*chapter Xxi.*

Such men are always the most unscrupulous in revenge. I have seen murder in his eyes a score of times in the last fortnight. If our lines had fallen in the pleasant Italian places, he would have invested twenty scudi long ago in hiring a dagger. As it is, civilization and the rural police stand our friends.—GUY LIVINGSTONE.

The day wore away, the shadows of evening came, and all unaware of the rod that was in pickle for me, and the awkward surprise that was preparing, after making a most careful toilet at the barracks, that I might keep my cherished appointment at the park, I stuffed Mr. Goldrick’s remittance into my porte-monnaie, and set out in mufti for the cottage near the Reculvers. As I cantered along, anxious to perform my duty there, and without loss of time to turn my bridle towards Chillingham Park, I contrasted the happiness and the hopefulness of Louisa’s love and mine with the futile passion which the poor lost Agnes Auriol cherished for the worthless Berkeley; and while my heart, inspired by new and joyous impulses since the morning interview, sincerely mourned for her, it was at the same time soothed by the conviction that I could enable her to depart on that melancholy and filial pilgrimage to which she had dedicated her failing—it too surely seemed her last—energies.

I half hoped, too, that I might hear no more of her and her sorrows, and with the varied contingencies of foreign service in the field before me, there were ten chances to one against my ever doing so.

I had more than once asked of myself why this unfortunate young lady so deeply interested me; and with what object, if not pure benevolence, and to learn something of Berkeley’s movements, I sought or continued her acquaintance.

To Louisa my love and constancy remained unshaken; and fanned anew by the morning’s interview, they were stronger now than ever. Yet, to-night, some strange impulse urged me on this secret visit—one that I had already resolved should be the last—when prudence should have made me pause, and even at the hazard of wounding Miss Auriol’s feelings, have sent by the hand of Willie Pitblado the promised money to Mrs. Goldsworthy.

Berkeley, from the first hour we met together at the mess of the lancers, I had ever disliked, and I scarcely knew why; but, like the Chevalier Achille, I felt that, “if I had a star of destiny, and that man another, my star grew livid and pale when his crossed it.” It was the old adage of Dr. Fell, and I had a conviction that he was predestined to work me mischief in some way, or in some fashion, and now the time had come.

I reached the cottage, left my horse at the little green trellis-work porch, and was duly ushered into the presence of Miss Auriol by her anxious and motherly old attendant. She was seated in an easy-chair, half propped up by pillows, and so great was the languor oppressing her, that on this evening (for the air was remarkably close) she could scarcely rise to greet me.

A small scarlet shawl was spread over her head; and its bright hue, when taken in concert with the extreme pallor and purity of her complexion, and the blackness of her smoothly banded hair, made the girl’s strange beauty more fascinating and piquante than ever.

There was a charm in her half blush, her smiling bow, and the timid grace with which she received me, which made me feel that, with all the faults of the past, there was a great degree of worth and sincerity in Agnes Auriol still, and that she merited a very different fate in life; but, anxious to keep my appointment at the park, I at once handed her the porte-monnaie containing the money, and without accepting the chair proffered to me by Mrs. Goldsworthy, or even laying aside my hat, I said—

“Miss Auriol, I have come in great haste, and am required elsewhere, almost at this moment. There you will find what you require for your purpose and immediate necessities.”

“Captain Norcliff, this kindness is too much—too much. Nurse Goldsworthy told me that you had promised this gift; but I—I know not if I should accept—if I dare accept it from you—“

Tears choked her utterance, and then came on a paroxysm of her hard, dry, and racking cough.

I placed a hand caressingly on her head, and advised her to be careful of her health, for that terrible cough—“Is all the hope I have now of ultimate relief,” said she, looking up, with her dark eyes swimming in tears, and with a sublime brightness in them. “My dear mamma died of consumption, and with just such a cough; so did all my little brothers and sisters; and the presentiment is strong within me that I shall join them ere long—hence my wish, to die near the place where they lie.”

“You must not talk in this mournful way, Miss Auriol—you are too beautiful and too young to court such an early fate,” said I.

“Yet my little golden-haired brother, for whom I toiled and starved myself amid the vast and selfish wilderness of London, died earlier. Oh, Captain Norcliff, I would that he and I had passed away together, and now one grave might have held us; but then I had Berkeley to live for—he had not as yet deceived me. Love gave me hope, and I had my father’s fair name to redeem. I shall die soon—I know and feel it. Consumption was my only inheritance, and the agony of mind I have so long endured, since my days of toil and sin, has but served to encourage and develop that terrible disease.”

As she said this, her teeth chattered, as if with cold, and I turned her chair nearer to the scanty fire that burned in the little grate.

“And this money, which you, sir, so kindly give me; I know not, as I said before, whether I should accept it—indeed, I should not—“

“Nay, don’t offend me by a refusal,” said I, taking her cold and slender fingers in mine, and closing them over the packet of notes.

“But, sir—sir,” she urged plaintively, “even if I am spared to live a few years, I shall never be able to return it.”

“Heed not that, Miss Auriol—you may outlive me; the end of this month will see me far away from Britain.”

She gazed at me earnestly and wistfully, and said—

“Heaven bless and protect you, sir! My last prayers shall be for you and for your safety,” and bowing her face upon my hand, she kissed it and wept, while I strove in vain to withdraw it; but at the same time placed the other kindly on her head, to soothe and reassure her.

At that moment the door of the little parlour was thrown violently open, and a cry of terror escaped Mrs. Goldsworthy. I looked up, and felt as if I had been thunderstruck.

There stood Lady Louisa Loftus, and Cora, and Berkeley. Those three here! I mentally wondered who the deuce would come next.

I drew hurriedly back from Miss Auriol, who looked up in alarm, and then her eyes wandered in bewilderment from the faces of her fair visitors, till they settled with a sad, haggard, and beseeching stare, upon the well-moustached face of Berkeley, who stood there with his usual unmeaning smile.

“Doocid good tableau—haw!” he muttered.

“So—so this is the duty which prevented us from having the pleasure of your company at dinner, Captain Norcliff?” said Lady Louisa.

“A pressing duty, doubtless,” added Berkeley.

“Whence this intrusion?” I demanded, perceiving the whole network of treachery at a glance. “Whence this intrusion, Mr. Berkeley?” I fiercely reiterated, while my heart swelled with passion at my equivocal position, and I felt that my life, certainly the loss of Louisa’s love, might pay the penalty of my supposed, and, for aught I knew, alleged intrigue with a poor creature whom I simply pitied.

I felt that I was outwitted and overmatched by a cold-blooded, cunning, and sarcastic parvenu; one of those padded and perfumed military snobs, who are among her Majesty’s worst bargains, and who excite alike the contempt of the soldier and the ridicule of the civilian. I felt, too, all the peril of my position, and almost quailed before the strange, wild glitter of Louisa’s eyes, as she surveyed me. They wore such a smile as might have lit up those of Judith, when she writhed her white fingers in the curly pate of the sleeping Holofernes.

“Did you hear me speak, Mr. Berkeley?” I thundered out.

“Aw—aw—“ he was beginning.

“He will absolutely fight for this creature!” said Louisa, “Poor Cora, I am sorry that you have to blush for your worthy cousin.”

Instead of blushing, poor gentle Cora wept profusely, and knew not what to think; terror seemed to be her prevailing emotion.

“What am I to understand by all this?” I resumed. “You here, Lady Loftus, and you, Cora? Mr. Berkeley’s visit I might expect; but your appearance here, ladies, and at this hour, is not involuntary. Speak—explain—or rather, sir, I shall seek another place and time, and if—as I too surely believe—this scene has been planned and developed by you, Mr. Berkeley, woe to you, for your life shall pay the penalty.”

He grew pale, and winced a little, and then resumed his eternal smile.

“Such a scene to figure in!” said Louisa, with lofty scorn; “but this cottage shall be pulled down—it stands on papa’s land; and the steward should be careful whom he permits as tenants in the vicinity of Chillingham Park.”

Crushed to the dust by shame, humiliation, and illness, poor Agnes Auriol covered her face with her handkerchief, on which the blood-spots increased with every fresh fit of coughing, and her old nurse, oblivious of us all, spread her fat arms caressingly and protectingly round her; but the hateful Berkeley looked coldly and pitilessly on.

“Hear me, Lady Louisa,” said I; “and a few words will serve to explain why I am here.”

“Oh, your purse in that creature’s hand explains all, sir!” she replied, with a cutting smile.

“Oh, Newton, Newton!” sobbed Cora; “it seems all too true—why should you give that girl money?”

Berkeley was the object on which I should have turned; but Lady Louisa fascinated me, and her presence and Cora’s alone prevented me from knocking him down, or giving him a cut across the face with my riding-whip. Louisa was, indeed, a picture!

Drawn up to the fullest extent of her tall figure, she stood with her stately head thrown well back, and her rounded form half turned away, as if in disdain. An ample Indian shawl of alternate black, gold, and scarlet stripes had half fallen from her shoulder; her dress—she had been preparing for dinner when she started on this unlucky and unseemly errand—a bright, maize-coloured silk, with trimmings and flounces of rich black lace, displayed the magnificent development of her bust and lithe waist, and accorded well with her complexion. Her haughty nose, with its slender pink nostrils, seemed to curl with anger, and her forehead appeared lower than usual, so heavily fell the rippling masses of dark hair over her face, which was paler than ever, though the blood did flow furiously under that transparent skin as her anger gathered.

Her lips, usually scarlet as the petals of the fuschia, were now colourless; the short upper one was defined and stern; the lower, full and pouting, trembled with the emotion which she strove to repress; and her glorious black eyes had in them a mingled expression of fierce anger, deep reproach, sorrowing love for me, and shame for the whole affair—such an expression as I hoped never to see in them again.

When her anger prevailed, it was no summer lightning that flashed from the dark eyes of Louisa—for even her great Saxon ancestor, Lofthus, who held that thanedom in Yorkshire, before England’s conqueror came over at the head of his high-born housebreakers, had not a prouder or more fiery temper.

She gave me a deep, earnest, silent, and tearful glance, that said more than a thousand words, and, taking Cora by the hand, turned and retired from the cottage before I could speak—turned with the air of one alike convinced and resolved.

Berkeley, usually so cool and blase, had also a strange light in his eyes; but it was such a glitter as one might expect to see in the carbuncly orbs of the hooded snake; and having, evidently, no desire to be left with me alone, he turned rather precipitately and followed the ladies.

Just as he was leaving the cottage, however, I made a spring after him, and grasping his shoulder, wheeled him fiercely round until he faced me.

“Mr. Berkeley,” said I, in the hoarse, low voice of concentrated passion, “to-night, at head-quarters, this matter shall be arranged for a meeting to-morrow. Your life or mine must be the penalty of this little sensation scene, which your infernal malice has so skilfully contrived!”

“Aw—aw—don’t understand, unless you mean—“

“That you must meet me, sir,” said I, as with my leather riding-glove I struck him full across the face; “meet me on other ground than this.”

His eyes flashed now, and he grew very pale, while his fingers twitched convulsively; but, resuming his smile, he said—

“You are warm, Captain Norcliff—out of temper, and rude, in fact; but—aw—bah! people don’t fight duels nowadays, in our service, at least. Since Munro of the Horse Guards fought that doocid duel with Fawcett of the 55th, a hostile meeting has become a hanging affair—a little matter for a coroner’s jury and Calcraft’s consideration. So—aw—keep your temper, and au revoir.”

Lady Loftus and Cora, who had already sprung unaided into the phaeton, were calling upon him—upon him, and not upon me!—so he lifted his hat, with a bow of ironical politeness, and joined them, after which I soon heard the sound of the wheels die away in the distance.

For a moment I remained as if stunned by the suddenness and peculiarity of the whole affair; the next moment all my resolutions were taken.

I returned to the parlour, where Miss Auriol was still sobbing, but not violently—she was too weak for that.

“Mrs. Goldsworthy,” said I, “you must have perceived the false position in which we have been placed to-night, and must be aware that I can return no more. Keep for Miss Auriol the money I have given her, and be as you have hitherto been, loving and faithful. So now good-bye.”

I felt the impropriety and indelicacy of further protracting so unpleasant an interview, and, lightly pressing the passive hands of the girl and of her nurse, before either could speak I had left the cottage, and was in my saddle, spurring like a madman along the highway towards the barracks on the Thanet road, intent only on exposing Berkeley and avenging myself.

My subalterns, Frank Jocelyn and Sir Harry Scarlett, were too young and inexperienced to be consulted in the matter, so I resolved to start by the night train for Maidstone, and lay it before my older friends at head-quarters.

I gave my horse to my groom, Lanty O’Regan, and hurried to my rooms, and took out my pistol-case, as my only luggage. I felt hot, feverish, mad almost, and a goblet of well-iced champagne failed to soothe me. I heard the laughter, the clinking of glasses, and the joviality of the hussar mess ringing through the open windows as I crossed the dark barrack square on my way to the railway station; but when I was about to issue from the main-guard gate Pitblado placed in my hand a little packet, which a mounted servant had just brought for me, and which seemed to contain a little box.

Trembling, I opened it by the light of the main-guard lantern, and found it to contain my ring—my famous Rangoon ring—returned.

I placed it quietly on the finger from whence I had drawn it when at Calderwood Glen, and thanking the sentry who held the lantern with some smiling remark, continued my way to the train, which soon bore me to Maidstone.

Though I knew it not, Berkeley was in another compartment of the carriage I occupied.

*CHAPTER XXII.*

To write to Lady Louisa a full explanation of the affair was among the first of my resolutions; but would she believe me?—one against whom appearances, already, no doubt, coloured, distorted, and elaborated by Berkeley’s cunning insinuations, were so strong?

Without a word of inquiry, or hearing any exculpation, she and Cora had retired together, and with him, under his requested escort. What fatal use would he not make of the time thus given him! On, on went the swift train; but to me even the express seemed a laggard to-night!

Alas! that she I loved so deeply should think so meanly of me, as she undoubtedly did now.

If I called Berkeley out, and shot him, risking and breaking alike the civil and military laws of the land, I knew that my uncle would forgive, and that Cora would weep for me; I knew how Louisa would nervously shrink from the publicity of such an affair; but I knew also that none of them would forgive me for an alleged liaison with a creature apparently so worthless as the cast-off mistress of another—a liaison by which I lost the love of one so brilliant as the heiress of Chillingham. Of all such transactions, the old fox-hunting baronet, the mirror of honour, had a great horror, and within the seas that wash our shores there was no nobler heart than his. As yet, I could not see the end of the affair; my heart was swollen, and my head giddy, with rage; I longed only for friendly advice, and swift vengeance! If the story reached the ears of Sir Nigel, and he cut off my allowance, my pay as a captain of cavalry of the line—to wit, fourteen shillings and seven pence per diem—even with the contingent allowance of seventy or eighty pounds per annum (for burials and repair of arms, &c.), would never support me, even on service, in such an expensive corps as ours; thus, if I was a ruined man, it was all through the wiles of Berkeley! Pecuniarily I could not remain, and to retire, sell, resign, or exchange for India at such a crisis, when war was already declared in Europe, would be only to court disgrace and destruction.

Under any circumstances, to “send in my papers” was social ruin. I would sell my troop, and follow the regiment as a volunteer lancer, rather than not go to the seat of war in the East; and all this dilemma, this vortex of tormenting thought, this agony of anticipated shame, united with the loss of Louisa Loftus, I owed to the machinations, the hatred, and the jealousy of the only man I really disliked or despised in the whole regiment. At last I reached the barracks (where the last trumpet of tattoo had long since sounded), and sought the quarters of Jack Studhome, whom, to my confusion, and somewhat to my annoyance, I found engaged with the colonel on military business. In fact, with the aid of a couple of decanters of very unexceptionable mess port, and a box of cigars, they were going over the “Description Book,” which, for the information of readers not in the cavalry, I may mention is one of the sixteen ledgers kept by the regimental staff, being a register of the age, size, and description of the horses in each troop; the names and residence of the persons from whom they were bought, with the date of their purchase, and so forth, a column being appropriated for remarks, to show the manner in which each horse is disposed of.

“You here, Norcliff?” exclaimed Colonel Beverley, with surprise, as he closed the volume.

“Excuse me, colonel, I know that I should be at Canterbury; but I have ventured to head-quarters on a matter so very particular—“

“Now, Norcliff, what the devil is up?” interrupted Studhome, getting fresh glasses the while, and pushing the cigar-box towards me.

“Nothing wrong with your troop, eh?” said our lieutenant-colonel, lowering his eyebrows.

“No, colonel—a personal matter has brought me here,” I replied, while they, perceiving that I was pale and agitated, exchanged glances of inquiry.

“We shall soon be off, Norcliff,” said the colonel; “Travers and others have disposed of their spare horses; Scriven has sent his stud to Tattersall’s; the drag we shall leave here with the depot. Wilford’s yacht rides at Cowes with the symbolical broom at her masthead. I have been changing the dismounted men every three days, so that, come what may, all shall be perfect lancers when the complete mount arrives; and we have had the horses inspected once in each week by the veterinary surgeon, to ascertain whether there is among them any contagious disease, as that, you know, would play the deuce with us on service. Dragoons without horses (poor Beverley foresaw not the horrors awaiting the cavalry before Sebastopol) would be like rifles without locks. I also wish the corps to be supplied with water-decks,** but cannot get them; and now, Norcliff, that you have drawn breath, empty your glass, and say in what manner we can assist you.”

“You shall hear, colonel,” said I, taking his proffered hand; “I sought Studhome to obtain his advice, as my oldest and one of my most valued friends in the regiment, and I shall gladly avail myself of yours, under the pledge of secrecy, as the name of a lady is concerned in what I shall have the honour to relate to you.”

“Ah,” said the colonel, throwing open his frogged surtout, and half closing his eyes, as he lounged on two chairs, with the air of one who waits and listens, “this prologue bodes something unpleasant.”

Beverley’s voice and manner were slightly affected, but withal were very pleasing. He was, as I have said elsewhere, a very handsome man, of middle age, with a keen dark grey eye, and close crisp hair, somewhat of a drawler in speech, but well and powerfully built, broad-shouldered, lean-flanked, and a good average dragoon officer. Under excitement his features and bearing changed; he became brief and rapid; his lips became decided, though his very black moustache concealed them.

I related succinctly the story of Miss Auriol, and the slanders concerning me circulated in Maidstone—slanders of which Studhome was quite cognizant; I adverted to my engagement with Lady Louisa, and detailed the trap I had fallen into, and the use Berkeley had made of it, adding that I had resolved to parade him—to call him out, and had told him so, face to face.

“Ah, and what did he say?” asked the colonel, knocking the ashes from his cigar with a jewelled finger.

“If you lived till the age of Methusaleh, Colonel Beverley, you would never guess.”

“Well?”

“Putting his glass in his eye, he lisped out coolly, ‘Bah! people don’t fight duels now. In our service at least, since Munro’s fatal affair with Fawcett,*** hostile meetings have been hanging matters.’”

“The greater pity, say I,” continued Beverley.

“And he actually replied to you thus?” said Studhome.

“These were his words, or nearly so.”

Beverley’s brow knit, and a contemptuous smile curled his proud lip.

“Such cool impudence is delicious,” said he, laughing.

“But the matter cannot end thus!” I exclaimed, impetuously.

“Of course not, my dear fellow—of course not. Yet if the affair comes before the mess or the public, how are we to keep the name of Lady Loftus out of it? Though he might relish the eclat of having his trumpery cognomen jingled with that of Lord Chillingham’s daughter, and with yours, it is a very different matter for Lady Louisa. We must be cautious and circumspect, or we shall land you between the horns of a dilemma. Women make men’s quarrels infernally complicated.”

“I shall gladly avail myself of your advice, colonel, and Studhome shall act as my friend.”

Jack summoned his servant by a rapid process peculiar to barracks, and despatched him to the main guard to inquire whether Mr. Berkeley had passed in.

The answer came promptly that he was in his quarters.

“How long has he been there?”

“About half an hour, sir.”

“Egad, Norcliff, you have come by the same train from Canterbury,” said the colonel, after the servant had withdrawn. “How if you had been in the same compartment?”

“I might have been tempted to throw him out of the window.”

“Studhome, see Berkeley, and arrange this matter; but remember the honour of the regiment,” said the colonel, “as well as that of your friend, for at all risks and hazards I will have no public scandal about us—no handle given to the wretched whipsters of the newspaper press, when we are on the eve of departure for the seat of war.”

“Trust me, colonel,” said Jack, as he lit a fresh cigar, donned his gold-laced forage cap very much over the right ear, took up his riding-whip from force of habit, and hurried away.

The time of his absence passed slowly. I was in a dilemma, out of which I did not clearly see my way; and the colonel continued to punish Jack’s port, to smoke in silence, and peruse the “Description Book.”

Deeply in my heart I cursed alike the amenities of civilized life and the laws of modern society, which deprived me of the means of swift and certain retribution, even at the risk of my own life and limbs. Such trammels, in these days of well-ordered police, luckily, perhaps, compel us to conceal our hates and animosities; to submit quietly to wrong, insult, and obloquy, for which the very laws that pretend to protect and guide us afford no due reparation; trammels that avail greatly the coarse, the cowardly, and the mean, who may thus sneer or insult with impunity, when in the old pistol days their lives would have paid the forfeit; and whatever may have been the folly, error, or wickedness of duelling as a system, there can be no doubt that, when men had the test of moral courage as a last resort, the tone of society was higher, healthier, and better, especially in the army. Then practical jokes, rudeness, and quizzing were unknown at a mess-table; while an open wrong or insult bore with it the terrible penalty of a human life.

By the rules of the service I knew that no officer or soldier could send a challenge to any other officer or soldier to fight a duel, lest, if a commissioned officer, under the pain of being cashiered; if a non-commissioned officer or soldier, of suffering corporal punishment, or such other award as a court-martial might inflict.

The penalties of the civil law I knew to be still more severe; and yet John Selden, one of England’s most able, learned, and patriotic lawyers, says that “a duel may still be granted by the law of England, and only then. That the Church allowed it once appears by this: in their public liturgies there were prayers appointed for the duellists to say; the judge used to bid them to go to such a church and pray, &c. But whether this is lawful? If you make war lawful, I make no doubt to convince you of it. War is lawful because God is the only judge between two that are supreme. Now, if a difference happen between two subjects, and it cannot be decided by human testimony, why may they not put it to God to judge between them, with the permission of the prince? Nay; what if we should bring it down—for argument’s sake—to the sword. One gives me the lie: it is a great disgrace to take it; the law has made no provision to give remedy for the injury (if you can suppose anything an injury for which the law gives no remedy), why am not I, in this case, supreme, and may, therefore, right myself?”

While Beverley and I began to talk over such things, Studhome was, as he phrased it, “bringing Berkeley to book” in the affair.

He found that gentleman in rather a perturbed state of mind, soothing himself with a cigar, as he lounged in his vest and trousers on a luxurious sofa, in his elegantly-furnished room, the walls of which were covered with coloured engravings of horses and ballet-girls. A tall crystal goblet on the table bore evident traces of brandy and seltzer-water having been recently imbibed therefrom.

“So, after all that has occurred, you won’t meet Norcliff, as he wishes?” asked Jack, after the matter had been thoroughly gone into.

“Aw—decidedly not,” said he, emitting his words and a slender volume of smoke slowly together.

“In Britain, at least, as the law stands now, I can scarcely blame you, Mr. Berkeley,” said Studhome, stiffly; “but as the orders from London stand, we are soon to leave, and something must be done in the matter; for, as it is at present, you cannot both remain in the same regiment.”

“Aw—doocid good that,” replied Berkeley, twirling up his moustache; “but—aw—who is the muff that is to quit it, now that we have orders of readiness?”

“You, sir,” said Jack, rather perplexed.

“Thank you; but—aw—beg to decline. And this mysterious something which must be done—aw—eh?”

“I would recommend a candid confession on your part; such an explanation, in writing, as my friend, Captain Norcliff, may show to Lady Loftus and then commit to the flames, or return it to you.”

“The deuce!” drawled Berkeley, holding his cigar at arm’s length, and wheeling the sofa half round, to have a better view of our adjutant. “Is there any other little thing you would like?”

“I think not, sir.”

“My good friend, Studhome, you are, I have not a doubt, a very excellent adjutant, well up in lance, sword, and pistol exercise—knowing how to ‘set a squadron in the field,’ like the amiable Othello; but you—aw—aw—must really permit me to be the best judge of my own affairs.”

Studhome bowed haughtily, and then stood, cap and whip in hand, erect; so Berkeley resumed—

“You are aware of the whispers concerning Norcliff and that girl, Agnes Auriol—isn’t that her name?”

“Yes, sir; I am aware there have been malicious whispers, and I have my eyes now on the circulator of them.”

“Very good,” said Berkeley, colouring slightly; “they are very current among the 16th Lancers and 8th Hussars. I have known a little of the girl; but have—aw—tired of her now. We all tire, my dear fellow, of such affairs in time. Take a cigar—aw—you won’t—what a bore! well, so my advice to your irritated Scotch friend would be that, as she is at perfect liberty to leave my protection, she may enter quietly upon his; so there is an end to the doocid affair.”

“So you may affect to think,” said Studhome, eyeing the lounger with angry scorn.

“What could be more equivocal, as Lady Loftus admitted, than the circumstances under which we found them? He was supporting—actually caressing her; and then there was his proffered fifty-pound note. My dear fellow, people are not such devilish fools as—aw—to give fifty pounds to such girls for—aw—nothing!”

“Whatever you may pretend to think, or affect to say, of that affair, of my friend’s ultimate intentions, as a man of spirit, you cannot be unaware.”

“Aw—I don’t choose to speculate upon them.”

“This trifling, sir, is insufferable! He may lash you in the face with his whip before the whole regiment, when Beverley wheels it into line to-morrow, and so make you a scandal to us, to Maidstone, and the entire British Army, from the Life Guards to the Cape Rifles.”

