. The first shot to be tossed for; the others to follow in succession.”

“Enough, Jack,” said I, trembling with fierce eagerness, as I shook his hand. “When I remember all his perfidy towards me, his cool insolence at Calderwood, the mode in which he sought to compromise me with that poor girl at the Reculvers, his subsequent slanders at Maidstone, his act of treachery at the Balbeck, and his crowning it by the cool assertion that I, and not he, shot my own horse, to fall into the enemy’s hands—I shall shoot him if I can, like the dog he is.”

I passed the night as I suppose most men do who have such a dreadful business as a duel on their hands. It was all very well for Studhome to urge me again and again to sleep soundly, to keep my hand steady and my head cool; but strange thoughts would come unbidden—thoughts of those who were far away, and from whom I was now, perhaps, on the eve of parting for ever. Yet I could not bring myself to wish that Berkeley had sailed and escaped me.

Next morning ushered in the 17th of October, and with it the first formal bombardment of Sebastopol, on which the breaching batteries opened simultaneously from all quarters; and so terrible was the roar of sound, that in the rifle pits the discharge of the muskets could scarcely be heard. It seemed a mere snapping of caps.

I could not help smiling grimly when I heard the storm of war that was raging in the distance.

“What is one human life amid the numbers that are passing away there?—and such as Berkeley’s, too!” said I.

“Too true,” replied Jack. “But there go the trumpets for church parade. We are to have divine service in the cavalry camp, it seems.”

“Why?”

“We missed sermon on two Sundays—the chaplains were so busy with burial services for the cholera dead—so we are to have our minds enlightened to-day.”

As the regiment was for patrol duty, it paraded on horseback, and the whole formation of the parade—the lancers, with their fluttering banneroles; the appearance of the chaplain, with his white surplice and Crimean beard; the Bible on the kettledrums, which were improvised as a pulpit; and, in short, the entire affair seemed to me a species of phantasmagoria, for my thoughts and intentions were far away from that strange and stirring, yet somewhat solemn, scene. I was rather struck with the inconsistency of the text, however, on that a day of such importance to me and to the history of Europe.

“Love thine enemy, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.”

Such was the text of our chaplain on that morning. I heard him praying and expounding amid the thunder of the breaching batteries all round Sebastopol, from the Tchernaya on the right to the Quarantine Point on the left; but late events had turned my heart to stone, and with my mind intent upon a duel to the death, I heard him preach in vain.

Though still unflinching in purpose, he somewhat softened me in one way: and in the evening, after some reflection, and to be prepared for the worst, I wrote a farewell letter to Sir Nigel, with a full explanation of my conduct, and my dearest thanks for all his kindness. My sword, pistols, saddle, and the Medjidie medal I left him as souvenirs, and to Cora some little jewels which I named as remembrances of her old boy-lover, Newton.

Then I turned me to compose a brief, bitter letter to Louisa. It contained but two or three lines. As circumstances stood between us, I could not trust myself to say more than “that I was called upon by the rules of honour, and the duty I owed to myself, to have a hostile meeting with one who had wronged me deeply; that God only could know the sequel; and while at this moment I committed my soul into His hands, I entreated her to be assured that, if I fell, I should die loving her, and her only.”

This letter I had just sealed, addressed, and placed beside the other in my tent, when Studhome arrived, cloaked, and ready to set out. Our horses, with pistols in the holsters, were brought to the door.

It was long past five now, and the sun had set. I gave Pitblado the letters, saying—

“I am going to the front this evening, Willie, and, as we know not what may happen, if I don’t return, you will carefully see these letters posted for Britain.”

My voice must have faltered, for Pitblado looked at me earnestly, and said—

“Of course, sir—of course, sir; but, please, don’t talk that way.”

“Good-bye!” said I, clapping him kindly on the shoulder; and, as we mounted and rode away in the dark, I could see my faithful adherent looking alternately and wistfully at the superscription of the letters and after us.

Like a mighty shield of gold, the moon had long since risen from the Euxine, far across which its brightness came on the ripples, like a shining path, from the horizon to the red marble cliffs of Balaclava and Cape Phiolente, and now her disc grew smaller as she ascended into the more rarefied atmosphere; but her brilliance gave promise of a clear and lovely night as we quitted the cavalry camp at an easy walk—trotting might shake my hand, Jack said—and took the road that leads direct from Balaclava northward to Sebastopol.

High and broken ground rises on each side of that path which so many trod never to return, and which was now thronged by mounted men pouring down to Balaclava. A mile distant on our left, we passed the hamlet of Karani, and on our right the long line of defence works and redoubts, which lay two miles in rear of Khutor Karagatch, the British head-quarters. Those of France were a mile farther on, to the left; and then, diverging in the opposite direction, in rear of the breaching batteries which crossed the roadway, we sought for a quiet path between them and the extreme left of our army, to reach the broken ground opposite to the bastions of the South Fort, the proposed scene of our little operations.

So grand, so wild, and stirring was the scene, that for a moment I reined in my horse, and, forgetful of the dreadful errand on which we had come, surveyed it with a curious eye.

As I have said, on this night “the moon, sweet regent of the sky,” full-orbed and glorious, shone with wonderful brilliance, eclipsing even the fixed stars in the deep blue vault above, pouring ten thousand silver rays over everything, bringing out some features in strong light, or sinking others into deep, dark shadow.

The terrible panorama of Sebastopol lay before us. The noble harbour, with its tremendous batteries, its outer and inner booms, and myriad sunken ships, of all sorts and sizes, the mastheads of some, the mere stumps, bowsprits, and poops of others, visible, showing where the Flora of forty-four guns, the Oriel of eighty-four, the Three Godheads of one hundred and twenty, and all the rest of that vast scuttled armament, mounting more than one thousand five hundred cannon, lay, all sunk to bar our entrance.

We could see the white flag of Russia flying on its citadel; the cupola of the great church; the glass windows of the houses—the entire city, with all the domes and towers glittering in the moonlight, and girdled by its vast and formidable bastions of earth and stone, from which, ever and anon, came a red flash, and the boom of a heavy shot, or the clear, bright fiery arc described by the whistling shell, as it curved in mid air, on its ghastly errand, towards the French or British lines.

All this stirring panorama we saw extending for more than four miles, from the lazaretto on the west to the light of Inkermann on the east, which was glittering in the distance on its tower, four hundred feet above the mouth of the Tchernaya.

Several dead bodies lying in the immediate foreground, and the turf all torn to pieces and studded with cannon-balls and fragments of exploded shell—a literal pavement of iron—did not “add enchantment to the view.”

That softer effects might not be wanting, between the booming of the half-random cannonade that was dying away for the night, we could hear the brass band of the Rifle Brigade playing an old familiar air, which sounded sweetly in the distance. It was “Annie Laurie”—an air heard daily and hourly among our tents in the Crimea.

“Of all songs, the favourite song at the camp,” says one of the lancers, in a published letter, “is ‘Annie Laurie.’ Words and music combine to render it popular, for every soldier has a sweetheart, and almost every soldier possesses the organ of tune. Every new draft from Britain marches into camp playing this old Scottish melody. I once heard a corporal of the Rifle Brigade start ‘Annie Laurie.’ He had a tolerably good tenor voice, and sang with expression; but the chorus was taken up by the audience in a much lower key, and hundreds of voices, in the most exact time and harmony, sang together—

The effect was extraordinary. I never heard any chorus in oratorio rendered with greater solemnity; and the heart of each singer was evidently far away over the sea.”***

Just as we diverged from the main road, we heard the galloping of horses in our rear.

“Thank God, we are first on the ground,” said Studhome. “Here come Scriven and his man, with our assistant-surgeon, Bob Hartshorn, on his nagtailed bay.”

As he spoke, they reined in their horses a little. Then we all bowed, touched our caps, and proceeded slowly along the eminence, towards a quiet hollow, which Studhome and Scriven had previously inspected.

Berkeley was nervous and restless; his eyes wandered vaguely over the moonlit scenery. I could see that he frequently passed his tongue over his lips, as if to moisten them; he drew his gloves off and on, and fidgeted with his stock and eyeglass a hundred times; yet he chatted gaily enough to Scriven and the doctor, who told us that he had quite patients enough on his list, without having them added to by fighting duels.

“How romantic!—how terribly grand is all this prospect!” exclaimed Hartshorn, pointing to Sebastopol.

“Aw—haw—doocid good!” drawled my antagonist; “but, Bob, my dear boy, I am an Englishman, and England has been too well fed, too d—d cosy, for centuries, to have much romance about her! and so—aw—aw—I have none, thank Heaven! It is behind the age, Bob—behind the age!”

“An Englishman?” said I to Studhome. “His worthy father was an honest Scotch tradesman, who could little have foreseen the despicable figure his son is cutting to-night.”

“I was up to the front before to-day,” said Scriven, “and got a rifle ball through my shako.”

“It will serve for the—aw—aw—healthy purpose of ventilation,” said Berkeley, with a laugh—a very little one, however.

“My old quarters in Balaclava have been nicely ventilated by three bullet-holes in the roof,” said the doctor, a good-humoured, careless young fellow.

“Bob is quartered there, on an old Turk, whose third wife is a female so severely respectable, that she never feeds the hens without a veil on.”

“Why?” asked Scriven.

“Can’t you guess?” asked Berkeley.

“No.”

“Because there is—aw—aw—a d—d cock among them.”

This frivolous conversation was now interrupted by a hoarse voice in front, challenging—

“Qui va la?”

“Friends!” I replied.

“Anglaises,” added the other, and we found ourselves face to face with a French mounted officer and a small party of workmen, with pickaxes and shovels. In the horseman I immediately recognised Colonel Giomar, of the French 77th Regiment, who demanded whither we were going in that remarkable direction.

“’Tis an affair of honour, monsieur le colonel, and we propose to settle it here,” said I. “May we?”

“Tres bien! but you have chosen a droll place and hour,” replied the colonel, a short, pot-bellied little man, in a scarlet kepi, which had a great square peak, and who wore a frogged surtout, with a sabre in a brass sheath.

“We cannot fight within our own lines, monsieur.”

“I comprehend. You don’t permit duelling in your service, I believe?”

“No.”

“Indeed—singular!”

“Public opinion is against it.”

“The King of France, Louis XIV., in 1700, tried to put down duelling, on which an old field-officer said to him, ‘Tudieu, sire! you have put down gaming and stage-playing; now you wish to make an end of duelling. How the devil are officers and gentlemen to amuse themselves?’ But, with your permission, messieurs, I shall look and see how this affair ends. I haven’t seen one since we marched out of Cambrai.”

Berkeley bowed, and gave him a ghastly smile. When viewed by the moonlight, his face was so pale that even Scriven, his second, surveyed him with disgust and annoyance. There was a clamorous fluttering about my own heart. Thank that Heaven which I was about to face, my bearing was very different from his!

We dismounted, and the soldiers of the French working-party led our horses aside, as we had all come without grooms. The pot-bellied Colonel Giomar seated himself on the turf, to enjoy a cigar and see the sport; and the doctor, with professional sang froid, opened his case of instruments, and drew forth lint and bandages from the pocket of the Inverness cape which he wore over his uniform.

We now threw off our cloaks and swords. I wore an undress blue surtout; but Berkeley was dressed in an entire suit of black—a sack-coat, buttoned up to the neck, so that not a vestige of shirt was visible to attract my eye, or fix an aim.

Let me hasten over what follows.

Apologies were neither asked nor offered. The affair was beyond such amenities in the deadly game we were about to play. Twelve paces were measured; we tossed up for the first fire, and it fell to—Berkeley! Then I saw a smile of savage hope light up his eyes and curl his lip, as he took his ground and carefully cocked his pistol, just feeling the percussion-cap for a second with the fore-finger of his left hand.

Steadily I looked at him. I could see how he restrained his breathing, lest the aim might waver; how a white glare came into his eye, as it glanced along the barrel of the pistol, which he levelled full at my head, in the pale moonlight.

“Gardez la bombe!” shouted Colonel Giomar, as he rolled away over the turf like a butter-firkin. It was a moment of thrilling suspense, and, bewildered by the interruption, Berkeley permitted his pistol to explode, the ball going Heaven knows where! There was a whistling in the air overhead, with a rushing sound and then a heavy thud, as there lighted, almost at Berkeley’s feet, a five-inch shell, shot from the South Fort by the Russians, who must have seen our group in the moonlight; and there it lay on the turf, half-imbedded by its own weight, with its red fuse hissing and burning furiously.

For a moment I saw its upward glare, as it shone on the pale face of the terrified man, who was too much paralyzed by emotion to move; but, just as I flung myself flat on the earth to escape the explosion, there was a blaze of yellow light, a crash as of thunder, and I felt a kind of hot wind sweep over me. The shell had burst, and Berkeley lay a heap of mutilated blood and bones beside it!

We rushed towards him. Both legs were broken in many places, a large fragment was buried deep in his chest, and the man was dead!

“Poor fellow!” said I, after our first exclamations of astonishment and commiseration had subsided.

Berkeley had long and systematically wronged me deeply; and now the angry lust for vengeance passed away, and I felt ashamed of the bitterness of the emotions which had inspired me but a few moments before. I forgave him all now, and almost felt sorry for the sudden fate that had, perhaps, saved me—I say sorry, but I could feel no more.

That fate so unlooked for and mysterious freed me from all further trouble or responsibility. I could pardon him for all he had ever done to me, and to his dead victim too—poor Agnes Auriol.

“C’est la fortune de guerre, camarades,” said Colonel Giomar, shrugging his shoulders.

Stretched on the grass, which was soaked and sodden with his yet warm blood, there lay De Warr Berkeley, the coxcomb of Rotten Row, the epicurean of the mess and dinner-table, the Sybarite of the clubs, the sensualist whom poor Agnes Auriol loved—not too wisely, but too well; the sporting man, whose splendid drag presented the gayest show, the best company, the brightest parasols, bonnets, and fans, with the loveliest faces and the most expensive champagnes on the Derby-day, or the yearly inspection at Maidstone—there he lay dead, mangled, like a very beggar’s dog!

It was the fortune of war, as Giomar said; but a fortune on which he had never calculated—his mother’s pet from childhood, “clad in purple and fine linen.”