“Lash me?”

“Yes; and soundly too!”

“I don’t think he will.”

“Why?”

“For then the whole story would come out, there would be an arrest—aw—and court of inquiry, and my Lady Louisa Loftus would have her august name paragraphed in every paper, from the Morning Post downwards.”

“And under this belief in his forbearance, which pays my friend a high compliment, you actually shelter yourself?” said worthy Jack Studhome, with intense scorn.

“I shall take my chance.”

“Then, sir, cunning as you are, and though believing that my friend must submit to lie under a vile imputation, and, if it so happen, be ruined with Lady Louisa Loftus and his friends, you cannot expect to get off scot free. The devil! we live in strange times. Are we sunk so low that officers and gentlemen, that honourable and gallant members, that noble lords, that counsellors learned in the law, and even jolly students, are to settle their disputes in pothouse fashion, by womanly vituperation or vulgar fisticuffs, without ever dreaming of a recourse to the pistol? Men of all ranks, from the premier peer down to the anonymous scribblers of the daily press—

Those grovelling, trodden, whipt, stript, turncoat things, Made up of volumes, venom, stains, and stings,—

may now brand each other as liars, cowards, and ruffians, with perfect impunity. Do you understand me, sir?”

“Not quite.”

“How so? I speak plain enough!”

“Such fellows are—aw—out of my way.”

“Then you will understand this, sir,” said Studhome, grasping him fiercely by the shoulder, and with an expression in his eye which made even the insouciance of Berkeley to evaporate, “a few weeks must see us in the Levant, on the shores of Turkey, and before the enemy. A duel shall come off there, and to evade alike the laws of Britain and the rules of the service, the seconds shall bind themselves by a solemn promise to declare that he who may be wounded, or he who may be killed, was struck by a chance shot from the enemy. You comprehend this arrangement, sir?”

“Perfectly.”

“And your friend—who is he to be?”

“Captain Scriven, of ours.”

“Good—I shall see him instantly.”

“So that was your arrangement, Studhome?” asked Beverley.

“Yes; there was no other way. Scriven promises and agrees, and has passed his word for secrecy. Do you approve, colonel?”

“Why, I suppose that I must; and you, Norcliff?” he inquired.

“Wish to Heaven that I saw Malta, or even Gibraltar, sinking into the sea upon our lee quarter!” said I, with fierce fervour, as I shook Studhome’s hand, and for that night, at least, was obliged to content me, and return to my troop at Canterbury.

“If one in our ranks shows the white feather before the Russians, I believe Berkeley will be the man,” said Beverley, as he and Studhome smoked a last cigar with me on the platform before the down-train started.

*CHAPTER XXIII.***

Unslept and unrefreshed, after returning to Canterbury, I found myself next day at morning parade, and undergoing all the routine of regimental drill, by troop and squadron, with the hussar corps to which we were attached, while my thoughts and wishes were apparently a thousand miles away from the present time and circumstances.

The prospect of “satisfaction,” as it is termed, even in the unusual mode in which it was to be obtained, and though deferred, soothed me; but how was I circumstanced with Louisa? She believed me untrue to her! I was still under the false colours in which the artful Berkeley had contrived to show me.

My ring was returned, and though I still wore hers, our engagement seemed to be silently, tacitly broken; her miniature I would look upon no more—its features filled me with rage and torture.

Over the day which followed my last unlucky visit to the cottage near the Reculvers I shall gladly hurry. Ordering my horse—the black cover-hack with the white star on its counter—I was about to start for a ride, before mess, towards Ashford, when Pitblado placed in my hand two notes, which had just come by post. On one I recognised the handwriting of Cora; on the other the coronet and monogram of the Countess of Chillingham! My heart leaped to my head, and I tore open the latter first.

It was simply a card of invitation in the usual form—the Earl and Countess of Chillingham requested the honour of Captain Norcliff’s company at a friendly dinner, at eight o’clock on the evening of the 20th inst.—only three days hence, so the time was brief; but then we were under orders of readiness, and everywhere troops—horse, foot, and artillery—were pouring towards Southampton and other places for embarkation. The note concluded by mentioning that Sir Nigel Calderwood was expected from Scotland.

The invitation was perplexing; but I reflected that the earl and Countess were alike ignorant of the relations that had existed between their daughter and me, and the sharp wrench by which those tender relations had been so suddenly broken.

I could not refuse; and if I accepted, how was I to meet Louisa? And now, what said Cora?

Her dear little note was brief and rapid, but explained all, and more than I could have hoped for. Miss Agnes Auriol, on seeing the false position in which Berkeley had contrived to place me, had generously transmitted, last night, by her old nurse, all the letters she possessed of Mr. Berkeley, and these had served completely to explain her relations with him, and to exonerate me, affording a complete clue to what had already excited their suspicion and surprise—Berkeley’s intimate knowledge of the cottage, and the strange fact of his possessing a latch-key for it.

“Louisa knows everything, and now believes that she has been too precipitate;” so ran the note. “Restore her ring when you meet, and I shall tell you a great deal when we see you here. It is Louisa’s request that you meet her as if nothing had taken place. Will you believe it, that yesterday morning, before that horrid scene occurred, Berkeley had actually proposed to her in form, and been rejected—rejected, dear Newton, and for you? (This part of the note was singularly blurred, blotted, and ill-expressed for Cora.) I need not tell you to make yourself pleasant, for papa is expected, and Lord Slubber is to be here.”

A postscript added that the packet of letters had been returned to the cottage that morning by a servant—but he found the place locked up, and the inmates gone, none could tell him whither; so, in this dilemma, they had been posted to Berkeley himself, at Maidstone barracks.***

I answered the notes, gave them to Pitblado to post, and turned along the Ashford Road like one in a dream, letting the reins drop on my horse’s neck, and having ample food for serious reflection and mature consideration; for all these meetings, communications, and passages so momentous to me had been crammed into the short space of barely two days.

There were yet three days to pass before I should again see Louisa, hear her voice, and be gladdened by her smile.

Three days were a short invitation to a fashionable household, even to an officer in country quarters, but they seemed three centuries to me.

I felt, too, that I never enjoyed Louisa’s society less than amid her own family circle. True, my name was not recorded in Douglas, Debrett, or any other libre d’or of Scottish or English nobility, but I was not the less a gentleman, and my whole soul fired up—almost with red republicanism—at the cool bearing usually assumed towards me by my Lady Chillingham.

A few hours since, the idea of being made a mark for a Muscovite bullet, or a Cossack lance, had not been a matter of much moment; now that the cloud had dispersed, that I knew Louisa loved me still—now that I felt once more all the witchery with which the love of such a girl can enhance existence—now that the sweet dream was no longer, as it had been at Calderwood, a mere dream, but a delicious reality—I came to the conclusion that war was an impertinent bore, glory a delusion and a snare, Mars and Bellona a couple of humbugs—the former a rowdy, and the latter no better than she should be.

I can really assure the reader that I would have borne the intelligence of a sudden peace with great Christian fortitude and perfect equanimity of mind; and had it pleased the Emperor Nicholas and the Western Powers to shake hands, and leave unmolested the Crimea and the “sick man” at Stamboul, certainly none would have blessed their quiet intentions more than I, Newton Norcliff.

But fate had ordained it otherwise; and, like the Roman senator, their “voice was still for war!”

The eventful evening of the “20th instant” saw me ushered into the drawing-room at Chillingham Park, and on this occasion I went in full uniform, knowing well that it enhances the interest with which one is viewed, in times when the atmosphere is so redolent of gunpowder, as it certainly was at this period of my story; and when one is made up—

By youth, by love, and by an army tailor,

the impression is generally favourable.

Circumstances fluttered me, and it was not without an unwonted emotion of confusion I made my way among ottomans, buhl tables, and glass-shades, and seeming to see in the reflecting mirrors at least one hundred figures in lancer uniform traversing the vast perspectives.

Even the usual cold and haughty countess received me with cordiality (she was soon to be rid of me for ever, perhaps). Lord Chillingham, a dignified old peer, whom it is difficult to describe, as there was an absence of characteristics, and nothing remarkable about him, save the extreme length of his white waistcoat, met me with the polite and pleasing warmth he accorded to all whom he cared nothing about.

Cora hurried forward to meet me, looking, I thought, very pale, and not very becomingly dressed—in deep dark blue silk, with black lace flounces—and beyond her I saw Lady Louisa. When I approached the latter, my temples throbbed painfully, and I played nervously with the tassels of my gold sash, like a raw boy who had just reported his having joined.

She was calm, collected, and grave—fashionably, painfully so—but then your well-bred Britons do so hate a scene that they have learned the art of keeping every emotion under the most complete control, relaxing the curb only when it suits themselves.

Save Cora, who witnessed our smiling and pleasant meeting, our suave exchange of bows, and a slight pressure of the hand, none could have read the thoughts that filled our eyes and hearts, and still less could they have imagined the stormy adieux of the other evening. The diamond drops that glittered in Louisa’s eyes as she met me did not run over; but were absorbed by her thick dark lashes, as she closed them for an instant, and then looked down. She was simply dressed in white silk, with diamond ornaments, and strings of pearls among the braids of her magnificent black hair.

“I invited your friend, Mr. De Warr Berkeley, for the evening,” said the countess, “but the invitation, I fear, was too short, and unfortunately, he pleaded a pre-engagement.”

At that moment a bright and intelligent smile flashed in Louisa’s eye. In fact, the whole of the late affair was known only to the actors therein—unless I included Beverley and Studhome.

“Captain Calderwood Norcliff—my Lord Slubber,” said the earl, as he led me forward to an old gentleman, who was stooping over the chair of the countess, with whom he was smiling and conversing in a polite monotone.

“Ah—indeed—have much pleasure,” said this personage, bowing, with a broad conventional smile, and giving two of his withered fingers; “any relation of Sir Nigel Calderwood?”

“His nephew.”

“De-lighted to see you, my dear sir. Sir Nigel is here—arrived this morning.”

“We but wait his appearance for dinner; our party is small, as you see, Captain Norcliff,” said the countess, who was certainly still beautiful, being a larger, older, and more stately version of Louisa, and a powdered toupee would well have suited her face and stature.

Amid vapid discussions or desultory remarks about the probabilities of the war, the weather, and the crops, with my Lord Aberdeen’s suspicious policy—ante-dinner remarks—while my eyes from time to time sought those of Louisa, I studied the aspect of my wealthy rival, who, little suspecting the secret of my heart, had immediately engaged me in conversation.

Lord Slubber was not so tall as he had been; his features, though finely cut, were somewhat flabby now, and had become a mass of undoubted wrinkles, yet he had been deemed “the handsomest man of his day,” a period on which we shall not venture to speculate. The veteran roue considered himself “a lively dog” yet, and hoped to achieve conquests. Thus his teeth were a brilliant triumph of art over nature, and though his head was bare and smooth as a billiard-ball, his pendulous cheeks wore a delicate little pink hue there could be no doubt about.

His face, with its long, aristocratic nose, somewhat prominent chin, and receding forehead, and his perpetual simpering smile, reminded one of the portraits of Beau Nash, and made one fancy how well he would have suited the powder and ruffles, the bagwig and small-sword of the early days of George III., rather than the odious black swallow-tail and waiter-like costume of the present age.

And this garrulous old beau—this “lean and slippered pantaloon”—was the descendant and representative of the great Norman line of Slobar de Gullion, who had hamstrung the Saxon Kerne in the New Forest, extracted the grinders of the sons of Judah; who had made their mark (as an Irish navvy might do) at Magna Charta, and ridden in all their ironmongery in Edward’s ranks at Bannockburn, and in Henry’s at Agincourt.

My satisfaction in finding myself still the lover of Louisa, and again the guest of her father, was somewhat dashed by the presence of this, in some respects, formidable rival, who, as the countess informed me in a whisper, was about to be created a marquis for his zealous support of Lord Aberdeen’s administration, and was to be decorated with the Garter, of which the Emperor Nicholas had just been deprived.

I muttered something by way of reply, and Lady Louisa, who was seated near us on an ottoman, said, laughingly, behind her fan—

“A marquis and K.G. Oh, mamma, such an old quiz it is! But, only imagine, he has been proposing to take us all, and Cora, too, in his yacht to Constantinople—or even to the Black Sea, if we wish it.”

“How kind of him.”

“She carries brass guns, and he believes he may assist Admiral Lyons, if necessary.”

“Remember that he is a devoted admirer of yours,” I heard Lady Chillingham whisper, with a glance which repressed her daughter’s desire to laugh outright.

“Hush, mamma,” she replied, shutting her fan sharply; “confidences are unusual in you; and as for he you speak of, his appearance is quite enough to make one grow old.”

Whether the countess would have checked this unseemly remark, which I could not help overhearing with joy, I know not, for at that moment the roar of the dinner-gong was heard in the vestibule, and my uncle, Sir Nigel, looking hale, hearty, and ruddy, with his silver hair all shining and waving, entered, and shook hands with all, but with none so warmly as me. He wore a dark grey riding-coat, top-boots, and white corded breeches, a costume for which he apologized to the countess, and then turned again to me.

“Egad, Newton, glad to see you, my dear boy—in uniform, too—how well the fellow looks in his sash and epaulettes! Your pardon for being so late, Lady Chillingham; but I rode over to the barracks, thinking to accompany Newton here. How glad Willie, my old keeper’s son, was to see me! Returning, I lost my way among a network of green lanes and hedgerows; but as your Kent here is as flat as a billiard-table, when compared with Fife and Kinross, the slopes of the Lomonds, and the Saline hills, I rode straight for Chillingham, rushing my horse at hedges, sunk fences, and everything that came in its way, in defiance of threats against trespassers, and so forth, and I am here!”

“Coming as became the master of the Fife hounds, eh, Sir Nigel?” said the countess; “but now I shall take your arm.”

The earl led Cora, Slubber gave his arm to Lady Louisa; and I thought of honest Chaucer’s “January and May,” as I brought up the rear, solus, playing with the tassels of my sash, and gnawing my moustache, as we marched through a double line of liveried servants to the dining-room, where I contrived to seat myself on her other side.

There was an air of propriety about old Slubber, which, though it made Louisa laugh, was intensely provoking to me, who had to keep my conventional distance. However, I could cross a country with her when riding to hounds, and claim her lithe waist for a waltz when occasion offered; thank heaven! our senile Anglo-Norman was beyond these, and a few other things now; and she gave me many a bright and intelligent glance from under her long black eyelashes, which were almost curled at the tips—recognitions of which his self-satisfied lordship was in blissful ignorance.

I had the engagement ring to restore; but in the meantime our conversation was confined to dinner-table twaddle, and as the dinner was served up a la Russe, and all the carving done aside, even its courtesies were abolished: so we confabulated with much hollow earnestness on the prevalent rumour that all the cavalry, light and heavy, were to march through France to Marseilles, the last batch of novels from Mudie’s, the race meetings, the future Derby, and other topics equally far from our hearts; and then we had to laugh at old Lord Slubber, when he perpetrated the joke that every small wit did at that time.

“Turkey, my lord?” said a servant.

“Thanks—a slice—just what Nicholas wants.”

“And what you, Newton, and other fellows, must prevent him from getting, eh?” said Sir Nigel.

To return our engagement ring was the chief object that agitated me during dinner; and, on perceiving that Louisa had drawn the glove off her lovely left hand, I almost thought the return was thereby invited; and as we dawdled over the dessert, which was served up on the earl’s favourite Rose du Barri service of Sevres china, and while Slubber waxed eloquent on his friend Lord Aberdeen’s doubtful policy, which my uncle tore all to fritters, I contrived, unseen, to place my Rangoon diamond in her hand, which closed upon it and mine, with a rapid, but nervous pressure, which sent a thrill to my heart, and a flush to my cheek.

It was done!

Recovering—if, indeed, she ever lost it—her complete composure, she asked me, with a smile, as if casually, how I liked the family motto, which was graven round the champagne goblets.

“Prends moi tel que je suis,” she added, reading it.

“I understand it with delight,” said I.

“Take me such as I am,” she translated, with a glance which filled me with joy.

Poor old Slubber knew nothing of the little enigma that was being acted almost under his aristocratic nose, and amid such trivial remarks as these—

“What bin is this port from, Mr.—?” naming the butler.

“Good, remarkable port, my Lord—bin ten—vintage, 1820; it is the finest old wine in the county of Kent.”

“Don’t taste so,” said Lord Chillingham; in fact, it had been voted out of the servants’ hall as intolerable. “And the sherry—eh?”

“Pale, my lord,” whispered the butler; “you paid three hundred a butt for it—from the small bin.”

“Good—uncork some of the Moselle.”

In the calm, inscrutable face, and tutored bearing of Louisa Loftus, no one could have read the deep secret we had just shared in—the reconciliation of two ardent and anxious hearts—the bond of love and trust renewed; but this strange power of veiling all agitation at times is incident alike to birth and training, and to the local influences of these in the present time, when in modern society the human face is too often a mere mask which conceals every emotion, exhibiting a calm exterior, however at variance with the mind or disposition of the person; thus, though her pride and self-esteem had been recently stung to madness, and her heart had been crushed within her, now, under the revulsion incident to a great joy, and reunion with me, Louisa was able to wreathe her sweet face with a quiet and well-bred smile, while she listened to the senile gabble of my Lord Slubber.

Great emotions, like those excited by the affair of Agnes Auriol, seldom can remain long, and must subside; Louisa was quite subdued, and sunk in softness and love to-night. She was all that I could desire—my own Louisa.

The gentlemen soon joined the ladies in the drawing-room, and I drew at once near Louisa, who was again seated on the same ottoman with Cora. Lady Chillingham was idling in an easy-chair, half asleep, near the fire, with her feet placed on the velvet fender-stool, and a silky lapdog on her knee; but she roused herself on the approach of Lord Slubber to whisper one of his old-fashioned compliments, coined in the age when gallantry was a study.

“And you think the cavalry will not go through France?” said Louisa, taking up, after a time, the thread of some of her former remarks, while Cora fixed her tender and beautiful eyes kindly on my face.

“It is extremely doubtful,” said I.

“And why so, Newton?” asked Cora.

“Because, cousin, it is feared that the red coats will not be popular in France; and then there are the Scots Greys, who are literally covered with trophies of Waterloo;*** they especially would prove a very unpalatable spectacle to the men of the Second Empire.”

“Your route will be a long but very pleasant one, by classic seas and classic shores,” said Louisa. “Shall we trace it on the map of the Mediterranean, in the library? Come, Cora.”

There was a tremulous change in her voice, and a glance in her eye that I could not mistake.

Quitting the drawing-room unnoticed by our seniors, we stepped into the library, the oak shelves of which were loaded with books of all sizes in glittering bindings, more seemingly for show than use, and approaching the large stand of maps on horizontal rollers, we drew down that of the Mediterranean, while Cora, whose good little heart forboded that we needed not her geographical aid, eyed us wistfully for a second, and passed out by a door beyond.

The library had green-shaded lamps, which were half lighted; thus we were almost concealed in shadow, and the huge cloth-mounted map we affected to examine hung before us like a friendly screen. We had but a few stolen moments for conversation, and one impulse animated us.

I turned to Louisa; her face drew closer to mine, and our lips met in one long, long passionate kiss—such a kiss as if our souls were there.

“You understand all, now, Louisa?” said I.

“All,” she said, in the same breathless voice.

“And forgive all—about that poor girl, I mean. How appearances were against me!”

“Oh yes, dear, dear Newton.”

“And you love me?”

“Oh, Newton!”

“You love me still?”

“Can you ask me while petting me thus? You have felt our separation since those few happy days at Calderwood?”

“As a living death, Louisa. Worse than anticipations of the greater separation that is to come.”

“With all its dangers!” she said, with her eyes now full of tears.

“Yes; for whatever happens I shall feel assured—“

“That your poor Louisa loves you still—loves you dearly, Newton; and ere you go to-night you must give me a lock of your hair.”

Her head on my shoulder; her pale brow against my cheek, her lips were close to mine.

“Till we are both in our graves, dear Newton, you can never, never know how much I love you, and the agony that Berkeley’s cunning cost me.”

These were blessed words to hear—blessed words to treasure in the distant land to which I was going; and in a silence more eloquent than words, I could but press her to my heart.

This was indeed a moment of reunion, never to be forgotten, but to be treasured in the secret recesses of the soul, and recalled only at times; and times there were when I recalled it, when far, far away, in the lonely watches of those dark nights, when the chafing of the Black Sea was heard afar off on the rocks of Fort Constantine, and the thunder of Sebastopol was close and nigh; and then the vague, undefined memory of the place, the time, her voice, her eyes, and her kiss, would come gradually back, filling my heart with intense melancholy, and my eyes with tears.

In my doubt of the future, in my fear of ensnarements, and the exercise of parental authority (a power of which we stand in such awe in Scotland), and lest, by an unforeseen chance or circumstance, I should lose her, I actually besought her, in what terms it is impossible to remember now, to consent to a private marriage; and strange ideas of written promises and protestations, of blood mingled with wine, and many other melodramatic absurdities, occurred to me.

“Ah, no, no,” said she, rousing herself to the occasion. “There will be time enough when you return.”

“If I ever do return,” said I, impetuously, thinking of the chances of war, and my certain hostile meeting with Berkeley.

“You must return, dear Newton—you shall, and I feel it in my heart.”

“And there will be time—“

“For me,” she interrupted, “to be cried, as Lydia Languish says, ‘three times in a parish church’, and have an enormously fat parish clerk ask the consent of every butcher in the parish to join in lawful wedlock Newton Calderwood Norcliff, bachelor, and Louisa Loftus, spinster; unless we have a special licence, St. George’s, Hanover Square, and the Bishop of London in his lawn sleeves, and so forth.”

This sudden change of manner at such a time startled and distressed me.

“It is her way—a mistaken lightness of manner,” thought I.

But, alas! I was yet to learn some terrible lessons in the treachery of the human heart!

Another brief and mute embrace, and we had just time to veil our mutual agitation and turn our attention to the outspread map of the Mediterranean, affecting to trace the distance from Cagliari to Malta, when we heard the voice of Lord Chillingham saying to Sir Nigel—

“Here they are, reviving their geography apparently. Captain Norcliff,” he added, “here is a note for you which has just been brought by an orderly dragoon.”

“Thanks, my lord. Is he waiting?”

“No, sir,” said the servant, who presented it to me on a chased silver salver; “he immediately wheeled round his horse and galloped off.”

“Permit me,” said I, tearing it open.

It had been hurriedly pencilled by Frank Jocelyn, and ran thus:—

“MY DEAR NORCLIFF,—The lieutenant-colonel in command of the consolidated depots here informs me that the route for ours is at Maidstone, for which place the troop must march by daybreak to-morrow. Sorry to disturb your dinner-party; but now the word is ‘Eastward ho!’”

I handed it first to Louisa, and for a moment my voice failed me; but rallying, I said—“I have to apologize for a hasty departure, and shall thank you, my lord, to order my horse.”

Much that followed was confusion. I can remember my good uncle shaking me repeatedly by the hand, and patting me on the epaulettes (we were like officers then, and had epaulettes on our shoulders). Cora wept a great deal; Louisa was quite silent and very pale. Our parting scene passed away like a dissolving view; but the bitterness was somewhat taken from it by the whole party promising to “drive or ride over to Maidstone and see us march out;” and so, with a kind adieu from all, I sprang on my horse, quitted Chillingham Park, and soon reached the barracks, where I found Jocelyn in my quarters awaiting me, and Willie Pitblado, who had already relinquished his livery for his lancer uniform, whistling vigorously as he packed and buckled up my traps.

Away from Louisa, I had no relief now for my mind but intense activity.

In the dull grey light of the next morning I quitted Canterbury with my troop for Maidstone, into which we were played by our own band, which came a mile or two on the Rochester Road to meet us.

There I learned from Colonel Beverley that, on the following day, we should march to join the expedition destined for the defence of Turkey.

*CHAPTER XXIV.***

Such was the doggrel ditty—some camp song of the brave old Peninsular days—with which I heard my Irish groom, Larity O’Regan, solacing himself in the grey light of the early morning, as he rubbed down my charger, and buckled his gay trappings, in the dawn of the, to me, eventful 22nd of April. How I envied that man’s lightness of heart! Perhaps he had a mother in a thatched cabin in some brown Irish bog far away; sisters, too; it might be a sweetheart—some grey-eyed and black-haired Biddy, or Nora. If so, they occasioned him but little regret then; and light-hearted Lanty’s queer song and jovial bearing went far to rouse my own spirit as I mounted the gallant dark horse that was to bear me in the fields of the future.

The regiment, mustering about three hundred men of all ranks, came rapidly from the stables, under the eye of Studhome, and that ubiquitous and indefatigable non-commissioned officer, Sergeant-Major Drillem. The sun had not yet risen, but the barrack windows were crowded by the men of other corps to witness our departure. Their own turn would soon arrive.

Wilford informed me that the route*** had come suddenly, when the regiment was in church, and it was first announced by the chaplain from the pulpit. The sanctity of the place alone restrained the cheers of the lancers, but not the sobs of the women; and he added, that by a singular coincidence, the text the chaplain had chosen for his sermon was from Proverbs xxvii. 1—“Boast not thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.”

As the trumpets blew the assembly on this auspicious morning, their sound seemed different—more warlike in fact than usual—a portion of the great movement in which the fate of Europe, and certainly of many a poor human being, was involved.

As yet Lionel Beverley, our lieutenant-colonel, who wore his Cross of the Bath, was the only decorated man among us (save a few Indian medals); but a rich crop of such tributes was to be reaped in the land to which we were going.

Our plumes had been laid aside, glazed covers were on our square-crowned caps, and officers and privates alike had canvas havresacks and wooden canteens slung over the right shoulder; some of the former had telescopes and courier-bags; but all betokened coming service and preparation for it.