Bundled in a cloak, his remains were borne to the rear by the Frenchmen of the 77th; and full of much thought, and with many a surmise as to how the corps would view the story of the night, Studhome, Scriven, the doctor and I, rode slowly back to quarters, leading with us a riderless horse.

I entered my tent, bewildered, giddy with the startling episode in which I had been involved. I had but one satisfaction—his blood was not on my hands. My brain swam, my heart was beating fast, and I had an intense thirst. A bottle of Cliquot stood near. Studhome adroitly struck off the top with his sword, and gave me a generous draught.

Then, by the light of a stable lantern that hung glimmering on the tent-pole, I saw the two letters I had so recently penned lying on the top of a baggage trunk; but a third epistle, addressed to myself, was beside them.

It was from Sir Nigel: the mail from Constantinople had come in that afternoon. I tore my missive open, and almost the first words that met my eyes were—

“Compose yourself, my dear boy. Louisa Loftus, the tricky jade, is now a marchioness. I send you herewith the Morning Post, which details her marriage at full length.”

“Read that, Jack!” said I, in a hoarse voice, while the miserable tent swam round and round me.

Studhome scanned the letter hurriedly.

“Oh, Jack! what do you think of all this?”

“Think!” said he with an oath. “I think Sir Walter Scott did well to call the world ‘an admirable compound of folly and knavery.’”

So all her studied silence was accounted for now!

*CHAPTER L.***

On that day, never to be forgotten in the annals of the British cavalry, the 25th of October, when we fought the battle of Balaclava, no man in all the Light Division mounted his horse with a more reckless heart than I, and no man, perhaps, was personally more careless as to the sequel. War and its contingent horrors were a relief, congenial to my bitterness of spirit, and afforded me a relief from myself.

There is probably not a boy in Britain but knows how, on that terrible day, the six hundred horsemen rode fearlessly into the Valley of Death; yet I cannot resist the temptation to tell the gallant story once again.

We were roused early in our miserable quarters by tidings that the Russians, in great force, were menacing Balaclava, the harbour of which was of vital importance to the allies in their operations against Sebastopol. Sir Colin Campbell—Lord Clyde, of glorious memory—had been appointed governor; and to him and his Highland Brigade had this most valuable post been intrusted by the allied generals. On this day he was reinforced by a few marines from the fleet, and four thousand lubberly Turks, who occupied four redoubts, which commanded the road to the camp.

The cavalry division—led by Lord Lucan, and composed of the Scots Greys, the Inniskillins, 1st Royal, 4th and 5th Dragoon Guards, forming the Heavy Brigade, under General Scarlett; and the 4th and 13th Light Dragoons, the 8th and 11th Hussars, with the 17th Lancers and ours, forming the Light Brigade, under the Earl of Cardigan—were to form between those Turkish redoubts and the Sutherland Highlanders, who were encamped under the cliffs, where the marines had a battery.

It was seven in the morning, when Captain Nolan, of the 15th Hussars, Lord Raglan’s gallant aide-de-camp, dashed into our quarters on horseback.

“Get your men into their saddles, Colonel Beverley,” he exclaimed. “A strong column of the enemy’s cavalry, supported by artillery and infantry, some twenty-three thousand of all arms, are now in the valley before Balaclava. General Baur has already stormed one of the Turkish redoubts, and is opening fire on the other three. The Bono Johnnies are flying in all directions. Pass the word along for the whole line to turn out. We must floor them instantly!”

The trumpets blew loud and shrill among the tents, just as Studhome and I were making a hasty breakfast.

“The deuce!” said he. “So we must take a turn against those troublesome Cossacks; but if no Russian rifle bullet hath its place allotted in my proper person, we shall devil those drumsticks, and polish off that cooper of sherry in the evening.”

Poor Jack!

We were soon in our saddles, with pistols loaded and lances slung. All were eager for the fray; and just as the sun arose General Bosquet, with a few pieces of artillery and two hundred Chasseurs d’Afrique, arrived to join us.

The surface of the valley into which the cavalry division advanced was undulating, and numerous green grassy hillocks served to conceal the movements of the various bodies of troops from each other. Above those hillocks we could see the light smoke of the distant conflict curling, as the Russians attacked and took in rapid succession the four redoubts, turning the guns of each, as they captured it, on the fugitive Turks, who fled in masses, and were decimated by round-shot and grape from their own guns, which, in their haste to escape, they forgot to spike.

The last redoubt was speedily abandoned by the brutal Colonel Hadjie Mehmet, who, bareheaded and without his sabre, was seen galloping ignominiously over his own men, as they rushed like a flock of sheep towards the steady line of the 93rd Highlanders, and there, by superhuman exertions, Sir Colin Campbell formed them in a confused body on his flank. But before this bourn was reached a Russian bullet had sent the soul of Hadjie Mehmet in search of the wonders of Paradise.

In fierce pursuit the Russian horse came dashing on, their polished lance-heads and black leather helmets shining in the sun, and, like successive human waves, squadron after squadron came in view. Pausing for a moment on the crest of a ridge, they looked with wonder—it might be scorn—upon the thin red line of Scotsmen, whom, as Campbell said, in his quaint way, he “did not think it worth while to form four deep or in square.”

On came the Russians, with levelled lances and uplifted swords—on and on at a gallop, and from thence to racing speed—down like thunder rolling through the murky air. This sight proved too much for the red-capped Turks. Once more their line of red breeches was turned to the enemy, as they fled en masse; but calmly, steadily, and sternly, like their native rocks, stood the men of the slender Scottish line.

A command is given. Now the Minie rifles are levelled from the shoulder, the plumed bonnets seem to droop a little to the right as each man takes his aim, the withering volley rolls along from flank to flank, and, as the smoke rises, we see a confused heap of men rolling wildly over each other, while swords, lances, and caps are scattered far and near. Beyond these are the retreating squadrons—fugitives, and in utter rout!

The cowardly Turks were objects of intense derision to our seamen, and even to the little middies and soldiers’ wives. Many of the latter kicked and cuffed the “Bono Johnnies” without mercy for their shameless abandonment of the Highlanders, and for plundering our cavalry camp, where they gobbled up the porridge which the Scots Greys had been cooking for breakfast when the alarm sounded.

Many other regiments of cuirassiers and lancers now joined the baffled horse, as they re-formed on the slope of a hill, from whence, for the first time to-day, they saw us, the heavy and light divisions of cavalry, drawn up in the small valley a little to the left of the Highlanders, and having had enough of them, with us they now resolved upon a trial of strength.

By many thousands they outnumbered us; but we knew that we were unaided; that upon our own bravery, discipline, and hardihood depended the honour and the fortune of the day; and all the many staff officers and other spectators, who had come from the French camp and the harbour to witness the result, knew this too, and looked silently and breathlessly on.

In two long, compact, and glittering lines, the Russian horse once more came on. Among them were some cuirassier regiments of the Imperial Guard, with magnificent helmets, adorned with silver eagles. But now, without waiting for orders, the two advanced corps of our cavalry—the Scots Greys and the Inniskillin Dragoons, galloped forward to meet them, one in heart, in ardour, and in purpose, as when those two noble regiments had ridden side by side, in the same brigade, in the Septennial War, a century before, and on the plains of Waterloo.