Our horses were nearly all of a deep dark bay colour, save those of the band and trumpeters, many of which were white, or spotted grey. The guidons were all uncased; each was of white silk (the colour of our facings), embroidered with gold, measuring three feet long by twenty-one inches on the lance, which was ten feet in length—the regulation for light cavalry. On the flank of its troop each standard was now flying in the morning wind.

On this occasion there were, as usual at such times, many of the fair sex interested in our departure. There was much weeping among many wives, and certainly among a great number of “very foolish virgins,” as Studhome designated them. Many of the soldiers’ wives were mingling in the ranks, and, fearless of the horses’ hoofs, were holding up their infants for the last kiss of many a poor father who was to find his grave in the land to which we were departing; and there were many painful separations among those who were destined never to meet again.

I remember a sergeant of Wilford’s troop, whose wife had recently presented him with a baby. The latter died suddenly on the night before we were to march, and, by a singular coincidence, the little thing’s cradle and coffin were brought into barracks together next morning, but poor Sergeant Dashwood had to mount and leave his weeping wife and unburied little one behind him.

He was one of the first who fell at the passage of the Alma.

There was, on the other hand, much heedless jesting and idle levity.

“This time,” said Wilford, to the group of officers who were gathered round Beverley, “we shall do a portion of the Mediterranean, the entire Levant, and Dardanelles, at her Majesty’s expense, and without the aid of Bradshaw or John Murray.”

“So we are actually going at last,” lisped Jocelyn, while playing with his horse’s mane.

“Ah! but we leave our representatives behind.”

“How, Travers?”

“In a squad of light infantry in arms, no doubt,” replied Travers, a handsome fellow, with a clear blue eye and long fair moustache. He had the reputation of being the most rakish fellow in the regiment, and could not resist perpetrating the old dragoon joke.

“How clumsily we English show grief,” I heard Berkeley say, as he witnessed a very affecting parting between a mother and her son. “Hear how that old—aw—woman is permitting herself to howl.”

“Anything is better than having every natural emotion subdued and snubbed from childhood, as among us in Scotland,” thought I.

Soldiers muster and march at all times merrily. Care cumbers them but little and briefly, for “with them the present is everything, the past a point, the future a blank. The greeting of surviving friends is seldom embittered by the recollection of those who are no more, and in a life of danger and casualty this is natural.”

Already the advanced guard had been detailed and thrown out, under young Sir Henry Scarlett. The crowd in and about the barracks was great. Many carriages full of fashionables from Canterbury, Tunbridge, and elsewhere, were arriving, for the double purpose of getting up an appetite for breakfast and seeing us depart; but I saw nothing of my friends, for whom I was looking anxiously—so much so that Studhome said, laughingly, as he rode past—

“Come, look alive, Norcliff, and get your troop into shape. There is no such spoon in the service, or out of it, as an ‘engaged man.’”

At another time I might have resented Jack’s banter, but Beverley wheeled the regiment from open column into line, and opened the ranks, as the commandant of Maidstone cantered in, with his staff, their plumes waving and epaulettes glittering. Then, from line, we were formed in close column in rear of the leading troop, for the delivery of an address, of which I did not hear one word, for just as the commandant took off his cocked hat and began his oration Lord Chillingham’s carriage, preceded by two outriders, drove in, I perceived that it was occupied by Cora, Lord Chillingham, and Lord Slubber. My uncle and Lady Louisa, who were on horseback, came at once close up to me.

My pale love looked tenderly at me, and her dark eyes bore unmistakable traces of recent tears, or was it the long ride in the morning wind which had inflamed them? All emotion, however, was subdued now, which was well, as her rare beauty, her bearing and seat in the saddle, attracted the eyes of half the regiment, seriously damaging the interest of the old commandant’s address; and my uncle, after warmly shaking my hand, proceeded to examine, with a critical eye, the mount of our men.

The party in the carriage alighted, so Louisa dismounted and gave her bridle to her groom.

Our eyes seldom wandered from each other, but we had little to say beyond a few commonplaces, yet at that bitter hour of parting our hearts were very full, and she stroked and petted my horse, saying almost to it the caressing things she dared not address to me.

At last the final moment of departure came, and her eyes filled with irrepressible tears. Lord Slubber hurried forward to assist her to remount; but his tremulous hands failed him, or Louisa proved too large and ample; so I leaped from my horse, and took the office upon myself.

Louisa bit her lip, and smiled at Slubber, with mingled sorrow and disdain in her expressive eye, as I put one arm caressingly around her, and swung her up, arranging to her complete satisfaction the ample skirt and padded stirrup for the prettiest foot and ankle that England ever produced, and they are better there than in boasted Andalusia.

At that instant a hot tear from under her veil fell on my upturned face; and then it was that I contrived, unseen, to give her the lock of hair. It was in a tiny locket, the counterpart of that which I wore at my own neck. She just touched it with her lips, and slipped it into her bosom. Save Cora and myself, I think no one noticed the little action.

Another moment, and I found the whole regiment in motion, and, preceded by the band of a dragoon guard corps, departing from the barrack square. Many of our men now unslung their lances, and brandished them, while chorusing, “Cheer, boys, cheer”—a song, the patriotism of which is somewhat equivocal, though the air is fine and stirring.

Louisa accompanied me, riding by my side, to the gate. What we were saying, I know not now; but my heart was beating painfully. The scene around me seemed all confusion and phantasmagoria; the tramp of the horses, the crash of the band, with cymbals and kettledrums, the cheers of the soldiers and of the people, seemed faint and far away. I heard Louisa’s voice alone.

But now a loud and reiterated hurrah—the full, deep, hearty cheer of warmth and welcome, of joy or triumph, which comes best from English throats, and from English throats alone—rose from the multitudes without, as the head of the column defiled slowly through the street; and I must own that three hundred mounted lancers—all handsome young men, well horsed, and in gay uniform, blue faced with white, and with all their swallow-tailed red and white banneroles fluttering in the wind—presented a magnificent spectacle.

Thousands of handkerchiefs were waved from the windows, and many laurel branches and flowers were flung among us. Other troops, both horse and foot, were on the march that morning, and the crash of other bands, heard at a distance, came over the sprouting cornfields and hop-gardens of beautiful Kent. I had pressed Louisa’s hand for the last time, and she had returned to her friends. We had separated at last, and with all the love that welled up in our hearts, we had parted, as some one says, “without the last seal upon the ceremony of good-bye, which it is unlawful to administer in public to any but juvenile recipients.”

I was alone now, and yet not quite alone, for my uncle, though his military career had been confined to the ranks of the Kirkaldy troop of Yeomanry, accompanied me for some miles, mounted on a stout cover-hack, though sorely tempted to spur after some Highland regiment, whose bagpipes we heard ringing on some parallel road, as we marched along the highway to Tunbridge, en route for Portsmouth, where our transports lay.

Sir Nigel bade me farewell at Tunbridge, and turned to ride back to Chillingham Park, whither my heart went with him. The fine old man’s voice faltered and his eyes grew very moist, as he pressed my hand for the last time, and reined aside his horse, looking among the troop for Willie Pitplado, whom he had known from infancy, and with whom he also shook hands.

“Good-bye, Willie,” said he. “Remember you are your father’s son. Dinna forget Calderwood Glen, and to stick to my nephew.”

Willie’s heart was full, and as he gnawed his chin-strap to hide his emotion, I heard him send a farewell message to his father, the old keeper.

And then, as the sturdy baronet rode slowly to the rear, adopting at once the old hunting seat, several of our lancers cheered him, for he was the last specimen of his class they would probably see for many a day to come.

I now remembered, with keen reproach, that in the fulness of my emotion at parting from Louisa—in fact, the selfishness of my love—I had forgotten to bid adieu to Cora and to Lord Chillingham. About the latter omission I cared little; but to leave Cora—kind, affectionate Cora—whose sad and earnest face I seemed still to see, as she gazed so wistfully from the carriage window, and to leave her, it might be for ever, without a word of farewell, was a fault almost without remedy now.

However, I lost no time in writing my excuses from our first halting-place, which was at Mayfield, though some of our troops remained at Tunbridge Wells, and others had to ride to the market town of Cranbrook for quarters and stabling. Proceeding through the great hop-growing district of England, we frequently marched between gardens, where the little plants were beginning to creep up those tall and slender poles of ash or chestnut, which (before the hops gain their full growth, in September) present so singular an appearance to a stranger’s eye. When those green hops were gathered, and when the hop-queen was decorated in honour of the harvest home, we were moving towards the passage of the Alma. Kent was wearing its loveliest aspect now, in the full glory of hedgerows, copse, and meadows, in the last days of spring, under a clear blue sunlit sky. The birds, in myriads, filled the hedges with melody; the purple and white lilacs were already in full bloom, and the grass was spotted with snow-white daisies and golden buttercups, while primroses and violets grew wild by the side of the chalky and flinty roads.

The quaint, tumble-down cottages, covered to their chimney tops with ivy, woodbine, and wild hop-leaves; the fair, smiling faces that peeped at us from their lozenged lattices; the sturdy fellows who lounged and smoked at the turnpike; the red wheeled waggons on the road; the laden wains, and the canvas-frocked yokels far a-field; the lowing cattle that browsed on the upland slope; the square white tower of the little village church on one side; the red-brick manor-house on the other, with all its gables and oriels peeping above the woodlands; the whistle of the distant railway train, and its white smoke curling up in the sunshine, were all indicative of happy, peaceful, and prosperous England, and of a soil long untrodden by a hostile foot. From every port in the United Kingdom; between Portsmouth and Aberdeen, troops were quickly departing now. Being cavalry, on our route through Kent, Sussex, and a little part of Hampshire, we overtook and passed several corps of infantry and artillery, which were marching by the same roads for the same place of embarkation, and stirring were the cheers with which we greeted each other.

We remarked that the bands of the Scottish and Irish regiments were almost invariably playing the national quick marches peculiar to their own countries, while those of English corps played German, and even Yankee music.

The Black Watch, the Cameron Highlanders, the Scotch Fusiliers, &c., stirred each other’s hearts by such airs as “Scots wha hae,” “Lochaber no more,” and so forth; the Connaught Rangers and the 97th made the welkin ring to “Garryowen,” and similar airs, which are more inspiring to the British soldier than those of Prussia or Austria can ever be; and, as our colonel remarked it, it would have been better taste had the English bands played the quicksteps of the sister countries than foreign airs, with which an Englishman can have no sympathy whatever.***

I remembered a pleasant little incident during our march through Sussex. As we passed a village parsonage—a quaint old gable-ended house, secluded among moss-grown trees—the sound of our kettledrums and trumpets, the tramp of the horses, and the clatter of the chain bridles and steel scabbards, drew forth the inmates—an aged clergyman and his two daughters—to a green wicket in the close-clipped holly-hedge, where the group stood, as in a green frame of leaves, looking with deep interest at the passing lancers, who were riding in what was then the order—sections of three. White-haired and reverend, with his thin locks shining in the sun, the curate took off his hat, and lifted up his hands and eyes in a manner there could be no mistaking. The old man was evidently praying for us. His face was expressive of the finest emotion; he felt that he was looking on many a man he would never see again. Perhaps he had a son a soldier, or was himself a soldier’s son; or he felt that he, though old and stricken with years, was destined to survive many of the young, the hale and hearty in our ranks, who were still “on life’s morning march.” Some of our officers lifted their caps and bowed to the little group, and I am sure that Frank Jocelyn kissed his hands to the girls, who were waving their handkerchiefs, while more than one of ours cried, “God bless you, old boy!” and frequently, long after, in the snows of Sebastopol and the terrors of the valley of death, the face and form of that good old man, and the kindness of his mute prayer, came to the memory of some of us. It formed one of our last and most pleasing incidents connected with England.

In four days we reached Portsmouth, which presented a scene of indescribable bustle and activity; and the fifth day saw my troop, consisting of fifty men, with sixty horses, and with the colonel, Studhome, M’Goldrick, one surgeon, the sergeant-major, and rest of the staff, embarked from the dockyard jetty at eleven A.M., on board a splendid clipper ship, the Pride of the Ocean, Captain Robert Binnacle, bound for Turkey. The other five troops of the corps were embarked on board the transports Ganges, Bannockburn, and other vessels.

We had not been without hope of going in the Himalaya, which would have taken the entire regiment in her capacious womb, and which, moreover, is our only cavalry ship; but the authorities had declared otherwise.

The morning of our embarkation was beautiful; the scene animated, picturesque, and bustling, such as Portsmouth alone could exhibit at such a time; but we were sorely troubled by our horses. Some were conveyed on board in stall-boxes, others were lowered down the hatches by bellybands and slings, in which, being spirited and young, they were very restive, lashing out, to the imminent danger of the brains and bones of those in their vicinity, until they found themselves in the tow-padded stalls below the maindeck.

Adding to the bustle and interest of the scene, several ships of war were taking in stores and preparing for sea; boats, manned by seamen and marines in white jackets, were shooting to and fro between Portsmouth on one side and Gosport on the other. A strong detachment of the 19th (1st Yorkshire) Regiment was embarking on board the Melita, a Cunard steamer; the Euxine, a Peninsular and Oriental liner, was receiving many of the staff, a number of horses, and nearly twenty tons of ball cartridges. A squadron of the 8th, or Royal Irish Hussars, under Major de Salis, were stowing themselves on board of the Mary Anne transport; and a great body of Woolwich Pensioners, a numerous staff of veterinary surgeons, members of the ambulance, ordnance, and transport corps, were all embarking at the same time. Thus the hurly-burly was prodigious, and the whole of the quays were encumbered by baggage, stores, field-pieces, mortars, shot and shell, chests of arms, tents and camp equipage, guarded by marines with fixed bayonets, or seamen with drawn cutlasses. With all this apparent activity there was, of course, the counteracting influence of that red-tapism which is the curse of the British service. When war was declared the Royal Arsenal did not contain a sufficient quantity of shells to furnish the first battering train that went to Turkey, and the fuses then issued had been in store ever since the battle of Waterloo! Even the mattocks and shovels issued to the troops had been sent home from the Peninsula by the Duke of Wellington as worthless!

Here at Portsmouth we saw many a bitter—also to too many it proved a final—adieu. With all my soul I loved Louisa; and yet, when, standing on the dockyard jetty there, I saw the partings of husbands from their wives, and fathers from their children, I thanked Heaven in my heart that in this, to them, most bitter hour, I had only my good black charger to care for.

Midday was past ere all the passengers for the Pride of the Ocean, with their baggage, &c., were on board. I had personally to see the cattle stabled below; the men told off to their messes and watches; the lances, swords, and other arms stowed away in racks; the valises and hammocks slung to their cleats, and so forth. In the stables one stall on each side was left vacant, with spare slings, in case of accidents at sea.

Fortunately, I was spared the annoyance of Berkeley’s society on the voyage out, as there was not space for more than one troop on board the clipper; so he was with Wilford’s on board the Ganges. He was not exactly “in Coventry,” but somehow our mess disliked him, and could not exactly comprehend, as they phrased it, “what was up” between him and me.

Now that I was again in favour with Louisa Loftus; now that the untoward affair at the Reculvers had been completely explained, and that the victory was mine, and his the shame, defeat, and rejection—nearly all emotion of hostility against him had died away, or been replaced by settled contempt. Yet the hostile meeting was still looming in the future, and would have to ensue on the first suitable opportunity.

I was not sorry when the bustle of embarkation was over, and the clipper was towed out to the famous reach or roadstead at Spithead, where she came to anchor for a time, under the shelter of the high lands of the Isle of Wight.

The noblest army that ever left the shores of the British Isles was, undoubtedly, that which departed under Lord Raglan’s orders for the East.

It was the carefully-developed army of forty years of peace, during which the world had made a mighty stride in art, in science, and in civilization—greater than it had done, perhaps, between the days of the Twelfth Crusade and the last day of Waterloo.

“War,” says Napier, in his “Peninsular History,” “war tries the military framework; but it is in peace that the framework itself must be formed—otherwise barbarians would be the leading soldiers of the world. A perfect army can only be made by civil institutions.”

The same magnificent writer says elsewhere, with terrible truth, “In the beginning of each war England has to seek in blood the knowledge necessary to insure success; and like the fiend’s progress towards Eden, her conquering course is through chaos, followed by Death!” and that such was her course in the Crimea, let the errors of general routine, the trenches of Sebastopol, and the criminal red-tapism at home bear witness.

Of the morale of that army there can be no higher evidence than the voices that came from the poor fellows in our ranks—the letters with which they filled the newspapers of the day, detailing with spirit, simplicity, and pathos their humble experiences in the great events of the war.

All our men loved Beverley, who was a model commanding officer, and my troop deemed themselves (as I did) peculiarly lucky in being with him and the head-quarters staff. He took great care of his regiment, and a strict supervision of the horses.

He had left nothing undone while at home, by the establishment and encouragement of a school, a library, and so forth, to raise the moral tone of the lancers, their wives and families; hence some of the contributions of our privates to the newspapers were fully equal to any that emanated from Sir Colin’s famous Highland Brigade. Beverley regularly visited the sick in hospital, and cheered them by his kindly manner; and all the little ones who played in the barrack square smiled and welcomed the approach of the colonel, who was seldom without a few small coins to scatter among them, and cause a scramble; yet, as I have said, he was somewhat of a dandy, and not without a tinge of affectation in his tone and manner.

Next evening saw us at sea.

The Nab Light had sunk far astern, and the pale cliffs of the Isle of Wight had melted into the world of waters.

Old Jack Bloater, the pilot from Selsey, had drunk his last horn of grog at the binnacle, and left us with every wish for “an ‘appy journey—a bong woyage, as the monseers called it, and that we would soon give them Roosians a skewerin’.”

And now I knew that many a day, and week, and month, it might be years, filled up by the perils and stormy passages of a life of campaigning, must inevitably pass ere I should again hear Louisa’s voice, before I had her hand in mine, and looked into her tender eyes again—if I was kindly permitted by Heaven to return at all. But little knew our departing army of the suffering and horrors that were before it—horrors and sufferings to which the bayonets and bullets of the Russians were but child’s play.

I was now away from her finally, and without the least arrangement having been made for that which alone can soothe the agony and anxiety of such a separation—correspondence! I clung to the hope that she might write to me; if not, I could only hear of her from Cora, or perhaps when Miss Wilford wrote to her brother Fred; and, it might be, from some stray paragraph in the Court Journal or Morning Post, if either ever found its way beyond the Dardanelles, which seemed doubtful.

I had her treasured lock of hair and the miniature, on which I was never tired of gazing, especially when I could do so unseen in my swinging cot, for a crowded transport is the last place in the world for indulging in lover’s dreams or reveries. It was a poor, feeble daguerreotype, yet there were times when, by force of imagination, the pictured face seemed to light up with Louisa’s smile, and when the fine feminine features became filled by a blaze of light and life, so like the original that they became perfectly lovely.

Then I would think of Cora, too, and when I reflected over all her bearing towards me, the light which broke upon me at first became clearer.

Her tears when she first told Sir Nigel of her suspicion that I loved Louisa; her sudden changes of colour, from pallor to ruddy suffusion of the cheek; her hesitation in addressing me at times, her abruptness at others, or her silence; her vehemence in defending me against the accusations of Berkeley, and her joy at my victory; her occasional coldness to Louisa and her silent sorrow at my departure; all that had at any time puzzled me was explained now.

Cora loved me with a love beyond that of cousin, and I must often have stabbed her good little heart by my impertinent confidences regarding my passion for another.

Well, well, Cora’s love and my regrets were alike vain now, for the swift clipper ship was running on a taut bowline by the skirts of Biscay’s stormy bay, as she bore us on “to glory” and Gallipoli.

*CHAPTER XXV.***

The cabin was spacious and comfortable. Binnacle, the skipper, was a short, thick-set little stump of a fellow, with a round, good-humoured face, which had become browned by exposure in every climate and on every sea under the sun. He was very anecdotical, perpetually joking and laughing, and had one peculiarity, that he never in conversation inter-larded his remarks with nautical phraseology, like the conventional or orthodox sailor of romance and the stage.

He had never sailed before with a horse on board, and now that he had actually one hundred of those useful quadrupeds under his hatches, he spent a great deal of his spare time among them, tickling their ears and noses—more, perhaps, than some of them quite relished, if one might judge of the manner in which they occasionally showed the whites of their eyes, and lashed out at the rear end of their stall-boxes.

On board we smoked, of course, played chess, loo (rouge-et-noir, a little), and daily watched with interest the steamers which passed us, full of troops, British or French, all on their way to the East. Some of us kept diaries and made memoranda for friends at home: but some grew tired of doing so, or reflected that they might not live to record that, on such a day, the white cliffs of old England were again in sight.

We had quite a bale of the “Railway Library” on board; but to reading we preferred telling stories, to kill time, or watching, telescope in hand, for bits of continental scenery, as we ran along the coast of Portugal, spanned the Gulf of Cadiz, and hauled up for the Straits of Gibraltar, after passing the rocky promontory of Cape St. Vincent, which we saw rising from the sea north-north-east of us, about ten miles distant, on the fifth day after we sailed from Spithead.

During the day we had not many leisure hours, as there is no situation in which troops more urgently require the personal superintendence of their officers than when on board ship.

All the lancers were supplied with white canvas frocks, to save their uniforms, and were divided into three watches, each of which in turn was on deck, with at least one officer. We had an officer of the day and guard, who posted sentinels, armed with the sword, at the breaks of the poop and forecastle, to maintain order, and, when the weather permitted, we had an hour of carbine and sword exercise, to the great edification of Captain Binnacle and his crew. Every morning the bedding was brought on deck and triced in nettings alongside; no smoking was permitted in the stables or between decks.

The cattle were of course our chief care, and Beverley was always particular about his mounts. Experience and theory had long convinced him that the sire dominated in the breed of chargers; thus he ever eschewed the produce of half-bred stallions and stud horses. We gave them mashes dashed with nitre, and mixed bran with their corn; daily we had their hoofs and fetlocks washed in clean salt water, their eyes and noses sponged, and when at times the windsails failed to act, and the hold became close, we washed the mangers with vinegar and water, and sponged the horses’ nostrils with the same refreshing dilution.

Notwithstanding all our care, however, before we sighted Malta we lost three—one of which was my uncle’s present, the black cover-hack with the white star on her counter. It became glandered.

Pitblado, who had seen the nag foaled, and had many a day taken it to graze in Falkland Park, and on the green slopes of the Mid Lomond, flatly refused to shoot it when I ordered him to do so, but gave his loaded carbine to Lanty O’Regan, who had fewer scruples on the subject.

When this episode occurred, Cape Espartel was bearing south-east of us, about twelve miles distant; and by our glasses we could distinctly see the features of that remarkable headland of Morocco, the north-western extremity of the mighty continent of Africa, with its range of basaltic columns, which nearly rival in magnificence those of Fingal’s Cave at Staffa; and the noon of the following day, as we bore into the Mediterranean, saw the great peak of Gibraltar rising from the horizon like a couchant lion, with its tail turned to Spain.

When my poor nag, previous to its slaughter, was being slung up from the hold, Beverley was much impressed by the real grief of honest Pitblado for its loss; and told me an interesting Indian anecdote of a pet horse that belonged to the 8th Royal Irish Hussars.

Beverley seldom spoke of India, for it was a land that was not without sorrowful recollections to him; and we all knew that he wore at his neck a large gold locket, containing a braid of the hair of his intended bride—a lovely girl, who was shot in his arms, and when seated on his saddle, as he was spurring with his troop through the horrors and the carnage of the Khyber Pass—on that day when nearly our whole 44th Regiment perished—and poor Beverley, with her dead body, fell into the hands of the Afghans.

“When we last went out to India,” said he, “that was when I was but a cornet of sixteen, and several years before you joined us, we relieved the 8th Royal Irish, who had been there long—I know not how many years, but time enough to gain on their colours Pristinae virtutis memores, with ‘Leswaree,’ and ‘Hindostan’—honours which they shared with the old 25th Light Dragoons,*** for five-and-twenty years was then the common term of Indian expatriation.

“The 8th had been at the storming of Kalunga, where their old and beloved colonel—then General Sir Robert Rollo Gillespie—was killed at their head, and fell with that splendid sword, inscribed ‘The gift of the Royal Irish,’ clenched in his hand. His horse was a remarkably noble animal, which had been foaled of an Irish mare at the Cape of Good Hope; but he had the beautiful Arabian head, the finely-arched neck, long oblique shoulders, ample quarters, well-bent legs, and long elastic pastern of his sire—a splendid Godolphin barb. Black Bob was indeed a beauty!

“After the affair at Kalunga he was put up for sale, with his saddle and housings still spotted with the blood of the gallant Gillespie, who was so greatly beloved by the brave Irish fellows of the 8th that they resolved to keep his horse as a memorial of him; but, unfortunately, the upset price was three hundred guineas.

“Two officers of the 25th Light Dragoons raised it speedily to a hundred more. But not to be baffled, the poor fellows subscribed among themselves, and actually raised five hundred guineas, for which the beautiful black horse, with his housings, was sold to them.

“Black Bob thus became their property, and always preceded the regiment on the march. He knew the trumpets of the 8th better than those of any other regiment. The men were wont to affirm that he had a taste for the Irish brogue, too, and that he pricked his ears always highest at ‘Garryowen,’ in regard that his mother was a mare from the Wicklow Hills.

“Bob was fed, caressed, petted, and stroked as no horse ever had been before; and always when in barracks, as the corps proceeded from station to station where he had been with his old rider, he took the accustomed position at the saluting base when the troops marched past, just as if old Rollo Gillespie was still in the saddle, watching the squadrons or companies defile in succession, and was not lying in his grave, far away beneath the ramparts of Kalunga, among the Himalaya mountains in Nepaul.

“Well, as I have said, at last we came to relieve the 8th, who were dismounted, and had their horses turned over to us. They were to go home, as we had come out, by sea. The funds of the hussars were low now; pay was spent and prize-money gone. They were in despair at the prospect of losing their pet horse; but no such passengers ever went round the Cape, so they had to part with Bob at last.

“A civilian at Cawnpore bought him, and the hussars gave him back more than half the price, on receiving a solemn promise that Bob was to have a good stable and snug paddock wherein he was to pass the remainder of his days in comfort; and this pledge the new proprietor kept faithfully. But Bob had only been three days in his new quarters, when he heard the trumpets of the 8th waking the echoes of the compound, as they marched, dismounted, before daybreak, to embark on the Ganges, for Calcutta.

“It was the old air of the regiment, ‘Garryowen.’ Then Bob became frantic. He bit and tore his manger to pieces; he lashed out with his hoofs and kicked the heel-posts and treviss boards to pieces. He destroyed his whole stall, and sunk among the straw, bleeding, cut, and half strangled in his stall collar.

“After a time, when day by day passed, and he saw no more the once familiar uniforms, and heard no more the voices or the trumpets of his old friends, he pined away, refused his corn, and even the most tempting mashes, totally declining all food. So he was turned into the paddock; but then he leaped the bamboo fence, and with all his remaining speed rushed direct to the barracks at Cawnpore.

“There he made straight for the cantonment of the European cavalry, and came whinneying up to the saluting post, where he had so often borne old Gillespie and seen the squadrons of the 8th defiling past, and there, on that very spot, the horse fell down and died!”***

“I have often heard similar stories of dogs—but never such a yarn of a horse,” said Captain Binnacle, who was greatly impressed by this anecdote, and smoked a long time thoughtfully and in silence after it.

“Fact though!” said Beverley, curtly, and rather haughtily, as he tipped the ashes off his cigar.

“That horse had the heart of a man. But I could spin you a yarn, colonel, of a man that had the heart of a beast—ay, of a wild wolf; and it all occurred under my own eye—for I had to shed human blood in the matter; though I doubt not God above will acquit me therefor, seeing as how my own conscience acquits me.”

The impressive manner so suddenly adopted by our worthy little skipper attracted the attention of Beverley, Studhome, and M’Goldrick, and all the listening group.

Even Jocelyn—a gay fellow, who had more affaires de fantaisie than affaires de coeur, and who never permitted the impulses of that useful utensil, his heart, to go further than proved convenient or comfortable—felt himself interested by the gloomy and stern expression that came into the face of Captain Binnacle.

“Would you like to hear my yarn, gentlemen?” said the latter.

“With pleasure—certainly—by all means—if you please,” said we, alternately, and all together, for Binnacle was evidently anxious to spin it.

He gave a glance aloft, and another at the sky. The evening was fine and clear. The mate had charge of the deck, the ship was running under her head-sails, courses, top-sails, and topgallant sails before a fine strong breeze, which, as she rolled from side to side, made our horses reel and oscillate in their padded stalls below. The watch of lancers were all smoking or chatting on the port side; the sail-makers, squatted under the break of the forecastle, were busy on a set of new studding-sails; the carpenters were at work repairing the headrails forward.

The result of Binnacle’s glances was satisfactory; and, descending to the cabin, whither we all followed, he ordered glasses and decanters, with a case of four square bottles that held something stronger than decanters usually do. We all betook us to brandy-and-water, except Frank Jocelyn, who imbibed noyeau and lemonade, a decoction which Binnacle viewed with sublime contempt; but Frank wore his hair, divided in the middle, and invariably used w for r, so we excused him, as one might do a young lady.

After a few preliminary coughs and hems, Binnacle told us the following story, which is so horrible that it fully requires—let us hope deserves—an entire chapter to itself.

*CHAPTER XXVI.***

“You must know, gentlemen, that five years ago, come December next, I was first mate of the Favourite, a brig of London, registered at Lloyd’s as being two hundred tons burden, John Benson, master, with a crew consisting only of nine men and a boy. We had run, late in the year, to Newfoundland for a cargo of salted cod, and sailing later still, lost a topmast, and had to run up Conception Bay to refit at the town of Harbour Grace.

“Winter was close at hand now, so we lost no time in getting our gear ready; but the field ice came down swiftly from the north, and for the distance of two hundred miles from the mouth of the bay—that is, from Baccalieu and Cape St. Francis—away towards the Great Bank of Newfoundland, it covered all the sea, hard and fast, with hundreds of icebergs wedged amid it; so there was nothing for us now but patience and flannel, to strip the ship of her canvas and running rigging, to stow away everything till the spring, to muffle ourselves to the nose, and try to keep our blood from freezing by sitting close to wood-fires, and drinking red Jamaica rum mixed with snow-water, or that of the mineral springs on the hill of Lookout.

“A winter in Harbour Grace is not quite so lovely as one would be in London, as it is a poor little wooden town, with a few thousand miserable inhabitants, and a port that is difficult of entrance, though safe enough when one is fairly in. Well, everything passes away in time; so the winter passed, and the spring came; but, as usual in that imaginary season there, the snow fell heavier, till it was fathoms deep in the gulleys and flat places; the weather became more wintry than ever, and though the fierce black frost relaxes a little, it will still freeze half and half grog as hard as rock crystal.

“Some of our crew bemoaned this unlooked for detention bitterly, especially the captain, Tom Dacres, and one or two married men, whose wives, they feared, would deem them lost; but none were more impatient than the boy I have named. We called him Scotch Willy, for his name was William Ormiston, from the village of Gourock, on the Clyde. Well educated, with a smattering of Latin and other things, a passion for wild adventure, and chiefly for the sea—a passion fed by the perusal of Robinson Crusoe and other romances—made him run from home and ship for North America, where we picked him up; and often, in the watches of the night, poor Willy confided to me his remorse and repentance, and wept for his mother, whose heart he feared he had broken. Then he used to show me an advertisement cut from a Glasgow paper, that fell into his hands in New York:—

“Left his home, ten days ago, a boy fifteen years of age, named William Ormiston; dressed in a blue jacket and trowsers, with a Glengarry bonnet; has dark eyes and brown hair. Any information regarding him will be most thankfully received by his widowed and afflicted mother, at the Quayside, Gourock.”

“‘Such was the notice that caught my eye when I was more than two thousand miles away from her—with my heart as full of remorse as my pocket was empty,’ Willy would say, in a voice broken by sobs; but he hoped yet to get home and cast himself into her arms.

“In his tribulation Willy always thought his mother would be praying for him, and that her prayers would be more efficacious than his own, and this conviction always consoled and strengthened him. He was a handsome boy, this Willy, with eyes so dark that he might have passed for a grandson of ‘Black-eyed Susan,’ only that she was an English girl, and our Willy was Scotch to the backbone—he was.

“In March we began to get ready for sea, as there is usually a partial breaking up of the ice about the middle of that month, so we resolved to get away if we could, and stand across for Cadiz, if once clear of that dreary and snow-covered land and the field ice. In Spain we were to exchange the salted cod for wine and fruit, and then return to London.

“A Russian whaler, which had been frozen in the same bight, but nearer the sea, was working out ahead of us some three miles or so, through the blue water and between the white floating floes, and we gave the greasy beggar a cheer as he passed out of the bay, made a good offing, and bore away, east by north, round Baccalieu Island.

“Conception Bay, I should tell you, gentlemen, is a large inlet of the Newfoundland coast, about fifty-three miles long, by some twenty or so broad; thus there is plenty of elbow-room for working out, even against a head-wind. Its coast is very bold and precipitous, especially about Point de Grates and Cape St. Francis. Harbour Grace and Carboniere on its shore were settlements of the old French times.

“As we followed in the Russian’s wake, Bob Jenner, a fine, handsome young seaman, from Bristol, had the wheel, steering, with a steady hand, between the floes of broken ice that were drifting dangerously about the bay. We had the brig under easy sail; her fore and main courses, topsails, jib, and forestay-sail.

“Amid the quiet that prevailed on board, and the satisfaction we felt in having the blue water rippling alongside again, we were surprised by hearing a voice hailing us, as it were, from the sea.

“‘A man in the water, sir; just abeam of us, to port,’ shouted Scotch Willy, as he sprang into the main chains.

“And there, sure enough, in the sea, some twenty yards or so from us, we saw a man’s head bobbing up and down like a fisherman’s float, just as we neared the mouth of the inlet, where, beyond the headlands, that were covered with snow, and shining in the sea, we could see the waters of the Atlantic stretching far away.

“‘Rope—a rope!—man overboard, Captain Benson; lay the maincourse to the wind!’ were now the shouts.

“‘Bear a hand—quick—diable!’ cried the man in the water. ‘Are you fellows fit for nothing, in heaven or hell, that you will let me drown before your eyes, d—n them?’

“Ere this remarkable speech reached us, the sheet was let fly to starboard, hauled into port, the brig lay to the wind, and the line was hove to this ill-bred personage in the water. He caught the bight of it with difficulty, for he was sorely benumbed, and actually sunk out of sight as he tied it under his armpits. However, up he came again, and we gently hauled him on board, where he fainted for a few minutes; but recovered when we poured some warm brandy-and-water down his throat, stripped off his wet clothes, and put him in a cosy spare hammock in the forecastle.

“By the time all this was done, we had cleared Conception Bay, and, with flocks of the Baccalieu birds screaming about us, were heading east by north, to keep clear of the floes, which the current was throwing in towards the land again, so rapidly, that many of them, like the links of an icy chain, were already drifting between us and the Russian, who was hoisting out his studding-sails on both sides, to make as good an offing as possible, before the sun set upon that frozen shore and tideless sea.

“By midday she was well-nigh hull down; but standing to the southward, having cleared the outer angle of the ice, while we were standing east and by north, to turn the end of a long mass, which we hoped to do ere night fell. In fact, the Russian had glided through some opening, which had closed again, for we could see only a line of ice, now stretching to the northern horizon, shutting us in towards the land.

“By midday our new hand was so far recovered as to be able to tell us that he was by name Urbain Gautier, a French Canadian, and that he had been a seaman on board the Russian whaler; that he had resented some ill-usage, been flogged, and thrown overboard. In proof of this summary procedure he showed us his back, which was covered with livid marks, evidently produced by the hearty application of a cat or knotted rope’s end, but Scotch Willy lessened the general sympathy by informing me and Tom Dacres, in a whisper, that when the Canadian’s knife fell from its sheath as we dragged him on board there was blood on its blade.

“Blood!

“This circumstance was whispered among the crew from ear to ear, and gave rise to many suspicions in no way favourable to our new acquisition, whom, however, they cared not to question, as he was a man singularly repulsive and brutal in aspect, and having a something in his expression of eye which made all on board shrink from him.

“Urbain Gautier was Herculean in stature and proportion, and most saturnine and satanic in visage. His eyes were too near each other, and too deeply set on each side of his long hooked nose, over which his two eye-brows met in a straight and black unbroken line. His mouth, with its thin lips and serrated fangs, suggested cruelty, and altogether there was a general and terrible aspect of evil about him. He spoke English, but when excited resorted to Canadian-French oaths and interjections.

“If ’twas he brought us ill-luck we got our first instalment of it that very night.

“The morning broke cold, grey, and cheerless, amid a storm of snow and wind, through which, to reduce the ship’s speed, for we could see but little ahead, we drove under our fore-course and topsails all close-reefed now, and bitterly did we all regret the impatience which made us leave our snug moorings in Harbour Grace.

“Now and then the black scud would lift a little, but only to show the ice-fields drawing nearer and nearer, so, lest we should be crushed or enclosed amid them hopelessly, and then, it might be, starved to death when the last of our beef, biscuits, and water were gone, we steered in for the land, with the wild Arctic tempest—for such it was—increasing every moment.

“We tried sounding to leeward, but the lead always slipped from my benumbed hands, and in the end we lost the frozen line, as it parted in the iron block which was seized to the rigging by a tail-rope. Ere long we struck soundings with the hand lead, for the water was beginning to shoal!

“The brig’s tops and the bellies of the close-reefed topsails became filled with snow, and now we began to look gloomily at each other, fearing rather than doubting the end.

“For most of that weary day we held on thus, running alternately west and north—sea-room was all we wanted till a safe harbourage opened; but ere long we knew it would be hopeless to look for either if the gale continued, and the briskest exercise could scarcely keep us from being frozen.

“We had been driven nor’-west I know not how many miles—for, perhaps, more than six-and-thirty—when a heavier sea than usual struck the brig on her starboard side, throwing her over on her beam ends to port, carrying away the bulwarks, tearing the long-boat from its chocks and lashings amidships, and making a clean sweep of everything on deck, buckets, loose spars, and handspikes; and with these went one of our men, who was never seen again.

“The brig righted, for she was a brave little craft, but with the loss of her topmasts and jib-boom, all of which, with yards and gearing, were broken off at the caps, and with hatchets and knives we worked amid the blinding and benumbing haze of drift and spray, snow, and the darkness of the coming night, to clear the wreck away—and away it all went astern with a crash, leaving the Favourite now under only her forecourse and staysail.

“I shall never forget that night, if I live for a thousand years.

“The pumps were frozen; the boxes a mass of ice; the brakes refused to work; but I knew there was more water in the hold than was healthy for us. We could get no tea, coffee, nor any warm food, for the cook’s galley had been swept overboard, and the tots of grog, which I served out from time to time, conduced, I think, rather to stupefy than to comfort the poor fellows, who were beginning to lose all heart, and to huddle together for warmth in the forecastle.

“Lightning, green and ghastly, glared forth at times, revealing the weird aspect of the crippled and snow-covered brig; yet it had the effect of clearing the atmosphere and enabling us to see the stars; but still the wind blew fierce and biting over the vast ice-fields, and still the fated craft flew on—we scarcely knew whither—but as the event proved, between the headland of Buenovista and the enclosing ice.

“We had the utmost difficulty in keeping a lamp in the binnacle, and by its light, amid the storm, Urbain Gautier, the French-Canadian, who had the wheel, was steering; no other man on board but he could have handled it singly and kept the brig to her course, for he had the strength of three of us, and seemed alike impervious to cold and to suffering.

“I think I can see him now as he stood then, with his feet firmly planted on the quarterdeck grating, his hands on the spokes of the wheel, and the livid lightning seeming to play about him, as the brig flew on through the storm and the darkness, and with every varying flash his features changed in hue. Now they were green, and anon red or blue; now purple, and then ghastly white; ever and again, as the lightning flashed forth, this infernal face came out of the gloom with a diabolical grotesqueness, and a strange smile on it that appalled us all; and now another day began to break.

“‘Mate, that fellow is more like a devil than a human being,’ whispered Bob Jenner to me, echoing my own thoughts, as we clung together to the belaying pins abaft the mainmast.

“He spoke in a low whisper; but in an instant the eyes of Urbain were on him.

“‘Ah!’ said he, showing his serrated teeth, ‘a maladroit speech, messmate.’

“‘No messmate of yours,’ growled Bob, unwisely.

“‘Shipmate, then,’ suggested the other, with a strange glance, between a grin and a scowl, for his black, glittering eyes wore one expression, and his cruel mouth another.

“‘Well, mayhap, for so it must be,’ said Bob, bluntly.

“‘Ah,’ said Urbain, with his horrible smile, as he held the wheel with one hand, and—even at that terrible time—felt for his sheath-knife with the other; ‘ah! you think me a mauvais sujet, do you?”

“‘I doesn’t know what “mavy suggey” may be, and I doesn’t care if I never does,’ replied Bob, sturdily; ‘but once I catches you ashore, mounseer, I’ll teach you not to grip your knife when speaking to me.’

“‘No quarrelling, lads,’ said I, while my teeth chattered in the cold of that awful morning atmosphere. ‘I only wish we were ashore.’

“‘Then have your wish. Land ho!’ sung out Urbain; and at that moment the grey wrack around us parted like a curtain; there was a dreadful crash, which tumbled us all right and left; the breakers which he had seen ahead were now boiling around us; and the brig lay bulged and broken-backed upon a reef, close to a lofty line of rocky coast, a helpless wreck, with the ice closing round her; and with a sound between an oath and a laugh, Urbain quitted the now useless wheel, which oscillated, as if in mockery, to and fro.

“Captain Benson, who, worn out by toil, had been snatching a few minutes’ repose under the hood of the companionway, now sprang on deck, to find the brig totally lost, and that for us there was no resource, if we would save our lives, but to abandon her and get on shore.

“Broken and bulged, she was too firmly wedged on the reef for us ever to have the slightest hope of getting her off, save to sink her in deep water. As yet she might hold together for some hours, if the fury of the storm abated, and there were evident signs of such being the case.

“As each successive blast grew less in fury, and as the force and sound of the sea went down, we heard the wild streaming of the Baccalieu birds; and now, ere the water, which was rising fast in hold and cabin, destroyed everything, we procured charts and telescopes, to discover on what part of that barren, bleak, and most desolate of all the American shores, our fate had cast us.

“On comparing the outline of the snow-clad coast with the diagrams on the chart, we found we were stranded somewhere between the Bloody Bay and the Bay of Fair and False, about one hundred and twenty miles to the north-westward of the point from whence we had sailed.

“Few or no settlers, even of the most hardy and desperate description, are to be found thereabout, as the inhabitants between that place and the Bay of Notre Dame, about one hundred and fifty in number, are poor wretches who fish for cod and salmon in what they call summer, and for seals and the walrus in winter, and usually retire for the latter purpose to St. John’s, or bury themselves in the woods till the snow disappears, about the month of June.

“We had but a sorry prospect before us; every instant the brig was going more and more to pieces beneath our feet, and our glasses swept the far extent of the snow-clad coast in vain, for not a vestige of a human habitation, or any sign of a human being, could be seen. No living thing was there save the Baccalieu birds, which screamed and wheeled in flocks above the seething breakers.

“Captain Benson’s resolutions were taken at once. He resolved to abandon the wreck, and make his way by land at once for Trinity, a little town on the western side of the great bay that divides Avalon from the mainland of the island, or for Buenoventura, another settlement twelve miles to the southward.

“By circumnavigating the numerous bights, bays, and other inlets that lay between us and Buenoventura—especially the long, narrow, and provoking reach of Clode Sound—provided we failed to cross it on the ice, we should have at least a hundred miles to travel over a desolate and snow-covered waste, without a pathway, and without other guide than a pocket-compass.

“We set about our preparations at once. Every man put on his warmest clothing, and Tom Dacres lent a cosy Petersham jacket to the Canadian, Gautier. We greased our boots well, that they might exclude the wet, and made us long leggings to wear over our trousers by tying pieces of tarpaulin from the ankle to the knee, and lashing them well round with spun-yarn.

“For many hours we had been without food, and now examination proved that, save a few biscuits in the cabin locker, all the bread on board had been destroyed by the salt water; yet Urbain Gautier was able to make a meal of it. We were forced to content ourselves with a half biscuit each, to be eaten at our first halting place on shore. Beef or other provision we had none, and not a drop of rum or any other liquid could be had, for the brig was going fast to pieces, as the breakers surged up under her weather-counter, and all the hull abaft the mainmast was settling rapidly down in the water.

“Luckily we got up six muskets and some dry ammunition through the skylight. I say luckily, as we would have to hunt our way to Buenoventura; and these, with two tin pannikins, wherewith to cook and melt the snow for water, and a box of lucifer matches for lighting fires when we squatted in the bush for the night, we made our way ashore in the quarter-boat, and landed a chilled, wan, haggard, and miserable little band, consisting of eleven persons in all, including the captain, Bob Jenner, Tom Dacres, Willy Ormiston, the boy, myself, and five others.

“We were not without some fears of the Red Indians, though few or none, I believe, are now to be found on the island. Thus our first proceeding was to load and cap our muskets carefully.***

“Captain Benson proceeded in front, with a fowling-piece on his shoulder, steering the way, with the aid of his pocket compass and a fragment of a chart; and he, too, was custodian of our box of lucifer matches. Just as we reached the top of the cliffs, by a slippery and dangerous ascent, we heard a sound, which made us all pause and look back towards the wreck. The field ice had already closed in upon the reef; but the last vestiges of the brig had disappeared where the Baccalieu birds were whirling thickest and screaming loudest.

“From the cliff that overlooked the sea, which was covered to the horizon with a myriad hummocks of field ice, diversified here and there by a great iceberg, the view landward differed but little in aspect. The whole dreary expanse was covered with snow—snow that made the frozen lakes and bays so blend with the land, that save for the dark groves of stunted firs and dwarf brushwood that grew in the arid soil, it was difficult to know where one ended and the other began. The hills were low, monotonous, and unpleasantly resembled icebergs, without possessing the altitude, the sharp peaks, and abrupt outlines of the latter.

“In all that wintry waste the most awful silence prevailed, and not a sound was stirring in the clear blue air, for now the snow-storm had ceased, the wind had died away, and the sky was all of the purest, deepest, most intense, and unclouded blue. Amid it shone the dazzling sun, causing a reflection from the snow that served partly to blind or bewilder us; but now, after sharing our tobacco—all save Urbain—for a friendly whiff, we set resolutely forth upon our journey, in a direction at first due south-west from Bloody Bay, towards the upper angle of the long and winding shores of Newman’s Sound.

“Three days we travelled laboriously, each helping his shipmates on, for our strength was failing fast, and sleeping in the scrubby bush at night was perilous work, for the cold was beyond all description intense; but we selected places where the snow was arched and massed over the low fir-trees, and there we crept in for shelter, running only the risk of being completely snowed up. Three days we travelled thus, without a path, over the white waste, where, in some places, the snow was frozen hard as flinty rock, and where, in others, we sank to our knees at every step; and during those three days, save the half biscuit per man which we had on quitting the wreck, no food passed our lips, and no other fluid than melted snow; and when the damp destroyed our tiny store of matches, we had no other means of allaying the agony of our thirst than by sucking a piece of ice or a handful of snow, and these were sure to produce bleeding lips and swollen tongues, as they burnt like fire.

“On the third morning, as we turned out, a seaman, whose name I forget, did not stir; we shook and called him, but there was no response; the poor fellow had passed away in his sleep, and so we left him there.

“Our fingers and noses were frequently frost-bitten; but when they were well rubbed in snow, animation returned. Those who had whiskers, found them more a nuisance than a source of warmth, as they generally became clogged by heavy masses of ice. Dread of snow-blindness, after the glare of the past winter, came on us, too; for each day the sun was bright and cloudless—a shining globe overhead; but a globe that gave no heat.

“We met no traces of Red, or of Micmac Indians, or of the wild cariboo deer; the black bear, the red fox, the broad-tailed musquash, the white hare, and other game of the country, were nowhere to be seen either, or else we were not trappers enough to know their lairs or trail.

“Snow-birds, and all other fowl seemed equally scarce: in fact, the severity of the weather had destroyed, or driven them elsewhere, and with our hollow and blood-shot eyes we scanned the white wastes in vain for a shot at anything.

“To add to our troubles, little Scotch Willy fairly broke down, unable to proceed; and as the boy could not be left to perish, we carried him by turns—all, save the great and muscular Urbain Gautier, who told us plainly that he would see the boy and the crew in a very warm climate indeed before he would add to his own sufferings by becoming a beast of burden.

“‘A beast you will ever be, whether of burden or not,’ said Captain Benson, as he took the first spell of carrying poor Willy, who like a child as he was, wept sorely for his mother now.

“‘Tonnerre de Dieu!’ growled the savage, grinding his teeth and cocking his musket; but as three of us did the same, he gave one of his queer grins, and resumed his journey; but kept more aloof from us, for which we were not sorry.

“By contrast to the icy horrors around us, memory tormented us with ideas and pictures of blazing fires and festive hearths; of happy homes, of warm dinners and jugs of hot punch; of steaming coffee and rich cream; of mulled wines; of chestnuts sputtering amid the embers; of carpeted rooms and close-drawn curtains, glowing redly in the warm blaze of a sea-coal fire; of warm feather-beds and cosy English blankets; of every distant comfort that we had not, and never more might see.

“On the fourth day there was no alleviation to our sufferings; no change in the weather, save a sharp fall of snow, against which we were sullenly and blindly staggering on, when a cry of despair escaped from the blistered lips of Captain Benson.

“The fly and needle of the pocket-compass had given way, and we had no longer a guide!

“Indeed, we knew not where, or in what direction, we might have been proceeding with this faulty index since we left the ship. Long ere the noon of the fourth day we should have turned the inner angle of Clode Sound; but now we saw only masses of slaty rocks on every hand, rising from the snow, with snow on their summits, save towards the west, where the vast and flat expanse of a frozen and snow-covered sheet of water spread in distance far away.

“We thought that it was the sea, but it proved eventually to be the great Unexplored Lake, which is more than fifty miles long, by about twenty miles broad.

“In this awful condition we found ourselves, while our little strength was now failing so fast that we could scarcely carry our hitherto useless muskets; and now another night was closing in.

“Urbain, who was near me, uttered a savage laugh.

“‘What are you thinking of?’ I asked with surprise.

“‘Of what, eh?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Tres bien! very good; I was thinking over which is likely to be the best part of a man.’

“‘For what purpose?’

“‘Cordieu! for eating,’ said he, with a fiendish grimace.

“After this the imprecations of Urbain, chiefly against the captain, became loud, deep, and horrible; but luckily for us most of them were uttered in French. Ere long the savage fellow’s mood seemed to change; he wept, and to our surprise offered to carry Willy, on one condition, that one of us carried his musket; and then once more, guided now by the direction in which the sun had set, we continued our pilgrimage towards the south.

“Urbain’s vast strength seemed to have departed now; he was incapable of keeping up with us, and began to lag more and more behind, so that we had frequently to wait for him, as we were too feeble to call, and Willy, who feared him greatly, implored us not to leave them.

“On these occasions Urbain’s old devilish temper became roused, and he broke forth into oaths, and even threats; so, ultimately, we left him to proceed at his own slow pace as we struggled towards a wood, dragging with us a seaman named Tom Dacres, who had been no longer able to abstain from swallowing snow, by which his mouth was almost immediately swollen, while he became speechless and all but paralysed.

“Yet on and on we toiled, dragging him by turns, our weary limbs sinking deep at every step. When I look back to those sufferings, I frequently think that I must have been partially insane; but it would seem that, like one in a dream, I went through all the formula of life like a sane person.