Overlapped by the vast extent of the first Russian line, we thought they would be literally swallowed up and exterminated. A ray of light seemed to pass along the ranks, as all their sword blades flashed in the sunshine; and then came the shock of battle.

The Scots on the left, the Irish dragoons on the right, broke through the Russians, cutting and treading them down; then both regiments actually disappeared! We held our breath; but anon a shout escaped us, as we saw them on the crest of an eminence beyond, cutting through the second Russian line!

All was then a wild and mingled chaos of uniforms, scarlet, blue, and green; of flashing swords and brandished lances, of floating plumes and swaying standards; of shrieking men, and horses kicking, plunging, and rolling on the turf; and many an episode of chivalry and hand-to-hand combat was there.

Then we heard the shrill trumpets above that infernal din, where no commands would have availed. The tall black bearskins of the Scots, and the brass helmets of the Irish dragoons, began to reappear; and, soon emerging from that human sea of glory and honour, we saw our gallant Heavies once more reforming in compact line, and retiring at a hand gallop, after having taught the thick-skulled Muscovites the strength of a Briton’s arm, and the temper of our Sheffield steel.

Conspicuous by their colour, we could see that many of the Scots Greys’ horses were covered with blood.

And now came our part in this terrible drama—the disaster of the day!

*CHAPTER LI.***

Recoiling before the glorious charges of our Heavy Brigade, the Russian horse and foot had retired into a narrow gorge at the head of the long green valley. There thirty pieces of cannon were in position, and in rear of them were formed six solid columns of cavalry and six of infantry, while other dense masses occupied the slopes beyond.

Notwithstanding this formidable array, in an almost unassailable position, a message was received by Lord Lucan from Captain Lewis Edward Nolan, of the 15th Hussars, undoubtedly one of the bravest of the brave, to the effect that the Light Brigade was to carry those thirty pieces of cannon. Another account says that he simply pointed to the guns with his sword, and said, “We should take them,” and that the motion was taken for an order.

Ere many minutes were passed, poor Nolan paid the full penalty of this misconception or error in judgment—if error it was.

Perilous, rash, and desperate though the attempt, Lord Lucan reluctantly ordered the Earl of Cardigan to advance with his brigade, and cheerfully we obeyed the startling order.

We numbered only six hundred and seven horsemen, officers included.

Each officer took up the words in succession—“The brigade will advance. First squadron, march, trot, gallop!” And then for the first time, as I led my squadron on, did I become aware how thirsty we unconsciously become when under fire. My lips were quite baked, yet the morning air was moist and cool. We had before us a mile and a half to gallop over, level and open ground, encumbered here and there by the dead and wounded men and horses of the previous encounter; but these we swept over in our advance towards where the black and grim artillery stood, with round and gaping muzzles, before the solid array of Russian horse and foot—those dark columns in long grey capotes, all cross-belted, with fixed bayonets glittering in the sun; those darker and less distinct clouds of horsemen, whose forest of lances, sword-blades, and brighter appointments glittered and flashed from among their umbered masses.

On and on we rode, and faces flushed red, and hearts beat wildly—while the Earl, brave as every English gentleman should be, with all his faults of temper—led us on with brandished sword. Every hand was firm on the bridle, every grasp was firm on the sword, every knee was pressed to the saddle-laps, every rowel was tinged with blood; so, holster to holster and boot to boot, the squadrons were pressing on.

“CHARGE!” escaped me, almost before the time, and then the maddened horses rushed on at full racing speed, with long, invigorating strides. Our lances were all unslung, and in the rest, the banneroles fluttering before the horses’ heads and outstretched necks, from which the manes were floating backward like smoke.

We were soon within the line of fire. Like the thunder of heaven the park of artillery shook the air, as cannon, mortars, and rifles opened like a fiery hell on front and flanks at once. An iron shower of round shot and grape, shells, and rockets, with a tempest of conical rifle bullets, whizzed past our ears, or tore through horses and men, and down they went on right and left at every stride.

Struck on the breast by a shell, the gallant Nolan fell back on his saddle, with a wild and harrowing cry, as his horse swept round, and bore his body to the rear, with his feet still in the stirrups, vindicating, even in death, his reputation as one of England’s noblest horsemen.

Man after man, horse after horse, are now going down, thick and fast, and shrieks, and prayers, and curses rise together to Heaven; but the rest close in from the flank, and firmer, denser, wilder, and more resolute than ever we ride the race of death!

On, and on yet, steeds snorting, lances rising and falling, pennons fluttering, and sabres flashing in the sunshine.

“Steady, lads, steady!” cried Lionel Beverley, as another shower of grape tore through the squadrons, and many more went down, though some of the horses remained riderless in the rank, and galloped mechanically on. For a moment, amid the confusion, I saw the colonel for the last time, as he led us—that noble heart, that polished gentleman and gallant lancer. He was deadly pale, for he was mortally wounded in the left side. His life-blood was ebbing; but his sword was still uplifted, and a light was flashing in his eyes, which already could see “the glories and the terrors of the unknown world.”

“Close up, gentlemen and comrades! Keep your horses well in hand; but spur on—charge, and charge home! Hurrah!”

A ball hummed past—a twenty-four pound shot, apparently—and where was Lionel Beverley?

Doubled up, a dead and ghastly heap, under a dying and mangled charger! The next who fell was my friend Wilford. If he was somewhat of a dandy in England, there was no want of pluck in him here. Leading his troop, he fell close by me, and I leaped my horse over him as he rolled past, churning a mouthful of grass and earth, his features awfully convulsed, and his limbs trembling in their death agony. Poor Fred Wilford!

On and on yet! Many a familiar face is gone now; the gaps are fearful, and men who were on the flanks now find themselves in the centre. Yet, withal, it is impossible not to feel how—

On we still gallop towards that mouth of fire—on, and fearlessly. The best blood of the three kingdoms is in our ranks, all well and nobly mounted, the flower of our gallant cavalry—on yet like a whirlwind, the hearty British “Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!” ringing in our ears; the heart’s blood seems mounting to the brain; and now we are upon them!—now the red flashing muzzles of the cannon are passed; the gunners are throwing themselves under the wheels and limbers, where we cut them down, and spear or pin them to the turf. Others are rushing for shelter to their squares of infantry, under whose rifles they lie flat and securely, while sheets of lead are tearing through us!

Oh, the superlative bitterness of that moment, when, with all our horses blown, I look back and see that we are without supports!

The guns are taken—the gunners almost annihilated; our horses are breathless. We have no aid, and no resource but to ride back, under such a concentrated fire as troops were never before exposed to.

“It’s all up—threes about—retire!”

A single trumpet feebly gives the call, and away we go.

Shot—in the heart, perhaps—my Arab steed sank down gently beneath me; but I received a severe blow from something, I know not what—the splinter of a shell, probably, which crushed my lancer cap, and almost stunned me. I must have remounted myself mechanically, for when we hacked our way back, and reached the rear, I was riding a bay horse of the 11th Hussars, the saddle and holsters of which were slimy with blood. The horse fell with me soon after, as it had been disembowelled by a grape shot.