“On reaching the thicket, it proved to be one of old and half-decayed firs; then we proceeded to suck portions of the bark greedily. After this we became aware, for the first time, of the absence of Urbain Gautier and little Willy.

“They had disappeared in the twilight!”

Here Captain Binnacle interrupted his narrative by expressing a fear that he wearied us; but we begged of him to proceed, as we were anxious to know how those adventures ended by the shore of the Unexplored Lake.

*CHAPTER XXVII.***

“Nestling close to a rock, from the side of which the snow formed an arch, we found some moss, which we ate with avidity, and then some sprigs of savine, which generally grows in the clefts of the rocks all over the island and the Labrador coast, yielding the berry from which the spruce beer is made. With tears of thankfulness we devoured them, and were surmising what had become of Urbain, when about nine o’clock by the captain’s watch he appeared, but without Scotch Willy, who had, he said, died about an hour ago, and been buried by him among the snow.

“‘Where?’ asked the captain, in a low voice, for Dacres, and two others of our famine-stricken band, were in a dying condition.

“‘Did you observe an old peeled trunk of a tree about a mile distant?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Tres bien—I buried him there,’ replied Urbain, whose voice sounded strong and full compared with what it was some hours ago. Captain Benson remarked this, and said—

“‘You have hunted and found something to eat?’

“‘Tonnerre de ciel! Beelzebub—no. I left my gun with you.’

“True; did poor little Willy die easily?” I asked.

“‘I wish we may all die so easily,’ replied Urbain, with an impatient oath, as he crept close to me for warmth, causing me, I know not why, to shudder.

“I scarcely slept that night, though our snow cell was not destitute of heat; but vague suspicions and solid terrors kept me wakeful. Willy’s sudden death appalled me; and something in the bearing and aspect of Urbain filled me with dreadful conjectures, which, in the morning, I communicated only to Bob Jenner.

“At dawn we found Tom Dacres dead, and two others dying; to leave the latter would have been inhuman; the poor fellows were quite collected, shook hands with us all round, shared their tobacco among us equally, and while we all smoked for warmth, the captain repeated the Lord’s Prayer. After which, Jenner and I took our guns and went forth to explore. With tacit but silent consent, we went straight to the old bare skeleton tree. The snow around it was frozen hard, and was pure, spotless, and untrodden, as when it fell some days before; so Urbain had told a falsehood, and little Willy was not buried there. For a little sustenance we now sucked the rags with which we oiled our guns, and looked about us, tracing back our trail of the preceding evening a little way.

“Suddenly we came upon the footmarks of Urbain, which diverged at an acute angle from our several tracks, and those we followed for about three hundred yards, to where a great rock rose abruptly from the snow, which was all disturbed and discoloured about its base—discoloured, and by—blood.

“Bob Jenner and I looked blankly at each other, and cold as our own blood was, it seemed to grow colder still. There, in that awful solitude of vast and snowy prairies, dwarf forests, unexplored lakes, and untrodden land, a terrible tragedy had too surely been acted. He had killed the boy—but why? Removing the snow with the butts of our guns, a white man’s hand appeared, an arm, and then we drew forth the dead body of little Willy Ormiston. It had a strange and unnaturally emaciated aspect. A livid bruise was on the right temple, and there was a wound, a singular perforation under the right ear. These were all we could discover at first; but there was much blood upon the snow around, and on the poor boy’s tattered clothing. Then a groan escaped us both, when we found that his left sleeve had been ripped up, and that a great piece of the arm was wanting, from the elbow to the shoulder, having been sliced off literally and close to the bone.

“‘A strange mutilation!’ said I, while my teeth chattered with dismay, and I evaded putting my thoughts in words. ‘If wolves—‘

“‘Wolves never did this,’ replied Jenner in a husky voice; ‘but a knife has been used.’

“‘You mean—you mean—‘

“‘Look ye, shipmate, at that round wound in the neck.’

“‘Well?’

“‘After stunning him by a blow, Urbain Gautier has punctured the boy’s throat, and sucked his blood, like a weazel or a vampire, or some such thing, and ended actually by cutting a slice from his arm!’

“The whole details of this act of horror seemed but too complete, and gradually we were compelled to accept the fact, the more so when I recalled his strange remark of the preceding evening. We became sick and giddy; the white landscape swam round and round us, and while covering up the remains with snow we fell repeatedly with excess of weakness, and then returned to the little thicket—returned slowly, to find that our band was lessened by three, for in addition to Tom Dacres, two other poor fellows had just breathed their last. Urbain’s fierce black eyes questioned us in stern silence as we approached.

“‘Did you find the boy?’ asked Captain Benson, who had been singeing the hair off a fur cap of Dacres, and cutting it into strips for us to chew, which we did thankfully.

“‘Yes, he is dead. Let us think no more of it at present,’ said I.

“Black fury gathered in Urbain’s sombre visage as we came close to him, and he growled out—‘I buried him at the foot of the old tree, shipmate; so, diable! say what you like, or that which is safer, think what you like.’

“I was too weak to resent this, or to confront him, and so turned away. The captain divided some of the dead men’s clothes among us, but these Urbain declined to share, or in the strips of scorched fur, for his strength seemed to have been completely renovated during the night; and after covering our poor companions with snow, we again set forth wearily towards the south-east, and, weak though, we were, we cast many a backward glance to the thicket where our three dead shipmates lay side by side. About noon a covey of white winter grouse were near us; we all fired at once. Whether it was that we were bad shots, that our hands were weak, that our eyes miscalculated the distance, or our aim wavered, I know not, but every bird escaped, and with moans of despair we reloaded. Then, to add to our troubles, it was found that only three of us, to wit, the captain, Urbain, and myself, had dry powder left. On and on yet to the south-east, through the blinding and trackless waste of snow!

“In a place where a grey scalp of rock was almost bare of drifted snow we found the skeleton of a cariboo deer. It was pure white, and coated with crystal frost. Wolfishly we eyed it, as if we would have sucked the dry bones that several winters, perhaps, had bleached, for not a vestige even of skin remained on them. Those whose ammunition failed them, now cast away their guns and powder-horns as useless incumbrances. We were all reduced to shadows, and two had to support their bending forms on walking-sticks. Even our jolly captain was becoming quite feeble, and the despondency of settled despair was creeping over us all.

“Urbain alone seemed hale, and stepped steadily, when others fell ever and anon in utter weakness. There were times when I surveyed his vast bulk, which loomed greater to my diseased eyesight, and I thought we had the foul fiend himself journeying with us in the form of a man.

“What if all should perish—all but he and me? On we toiled towards another thicket, where we proposed to search for roots or moss, on which to make a meal, and to light a fire, for evening was approaching; and now it was that Urbain seated himself on a piece of rock, swearing that he would proceed no farther then, but would rejoin us in the thicket. Captain Benson was too weak, or cared too little about him, to remonstrate, so we passed on in silence to our halting place, where, most providentially, we found some juniper bushes, which the snow had preserved, and some soft fir bark, which we devoured greedily. Refreshed by this, we lighted a fire by means of some gunpowder and a percussion cap, and heaped the branches on it. A bird or two twittered past; I fired mechanically—almost without aim—and was lucky enough to knock over a large-sized pigeon-eagle, which was speedily divided and devoured, half broiled, ere we thought that the feathers only had been left for Urbain, of whose guilt Bob and I had informed our shipmates, that all might be on their guard, and our narrative added to their sufferings, for now we all feared to sleep, and had to cast lots for a watcher.

“About dawn he returned, and when we all set forth again, though we had been renovated by the heat of our fire and by the savage meal we had made, he seemed, as usual, the freshest among us, and on this day we observed, in whispers to each other, that he wore round his neck a red-spotted handkerchief which we had left tied over the face of Tom Dacres!

“He must have gone back to the thicket where the three dead men lay, but for what purpose?

“About noon on this day we found ourselves on the summit of a mountainous ridge of bare rock; it was without snow, which, however, lay drifted deep around. It commanded an extensive view so far as from the borders of the great Unexplored Lake on our right, to the head of Smith’s Sound on our left.

“There was no sign of a human habitation to be seen, and our eyes swept in vain the horizon, where the white snow and blue sky met, for a smoke-wreath indicating where a squatter’s cabin stood.

“‘Malediction!’ said Urbain, hoarsely, ‘if this continues I shall have something to eat, bon gre malgre!—if it should be the flesh of a man. You seem shocked mate,’ said he to me, as I shrank back.

“‘I am shocked,’ said, I, quietly.

“‘Well—diable! don’t be so,’ he replied, mockingly, ‘because it is wonderful truly what you may bring your mind to, if you put your courage to the test, and place yourself en visage with your fate like a man.’

“‘Or a devil—eh, Urbain Gautier?’ said Captain Benson; ‘but no more of this, or—‘

“‘Don’t threaten me, mon petit capitaine—my nice little man,’ interrupted the giant, with a horrible grimace, ‘or—‘ and pausing, he laid his hand significantly on his knife.

“Urbain now became surly, insolent, and ferocious; but knowing his singular strength, which failed less than ours, and knowing the secret, the loathsome and terrible means by which he maintained it—aware also that he had plenty of ammunition—we dissembled alike our fears, our suspicions, and our abhorrence of him.

“After we had toiled on for two hours in silence, he suddenly stopped us all by an oath.

“‘Nombril de Belzebub!’ he exclaimed to Captain Benson, ‘what is the use of looking for food or game in these infernal wastes, into which your stupidity has led us? Let us cast lots, and find out who shall be shot for the food of the rest!’

“‘Silence, wretch,’ said Captain Benson.

“‘To that it will come at last,’ said Urbain, grinning.

“‘Perhaps it has come to it already,’ said Bob Jenner, unwisely.

“‘Ah, sacre! You think I murdered that boy, do you? And you think so, too?’ he added to me.

“‘I have not said so,’ I replied, evasively.

“‘You had better not, or by—, if you thought me capable of committing such an act, or if you said it—‘ and so on he rambled incoherently, threatening and bullying; but all the while most surely confirming our just suspicions.

“‘Let us cut him adrift; leave him behind; if we can do so, to-night,’ whispered Jenner to me.

“Low though the whisper was, it caught the huge ears of Urbain, even while muffled by the lappets of a sealskin cap.

“‘Leave me behind, will you? Well, you may do so; but, diable! I shall not be left without food.’

“About an hour after this we met with a terrible but significant catastrophe. While we were all proceeding in Indian file behind the captain, Urbain stumbled on a piece of slippery ice; he fell, and in doing so, his musket exploded, lodging its contents right in the back of the head of my poor messmate, Bob Jenner, who fell back, and expired without a groan.

“We were appalled by the suddenness of this calamity; all, save Urbain, who rubbed his knees, muttered an oath, and reloaded with all the rapidity of alarm; while each of us read in his neighbour’s face the conviction that there was more of design than accident in what had taken place, though it had all the appearance of a casualty.

“Dissembling still, and having but little time for grief, we covered poor Bob’s remains with snow, and resumed our melancholy march.

“We were but six now, and five of those were famished scarecrows.

“A mile farther on, we found the ruins of a deserted log hut, which we hailed with extravagant joy, as our first approach to civilization, and the abode of human beings. There we resolved to pass the night, which was approaching, and there we kindled a fire, and with blocks of snow filled up the doorway, while the smoke escaped by an aperture in the roof.

“Oh, how genial was the warmth we felt; and though we had only a few fragments of moist bark to chew, we would have felt almost happy, but for the recent catastrophe, and for our dread of Urbain Gautier, who as soon as twilight fell said he would go in search of a shot, and taking his gun went away.

“We breathed more freely when he left us; but we shuddered with intense loathing when we knew that he was returning to the place where our dead companion—too surely murdered by his hand—lay uncoffined in the snow.

“We felt that we were no longer safe with him, and all were conscious that he should die, as a judicial retribution.

“Lots were cast for the dangerous office of executioner, and the fate fell on me.

“Instead of alarm or compunction, I felt as one who had a terrible duty to perform. I became conscious that justice to the dead and to the living, if not my own personal safety, demanded the fulfilment of the terrible task which had become mine, and with the most perfect coolness and deliberation I overhauled my gun, examined the charge, carefully capped it anew, and sleeplessly awaited him I was to destroy—this wretch—this ghoul or vampire, on his return from his horrid repast amid the snow—a repast which his own treachery and cruelty had provided; and as I waited thus the face of poor Willy Ormiston, and the cheery voice of poor Bob Jenner, as I had often heard it, when he sang at the wheel, or when sharing the night-watch, came powerfully and distinctly to memory.

“I threw more dry branches on the fire, and bidding my shipmates sleep, addressed myself to the task of watching, and half dozing, with my weapon beside me.

“I felt sure that Urbain hated me; that he knew I suspected him, and would too probably be his next victim, especially if my shot missed him, as he might then legally slay me, and would do so by a single blow.

“Already I felt my flesh creep at the idea of its furnishing a collop for him, perhaps to-morrow night, when he stole back from the next halting place.

“I shall never forget the weary moments of that exciting night. I have somewhere read that ‘it is one of the strange instincts of half slumber to be often more alive to the influence of subdued and stealthy sounds than of louder noises. The slightest whisperings, the low murmurings of a human voice, the creaking of a chair, the cautious drawing back of a curtain, will jar upon and rouse the faculties that have been insensible to the rushing flow of a cataract, or the dull booming of the sea.’

“I must have been asleep, however, when a sound startled me, and I could hear footsteps treading softly over the crisp and frozen snow. Rousing myself, I started to the aperture which passed for a doorway, and which, as I have stated, we had partially blocked up by snow; and through it, about fifty paces distant, I saw the tall dark form of Urbain towering between me and the ghastly white waste beyond. He loomed like a giant in the bright but waning moon, that was sinking behind the hills that are as yet unnamed, while a blood-red streak to the westward showed where the morning was about to break.

“My heart beat fast, every pulse was quickened, and every fibre tingled, as I raised the musket to my shoulder, took a deliberate aim, and, when he was within twenty paces of me, fired, and shot him dead!

“The bullet entered his mouth, and passed out of the base of the skull behind, injuring the brain in its passage, and destroying him instantly.

“So Captain Benson told me, for I never looked on his face again, though I have often seen it since in my dreams.

“About two hours after this summary act of justice we were found and relieved by a travelling party of Indians, Micmacs, who come from the continent of America at times, and domicile themselves chiefly along the western shore of the island, to hunt the beaver by the banks of the Serpentine Lake.

“They conveyed us through the fur country of the Buenoventura people to the miserable little settlement of that name, where we remained till the ice broke up, when we were taken to St. John’s in a seal-fisher.

“There our perils and suffering ended. We had shipped on board different crafts for different countries, and the next year saw me appointed captain of this clipper-ship, the Pride of the Ocean.”***

*CHAPTER XXVIII.***

Pleasantly we traversed the almost tideless waters of the Mediterranean, the great inland sea of Europe.

We generally had a fair wind; but in our tacks southward and northward more than once we sighted the shores of Europe on one side, and those of Africa on the other.

The routine of transport life varied but little, so every passing sail became an object of speculation and interest. Day by day, and frequently night after night, we walked with the same person on the same side of the quarter-deck, turning short round at the taffrail aft, and at the break forward, to resume the same pace, without making a remark, for all our mutual ideas had been interchanged over and over again, and no tie remained, save that of being comrades, weary and worn alike, though each had his own thoughts, the mental orbit in which his soul revolved, and these were, perhaps, three thousand leagues astern.

Every probable and possible phase of the war we had dissected and discussed, and the future excitement that was to come we contrasted impatiently with the quiet, inglorious monotony of the present, while the swift clipper cleft the classic waters of the Mediterranean.

The monotony on board was once varied by a trivial practical joke played by M’Goldrick, the paymaster, on the colonel and some of the English officers, who had been deriding Scottish cookery. He produced at dinner a valuable preserve, which he had previously had carefully soldered up in a tin case, by the armourer’s aid, and which he had compounded with the joint assistance of the ship’s cook and my man, Pitblado.

It was duly boiled, and produced at table in its tin case as a scarce and rare Parisian decoction—Farina d’avoine au fromage, or some such name; and after being partaken of by Beverley, Studhome, and the rest, was pronounced excellent, though it proved, after all, to be only a very ill-made Scotch haggis.

In the Mediterranean we were frequently impressed by the extreme blueness of the water. It seemed to have a purer and deeper tint than we had ever seen it wear even in higher latitudes, especially when the weather was fine, and light scattered clouds were floating through the sky.

About a fortnight after passing “old Gib,” the outline of Malta and its sister isle, the abode of Calypso, rose from the morning sea on our lee bow; and during the whole of a lovely day our eyes were strained in that direction, watching that rocky shore of so many great and glorious memories—the last stronghold of Christian chivalry—the link between Britain and her Indian empire—our “halfway house” to the Bosphorus—with all its cannon bristling as the mistress of the Mediterranean and Levant.

As we drew nearer, our field-glasses enabled us to trace the rocky outline of the greater isle—the hilly range of which is only about a hundred feet higher than the dome of St. Paul’s—and the steep, rugged coast to the north-east, beyond which lie the casals, or villages of the lank, yellow-visaged, black-bearded, and malicious-looking Maltese, concerning whom I do not mean to afflict my reader with either a description or a dissertation.

The evening gun flashed redly from the Castle of St. Elmo, and the harbour lights of Valetta were sparkling brightly amid the golden evening haze, as we ran into the harbour, round which a thousand or more pieces of cannon were bristling on battery and platform, and on coming to anchor found that we were only a pistol-shot astern of the Ganges, which had on board Wilford’s troop of ours, and which had come in two days before us.

We were only to wait the refilling of our tank with fresh water, of which, being a horse transport, we required an unusual quantity; and now our poor nags were neighing in concert in the hold, for, as Captain Binnacle termed it, “they smelt the land.”

No officer or soldier was permitted to go on shore, unless on duty, for already Malta was crowded with troops, so much so that the 93rd Highlanders were actually bivouacking in a burying-ground. But these orders did not prevent us from visiting our comrades in the Ganges; so Binnacle sent off his gig, with the colonel, Studhome, Sir Harry Scarlett, and me.

We found that all were well on board, and had suffered no casualties, save the loss of four horses by disease. Unlike us, however, they had been favoured by that remarkable illumination known in those waters as St. Elmo’s light, which had shone on their main-topgallant mast for a space of three feet below the truck in the night, when they were off the volcanic isle of Pantalaria.

My old friend Fred Wilford received us with warmth and welcome. Thus far our voyages had been equally unmarked by danger or adventure.

In the cabin we found Berkeley, reading one of the London morning papers, which was only a week or so old. It had come by the steam packet from Marseilles. He addressed a few remarks, in his usual languid way, to the colonel and to Scarlett, made a pencil-mark on his paper, as if half casually, and tossing it on the cabin table, retired, with his strange smile and lounging gait, on deck.

Under other circumstances I should most probably have been awaiting him at the hotel of M. Dessin, at Calais, for the purpose of giving him a morning airing on the beach, with the chance of myself being carried back on a shutter, perhaps, to that famous room, in which, as all the travelling world know, Lawrence Sterne and Walter Scott have slept. But fate or duty had arranged it otherwise; so here we were, quietly smoking cheroots in the harbour of Valetta. But his voice and presence recalled all the baseness of his conduct at the Reculvers, and the bitterness of the time when he involved me in disgrace with Louisa Loftus—a double piece of treachery for which I had yet to demand satisfaction.

Curious to see the paragraph which had such interest for him, I took up his paper, and my eye fell at once upon the following paragraph:—

“THE NEW PEERAGE.—Our readers will be glad to perceive that, by last night’s London Gazette, a right honourable lord, long known in the world of fashion, and latterly in political circles, has been raised to a marquisate, by the title of Marquis of Slubber de Gullion and Viscount Gabey of Slubberleigh. Rumour adds that, lest the newly-won honours perish, the noble marquis is about to lead to the altar the only daughter and heiress of one of the greatest of our English families—the fair maid of Kent.”

I knew well that the closing words could only refer to Louisa Loftus. I had seen her but a few days before this piece of impertinent twaddle had been penned, and the memory of our parting hour, and the expression of her eyes, came vividly before me; but we were far separated now, and it is difficult to describe how deeply the tenor of that paragraph stung me.

The drums were beating in barrack and citadel, and the trumpets were sounding tattoo in the transports, as we were rowed back to our vessel. Studhome and the colonel were chatting gaily, and Scarlett was humming a waltz, as he pulled the stroke-oar and thought of past days at Oxford.

I alone was silent and sad.

From violet and purple, the tints of the later evening—the gloaming, as we call it in Scotland—passed into blue and amber, and the lights of Valetta rose over each other, glittering in tiers along the slope on which the city is built, with all its “streets of stairs,” which Byron anathematized.

The band of an infantry regiment was playing in Citta Nuova, and softly the strains of the music came across the rippling water, over which the blue and amber tints were swiftly spreading, while in its depths the stars were shining, and all the shipping were reflected downwards.

Lights glittered gaily all round the harbour; the ramparts of St. Elmo and of Ricazoli, with the mass of the cathedral, where the knights of the Seven Nations sleep in their marble tombs, and where hung of old the silver keys of Acre, Rhodes, and Jerusalem, stood in bold outline against the ruddy, but deepening, twilight sky.

The scene was lovely and stirring withal; but my heart and thoughts were far away from Malta, as we were rowed back between crowded transports, and huge, silent frigates and line-of battle ships, to the Pride of the Ocean.

My good friend, Jack Studhome, who knew the cause of my too apparent depression, made light of the matter, and endeavoured, in his own fashion, to soothe and console me while we took a whiff together on deck, before turning in for the night.

“Consider, Norcliff,” said he; “Lady Louisa Loftus, sole heiress of Chillingham Park!”

“Ay, there’s the rub, Jack—sole heiress. I would rather that she had not a shilling in the world.”

“Indeed! Why?”

“Our chances were more equal then.”

“Hear me out. Sole heiress of Lord Chillingham—all save his titles! What should, what could, tempt her—already too, in the face of her engagement with you—to throw herself away on old Slubber, who might be her grandfather? Where would be her gain?”

“The title of marchioness, with vast estates,” said I bitterly. “In my case, my dear fellow, she would only be Lady Louisa Loftus, wife of a very poor captain of lancers.”

“But those newspaper rumours are frequently such impertinent falsehoods. Remember that, if their authors get their columns filled, they care little with what it may be, for a newspaper must contain daily the same amount of words, whether it give news or not. So with messieurs the editors, it is anything for the nonce. Their best productions are in the press to-day, and too often, perhaps, we don’t know where to-morrow; so put not your trust in this, Norcliff. And now to bed. We have stable duty at seven, A.M., to-morrow,” concluded Studhome.

Next morning, Captain Binnacle, who had been on shore at Valetta, brought off with him the mail, which came from London via Marseilles, and by it I received a welcome letter from Sir Nigel.

It was long and hurried; but was filled chiefly with hunting intelligence. Had Cora written—and why did she not?—I might have had more interesting tidings.

He had bought a couple of hunters from Lord Chillingham but feared they wouldn’t do in such a stone-wall county as Fife; and he had secured a new huntsman—such a tip-top fellow! He had hunted all the counties on the Welsh border—could tell the pedigree of a hound at a glance—was perfect in his work, and rode under ten stone. Sir Hubert himself was but a sham when compared to him, and he was sure to figure some day in the columns of Bell’s Life.

I had full permission to draw for whatever I required; but I scanned the letter in vain for the name of Louisa. Slubber’s was spoken of only twice. Indeed, my hearty old uncle viewed that noble peer of the realm with no small contempt.

“I am still at Chillingham Park, with our kind friends; but I must be home in Scotland for the Lanarkshire steeple-chase on Beltane day. There will be some queer jockeyship in the mounts, I fear. Four miles distance will be the run, including thirteen stone walls, four rough burns, two water leaps, and six-and-twenty most infernal fences. I know the course well—by Gryffwraes and Waterlee. (All this stuff, thought I, and not one word of Louisa!) Old Slubber is to be made a marquis, it seems, so the countess talks nothing but ‘peerage’—Douglas and Debrett, Lodge, and Sir Bernard Burke. It is all noble ‘shop,’ and we poor commoners have not the shadow of a chance!

“Slubber is an old humbug; I am as old as he is, perhaps; but I don’t wear my hat in the nape of my neck, or use goloshes and an umbrella—never had one in all my life. I don’t mount my horse with the aid of a groom, and ride him as if I was afraid he’d take it into his head to run up a tree. I don’t take dinner pills and Seltzer water on the sly from the butler; and my stomach, thank God, is not like his—a more delicate piece of machinery than Cora’s French watch; for I can take a jolly curler’s dinner of salt beef and greens, and can rush my horse at a six-foot wall neck and neck with the lightest lad in your troop.

“So why he’s made a marquis, the devil, and that Scoto-Russian, Lord Aberdeen, on whose policy he always gobbles like a turkey-cock, only know.”

Sir Nigel’s ridicule of Slubber consoled me a little for his omitting the dear name of Louisa. I knew that it was my regard for her that inspired his chief dislike for the lord. But why was the good-hearted baronet so vituperative? Was the senile peer really likely to become a successful lover? Save by the side of his mistress, a lover is never content.

*CHAPTER XXIX.***

We were favoured by AEolus. One might have supposed that Captain Robert Binnacle had succeeded to the bag of wind which that airy monarch gave to the wise and gentle king of Ithaca. Thus a few days more saw our transport amid the Isles of Greece as she bore through the Archipelago.

One day it was Milo, with Elijah’s lofty peak, its smoky spring, and hollow, sea-soaked rocks, that rose upon our lee; the next it was Siphanto’s marble shore, where ireful Apollo flooded the golden mines; rugged Chios—in pagan times the land of purity, in later days the land of slaughter; then Mytilene, the most fertile of all the AEgean Isles, where “burning Sappho loved and sung,” and where Terpander strung the lyre anew. Now it was Lemnos, where Vulcan fell from heaven, and where his forges blazed; and the next tack brought us to Tenedos, whose name has never changed since Priam reigned in Troy—all names that recalled alike our schoolboy labours, and the departed glories of the Grecian name.