Of all those glorious regiments who formed the Light Brigade, there came back but one hundred and ninety-eight men; many of these were wounded, and many dismounted; and when the rolls were called over at nightfall, it was found that one hundred and fifty-seven were dead, one hundred and nineteen were wounded, and that three hundred and thirty fine horses were killed, leaving more than one hundred and thirty dragoons unaccounted for.

I had not the heart to number the forty men who represented the two squadrons which followed Lionel Beverley. There, on the green sward of that Valley of Death, lay our gallant colonel, cut in two by a round shot; Travers, torn to pieces by grape shot; Scriven, slain by three lance wounds; Howard, “the only son of his mother, and she was a widow;” Frank Jocelyn, our old sergeant-major, and an incredible number of others killed. The flower of our lancers were there, and among them my faithful follower, Pitblado, with a rifle bullet in his leg.

Hot, breathless, stiff, sore, and covered with bruises, I now discovered that in the melee—though I was unconscious of having struck a blow—there were, at least, twenty notches in the blade of my sword, that I had received three very severe lance prods, two sword cuts, and that my uniform was torn to rags. When we halted to girth up, I threw myself on the rich grass of the valley, and, taking off my battered lancer cap, felt the cool breeze most grateful, as it came from the distant sea. Then I buried my face among the verdure, less for coolness than from excess of weakness, and to hide the sorrow that consumed me for the losses we had sustained.

From a distance came the cheers of the Heavy Brigade, avenging us, and completing the work we had begun. Then the fierce excitement—the devil that had possessed me—passed away, and I thought only of the dying and the dead.

---

“Is that you, Lanty?” said a voice near me.

“Ov coorse it is—barrin’ the tip of an ear.”

“Well, thank God, there are at least two of our troop left.”

“And the captain here!”

I must have fainted from exhaustion and loss of blood, for after a time I was surprised to find my jacket open at the neck, and that I was propped against my dead horse by Dr. Hartshorn, who was binding up my cuts and scars, while Lanty O’Regan attended, with a short black dudeen in his mouth, which had been enlarged by a sword cut, and then roughly patched with plaster, which did not, however, prevent poor Lanty from talking.

“Me mouth, is it, I’m to take care ov, docthor dear? Sure, if it is only for the sake ov the girls, I’ll do that same; but, be gorra! I wish that dirty Roosian had been holdin’ on the horns of the new moon wid his fingers well greased, before I came across him.”

“Are you sure the farrier-sergeant is dead?”

“Quite sure, docthor.”

“You saw him get the sleeping draught?”

“Sure, the draught it was that finished him right off?”

“What the deuce do you mean? I took orf his leg successfully in the Turkish hospital.”

“And sure, afther ye war gone, the Turkish Hospital sergeant, who was blazing drunk with raki, made up a prescription of all the dhrugs in the place, saying some o’ them would surely compose him.”

“Well—well?”

“The farrier-sergeant took it, sir; and he’s now composed enough, poor man, and laying in the trinches, waitin’ to be covered up wid green sods, if they can be got in that red valley ov blood and murder.”

Some brandy given by Hartshorn now rallied me a little, and I inquired for Willie Pitblado. Lanty informed me that he was in a hospital tent, and enduring great pain.

Pitblado’s sword had broken in his hand; he was looking wildly round him for another, when poor Studhome, who lay dying beneath ahorse, placed his own sword in Willie’s hand, saying—

“Use it, and wear it for my sake. All’s over with me!”

Pitblado cut down two Russian gunners, and actually bore Studhome for some paces in his arms, before he discovered that he was dead, and then a rifle bullet stretched him on the field.

A few men were now crawling back from the valley, where several dismounted guns and dead bodies were all that remained of the Russian host, which had now fallen back.

Numbers of horses, many of them severely wounded, with bridles hanging loose, and saddles all bloody, careered along the green ridges, where they were caught by the Turks. Some came trotting quietly into quarters, when they heard the trumpet sound for “corn”; others cropped the bloody herbage in the Valley of Death; and not a few who remained beside their fallen riders were found by the burial parties.

Beverley’s body was discovered, terribly mutilated, stripped, and deprived of the locket which contained the hair of his intended—the girl who was shot in his arms on the retreat through the Khyber Pass.

On surveying the horrors of that day, I asked myself—was it for such work as this that heaven created us?

But such was that glorious and disastrous episode of the war—the charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava.

In foreign armies—as I once heard a brother officer remark—one would have found plenty of officers to lead such a charge, but in what other army would one find soldiers to follow as ours did? Though surrounded on every side by the enemy, though apparently all was over with them, though suffering under a withering fire, and seeing their comrades falling in heaps around them, not a man flinched, or thought of shifting for himself; but all looked to their officers, and followed them as if they had been on an ordinary parade.

“There are eighty-one of ours, sir, to be buried in yonder pit,” said a trumpeter named Jones, as he came to my tent next morning.

“Eighty-one!—my God!—the poor fellows!”

“Yes, sir—eighty-one,” repeated Jones, sadly.

“Where are they?”

“Some are in the trenches—others coming.”

They were borne from the field, where they had lain all night, and where the only tears that fell on them were the dews of heaven, and then they were half lowered, half flung in—eighty-one! all handsome young men—and the Highlanders began to cover them up.

“God rest them,” said I, lifting my cap, as I leaned on the trumpeter’s arm.

“Ay, sir,” said he, sadly; “the next trumpet they hear will be a louder one than Bill Jones’s!”

*CHAPTER LII.***

I had been some days in Messirie’s Hotel, at Pera, before I realized or quite became reconciled to the idea that I was going home on sick leave, worn in mind and body, and smarting still with many wounds, for some of the lance prods had gangrened, the iron having been, perhaps, rusty. Many other officers were also at Messirie’s, on their way home, some with amputated limbs, but all leaving the army with regret. All were pale and lean enough, with bronzed faces and bushy beards, their red shell-jackets or blue surtouts out-at-elbows, threadbare, patched, and stained by the mud of the trenches, and there were one or two lisping idiots, with flyaway whiskers, hair divided in the centre, and yaw-haw tones, whose “pwivate affairs had become wemawkably urgent!”

I had with me poor Willie Pitblado, whose left leg was well-nigh useless now. No surgeon had succeeded in extracting the ball; their attempts had produced torture, which brought on a low fever, and Willie was going home with me now—only, I feared, to die.

And now, on the last evening of this most memorable year, I sat alone, muffled in my cavalry cloak, looking from the hotel window down a long and narrow street, paved with rough, round stones, where the humauls, or Turkish porters, British tars, half-furious with raki, Zouaves, with cigar in mouth and hands in pockets, dragomans, with pistol and sabre, indolent, sensual, and brutal Osmanli soldiers, and other nationalities and costumes, made up a strange and varied scene. From another window I could see Stamboul, its flat roofs, round domes, its mosques and minarets, stretching in the distance far away; the Golden Horn; with the three-deckers of the Sultan lying idly at anchor; and the new bridge that spans the harbour; and, over all, the weird-like glories of a crimson moon.