Off Tenedos the Himalaya steamed past us, with two thousand two hundred souls in her capacious womb. Soon after we entered the Hellespont, between the famous castles of the Dardanelles, where Sestos and Abydos stood of old, and the cannon of Kelidbahar (the lock of the sea) on the European side saluted us, while the Turkish sentinels yelled and brandished their muskets; and amid the haze of a summer evening we saw the harbour lights of Gallipoli rise twinkling from the waters of the strait; and when the anchor was let go, the courses were hauled up, and the transport swung at her moorings, we knew that we were hard by the shores of Thrace.

“And where the blazes is this same Seblastherpoll?” asked Lanty O’Regan, my Irish groom, who was taking a survey of the waters where Leander took his nightly bath.

“That place we sha’n’t see, Lanty, for many a long and weary day,” said his Scotch companion, Pitblado, with more foresight than some of us then possessed.

Few of us slept that night, and all were busy with preparations for landing; for, with all its varieties, we were weary of the voyage, the confinement of the transport, impatient for shore and for action. So vague were the ideas our soldiers had of distance and locality, that most of them expected to find themselves face to face with the Russians at once.

Beverley and Studhome prepared their “disembarkation returns” for the information of the adjutant-general; and these were so elaborate that one might have supposed the worthy man’s peace of mind depended entirely on their literary productions. The whole troop had their traps packed, and were ready to start with the first boat, when the order came to land; and almost with dawn next morning an aide-de-camp, sent by Lieutenant-General the Earl of Lucan, commanding the cavalry division, arrived with orders for our immediate disembarkation, as we were to be posted in the Light Brigade, which already consisted of the 8th and 11th Hussars, and the 4th and 13th Light Dragoons.

The news spread through the ship like wildfire, and the cheer which rose above and below almost drowned the welcome notes of the warning trumpet, as it blew “boot and saddle”—a sound we had not heard since the day we marched from Maidstone.

“Gentlemen, welcome to Gallipoli!” said the staff officer, as he clattered into the cabin, with his steel scabbard and spurs, and proceeded forthwith to regale himself with a long glass of Seltzer, dashed with brandy, for the morning breeze was chilly as it swept across the Hellespont.

“It’s a queer-looking place, this Gallipoli,” said Beverley.

“And a queer-looking place you’ll find it, colonel,” added the aide-de-camp, as we gathered round him. “You will be more given to airing your clothes than your classics, and won’t be much enchanted with your quarters in Roumania. In lack of space and cleanliness, and in the liberal allowance of gnats and fleas, they are all up to Turkish regulation.”

“Any society here?” asked Jocelyn, with his little affected lisp, as he caressed his incipient moustache.

The aide burst into a hearty fit of laughter, and then replied—

“Plenty, and of the most varied and original character.”

“And how about the ladies?”

“Is it true that the Turks still regulate their establishments of womenkind according to the Koran?” asked the paymaster, with a grin on his long, thin Scotch face.

“Upon the system of the 4th Veteran Battalion rather,” replied the aide-de-camp.

“Ah, and that—“

“Gave a wife to every private, and three to the adjutant.”

“Good Lord deliver us!” exclaimed Studhome, as he doubled his dose of cognac and Seltzer.

“Is it a good country for hunting hereabouts?” asked Sir Harry Scarlett.

“Can’t say much for that,” replied our visitor, shrugging his shoulders. “Besides, the Earl of Lucan will probably cut out other work for you than riding across country; but for sportsmen there are plenty of hares, partridges, and wild duck to keep one’s hand in till we see the Russians, which I hope will not be long, for we are already all bored and sick to death of Gallipoli.”

“How long have you been here?” asked Beverley.

“A month, colonel. Another troop has just been signalled off the mouth of the Dardanelles.”

“The Ganges, with more of ours, perhaps.

“Likely enough; but they come in here every hour.”

“Any word yet of moving to the front—of taking the field?” asked Beverley.

“No, nothing seems decided on yet. There are a thousand idle rumours; but we are all in the dark as to the future—French and British alike.”

“A deuced bore!” exclaimed two or three together.

“Ah, you’ll find it when you have been a month or so under canvas at Gallipoli. And now, Colonel Beverley, I need not suggest to so experienced a cavalry officer how the horses are to be got on shore, but for the time shall take my leave. Some of the cavalry divisional staff have established a kind of clubhouse in a deserted khan, opposite the old palace of the Bashaw, or Capudan Pacha, where we shall be glad to see you, till we can make other arrangements; and so adieu. Should you look us up, ask for Captain Bolton, of the 1st Dragoon Guards.”

In another minute the officer—a purpose-like fellow, in a well-worn blue surtout, his steel scabbard and spurs already rusted—was down the ship’s side, and being rowed ashore by eight marines in a man-of-war boat.

We experienced some difficulties in getting our horses slung up and landed, as, to plunge them into the sea, after being so long in the close and confined atmosphere of the hold, was not advisable; and after they were all disembarked (with the assistance of some merry and singing Zouaves of the 2nd Regiment, while a horde of lazy Turks of the Hadjee Mehmet’s corps looked idly on), we had to give them a cooling regimen and gentle exercise, as the best means of restoring them to their wonted vigour, and preparing them for the strife and service that were to come. The vessel that was reported as being in sight, proved really to be the Ganges. We were at last on foreign soil, and Studhome, by a word and a glance, reminded me that he had not forgotten what was to take place between me and Berkeley; but immediately after landing, that personage was reported on the doctor’s list, so we had to let the matter lie over for a time. Troop after troop of ours arrived; and gradually Colonel Beverley had again the whole regiment under his kindly and skilful command.

Studhome and I, who had frequently chummed together, when in India, had the good luck to be quartered in the quiet and snug house of Demetrius Steriopoli, the well-known and industrious miller, at a short distance from the town. Eighteen thousand British troops were now in Gallipoli, which, from being a quiet little den of Oriental dirt and Oriental indolence, Moslem filth and fatuity, became instinct with European life and bustle, by the presence of the soldiers of the allied armies. Those who landed with no other ideas of the Orient than such as were inspired by the “Arabian Nights,” and Byron’s poetry, were somewhat disappointed on beholding the dingy rows of queer and quaint wooden, rickety and dilapidated booths which composed the streets of this ancient Greek episcopal city of Gallipoli.

Narrow, dirty, and tortuous, they were scattered without order on the slope of a round stony hill; the thoroughfares were made of large round pebbles, from which the foot slipped ever and anon into the mud, or those stagnant pools whence the hordes of lean and houseless dogs—houseless, because declared unclean by the Prophet—slaked their thirst in the sunshine. Over these brown, discoloured hovels rose the tall white minarets of a few crumbling mosques, with cone-shaped roofs and open galleries, where the muezzin’s shrill voice summons the faithful to prayer. A leaden-covered dome of the great bazaar, and the old square fortress of Badjazet I., with a number of windmills on every available eminence, were the most prominent features of the view, which could never have been enchanting, even in its most palmy days—even when the vaults of Justinian were teeming with wine and oil; for the Emperor John Palaeologus consoled himself for the capture of Gallipoli by the Turks with saying, “I have only lost a jar of wine and a nasty sty for hogs.”

But now its muddy streets of hovels were swarming with redcoats: the Scottish bagpipe, the long Zouave trumpet, and the British bugle-horn, rang there for parade and drill at every hour—even those when the followers of the Prophet bent their swarthy foreheads on the mosaic pavement of their mosques; and daily we, the light troops of the cavalry division, were exercised by squadrons, regiments, and brigades, near those green and grassy tumuli which lie on the southern side of the city, and cover the remains of the ancient kings of Thrace. Now the waters of the Hellespont were literally alive with war vessels and transports, belonging to all the allied powers. They were of every size, under sail or steam; and amid them, with white pinions outspread, the swift Greek polaccas sped up or down the strait, which always presented a lively and stirring scene, with the hills of Asia Minor, toned down by distance, seeming faint and blue, and far away. Parade over, it often amused me to watch the varied groups which gathered about the doors of the bazaar, the wine and coffee-houses. There were the grave Armenian of Turcomania, with his black fur cap, and long, flowing robe; the black-eyed Greek, in scarlet tarboosh and ample blue breeches; the dirty, hawk-visaged Jew, attired like a stage Shylock, waiting for his pound of flesh; the kilted Highlander, in the “garb of old Gaul;” the smart Irish rifleman; the well-fed English guardsman, blase, sleek, and fresh from London; the half savage-like Zouave, in his short bluejacket and scarlet knickerbockers; the bronzed Chasseur d’Afrique; the rollicking British man-o’-war’s man, in his guernsey shirt and wide blue collar; the half-naked Nubian slave; the pretty French vivandiere, in her short skirt and clocked stockings, looking like Jenny Lind in “The Daughter of the Regiment,” only twice as piquante and saucy; even a Sister of Charity, sombre, pale, and placid, would appear at times, crossing herself as she passed a howling dervish, when seeking milk or wine for the sick; and amid all these varied costumes and nationalities were to be seen such heedless fellows as young Rakeleigh, Jocelyn, Scarlett, Wilford, and Berkeley, of ours, in wideawake hats, all-round collars, with Tweed shooting suits and flyaway whiskers, hands in pockets, and cheroot in mouth, as they quizzed and “chaffed” the great solemn Turk of the old school, with his vast green turban and silver beard, which steel had never profaned, or drank pale ale with his son of the new school, in the military fez and frogged surtout, with varnished boots and shaven chin, who, in his double capacity of a true believer and a mulazim (or subaltern of Hadjee Mehmet’s regiment), deemed himself at full liberty to use his whip without mercy among the camel-drivers and lazy galiondjis (or boatmen), eliciting shrieks, yells, and curses, which Berkeley, in his languid drawl, considered to be “aw—doocid good fun.”

Many of those smart youths of ours, and other fast Oxford men, had their constitutional and national conceit somewhat taken out of them before the war was ended.

“There is nothing more disgusting,” says a distinguished writer, with pardonable severity, “or more intolerable, than a young Englishman sallying forth into the world, full of his own ignorance and John-Bullism, judging of mankind by his own petty, provincial, and narrow notions of fitness and propriety—a mighty observer of effects and disregarder of causes, and traversing continent and ocean, at once blinded and shackled by the bigotry and prejudices of a limited and imbecile intellect.”

Much of this was the secret spring of our Indian mutiny, and is the cause that we are hated and shunned on the Continent. There are, of course, exceptions, for in the East I have seen local prejudices so far respected that we formed an escort when the British colours of the Sepoy infantry were marched into the Ganges, to consecrate them in the eyes of the Bengalese—the same pampered ruffians who slaughtered our women and children at Cawnpore and Delhi.

We looked in vain for pretty women, and the reader may be assured that some of our researches were of the most elaborate description. Not a trace of the boasted Grecian beauty was to be found in those oddly-dressed females, whose costume seemed a mere oval bale of clothing (the feridjee), surmounted by a white linen veil, and ending in boots of yellow leather, as they flitted like fat ghosts about the public wells, or the gates of the great bazaar. All were, indeed, plain even to ugliness, save in one instance—pretty little Magdhalini, the daughter of the miller, Steriopoli. I remember a charming vivandiere, who belonged to the 2nd Zouaves, for I saw her frequently under circumstances that could never be forgotten—in fact, under fire, at the head of the regiment. She was a smart little Parisienne, possessed of great beauty, with eyes that sparkled like the diamonds in her ears. She wore a pretty blue Zouave jacket, braided with red, over a pretty chemisette, and had her black hair smoothly braided under a scarlet kepi, which bore the regimental number. The first time I saw Sophie she was simply maintaining a flirtation with one of the corps, to whom she gave a mouthful of brandy from her barrel, as he stood on sentry under my window, and their banter rather interfered with the composition of a letter which I was writing to my cousin Cora.

“Ah, Mademoiselle Sophie,” said the Zouave, in his most dulcet tone, “you—mon Dieu—you look so lovely that—“

“That what—what—Jules?”

“Well, so lovely this morning that I am quite afraid—“

“To kiss me—is it not so, Monsieur Jolicoeur?”

“Yes.”

“Tres bien. Take courage, mon camarade.”

“Mademoiselle Sophie, you quiz me!”

“A Zouave, and afraid,” exclaimed the vivandiere; and then followed a little sound there was no mistaking.

“You are indeed beautiful, Sophie. There is not a vivandiere in the whole French army like you.”

“Yet I may die an old maid,” said she demurely.

“May?”

“Yes, Jules.”

“Then it will be your own fault, ma belle coquette, and not the fault of others.”

“Parbleu! I sha’n’t marry a Zouave, at all events.”

“Don’t speak so cruelly, Sophie. When I look on your charming face, I always think of glorious Paris. Paris! Ah, mon Dieu! shall we ever see it again?”

“Why did you leave it, Jules, and your studies at the Ecole de Medecin, to fight and starve here?”

“Why?” exclaimed the student.

“Yes, mon ami.”

“The old girl at the wheel, Madame Fortune, proved false to me. I lost my last money, fifty Napoleons, at the rouge-et-noir table in the Palais Royal. I was ruined, Sophie; and as I had no wish to jump into the Seine, and then to figure next morning on the leaden tables of the Morgue, like a salmon at the fishmonger’s, I joined the 2nd Zouaves in the snapping of a flint, and so—am here.”

“You will return with your epaulettes and the cross, Jules.”

“I don’t think so. Kiss me, at all events, ma belle.”

“Well, camarade, if it will console you—“

Here I tried to close the window, on which Jules “carried arms,” and looked very unconscious; while the pretty vivandiere gave me a military salute, and tripped laughingly away, singing—

Daily more troops arrived from Britain and France; daily the camps extended in size, and, notwithstanding the season, we suffered much from cold, while, so bad were the commissariat arrangements, that, in some instances, officers and soldiers were alike without beds or bedding, few having more than a single blanket; so, for warmth, they reversed the usual order, by dressing in all their spare clothes to go to bed.

Gallipoli became so crowded at last that some of the troops were despatched towards Constantinople and Scutari. There the Highland regiments, beyond all others, excited astonishment and admiration, not unmixed with fear, their costume seemed so remarkable to Oriental eyes; and many may yet remember the anecdote current in camp concerning them.

An old Turkish pasha, who had brought the ladies of his harem in a caique, closely veiled in their yashmacs, to see our troops land, was intensely horrified by the bare brawny legs of the 93rd foot; but after surveying them, he said, with a sigh, to an English officer—“Ah! if the Sultan had such fine soldiers as these, we should not need your aid against the Russians.”

“Well, effendi,” observed the Englishman, who was quizzing, “would it not be advisable to propagate the species in this country?”

“Inshallah! (please God!) it will be done, whether we advise it or not,” said the old Turk, sighing again, as he ordered his boatload of Odalisques to shove off for Istamboul with all despatch.

Amid the novelty of our new life at Gallipoli, a week or two passed rapidly away, ere rumours were heard of our probable advance to Varna; but, as I do not mean to repeat the well-known details of so recent a war, rather confining myself to my own adventures, and those of my regiment, I shall close this chapter by relating an episode which will serve to illustrate the brutal and lawless character of the Turk, and the slavery to which ages of conquest and degradation have reduced the wretched Greek. I have said that Jack Studhome and I were quartered in the house of a Greek miller, named Demetrius Steriopoli. His chief worldly possessions were a melon-garden, and two ricketty old windmills, which whirled their brown and tattered sails on the breezes that came from the Hellespont. In the basement of these edifices, and in the walls of his dwelling-house, were—and I have no doubt still are—built many exquisitely-carved fragments of some old Grecian temple; for there triglyphs, sculptured metopae, the honeysuckle, and so forth, with portions of statues, all of white marble, were used pell mell among the rough rubble masonry.

These edifices—to wit, the house and mills—stood on an eminence a little way beyond the ruins of the old wall of Gallipoli, on the side of the road that leads across the isthmus towards the Gulf of Saros.

His dwelling was picturesque, and that which is better, it was clean and airy; thus, while Beverley and others of ours were nightly devoured by gnats and other entomological torments, we slept each in a separate kiosk, or bedroom, as comfortably as if quartered in the best hotel of Dover or Southampton—so much for the housewifery of the little Magdhalini. Steriopoli was by birth a Cypriote Greek—a handsome and fine-looking man, about eight-and-thirty, and when armed with sabre, pistol, and yataghan, had rather more the aspect of a marauder than a peaceful miller, especially as his attire usually consisted of a scarlet fez, a large loose jacket of green cloth, a silk sash round his waist, a capacious pair of blue breeches, his legs being further encased in sheepskin hose, and his feet in sandals of hide. When the merciless Turkish troops massacred twenty-five thousand persons in Cyprus, destroying seventy-four once happy and industrious villages, with all their monasteries and churches, seizing the young women as slaves, and casting the male children into the sea, it was his fate, when disposed of in the latter fashion, to be picked up by the boat’s crew of a British man-of-war. Torn from the arms of his shrieking mother, he had been tossed into the harbour of Larneca, which was filled with the corpses of poor little infants. On board the British ship he had been kept for a time as a species of pet among the sailors. Hence his regard for us was great; and his open trust in us was only equalled by his secret abhorrence of the Turks. He was a widower, and his family consisted only of his daughter and a few servants, male and female—the latter being his assistants at the mills.

After the plain-looking women of Gallipoli, the beauty of the little Greek maid, Magdhalini, proved an agreeable surprise for us; and within doors she always laid aside the hideous yashmac which concealed her features when abroad. She was not much over fifteen, but already fully developed; she was lively in manner, and graceful in deportment; and her picturesque costume—a crimson jacket, with short, wide sleeves, open at the throat, and embroidered at the bosom, her skirt of various colours, and her hair ornamented with gold coins, all added to the piquancy of her beauty. Her features were remarkably regular; her forehead low and broad; her rich, thick hair was of a bright auburn hue; but her eyes were of the deepest black. In the latter, when contrasted with the pale purity of her complexion, the form of their delicate lids and curled lashes, I saw—or fancied so—a resemblance to Louisa, which gave the girl a deeper interest to me; and her appearance frequently recalled to me Byron’s description of Haidee:—

In stature she was a foot less than Louisa Loftus; but her form, her delicate hands, small feet, and rounded arms, might have served as models for the best sculptors of the old Greek days. On one occasion I showed her Louisa’s miniature, and she clapped her hands, and begged permission to kiss it, like a child, as she was in some respects. She was very curious to know why Studhome and I did not wear crucifixes or holy medals, like all the Christians she knew—even the Russians; and when I told her that such was not the custom in my country, she shook her head sadly, and expressed sorrow for its somewhat benighted condition.

I found a smattering of Italian which I possessed most useful to me now, for, next to the language of the country, it proves the most available in Greece or Turkey. The divan hanee, or principal apartment of the house (from which the doors of all the kiosks and other chambers open), was handsome, lofty, and airy. Its lower end was lined by a screen of trellised woodwork, containing arched recesses, or cupboards for vases of sherbet, cool water, or fresh flowers. In the central recess a miniature fountain spouted from a white marble basin, and a landscape was painted on the wall beyond. Curtains covered each of the doorways, and round the room—on three sides, at least—was a long sofa, or cushioned divan, the height of the window-sills, in the Turkish fashion; but, as Steriopoli was a Greek, his dwelling had more European appurtenances, such as a dining-table and chairs; and on its walls were various coloured prints of Greek saints and bishops, while above the door of each sleeping kiosk hung a crucifix of carved wood. In the divan we took our meals, and there, greatly to our host’s annoyance, we were joined at times by the Colonel Hadjee Mehmet, who commanded a battalion of the Turkish line at Gallipoli—an individual with whom Studhome had become acquainted through some transaction about the purchase of horses for some of our dismounted men, an affair in which, though worthy Jack would never admit it, this hook-nosed and keen-eyed follower of the Prophet jockeyed him and Farrier-sergeant Snaffles as completely as any groom might have done at Epsom or the Curragh. Now Demetrius Steriopoli, though he seemed not to care whether Studhome or I, or any of our brother officers who visited us, saw his daughter, manifested great uneasiness and irritation when she caught the wicked and licentious eyes of the Hadjee Mehmet, whose character he knew, whose power he dreaded, and whose nation and religion he detested; and thus she had standing orders to seclude herself whenever he came, which was pretty often now, to smoke his chibouque and drink brandy and water in secret, though the Prophet only forbade wine. He was a fat, bloated, and wicked-looking man, past fifty years of age. He wore a blue frogged surtout, scarlet trousers, and a scarlet fez, with the broad, flat, military button. He wore also a crooked Damascus sabre and beard, in virtue of his rank, as straight swords and shaven chins indicate the subaltern grades of the Turkish army, whose officers are the most contemptible in Europe. In boyhood they are generally the pipe-bearers or carpet-spreaders of the pashas. In this instance the Hadjee Mehmet (so named because he had performed the pilgrimage to Mecca, and kissed the Holy Kaaba) had begun life as a tiruaktzy, or nail-bearer, in the household of Chosrew Mehmet Pasha, who was the seraskier, or generalissimo of the forces, and who was supposed to be the gallant Hadjee’s father, though that honour was usually assigned to a Janizary who escaped the massacre of that celebrated force by concealing himself; and by Chosrew he was speedily advanced to the rank of mire-alai, or colonel of infantry.

He was very careful always to style us “effendi,” such being the prefix for all who are deemed educated; and, as he sat cross-legged on the divan, with his paunch protruding before him, his ample and well-dyed beard half hiding the frogged lace of his surtout, the amber mouthpiece of his long chibouque between his thick lips, with his little scarlet fez, and sleepy, half-leering black eyes, he seemed the very beau-ideal of a used-up and sensual Osmanlee.

“Ev-Allah!” (praise God!) he said, on one occasion, “I have now seen all the world.”

“Indeed, colonel, I knew not that you had travelled,” said I.

“Yes, and I would not give a grush (piastre) to see it again.”

“All, do you say?” queried I.

“Yes; Mecca, Medina, Bassora, Damascus, Cairo, and Iskandrich—there is no more to see; and of all the women I have ever beheld,” he added, with one of his wicked little leers, “who can equal the Cockonas of Bucharest? Not even the golden-haired Tcherkesses.”

“And what think you of the Greeks, colonel?” asked Studhome, rather in a blundering manner, for Steriopoli’s brows knit unpleasantly.

“Backallum” (we shall see), was his reply, as he gave a stealthy glance at Magdhalini, who was superintending the tandour, the substitute for a fireplace, consisting of a wooden frame, in which there is placed a copper vessel, full of charcoal, the whole being covered by a wadded coverlet, and closely reminding one of the brasseros of the Spaniards. Swift though the glance, it was not unseen by Steriopoli, whom the ominous remark which accompanied it sufficiently alarmed, and, with unwonted abruptness of manner, he requested his daughter to retire and assume her veil.

On the following day it chanced that he had to visit Alexi (which is about twenty miles distant from Gallipoli), as he had some flour to dispose of, and would be absent all night. Whether our Turkish visitor was aware of this circumstance I cannot say, but in the forenoon I came suddenly upon him and Magdhalini, whom he had surprised or waylaid in the pathway near the windmills. He grasped one of her hands, and she was struggling to release herself. I had my sword under my arm, but as a fracas with a Turkish officer was by no means desirable, I lingered for a moment before interfering.

“Girl,” I heard him say, with a dark scowl, while he grasped her slender wrist, “for the third time I tell thee not to bite the finger that puts honey into thy mouth.”

“Nonsense, Hadjee; let me go, I say,” replied Magdhalini, laughing, though she was partly frightened.

“I should like to make my home in thy heart, Magdhalini, even as the bulbul buildeth her nest in the rose-tree,” panted the fat Hadjee.

“Oh, thou owl, thou crow of bad omen!” exclaimed the lively Greek girl, as she wrenched her hand free, and, darting a bright and merry glance at her enraged and perspiring admirer, drew her yashmac close, and sprang away, blushing because I had witnessed the scene.

That night Studhome and I had been supping with Beverley at his quarters near the palace of the Capudan Pasha, and were returning late to the house of Steriopoli. The sky was clear and starry; thus we could see distinctly several Turkish soldiers loitering about near the house and windmills, and though the hour was an unusual one for them to be absent, that we deemed no concern of ours, and on entering we retired to our kiosks, or rooms, and were both soon sound asleep—so sound that we failed to hear a loud knocking shortly after at the front door. Magdhalini and two female servants promptly responded to the unusual summons, but declined to open without further inquiry, on which the door was beaten in by a large hammer, and a chiaoush, or sergeant, and several soldiers, all in Turkish uniform, seized Magdhalini, bound, gagged, and carried her off, despite her cries and resistance. Roused by the sudden noise, and suspecting we knew not what, Studhome and I dragged on our trousers, and came forth both at the same moment, each with drawn sword and cocked revolver; but before lights were procured, and ere the terrified servants could make us understand the real state of affairs, and the catastrophe which had taken place, our pretty Greek hostess was gone beyond recovery.

I shall willingly hurry over all that followed in this strange episode of social life in the East.

Poor Steriopoli came back next day to a desolate house—a degraded and broken home! He was full of rage and despair, for his daughter was the pride, the idol of his heart; and suspecting justly the Hadjee Mehmet, he discovered that this celebrated warrior had gone to Alexi, the very town from which he, Steriopoli, had returned.

There he traced his daughter, only to find that she had been most cruelly and shamefully treated. She was lodged in the house of the cole-agassi, or major of Mehmet’s regiment—a wretch who had originally been a channator aga, or chief of the black eunuchs; and on the pretext that she had renounced Christianity and embraced Islamism, he refused to give her up. In compliance with the wish of her sorrowing father, and the indignant old Bishop of Gallipoli, she was brought before the vaivode of the district. She appeared the wreck of her former self, and, though not present, I afterwards heard that a most affecting scene took place.

On beholding Steriopoli, whose once coal-black hair was now thickly seamed with grey, she broke away from the Turkish slaves who held her, and cast herself into his arms, in a passion of grief, exclaiming—

“My father! oh, my father! after what has taken place, I am no longer worthy to be in your house, or to pray at my mother’s grave. We can no longer be anything to each other.”

“Oh, Kyrie Eleison (Lord have mercy)!” groaned the unfortunate Greek.

Despite her solemn protests that she was still a Christian, the vaivode would not yield her to her father; but opening the Koran, closed the case by reading a passage from the sixteenth chapter thereof—a passage revealed to the Prophet at Medina:—“O Prophet! when unbelieving women come unto thee, and plight their faith unto thee, that they will not associate anything with God, nor steal, nor commit sin, nor kill their children, nor come with a calumny which they have forged between their hands and feet, nor be disobedient to thee in that which shall be reasonable: then do plight thy faith unto them, and ask pardon for them, of One who is inclined to forgive and be merciful. O true believers! enter not into friendship with a people against whom God is incensed; they despair of pardon and the life to come, even as infidels despair of the resurrection of those who dwell in the grave.”

“La-Allah-illah-Allah-Mohammed resoul Allah!”*** shouted the people.

The poor miller and his daughter were torn asunder, and the former was driven by blows from the house of the vaivode; while Magdhalini, whom he was never more permitted to see, was taken again to the house of the cole-agassi. By Turkish law, such as it is, any commissioned officer who kills a man is liable to five years’ slavery in chains, and service as a private hereafter; but the abduction of a Greek girl, though a rajah, or Christian subject of the Porte, was a very trivial affair—much less than stealing a terrier in the streets of London. The foreign Consuls took up the matter, and redress was sought of the Stamboul effendi, or chief of the police at Constantinople, but sought in vain. The Bishop of Gallipoli applied to the Skeik Islam, also without avail.

The Sheik is a very awful personage, who combines in his own person the greatest offices of religion, together with the supreme power of the civil law. Every new measure, even to naming the streets and numbering the houses of filthy Stamboul, requires his sanction. The Sultan alone has the power of life and death over the Sheik Islam, who can neither be nobly bowstrung, nor ignobly beheaded, and he enjoys the peculiar prerogative of being pounded to death in a mortar. A word from the Sheik would have restored Magdhalini to her father; but Hadjee Mehmet, the ex-tiruaktzy, had once operated on his holy nails, so a deaf ear was turned to the prayer of the infidel Bishop, who was seeking the dove in the net of the fowler long after we had taken our departure for Varna; and, until the memorable day of Balaclava, I saw no more of the infamous Hadjee Mehmet.

*CHAPTER XXX.***

Ere the course of events added to the distance which already lay between me and Great Britain, I resolved to write to Lady Louisa. I could no longer endure the torture of suspense, combined with absence and gathering doubt. In common parlance, ages seemed to have elapsed instead of weeks since the day we marched for embarkation, and when I beheld her for the last time; and thus, notwithstanding our strange compact that there should be no correspondence between us, I wrote to her, even at the hazard of the letter falling into the hands of her I dreaded most—proud, stately, cold, and unsympathetic “Mamma Chillingham.”

It was about the middle of May, the day before we were to embark again, for now the Allies were to advance to Varna; and while I wrote, and in thought addressed Louisa, her presence seemed to come before me in fancy, and the inner depths of heart and soul were stirred with a jealous love and sorrowful tenderness that were almost unendurable; but a summons from Colonel Beverley, regarding the baggage and squad-bags of my troop, cut short my epistle in a very matter-of-fact way, and I despatched Pitblado with it to the military post-office. In that letter I sent brief remembrances to Fred Wilford’s sister, and to many of our friends; but of the newly-made marquis I could not trust myself to write, though I had no doubt as yet of Louisa’s faith and truth. That night a letter came to me from Cora, the first I had received since we landed at Gallipoli. She and Sir Nigel had returned to Calderwood, and had just come back from the Lanarkshire steeplechases.

“Oh, Newton,” she continued, “how anxious and frightened we have been, for we heard that cholera had broken out in the British camp, and we trembled for you—dear papa and I. (There was no doubt the “we” did not include Louisa, at all events.) Do you think of us and quiet Calderwood Glen—of the old house, of papa, and of me? Are the Oriental ladies so beautiful as we have been told? One reads so much about their veiled forms, their brilliant eyes, and so forth. Tell us what you have seen of all this—the mosques, the harems, and the Golden Horn. You have seen everything, of course.”

There was nothing in Cora’s letter that either flattered my passion or soothed my apprehension. Chillingham Park was never once mentioned, and I could only gather from its abrupt passages and assumed playfulness that she still loved me, tenderly, truly, and hopelessly. There were times when, in her dreams—I learned all this long after, when the present had become the past, and could be recalled no more—there were times when, in imagination, she saw Newton Norcliff, safe from wounds and war, at Calderwood—hers, and hers only—a prize of which none could rob her, not even the brilliant Louisa Loftus; and in her sleep, tears of happiness stole down her poor, pale cheeks.

Newton was her cousin, her kinsman, her early playmate and boy lover, her idol, and her hero! What right, then, had this stranger, this Englishwoman, this mere Acquaintance, to seek to rob her of him? But she could not do so now. Newton was Cora’s, and in her dreams he was her lover and her husband, of whom she prayed only to be worthy and more deserving still; and so the poor girl would dream on till morning came—the chill, gusty morning of autumn, when the brown leaves were swept by the cold eastern blast against the windows of the old manor-house, and down the wooded glen; and with that chill morning would come the bitter consciousness that it was all a dream—a dream only, and that he whom she prayed for, and loved so hopelessly, was far, far away in the land of the savage Tartars, exposed to all the perils of the Crimean winter and of the Russian war, and that amid them he was thinking, not of her but of another! But to resume my own story. Berkeley, who had been on the sick list since our arrival at Gallipoli, was reported fit for duty on the morning we embarked for Varna. Most of the British troops were ordered there, or to Scutari, while the mass of our allies were to remain about the coast of the Dardanelles. On this morning, however, I saw the 2nd Zouaves march, as Studhome said, “with all their ladies of light virtue and boxes of heavy baggage,” for embarkation; and they presented a stirring spectacle, those swarthy, lithe, and black-bearded fellows, their breasts covered with medals won in battles against Bou Maza, and other sheiks of the Arab tribes, and their faces bronzed almost to negro darkness by the hot sun of Africa.

Their turbans and baggy breeches of scarlet gave them a very Oriental aspect; but their swinging gait and rollicking air, together with the remarkably free-and-easy manner in which they “marched at ease,” and the songs they sang, announced them all sons of la belle France; and, singularly enough, every second or third file had a pet cat perched on the top of his knapsack. The tricolor was decorated with laurel; their long brass trumpets played a strange and monotonous, but not unwarlike measure, to which they all stepped in rapid time; and in the intervals of the music many of them joined in a song, which was led by Mademoiselle Sophie, who was riding a la cavalier at their head, in rear of the staff, with her little brandy-keg slung over her left shoulder.

I caught just a verse as she passed; but I frequently heard her sing the same song at a future time—

Above all other voices, I could hear that of her friend, or lover, Jules Jolicoeur, most lustily—

Soldats, voila Catin!

as he marched along with his hands in his pockets, and his musket slung butt uppermost. Our transport was taken in tow by a war steamer. Thus our progress through the Sea of Marmora was rapid. We passed Constantinople in the night, to our great regret; and as no part of it, save the palace of the Sultan, was then lighted with gas, it was involved in darkness and silence. At least, we heard only the voices of the patrols, and the barking and howling of the thousands of homeless dogs which prowl through the streets. Being unclean, they are never domesticated; yet their litters are never destroyed, and they feed on the offal of the houses, or on the headless trunks that are at times washed up from the Golden Horn. Next day, as we proceeded up the Bosphorus, a swift (Clyde-built) Turkish steamer was running ahead of us; and we remarked that, whenever she passed a fort or battery, the standard with the star and crescent was immediately hoisted, and a trumpet was heard to sound.

At the Castle of Roumelia, and such places, we saw the slovenly Turkish guards getting under arms, and also that on each occasion the standards were dipped or lowered to half-mast three times. This indicated that the ship had on board a pasha of three tails, or one of equal rank, whose standard was flying at the foremast-head; and soon after we learned that he was the munadjim bashee, or chief astrologer, one of the first officers of the seraglio, and always consulted by the Sultan Abd-ul-Medjid. No public work was ever undertaken until he declared the stars to be propitious; and now he was steaming ahead to see how they looked at Varna! By the letter I had despatched from Gallipoli, I had, to a certain extent, relieved my mind, as I concluded that at Varna I should receive the answer, and that then all my suspense and anxieties would end, in the course of a few weeks at latest.

Against the strong current which sets in from the Black Sea, and which runs at the rate of four miles an hour down the Bosphorus, we steamed steadily on; and as the wind was fair, our transport carried a tolerable spread of canvas. Our sail was a delightful one! The weather was calm, and the scenery and objects on the European and Asian shores were ever changing and attractive. The abrupt angles and bends of the coast seemed to convert the channel into a series of seven charming inland lakes of the deepest blue—there being seven promontories on one side, and seven bays on the other, each bay running into a fertile valley, clothed with the richest foliage of the Oriental clime; and amid that waving foliage rose the quaint and fantastic country dwellings of the wealthy Frankish, Greek, or Armenian merchants of Stamboul, with their painted kiosks, gilded domes, and towering minarets, tall, white, and slender.

On the left or European shore, the whole panorama was a succession of beautiful villages, terraced gardens, and groves of chestnut, plane, and lime trees, with here and there long, sombre, and solemn rows of gigantic cypresses and poplars. On the right or Asian shore, the objects of Nature were of greater magnitude. The groves became forests, and the hills swelled into mountains; and, towering over Brussa, rose Olympus, “high and hoar,” covered with laurels and other evergreens to its summit.

Under a salute of cannon from the Castle of Europe, and still preceded by our Turkish friend, the astrologer with three tails, we hauled up for Varna, giving a wide berth to the dangerous Cyanean rocks, between which Jason steered the Argonauts in equally troublesome, but more classic, times.

From thence a run of about one hundred and fifty miles brought us to the low flat shore of Varna, where, on the 28th of May, we were all landed without accident or adventure, and placed under canvas among the rest of the troops. The aspect of Varna from the bay was somewhat depressing. Rising from a bank of yellow sand, a time-worn rampart of stone, ten feet high, loop-holed and painted white, encloses the town on its four sides, each of which measures somewhat more than a mile. This old wall had witnessed the defeat and death of Uladislaus of Hungary, by the troops of the Padishah Amurath II., and it yet bore traces of the cannon-shot of the Scoto-Russian Admiral Greig, who bombarded Varna in 1828.

Before the walls lies a ditch, twelve feet deep, and over both frown a number of heavy guns, which I found to be chiefly sixty-eight pounders; and over all rose the countless red-tiled roofs of the houses, with the slender white minarets and round leaden domes of the mosques, looking like wax-candles by the side of inverted sugar basins. Beyond, in the distance, stretched far away to the base of wooded hills the flat Bulgarian shore.

Painted with various colours, the tumble-down and rickety houses were all of wood, and exhibited a rapid state of dilapidation and decay. Prior to our arrival, the silence must have been oppressive. Save when a swallow twittered under the broad eaves, when a saka (or water-carrier), with his buckets suspended from a leather belt, shambled along, slipshod or barefoot, with water for sale, a hamal (or porter), laden with his burden, or when the wild dog that lay panting on a heap of festering offal uttered a hoarse growl, no sight or sound of life was there, when the fierce sun of unclouded noon blazed down into the narrow and tortuous streets. The place exhibited only Turkish filth, inactivity, and stupidity, till the arrival of the Allies, when its wooden jetties opposite the principal gate became piled up with munitions of war—bales, tents, tumbrils, and cannon; its roadstead crowded with war-ships, transports, and gunboats, under sail or steam; its bazaar filled by regimental quartermasters, cooks, and caterers, or soldiers’ wives in search of food, &c.; its five gates held by military guards—the merry Zouave, the grave and stern Scottish Highlander, the showy Coldstream, or the sombre rifleman.

Then its streets became literally alive, and crowded with the British, who came by sea, and the French, who came pouring over the Balkan. Their silence was broken by the sharp beat of the brass drum, and the sound of the ringing bugle every hour or more, and by the measured tramp of feet, as detachments on every imaginable duty marched to and fro between the camps, the town, and harbour, scaring the wild dogs from the streets, and the kites from the roofs and mosque domes, who were alike unused to such unwonted bustle and activity.

Crowds of Turks and Bulgarians, wearing caps of brown sheepskin, short jackets of undyed wool, and wide white trousers, with vacant wonder surveyed us, as brigade after brigade came on shore, our horse, foot, and artillery; while the little dark Arabs of the Egyptian contingent viewed with something akin to awe our brigade of Foot Guards, whose personal bulk and stature, with their white epaulettes and black bearskin caps, made them seem the veritable sons of Anak to those shrivelled children of the desert.

Amid the crash of military music, the glitter of arms, and the waving of silken colours, as regiment after regiment marched to its camping-ground, were to be seen the woebegone, helpless, miserable, and, in some instances, still seasick wives of our soldiers, hurrying wearily after their husbands’ battalions, carrying bundles or children, sometimes both, while other scared little ones were trotting by their side, and holding by their ragged and tattered skirts; but there was one soldier’s wife who appeared to European and Oriental eyes under very different auspices.

“All these marvels reached a climax,” says a writer,*** “when a boat from the Henri IV., rowed by six dashing French sailors, in snow-white shirts and coquettish little glazed hats, stuck with a knowing air on the side of their heads, shot up alongside the landing-place, and in the stern appeared the Earl and Countess of Errol—the former an officer in the rifles, and the latter intent upon sharing the campaign with her husband. I think the old civil pasha (mussellem of the city?), who was seated on a chair at a little distance, scarcely knew whether he was on his head or his heels when the lady was handed up out of the boat, and made her appearance at the town gate, with a brace of pistols in a holster at her waist, and followed by a Bulgarian porter, with a shoal of reticules, carpet-bags, and books, and taking everything as coolly as if she were an old soldier. The whole party followed the rifles to the field, and the countess is at the present moment living under canvas.”

This lady, who excited so much attention was Eliza, Countess of Errol, and her husband—as my uncle would have reminded me—was hereditary high constable of Scotland; as such, first subject in the kingdom, and of old leader of the feudal cavalry. Now he was a simply major in the Rifle Brigade, and was after severely wounded at the Alma. Undeterred by the miseries which he saw the soldiers’ wives enduring, Sergeant Stapylton, of my troop, had the courage to take unto himself a wife in this land of the Prophet; but the fate which threw her in his way was somewhat remarkable, and made some noise at the time. It came about thus:—The wife of a soldier of the 28th Regiment, when proceeding through the corn-fields from our camp to market in Varna, and perhaps considering how far her little stock of money might go in the purchase of dainty soochook sausages and cabaubs of herbs, for the delectation of herself and Private John Smith, was surprised to find herself addressed in tolerable English by a Greek female slave, who was at work among the corn, weeding it of the brilliant poppies.

Though fairer skinned than the women of that country, she had the appearance of a woman of Bulgaria. On her head a cylindrical bonnet, of harlequin pattern, was tied by a white handkerchief under her chin. She wore a short black gown, with a deep scarlet flounce, on which were sewn ornamental pieces of variously-coloured stuffs: a broad scarlet sash, elaborately needleworked, girt her waist; a few coins, of small value, were woven into her hair, which was of a rich brown hue, and hung in profusion over her shoulders, and on her wrists were bracelets of crystal. She wore the costume of a peasant girl, and her features were soft and pleasing—even pretty, though very much sunburnt.

In English she begged the soldier’s wife to give her a mouthful of water from a vessel she carried, saying that she “was sorely athirst, and weary with her work in the field.”

Now, Mrs. John Smith, of the 28th Foot, was greatly surprised on hearing this humble and gentle request made in the language of her native England, by one who seemed to all intents and purposes a Bulgarian. She entered into conversation with the stranger, and discovered that she was actually English by birth and blood, and a native of Essex!

She related that her father had been a merchant captain of London, who, after her mother’s death, had taken her with him in a vessel on a voyage to the Levant, where they were captured by a Greek pirate. She was then a mere child. Her father and his crew were put to death, their vessel plundered, and then set on fire, in the Gulf of Sidra, and destroyed. Her captor, a thoroughpaced old rascal, had now settled, with all his ill-gotten gains, as a small landowner, on the shore of the Bay of Varna, where she was still his bondswoman—his slave.

The soldier’s wife begged the girl to follow her, and take refuge in the British camp, and she was about to comply, when the appearance of her master or owner, a fierce-looking old fellow, clad in a jacket and cap, both of brown sheepskin, his sash bristling with knives, yataghans, and pistols, altered her feeble resolution; and though the wife of Private Smith shook her gingham umbrella with vigour, and threatened him with the “p’leece,” and the main-guard to boot, he, nothing daunted, replied only by a contemptuous scowl, and dragging the slave girl into his house, secured the door.

It chanced luckily, however, that Sergeant Stapylton, of ours, with a mounted party of ten lancers, was returning along the Silistria road—where he had been sent in search of forage—and to him the soldier’s wife appealed, and detailed what had taken place. He at once surrounded the house, and demanded the girl, in what fashion or language I know not; but he made the proprietor aware that fire or sword hung over him if she was not surrendered instantly.

Armed to the teeth, the Greek appeared at the door, and threatened him with the vaivode of the district, and the kaimakan, or deputy of the Pasha of Roumelia, and of various other dignitaries; but Stapylton put the point of his lance to the throat of the old pirate, who found in it an argument so irresistible, that he at once gave up the girl, whom our fellows brought with them in triumph to the camp, where a subscription was made for her, and she was a nine days’ wonder; and that this little bit of romance might not be without its finale, she ultimately became the wife of Sergeant Stapylton.

Our regiment was encamped eighteen miles distant from Varna, in the lovely vale of Aladyn, surrounded by forests of the finest timber, where the springs of water were numerous and pure, and where the grass and verdure were of the richest description; yet there it was that disease—the fell cholera and dysentery—broke out among us, and decimated our ranks more surely and more severely than the Russian bullets could have done. But amid their horrors folly ever found its way; and several of our people, French and British, got into scrapes with the Bulgarian and Turkish damsels, especially the latter, who are rather prone to intrigue, notwithstanding the dangers attendant on it, in such a land of jealousy and the prompt use of arms. Perhaps the yashmac, and the mystery it gave to their faces, of which the ever brilliant eyes alone were visible, and the mouth—usually its worst feature—was hidden, had much to do with this.

By the Koran, aged women alone are permitted to “lay aside their outer garments, and go unveiled.” A very old history of Constantinople—Delamay’s, I think—relates that a pasha, remarkable for the size and ugliness of his nose, married, before the kadi, a lady who, on being unveiled, proved to his great disgust to be exceedingly plain.

“To whom, of all your friends,” she asked, with her most winning smile, “am I to show my face?”

“To all the world,” said he; “but hide it from me!”

“My lord, patience,” she whispered, humbly.

“Patience have I none!” he exclaimed, wrathfully.

“Allah kerim! you must have a great deal of it to have borne that great nose so long about you,” she retorted, as she hurled her slipper at his head.

A pair of dark and brilliant eyes, sparkling through the folds of a fine white muslin yashmac, were very nearly the means of ridding me of Berkeley, and the impending duel, while we lay at Varna.

He and Frank Jocelyn, of my troop, a smart and handsome young fellow, whilom the prime bowler and stroke oar at Oxford, as good-hearted and open-handed a lad as any in the service, began an intrigue with two Turkish damsels, whom they found at prayer before an aekie, or Mahommedan wayside chapel, and whom they followed home to a kiosk in the vale of Aladyn.

Their love affair did not make much progress, being simply maintained by tossing oranges in the dusk over a high wall, which was furnished with a row of vicious-looking iron spikes. The oranges of Jocelyn and Berkeley contained notes written in French and Italian, of which the girls could make nothing, of course, the language of the educated Turks being a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic, the former being spoken by the peasantry alone; so the ladies responded by oranges, in which flowers were stuck, till on the fourth or fifth night, in reply to a very amatory epistle, souse came over the garden wall an iron six-inch shell, with its fuse burning!

Our Lotharios had only time to throw themselves flat on the ground, when it exploded in the dark with a dreadful crash; but without hurting either of them, and they retired, somewhat crestfallen, while hearing much loud laughter and clapping of hands within the garden wall. After this rough hint, they went no more near the ladies, who proved to be the wife of a yuse bashi, or captain of Turkish artillery, and her female slave.

While the months we wasted so fruitlessly at Varna crept slowly away, there occurred to me a singular adventure—in fact, one so remarkable in its import, and in reference to the future, that it still makes a deep impression upon me; and this episode I shall detail in the following chapter.

*CHAPTER XXXI.***

To the letter I wrote Louisa from Gallipoli no answer was ever returned.

Had it reached her, or been intercepted, and by whom?

I began to associate Berkeley—groundlessly, certainly—with her singular silence. All my former animosity to him returned; but, for the personal safety of the survivor, our strangely deferred meeting could not take place till we found ourselves in the vicinity of the enemy. I feared, too, that he might discover how completely she had ignored—or, to all appearance, forgotten—my existence. To me there was pure gall in the idea that he should have cause for triumph in suspecting it.

I constantly wore her engagement ring—the pearl with the blue enamel. Did she gaze on my Rangoon diamond as frequently as I did on the tiny gold hoop which once encircled her finger, and had hence become a holy thing to me? I was now beginning to fear that she did not.

The past had but one feature, one which every thought and memory seemed metaphorically to hinge; and the future but one object—the same—around which every hope was centred—Louisa. Via the Bosphorus, the mail steamers came puffing regularly into Varna Bay. They seemed to bring letters to all but me, and gradually my heart became filled by anxiety and fear.

Louisa might be ill—dead! I thrust aside that thought as impossible; I must have heard of so terrible a calamity from Cora, or from Wilford, who was in constant correspondence with his sister.

Her answer to my Gallipoli letter might have miscarried. Why her letter alone? Those of my uncle and of cousin Cora came at the requisite time, and in course of post. Could it actually be that Louisa was forgetting me? Her last look—her eyes so full of grief—her last kiss, so full of tremulous tenderness, forbade this fear, and yet it was passing strange that neither Cora nor Sir Nigel ever mentioned her in their correspondence with me.

I frequently prayed that her love might be as lasting in her as it proved agonizing to me.

Studhome knew my secret. To conceal from him that I was miserable was impossible, but honest Jack’s advice “to take heart of grace—to remember that there were as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, that—

“‘There were maidens in Scotland more lovely by far, Who would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar,’”

and a great deal more to the same effect and purpose, proved but sorry comfort and counsel.

On a Saturday evening I had tiffed with him in his tent. We had no second parade or anything to do. He vowed that he was tired of his studies, which generally consisted of the Racing Calendar, Hart’s “Annual Army List,” “White’s Farriery,” and the “Field Exercise and Evolutions for the Cavalry,” varied by Punch and Bell’s Life, so we ordered our horses, and rode to Varna, the variety and unwonted bustle of which afforded the means of amusement and relief, after the quiet and monotony of our camp in the green wooded vale of Aladyn.

We put up our horses at an old rickety Turkish khan, which an enterprising French sutler had turned into a species of hotel, for over the door a gay signboard, painted in tricolour, informed us that it was “Le restaurant de l’Armee d’Orient, pour messieurs les officiers et sous-officiers.”

There we had a bottle of excellent Greek wine, in a large whitewashed room, full of French officers, of every branch of the service and of all ranks, who received us with great politeness. They were all smoking cigarettes, chatting, laughing, playing chess or dominoes, and reading the Moniteur or Charivari, which last caricatured the Russians as unmercifully as our good friend Punch ever did.

Their gaiety and etourdi fashion of quizzing the women who passed drew many a scowl of wonder and reprehension from the turbaned, shawled, and solemn Turks, for few of the believers took kindly to “the sons of perdition who had come to aid them and the Vicar of God—the refuge of the world—from the Muscovite dog,” as one was heard to say; “and at the behest of a queen—a woman—Allah razolsum!” he added, with special reference to us.

“What a change all this is from our recent barrack life at Maidstone,” said Studhome. “We see such strange scenes—a new world here.”

“For our used-up guardsmen and hussars, who have been hitherto bored by the mere aimlessness and emptiness of their lives, our friend, the Emperor Nicholas, has certainly provided that which Sir Charles, in Used Up, would call a ‘new sensation,’ and a little healthy excitement.”

A young sous-lieutenant of Zouaves was particularly vehement and droll in describing a certain Egyptian magician, who had shown some wonderful things to him and his friends. His words seemed to excite much laughter, and, on drawing nearer, I discovered him to be Jules Jolicoeur, the Zouave, who had now been promoted to the rank of second-lieutenant in his regiment, in the ranks of which the cholera had already made sad ravages.

“Monsieur Jolicoeur,” said I; “a magician, do you say?”

“Peste! you know my name,” said he, smiling, while he pirouetted about and twirled his moustache.

“I have to congratulate you on your promotion. Better this than poring over Lemartiniere, Ambrose Pare, and so forth, at the Ecole de Medecin, eh?”

“Parbleu, monsieur! how do you come to know all this?” he asked, with pardonable surprise.

“Perhaps I am a magician too,” said I, laughing. “But this Egyptian of whom you tell us—he is a juggler, I presume?”

“Jouer—joueuse de gobelets, you mean? Oh, no. In a little water or ink, poured into the hollow of your hand, he will show you the face of any friend you most desire to see. It is miraculous.”

“Diable!” exclaimed Victor Baudeuf, a well-decorated captain of a French line regiment; “then he shall show me Mogador.”

The name of this well-known French dancer elicited a burst of laughter; but Jolicoeur said—

“Monsieur, you should call her Madame la Comtesse de Chabrillan!”