The December twilight stole on, and, as I mused, it seemed but yesterday since all those lancers who had died of cholera at Varna or elsewhere, and those whom I had seen cast into the great trench, had been alive, and riding by my side.

The embarkation of the wounded at Balaclava harbour, whither they had been borne on stretchers, minus legs and arms, hands and feet, with faces pale, slashed, gashed, and battered; our British men-of-war, the Sanspareil, Tribune, Sphinx, and Arrow, ranged in line, with open ports to sweep the valley; all the episodes of our departure—the somewhat mournful cheers given by the seamen as our transport, the Napoleon III., of Leith, got up her steam and cleared the harbour—cheers to which we could scarcely respond; the receding shores, where the iron voice yet rang the knell of many a human life from battery and bastion; the last rays of the sun, as they lit up the impending bluffs of Cape Aya, and ruddied all the rocks of red and white marble that guard the rugged coast, and repel the storms of the Euxine; all these, as they had melted into sea and sky, seemed like an old dream now, and, battered in body and broken in spirit, I was seated alone in Messirie’s Frankish hotel, on my way home!

Well, well! For weeks past I had been as useless at Balaclava as at the Hospital of Scutari, from whence I had been transferred to the suburb of Pera. I had been unable to share in the two battles of Inkermann, in both of which the Russians were totally defeated, and in the last of which our losses were fearful; and I had no share in the battle of the Ovens, on the 20th of November. By landing at Scutari on the 13th, I escaped the terrible hurricane by which so many of the shipping perished in the Black Sea, and by which the survivors of their crews were subjected to be mercilessly massacred by the Russians.

My poor comrades! Be a soldier but for six months, and you will never forget the new world that is opened to you—a respect for your brother officers and soldiers, and a kindly feeling for the old number of the corps; it lasts with life.

But that ghastly trench in the green valley, and the pale, moustached, and upturned faces! God bless all who lie there, and green be the graves of our people in the Crimea!

It was on the second day of the new year that we—Pitblado and I—sailed in H.M.S. Blazer for Southampton, with many other invalids, and, as we steamed round the Seraglio Point, and stood away into the Sea of Marmora, I thought of that day twelvemonth, when I was at Calderwood Glen, sharing the contents of my good old uncle’s ancestral wassail-bowl. How much had passed since then!

Trebitski’s Cossacks had taken the miniature, the ring; even Louisa’s lock of hair was gone too, and luckily now I had nothing to remind me of the beautiful traitress by whom I had been galled, befooled, hoodwinked, and so cruelly abandoned!

And Lady Chillingham could witness this horrible sacrifice, this English suttee, or act of immolation, quietly and approvingly. She had married without love herself—so had her mother before her—and both had been happy enough in their own heartless and stupid way. Such alliances, made on mere worldly grounds, were part of the system of that society in which they moved; so Lady Chillingham viewed the whole affair as a matter of course.

As for Louisa Loftus, why should she be different from other women of the world, and of her aristocratic class? I must have been deluded—mad indeed, to think otherwise for a moment! And yet she could crash my hope for the future recklessly, as a child breaks the glittering soap-bubble he has so carefully developed, or casts aside the plaything he once treasured. She could cruelly trample on the best love of a true and honest heart, to make a marriage that was advantageous only in point of rank and wealth, both of which she already inherited in the fullest degree.

Yet something of pity mingled with my fierce and bitter scorn of Louisa—pity for the dreary years she would have to spend, while tending a senile dotard, whom she could neither respect nor love. She would suffer in secret, or perhaps console herself by some scandalous flirtation, that Sir Bernard Burke would never record in his usually flattering pages, though he might have to chronicle the unexpected appearance of an heir to the noble old Anglo-Norman line of Slubber de Gullion.

While Louisa, plunged in all the gaiety of London life, forgot all but it and herself, Cora—I learned this after—had thought it a crime to be even happy, while I was suffering or absent. Such was the difference in the nature of those two girls.

At Stamboul I had procured an inlaid Turkish rifle, a high-peaked saddle, a cherry-pipe stick, and some yataghans, as trifles for Sir Nigel; slippers, all sewn with pearls, a shawl, a veil, a little trunk of essences, and other pretty things, for Cora.

Our homeward voyage was rapid and pleasant, so we steamed steadily on, passing many a transport hurrying to the seat of war, with her human freight, ardent and eager to replace the fallen; on by Malta and old Gib. I was too ill to land at either; but I was well cared for on board, for the officers treated me as if I had been their brother, and were never weary of extolling the terrible charge of the Light Brigade on the fatal 25th of October.

On an evening about the end of January, we were off Southampton, and ran into the tidal dock, which has such peculiar advantages for first-class steamers. There out of the general traffic, and in the basin of quiet water, the Blazer could easily land her melancholy freight of wounded men. Many poor fellows whom she had embarked had died on the way home, and found a grave under the waves of the Mediterranean.

We were landed by gaslight. I must have been very weak at that time. I remember the cheers of welcome and the genuine commiseration of the kindly English folks assembled on the crowded quays as we were borne tenderly ashore in the arms of our good sailor comrades; and my wasted appearance was not the least exciting, for I was so worn now that my face was not unlike the Death’s head on the appointments of the 17th Lancers—but with a goodly Crimean beard appended to it.

The lieutenant of marines conducted me to a fashionable hotel.

At Southampton I was separated from poor Willie. With all the other wounded soldiers, he was transmitted, per third-class train, to Fort Pitt, at Chatham. Save once, I never saw the poor affectionate fellow again. He became a confirmed invalid, and months passed away, during which he was neither discharged nor cured, though he longed to get home—home, that he might die where he first saw the light, in his father’s cottage, and be laid beside his mother’s grave in the glen.

But there is no cure for the home-sickness in the pharmacopoeia of Her Majesty’s medical department, at No. 6, Whitehall Yard.

For many days I remained at the hotel, careless how the time passed. I had become perfectly listless, and lay on the sofa for hours, less to nurse my wounds than from pure inertia, and heedless of what might happen.

Thus, one evening, when the snow lay deep in the streets without, muffling the footsteps of the passengers and the wheels of the cabs and omnibuses—when the fire was burning cheerily in the bright bars of the polished grate—the crimson curtains drawn across the windows—the crystals of the gaselier glittering with a thousand prisms, and thus when, after Crimean experiences, it was impossible not to feel intensely comfortable in the well-carpeted room of a fashionable English hotel, I was dozing off to sleep, and to dream, perhaps, of other scenes, when a sound roused me.

An arm—a soft and warm one—was round my neck, and two bright, sad, earnest, and tearful eyes were beaming affectionately into mine; a smooth cheek, rendered cold as a winter apple by the frosty air without, just brushed mine, and a kiss was on my forehead, as a beautiful and blushing girl threw back her veil, and I found my hands were clasped by those of Cora Calderwood.

“Dear, dear Cora!” I exclaimed, and pressed her to my breast.

I had longed for sympathy, companionship, friendship—for some one with whom to share the secret burden that crushed my heart; but I rapidly found the impossibility of doing this with my beautiful cousin, for now, as I embraced her, all her long-treasured and long-hidden love gushed up in her heart.

She smoothed back her thick dark hair with her pretty and tremulous hands, and then, placing them on my temples, surveyed me again and again, with eyes full of pity and delight, while half-kneeling beside me on the low fauteuil on which I lay.

“Cora!”

“Newton!”

She was too full of pure joy to speak; she could only throw her arms round my neck and whisper, with her rosy lip close to my ear—

“Newton—Newton—my poor Newton! my own love at last—and—and—here comes papa.”

As if to relieve me from a situation that was as embarrassing as it was pleasing, the affectionate old gentleman hurried forward to meet me. He had been less agile than his daughter in springing upstairs, and threading the mysterious corridors of an English hotel. He took me in his sturdy arms. His eyes were sparkling with pleasure; his ruddy cheeks were now rendered redder than ever by the frosty wind; his white locks glittered in the light; and his handsome old face was beaming with pleasure, as it always did when he saw me. Warmly he shook my hands again and again. He surveyed my hollow cheeks with commiseration, as Cora now did with tears; and then, with prodigious bustle, he proceeded to divest himself of numerous overcoats and wrappers, until he appeared at last in his black cut-away, with white corded breeches and top-boots, as of old the beau ideal of the master of the Fifeshire hounds.

“So we have found you at last, my dear boy—fairly run you to earth, eh? You must come home with us now—“

“To-night, papa?”

“Not exactly to-night, Cora; but as soon as he is fit for travelling. And a rare cooper of old port Davie Binns shall set abroach when again Newton is beneath the roof of the house in which his mother was born, and where she died, too, poor girl!”

My mother was more than forty when she died; but the old baronet only remembered his favourite sister as “the girl,” of whose beauty he was always so proud.

Cora had now removed her bonnet and cloak. She was beautiful as ever, but paler, I thought, for the flush that dyed her soft face at first had now passed away, and she lowered her dark lashes at times when I looked at her. But her secret was out now. I knew all, but could scarcely foresee how matters were to end.

Cora wore at her breast the silver crescent and lion I had sent her from India. She had more. She had on her finger my Rangoon diamond, which the Marchioness had sent to her, and which I desired her to retain for my sake, till I replaced it by one more valuable still.

We were very happy that night in Southampton; and, with more alacrity than I thought remained in me, I prepared at once to return to Scotland.

My health was not now what it had been; but my native air in Calderwood Glen would restore it. To repine now would have been ungrateful to heaven and my kind kinsfolk.

I had passed through that dreadful ordeal, the Valley of Death, and had returned with life and youth before me, when so many better and braver than I had perished by my side. So I resolved to return thankfully and joyfully home, to water my laurels among the heath-clad hills and grassy glens of my native place.

*CHAPTER LIII.***

Poor Willie Pitblado sank fast after the extraction of the ball, and the subsequent amputation of his leg.

In the pleasant month of June, when he knew that the golden laburnums and the hawthorns, pink and white, would be wearing their loveliest hues among the green hills and burnsides where he had played in boyhood, and when the summer breeze would be rustling the thick foliage that shaded his father’s humble cottage in Calderwood Glen, Willie felt that his hour was coming nigh, and he grew very sad and restless.

On that day, the last he was to spend on earth, there was an unwonted bustle in and around the great military hospital of Fort Pitt, and, natheless the sick and wounded, the weary in body and subdued in spirit, the dying men in the wards, and those whose battles and troubles were over, and who lay stark and stiff under a white sheet in the deadhouse, awaiting the muffled drums and the—now daily—funeral party, there had been a scouring of tins and polishing of wooden tables, a renovation of sanded floors and white-washed walls; an extra folding and arranging of knapsacks and bedding. Staff officers in full uniform, with aiguillette and plume, galloped to and fro, in and out, up and down the steep hill from whence the grim old fort looks down upon the quiet and sleepy Medway, with all its old battered hulks; and then whispers were passed along the wards that the Queen—Queen Victoria herself—was coming to visit the poor fellows who had carried her colours in triumph up the slopes of Alma, through the valley of Inkermann, and in the charges at Balaclava.

Then pale cheeks flushed and sunken eyes grew bright, and all were in high expectation, save one who lay in a corner on his iron bed and straw pallet under a poor rug, with eyes already glazed at times, for the hand of death was heavy on him; and this was my poor comrade Pitblado, with no friend near him save the hospital orderlies, who by this time were pretty well used to suffering and dissolution, and could behold both with stoical indifference.

It was on a day that many yet remember—Monday, the 18th of June—the fortieth anniversary of Waterloo, that all Strood, Rochester, and Chatham were startled from their usual rural tranquillity by the appearance of the Queen and her retinue, as she swept through their narrow and tortuous streets, at her usual speed, to visit the wounded soldiers in Fort Pitt.

The cold-blooded days of the “Four Georges” have passed into the waste of eternity, and it is our happy fortune to have upon our throne a queen whose true woman’s heart no glory of station, or fortuitous grandeur of position, can alter.

On his poor pallet, in the sick ward, Willie heard the cheers in the streets of Chatham far below; he heard the clash of arms and the rolling of the drum, as the guard presented arms at the gate, and in his death-drowsy ear he seemed to hear again the din of battle far away, Beverley’s voice, and the rush of the charging squadrons; but the sounds brought him back to the world for a time.

He was too feeble, too far gone, to join the melancholy parade before the hospital; but the orderlies opened the window of the ward, and propped him up with pillows and knapsacks, that, like one or two other wasted creatures, he might see the Queen pass along.

“I wish that God had spared me ance mair to see my puir auld father’s face,” said Willie, whose Scottish dialect came faster back as life ebbed in his gallant heart; “but His will be done. It canna be—it canna be! I maun e’en bear it, and he that tholes, overcomes.”

From the windows on the ground floor he saw the glorious noonday sun, on which his eyes were soon to close for ever, for the staff-doctor had rather curtly told him so. He saw the fertile plains of lovely Kent stretching far away towards Rainham, and the windmills tossing their arms on the green upland slopes. He saw the tower of Rochester Cathedral half hidden in the sunny haze, and the great square stone block of the grand old Norman castle towering against the clear blue sky, and casting a sombre shadow on the winding Medway, and poor Willie thought the world that God had made looked peaceful and lovely.

Before the hospital he saw paraded some three hundred men. The front rank lay mostly on the gravel, for they were unable to stand, either by debility or amputation; the rear rank was propped against the wall, on crutches or staves. All wore the light blue hospital gown, trousers, and cap; but many an empty sleeve and useless trouser-leg were there.

Every man of them has been face to face and foot to foot with death, and yet withal their hearts are strongly stirred within them by their Queen’s approach. Their hair is long, and in elf-locks; their faces are hollow and pale, and their eyes shine out weirdly, and like bits of glass, as those of the sick usually do.

“Attention!” cries the sleek and well-fed commandant (who, perhaps, had not been at Sebastopol), as he comes along in full uniform, with his cocked hat under his arm, by the side of the Queen, who leans on the arm of Prince Albert; and as they pass slowly along that remarkable line, their eyes and faces fill with pity and commiseration.

Mechanically, at the word of command, all the men make a nervous start. Those who are legless prop themselves on their hands and arms; and some stand painfully erect on their crutches, and their wasted fingers are raised in salute, to where the helmet or the Highland bonnet would have been; but, alas! a hospital nightcap is only there now!

Men of all regiments are there—horse, foot, and artillery, guardsmen, hussars, and lancers; but all wear one sad uniform now.

That morning was long remembered in Fort Pitt; and it was one which, no doubt, our good Queen long remembered too.

With a last effort, Willie rallied, and propped himself at the window, just as a hospital orderly pinned on his blue woollen gown a card like those worn by all the others, stating the age, name, and corps of the wearer. It bore—

“William Pitblado—aged twenty-four—lancer—leg amputated—Battle of Balaclava.”

The card, as it was pinned on, caught the eyes of the royal group, and the terrible expression that none can mistake—even those who luckily see it for the first time—was read in Willie’s face.

“Do not speak to him, please, your Majesty,” whispered the commandant; “his aspect must distress you—the man is dying.”

“Dying!” exclaimed the Queen; “poor, poor fellow!”

“Pulse sinking—hope all over—will be dead before evening parade,” muttered a sententious staff surgeon.

The Queen had in her hand a magnificent bouquet, presented to her by the ladies of those in the high places of Chatham garrison—heads of departments, and so forth. She detached a white rose, and gave it to the poor dying lad, whose faculties were making a rally for the last time.

He looked at the high-born donor without shrinking or quailing, and, with a sad, sad smile on his face, so thin and wan—for the eye of One who is greater than all the kings of the earth was on him now—the sufferer spoke, but in long and feeble utterances.

“My auld father aye said I need never—never look for—my reward in this world; but—but this day I hae gotten it.”

And he pressed the rose to his thin blue lips.

“Are you easy, my poor fellow?” asked the commandant.

“Ye-yes, sir—thank you—very easy,”

“Is there anything you would wish?”

“I would wish to be laid—in the old kirk-yard at hame, where my—my mither lies under a saugh tree—but—but it canna be. God has been gude to me—I might hae found a grave for ever far awa’ in the Crimea—and—and no within the sound o’ a Christian bell.”

His head fell back and turned on one side, as the eyes glazed and the jaw relaxed. The Queen—good little woman—drew back, with her handkerchief at her eyes, and the spirit of my faithful comrade—this poor victim of the war—passed away.

The Queen’s white rose is buried with Poor Willie Pitblado. His grave is in the military cemetery, under the shadow of the great Spur Battery.

I know the place well, and a stone placed by Sir Nigel Calderwood marks it.

*CHAPTER LIV.***

“And you love me, dear Newton—and—and no one else?”

Soft autumn was in all her beauty; the forest leaves of Fife were already tinged with yellow; the harvest fields were bare, and the brown partridges were whirring up in tempting coveys from the hard stubble and the hedgerows, while the deep, fragrant clover grew green and rich on the upland slopes.

It was a glorious evening in September, when the days and nights are of equal length. The sun was setting beyond the western Lomond, and casting his dewy shadow far across the woodlands of Calderwood Glen, when Cora and I lingered, hand in hand, in the old avenue, and she asked this rather pleasing—I had almost said, perplexing—question, while her soft and beautiful eyes were turned tenderly upwards to mine.

And dearly I kissed her, for we had been but three days married—so Cora was my kismet, my destiny, after all!

I was lost for a moment in thought—even lance-prods and rifle bullets had not cured me of my habit of day-dreaming and memory flashed back to that strange episode in the quarters of the hakim Abd-el-Rasig at Varna, when poor Jack Studhome, Jules Jolicoeur, and Captain Baudeuf were with me, and the words of the conjuring Egyptian quack doctor seemed to come to my ears again—“Allah kerim—it is kismet—your destiny.”

Cora repeated her winning question.

“And you love me, dear Newton—and no one else?”

“Could I fail to love you, Cora—you, who are all affection and perfection, too?”

“Now, in her memoirs, Mrs. Siddons asserts that ‘no woman can ever reach perfection until the age of nine and twenty or thirty,’ and I require a few years to reach that mature time,” she replied.

Another kiss, and perhaps another—I don’t think we counted them.

“Ah! how happy I am now!” she exclaimed, as she clasped her fair fingers on my arm, with her cheek reclining on my shoulder.

“And I, too, Cora.”

“Shall I sing you a verse of an old song?”

“If you please. Is it the ‘Thistle and Rose’?”

“No.”

“What then?”

But it is too bad to tease you, Newton dear!”

“My dear little wag of a wife!” I exclaimed; for while Cora’s sweet voice rippled over the verse, I could smile now, and tenderly too, at the advice it conveyed.

So much for “Time, the avenger!”

In the second chapter of this long history of myself and my adventures I have related that the Calderwood estates were entailed, and were thus destined to enrich a remote collateral branch, which had long since settled in England, “and lost all locality, and nationality too,” as Sir Nigel had it, the baronetcy ending with himself, to whom long life!

Thanks to the legal acumen of Mr. Brassy Wheedleton, and of Messrs. Grab and Screwdriver, writers to the signet, Edinburgh, there were “no end” of flaws discovered in the original entail of 1685, registered when James VII. was king of the realm. They boast that they could have driven a coach-and-six through it; so it was speedily reduced, and the lands of Calderwood Glen, with the place, fortalice, and manor-house thereof, and those of Pitgavel, with the mains, woods, and farm touns thereof, which were Cora’s own portion, were all secured to us, our heirs—yes, that was the word which made Cora blush—our executors, and assigns, for ever.

The old title of “Primus Baronettorum Scotiae,” the pride of Sir Nigel’s heart, neither I nor mine could inherit; but I have my star of Medjidie, a medal and two clasps for the Crimea, with the French Legion of Honour, and that decoration which I value more than all: the little black bronze Victoria Cross, inscribed “For valour,” which I received for the rash attempt I made at Bulganak, with a gallant few, to bring off the mutilated body of poor Rakeleigh, as the reader will find duly recorded in page 336 of the “Army List” for the month in which it was given, if he or she choose to look; and those four prized baubles, won amid blood and danger, shall long be prized as heirlooms in Calderwood Glen.

With the poet, I may exclaim—

---

The grass was growing green on the graves of the Alma, and where Albyn’s warpipe sent up its yell of triumph on the Kourgane Hill; greener, perhaps, on the graves of the light brigade in the Valley of Death, through which our six hundred chivalry swept like a thunderbolt; and the sweet spring flowers were blooming in the abandoned trenches of Sebastopol, when I could hear the angel voices of glad little ones waking the peaceful echoes in our old woody glen; and there a dark-eyed Nigel, a golden-haired Newton, and a blooming little Cora, with beaming eyes and dark brown braids, gambolled round the gaitered legs of old Willie Pitblado, and the boot-tops of the sturdy old baronet, or were learning “a taste of the brogue,” as they rode on the back of Lanty O’Regan, now our head groom.

And when winter comes to strip the old woods, and hurl their rustling foliage before the west wind, seaward, down the lovely Howe of Fife; and when the snows of Christmas whiten the scalps of Largo and the Lomond Hills, we never forgot, after Cora has spiced the wassail bowl, to fill our glasses, and drink in silence—

“To the memory of the brave fellows who died before Sebastopol!”

THE END.

1. Letter from the camp. ↩