“And where the devil is monsieur le Comte?” asked Baudeuf, with a grimace.

“At the gold-fields, having spent his fortune twice on the girl.”

“Well, to a wife in Paris a husband at the gold-fields is just as valuable as no husband at all. Tres bon! I shall see pretty Mogador, if your magician has any skill.”

“And where does your magician hang out?” asked Studhome.

“Hang—hang—il merite la corde, you mean, monsieur?” asked the puzzled Frenchman.

“No, no; where is he to be found?”

“Monsieur le magicien holds a spiritual seance to-night,” observed a French hussar, whose gorgeous dolman was almost sword-proof with silver lace.

“Tres bon!” exclaimed another; “there are twenty girls in Paris I want to see.”

“What is his time, Jules?”

“Eight o’clock.”

“’Tis but twenty minutes from that now.”

“We shall go too,” said Studhome, “and have our fortunes told; it will be as good a lark, monsieur, as any other.”

“Lark—aloutte—oh, yes, tres bon!” replied Jolicoeur, with a good-natured smile, though quite at a loss to understand why the bird was referred to.

“My fortune has often been told me, Newton, by gipsies, at Maidstone and Canterbury. By no two alike; but it was magnificent, according to the fee I gave, and always droll. We shall see what this astrologer—a real magician—has to show us.”

“If he shows us Louisa Loftus, Jack, I’ll forfeit a year’s pay!”

“Come, messieurs, to the seance,” shouted Jolicoeur, as he buckled on his sabre. “I wish to see Mademoiselle Sophie of ours, who has gone to Constantinople.”

“And I Mogador,” said Captain Baudeuf, “the delicious little dancer at the Mabille.”

“And I Rose Pompon!” exclaimed the hussar, tying the cords of his silver dolman. “Rose, the heroine of a thousand flirtations.”

“Mogador, the empress of ten thousand hearts,” added the captain.

“Hearts such as thine, mon camarade,” said the hussar, laughing.

“And Fleur d’Amour,” added another heedless fellow, “the Queen of the Tourlurous!”***

“Ah, mon capitaine,” said Jules. “Peste! what a roue it is. He has made as many conquests as our good friend Don Juan, in the delightful opera which bears his name.”

“Beware!” said the other, with a mock frown; “I’m an ace of diamonds man with the pistol, Jules.”

“Bah! Your pistol will never be levelled at me. Have a cigarette?”

“Thanks. As for Mogador, her silk tights were a study at the Mabille, and the grace with which she showed her feet and ankles—“

“Cordieu, mon ami! we haven’t a man in the 2nd Zouaves who has not appreciated that generous exhibition to the utmost. I hope she’ll appear in Baudeuf’s hand as Diana, or the chaste Lucretia!” said Jolicoeur.

These remarks elicited roars of laughter from the gay Frenchmen.

“By Jove, Newton,” whispered Studhome, “our fair friends will be conjured up in odd company. These fellows are naming the most notorious lorettes in Paris!”

With a prodigious clatter of swords and spurs, we all quitted the restaurant together for the residence of the magician; and Lieutenant Jolicoeur, who seemed disposed to fraternize with us, informed me that this personage, who was making so much noise in Varna, was a native of Al Kosair, on the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea, and that he was now chief hakim, or senior surgeon, of the 10th Battalion of Egyptian Infantry, which formed a portion of the Viceroy’s contingent with the Turkish army. So we looked forward with some interest to the interview, as he had a high reputation among the Osmanlees for the marvels he produced, and was faithfully believed.

After an interview, this magician strongly reminded me of the Sooltan described by Lane, in his “Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians.”

If in England, at this hour, so many persons believe implicitly in table-turning, spirit-rapping, mesmeric slumber, and mesmeric mediums, and many other outrageous whim-whams, it can surely be no wonder that the poor, ignorant soldiers of the Turkish and Egyptian armies should believe in the magic powers of the hakim Abd-el-Rasig, who, by the medium of another human soul, could show them whether their friends, their fathers, and mothers, at Gaza, at Cairo, or on the banks of the Nile, were still in the land of the living, as clearly as if they peeped through the magical telescope of the favoured prince in the fairy tale.

It was just about the period of which I write that the public of the modern Athens—that happy city of bibacious saints and briefless Solons—was electrified by a series of letters which appeared in one of her journals, signed by a tolerably well-known historian, occupying, however a lucrative legal position, to the effect that “he possessed a peculiar medium,” of whose person and spirit he had such entire mesmeric control that he had sent the latter to the Arctic regions, in search of Sir John Franklin, whom she saw, accoutred with cocked hat and quadrant, seated sorrowfully on a heap of snow; next, that he had sent her on a visit to one of Her Majesty’s ships in the West Indies, where she pryed into the savoury secrets of the midshipmen’s berth; and, not content with these wonderful voyages, he actually announced that he sent her spirit to heaven to visit his friends, and a much warmer climate to visit his enemies; and this blasphemous rubbish and mid-summer madness found believers in the Scottish capital, though it excited the laughter of the masses; but one night the fair medium, “being hot with the Tuscan grape, and high in blood,” or having imbibed over much alcohol, fairly unmasked the would-be Northern Balsamo as a dupe and fool, by forgetting to play her assumed character.

“Allons, mes camarades!” said Jules, placing his arm through mine and Studhome’s; “we shall all face this Cagliostro together—one for all, and all for one, like Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, in ‘Les Trois Mousquetaires.’”

It was impossible not to be pleased with the gaity and winning manner of this young Frenchman. His bearing and uniform, half Parisian and half Oriental, gave him somewhat of the aspect of a dandy brigand; but that bearing is peculiar to all the officers and men of the regiments of Zouaves.

Evening was approaching, and the shadows were falling eastward. Those of the tall minarets, and the rows of cypress-trees that guard “the City of the Dead,” were cast to a great distance, over the flat ground on which Varna stands. Many “true believers” were awaiting the shrill, boyish voice of the muezzin to call them to prayer; and the tambours of the French troops were gathering at their places of arms, and bracing up their drums, preparatory to beating the evening retreat, as we passed along the strangely-crowded streets, towards the Armenian church.

At a coffee-house, the whole front of which was open, we passed several of the Colonel Hadjee Mehmet’s soldiers, all drowsy with tobacco or bang, and seated like so many tailors, each on a scrap of tattered carpet. Some were idling over the chequers of a chess-board, and others were listening to the wild fairy tale of an itinerant dervish, to whom, from time to time, they tossed a quarter piastre (about a halfpenny) as it waxed more and more exciting.

Passing through a street which had just been named the Rue des Portes Franchises—a corporal of sappers being in the act of nailing up that title on the rickety mansion of a wondering and indignant emir—we reached the temporary residence of the hakim Abd-el-Rasig, near which several Turkish women in long caftans, a few hawk-nosed Greeks, and squalid Jews were loitering, as if pondering whether they dared tempt his skill by unwisely seeking to probe the future.

To the street the house presented nothing but a small door, having a curved arch, like a horseshoe, and a low, whitewashed wall.

Passing through, we found ourselves in a cool, shady courtyard, surrounded, as usual, by those inexplicable Turkish sheds, a well in the centre, a few rose-trees in tubs, and a few flowers and tiny shrubs forcing their way up between the slabs of pavement.

The mansion was almost entirely built of wood, and painted saffron and blue. We were ushered in by a little tawny Egyptian servant-boy, clad in baggy blue breeches and a scarlet tarboosh, and whom, to our disgust, we discovered to be tongueless—a mute!—and found ourselves in the divan hanee, or principal apartment; and now the hitherto ceaseless gabble and merriment of our French friends became hushed into comparative silence, as the hakim, who had been smoking his chibouque, with its long cherry-stick, rose from a luxurious pile of silken cushions to welcome us.

He was a little man, with Arab features, and a complexion of mahogany. His bushy beard was of a great amplitude. Time had long since dyed that appendage white, but the proprietor had turned it to a rich brown. He wore a green turban, a long, flowing coat, fashioned like a dressing-gown, of bright blue cloth, elaborately braided on the breast and seams with scarlet cord; his vest and trousers were of white linen, girt by a sash of green silk. Round his neck hung a comboloio, or Mahommedan rosary, of ninety-nine sandalwood beads.

Save that his intensely black eyes had under their impending brows a keen and hawk-like expression, his appearance was neither unpleasing nor undignified. His cheekbones were somewhat prominent; he had the organs of locality largely defined, and his forehead was high, but receding.

A Turkish soldier, an onbashi, or corporal of the Hadjee Mehmet’s corps, had just preferred some request as we entered; and on learning that we had come to see a trial of his power at the seance, or whatever else he was pleased to call it, he invited us all into an inner apartment which opened off the divan hanee.

It was lighted by four lamps, suspended from the ceiling, each with a large tassel below it. From these lamps flickered four flames, which emitted a strange mephitic odour. The chamber had been recently whitewashed; the doors and windows were all bordered by arabesques in black and red, and with elaborate sentences from the Koran, which I afterwards learned to be the following:—

“If they accuse thee of imposture, the apostles before thee have also been accounted impostors, who brought evident demonstrations, and the book which enlighteneth the understanding.”

“They will ask thee concerning the spirit; answer, the spirit was created at the command of my Lord; but ye have no knowledge given unto you, except a little.”

“This is light added unto light. God will direct His light unto whom He pleaseth.”***

In the centre was a table covered by a crimson cloth, on which stood a species of altar, formed of brass, about two feet high, supported by four monstrous figures, the description of which is beyond the power of language, and before it lay the Koran, open, and from its leaves depended fifty-four flesh-coloured ribbons, with leaden seals attached to them, being one for every two of the chapters of that remarkable book.

Near this lay a rod of strangely-sculptured bronze, which was known to have been found in one of the six great cavern tombs that stand in the pass of Bibou-el-Melek at Thebes, by the side of a mummy, which was alleged to be that of a royal magician, for in those tombs lie the Egyptian kings of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties.

Several bright green chameleons from Alexandria, which were perpetually crawling about this altar, and turning from their natural colour to red, blue, and white, according to the hue of anything they approached, added to the diablerie of this scene, which soon became rather exciting.

My own share in this adventure was so remarkable, that I came away with but a slight recollection of the part borne in it by my companions.

Indeed, I was the second person on whom he attempted to impose, if his singular mode of summoning, or spirit rapping, could be termed an imposition.

The first to whom he addressed himself was the Turkish soldier with whom we had found him in conversation.

The onbashi wished to know if his mother, Ayesha, widow of Abdallah Ebn Said, who dwelt at Adramyt, was well, and gave the hakim his fee—ten piastres—a large sum, no doubt, for the poor Osmanli warrior, who gazed about with considerable uneasiness, though the unabashed bearing of the Frenchmen might have reassured him; and I heard Jolicoeur whispering to Baudeuf that he had a dozen times seen just such a magical tableau at the Mabille and Porte St. Martin—diable—oui!—and had hissed it off, that he might have Mogador or Fleur d’Amour on with their dances.

“Ayesha, widow of Abdallah Ebn Said,” muttered the hakim. “A lucky name—it was borne by one of the four perfect women who are now in Paradise.”

Opening a gilt door in his little cabinet or altar, the hakim brought forth a large clam-shell and two phials of a dark liquid.

He wrote that verse of the Koran which I have quoted from chapter xvii., concerning the spirit, on a strip of parchment; then, pouring pure water over it, he washed it into the hollow of the shell; thus its sentiment and spirit were supposed to become a component part of the charm about to be wrought.

He then desired the onbashi to turn to the east, and pray (for religion evidently bore a great part in all his mummery), and next he summoned me to look into the shell, which he held in his left hand, while waving over it his bronze rod seven times—the mystical number.

I steadily gazed into the liquid, which a few drops from the phial had turned to a pale purple tint, but saw—nothing.

She did not appear. Thrice she was summoned, but in vain.

The hakim tugged his beard, frowned, and reddened with vexation, and emptied his shell, pouring the liquid carefully through a hole in the floor.

“My poor mother, then, is dead?” said the corporal, sadly, crossing his hands on his breast.

“Stafferillah! nay, do not think so,” said the hakim, kindly.

“Why, effendi?”

“Because, in that case, the liquid would become as black as the holy Kaaba.”

“But she did not appear?”

“This is an unlucky day, my son.”

“Why so for me, if not for others? I never omit to wash and pray; and yesterday, O hakim, you showed strange things to the Franks, filling all their khans and coffee-houses with wonder.”

“True; but go. Thou art one of the faithful. To the infidels all days are alike,” replied the hakim, with a very unmistakable scowl at Jolicoeur and Baudeuf. “Doth not the Prophet say, ‘Their works are like unto vapour in a plain, which the traveller thinketh to be water, until when he cometh thereto he findeth it to be nothing?’”

“Allah kerim!” said the onbashi, putting his right hand to his forehead, his mouth, and his heart, and stalking solemnly away.

Jolicoeur was pressing forward to summon his friend Sophie, no doubt, or perhaps some other gay damsel, when the hakim, who evidently disliked his scoffing smile and general bearing, ignored his presence, and said to me—

“Effendi, in what can I serve you?”

I felt the blood rush to my head, and in a whisper I mentioned to him Louisa Loftus. I was loth that my fast companions should hear her name, and make, perhaps, a jest of it. The hakim’s fee was, I have said, ten piastres; but as I gave him above a hundred—or equal to a guinea sterling—there were no words to express his thanks in Egyptian or Turkish; he could only mutter, again and again—

“Shookier Allah! May God reward you!”

Again he produced his clam-shell, the surface of which I carefully surveyed, while with great alacrity he wrote a verse from the Koran. The shell was clear and pure; no picture, line, or drawing could be detected on its pearly surface. Again he went through his mummery with the phials, and washed off the ink into the shell; again, as before, the liquid grew purple, and again he waved his rod of bronze.

“You wish to see her you love?” he whispered, with something of a licentious leer in his keen black eyes; “she who is to be your hanoum (wife or lady)?”

“Yes, effendi,” said I, blushing like a great schoolboy, in spite of myself, all the more that I saw Jack Studhome’s handkerchief at his mouth.

Fixing his keen eyes with something of sternness upon Jules Jolicoeur, whom he had suddenly detected in the act of mimicking him, the bearded hakim summoned him forward, and desired him to look into the shell, and tell us what he saw.

Abd-el-Rasig then turned to the east, and proceeded to pray and invoke in an inaudible voice.

I was four paces from the Zouave lieutenant, whose eyes, as he gazed into the shell, became dilated and fixed with astonishment, while his whole features, which were handsome, expressed something akin to fear.

“Merveilleuse! mon Dieu! merveilleuse!” he exclaimed.

“Do you see anything, monsieur?” I asked, with growing excitement.

“Yes—yes—oui, peste!”

“In heaven’s name what do you see?”

“A lady!”

“A lady?”

“Yes; the face of a lady, young, and very gentle. It is pale; her eyes are dark, her hair thick and jetty—it seems almost blue in this purple shell. Her eyebrows and lashes are thick,” he continued, speaking very fast. “She has an expression of intense sadness—ban Dieu!—she is like a sorrowing angel.”

“Her nose is aquiline?” I suggested.

“On the contrary, it is neat and small, but not quite retrousse. She moves—merveilleuse!—tears—she is weeping! On her breast there is a silver crescent; and now—now—the whole thing fades away!”

I was springing forward, when the hakim waved me imperiously back with his bronze rod, and instantly poured the contents of the shell on the tiled floor, from which a strange mephitic odour rose.

This was not the case on the previous unsuccessful occasion. Jules, who had become quite grave, now turned eagerly, and full of interest, to me.

“Is this the lady whose face you saw?” I asked, showing him the miniature of Louisa.

“No, monsieur; there is not the least resemblance.”

“Indeed!”

“I am somewhat of an artist, and know.”

“You are sure?”

“Sure as I now address you, monsieur.”

I began to smile.

“I have said that her eyes seemed dark, nearly as these. Her hair was black, thick, and wavy, but her nose and features were all smaller—more (pardon me, monsieur) feminine, perhaps—less decided in character, certainly; and on her breast she had a crescent of silver.”

“A crescent!”

“Yes, monsieur, with a lion above it. The ornament seemed to fasten or adorn the dress, and I saw it distinctly till she placed her hand upon it, and then the water in the shell rippled. It is positively miraculous,” he added, turning to Captain Baudeuf, who was twirling his moustache and smiling with obstinate incredulity.

The latter details petrified me.

Jolicoeur’s description was completely that of my cousin, Cora Calderwood. The crescent and lion was a gift I had sent her from India—a double ornament I had picked up in the great pagoda at Rangoon, and which she always wore, preferring it to her father’s crest and every other brooch.

“Are you satisfied, effendi?” asked the hakim, quietly, for he seemed used to astonishment on such occasions.

“I am bewildered, at all events, hakim,” said I.

“Why so?”

“It was not she I asked for or whom I named.”

“How do you know? You did not see. Another looked with your eyes.”

“True—but what does the vision portend?”

“You asked to see her—“

“I loved, hakim,” said I, emphatically.

“Nay, she who—if Allah and the Muscovite dogs spare you—is to be your wife, your hanoum. Do you not remember? Go! Allah Kerim! it is kismet—your destiny. The destinies of all, and the hour in which we are to die—yea, the very moment—are written by the finger of Azrael on our foreheads at our birth—on yours also, although you believe neither in Azrael*** nor the Prophet. Go! the mark is there, although we see it not.”

With those rather solemn words ringing in my ears, bewildered and thoroughly startled, I found myself traversing the streets of Varna with Studhome, while the French drummers were beating la retraite as the sun went down beyond those mountains that were then echoing with the cannon of Silistria, and while the shrill voices of the muezzins proclaimed the hour of evening prayer from the minarets of the mosques, into which the Moslems were pouring, with bowed heads and bare feet, to count their beads.

*CHAPTER XXXII.***

As from a dream I was roused at last by Jack Studhome proffering his cigar-case, and saying, with a smile—

“How about the year’s pay, Norcliff, eh? I owe you that, I suppose?”

“Don’t jest, for Heaven’s sake, Jack,” said I; “for I feel faint, queer, and ill.”

All that night we talked over the affair, through the medium of sundry flasks of iced champagne, without being able to come to any conclusion about it.

As a piece of trickery, it beat all that we had ever seen performed at Cawnpore, Delhi, or Benares, by Indian jugglers, though at mess we had seen those worthies swallow a sword to the hilt, or run it through a basket, in which was concealed a child, whose blood and screams came forth together, till the room door opened, and the little one ran in joyously, unhurt, and without a wound; or the orange seed, which one placed in my tumbler, where it took root, and in three minutes became a little tree in full bearing, from which the mess plucked the oranges as it was handed round. All such performances were beaten by that of the hakim Abd-el-Rasig!

That Jules Jolicoeur had seen a female face—a pretty one, too—in the clam-shell was certain, by whatever art or legerdemain that circumstance was achieved. His astonishment was too genuine and too palpable to be acted. The detail of the crescent brooch was a coincidence, perhaps; but then his description of the wearer accorded so well with that of Cora!

I resolved to seek him next day; but he was despatched on duty along the road towards the Balkan; and, as the event proved, I became too ill to follow him.

As we rode home from the Restaurant de l’Armee d’Orient, I was sensible of extreme giddiness; but attributed it to the champagne. I could scarcely guide my horse along the road that led to our camp in the vale of Aladyn, and felt Studhome repeatedly place his hand upon my bridle to guide me. I felt delirious, too, and next day found myself in the pangs of that foul pest, the cholera.

It seized me at the distance of some ten miles or so from the camp, from which I had ridden in search of Lieutenant Jolicoeur. I became so ill that I had to dismount, and was conveyed to the kiosk of a wealthy Armenian merchant, and there I remained in great peril for several days, before my circumstances or my whereabouts became known to my friends or the regiment.

I endured a severe pain or burning heat in the pit of my stomach, accompanied by the other symptoms of cholera—cramps in the limbs, and spasms of the intestines and muscles of the abdomen.

The pulses became faint, and at times scarcely perceptible; my skin grew cold, and suffused by a clammy perspiration. It was an undoubted case of spasmodic cholera.

I felt resigned and almost careless of life. There were times, however, when I reflected sorrowfully, almost bitterly, that it was not thus I had wished to die, unnoticed and unknown, among strangers in a foreign land; but, luckily for myself, I could not have fallen into more worthy hands.

The proprietor of the kiosk I have mentioned was a wealthy Armenian merchant, a native of Kars. Whether he was animated by that inordinate love of gain which is peculiar to his race, I know not; but he treated me with extreme kindness and hospitality, yet I never saw either him or any of his family. The dangerous nature of my disease was a sufficient excuse for my being carefully secluded from his entire household, which was numerous, as it consisted of several sons with their wives and children, all living together as one great family, but under his own rule, somewhat in the patriarchal mode of a Scottish clan under its chief.

In a little airy apartment, which opened upon a high-walled and spacious garden, I lay for many days, hovering between life and death. My medical attendant was an Italian surgeon, attached to the Bashi Bazooks, and wore a bright green frock-coat, long riding-boots, and a crimson fez, with a long blue tassel and broad military button. He looked like a reckless foreign cut-throat, with a fierce moustache, vast black beard, and close shorn head; but his exterior belied his character and skill.

In the old Sangrado fashion he bled me, taking twenty-five ounces of blood from my left arm, and gave me, I remember, from eighty to a hundred drops of laudanum, together with a teaspoonful of cayenne pepper, in a glass of stiff brandy-and-water, steaming hot, ordering me to drain it almost at a draught.

“Oh, Signor Dottore,” said I, “whence come those dreadful spasms?”

“They are rarely accounted for satisfactorily,” he replied, with professional nonchalance; “but, if I were to venture an opinion, I should say that the convulsioni arise from distended vessels, in the neighbourhood of the spine, on the origin of the nerves—you understand, Signor Capitano?”

I was soon past understanding anything; but, after the hot dose, I was wrapped in hot blankets, friction, with strong stimulating liniments, being applied along the spine by the hard hands of two black slaves, and heated bricks were placed to my feet and hands; and under all this process I fainted away.

For days I was as one who is in a dream, passive in the hands of those sable assistants, who, doubtless, thought a bowstring would have proved a “perfect cure,” and a saving of considerable trouble. The green frogged coat, the crimson fez, and the dark face of the Italian doctor, as he came from time to time, seemed all a portion of the phantasmagoria which surrounded me; but there came anon a sweeter, a softer, and more feminine face, with a lighter and a smaller hand, that seemed to touch me and smooth my pillow; and with this vision came thoughts of Louisa, of Cora, of the hakim Abd-el-Rasig and his magic spells, and then I would close my eyes, wondering whether I was asleep or awake, or if in a dream, from which I would waken, to find myself in my cool bell-tent in the green breezy vale of Aladyn, in my familiar quarters at Canterbury, or it might be in the dear old room of my boyhood, where my mother had so often hung over me and watched, in Calderwood Glen, and then I seemed to hear the cawing of the hoodiecrows among the ancient trees that rustled their green leaves in the summer wind.

The murmuring breeze that came so pleasantly to my dreaming ear passed over wooded mountains; but, alas! they were those of Bulgaria, and not my native land.

Amid all the wild ideas induced by my condition was the overpowering sense of weakness, with intense prostration and lassitude; but now, thanks to Heaven, to human skill, to my own youth and strength, the terrible disease was passing away.

While, by a stupidity or treachery closely akin to treason, our army, during the hot, breathless months of a Bulgarian summer, lay rotting and inactive at Varna, as if merely waiting the approach of winter to open a campaign with Russia—hardy Russia, the land of ice and snows, whose rash emperor boasted that her two most terrible generals were January and February—the fell disease which prostrated me was making sad havoc among my brave and patient comrades.

The 7th, 23rd, and 88th regiments, and all the infantry generally—the Highlanders almost excepted, their Celtic costume being an admirable safeguard by its warmth about the loins—were decimated by cholera. The Inniskillings and 5th Dragoon Guards were reduced to mere skeletons, and few cavalry colonels could bring more than two hundred and fifty sabres into the field.

So much was my own corps reduced, that on one parade Beverley only mustered two hundred lances; but many convalescents joined after. It was remarked that many of the ambulance corps, after what was termed “the great thunder-storm,” died within five hours of being assailed by the plague.

Thus, “hundreds of brave men, who had left the British shores, full of high hope and manly strength, died in the valley of Aladyn, or on the hills overlooking Varna! The army grew discontented. Though no act unbecoming British soldiers was committed—though no breach of discipline could be charged—it was impossible to refrain from discontent. Murmurs, not loud but deep, made themselves heard. No man there but burned to meet the enemy. The entire army was prepared cheerfully to face death in the service of the country to which it had sworn allegiance; but to remain in inactivity, exposed to pestilence, which struck down its victims as surely, and nearly as speedily, as the rifle-bullet, beneath a burning sun, with no power of resistance, and no possibility of evasion, was a fate which might quell the stoutest courage, and raise discontent in the most loyal bosom.”

Seven thousand Russians, who had perished of cholera some time before, were buried in the vicinity of our camp; and thus the green, smiling spot which the Bulgarians named the vale of Aladyn, the bearded Muscovites anathematized as the Valley of the Plague!

While such was the state of our inactive army at Varna, our fleet in the Black Sea was vainly seeking to lure the Russian vessels from their secure anchorage under the formidable batteries of Sebastopol; and the Turkish army was exhibiting a courage which astonished all Europe.

At Giurgevo, a city on the left bank of the Danube, on the 7th of July, a mere handful of Turks, chiefly led by a gallant Scot, styled Behram Pasha,*** defeated a large force of Russians, after a desperate conflict. At Kalafat the latter sought in vain to force the passage of the river, and drive the Osmanlees from their stronghold; and at Citate and Oltenitza they were routed with disgrace. For neither their own native prowess, the prayers of the Bishop of Moscow, nor the miraculous image of St. Sergius, availed them—the blue cross of St. Andrew and the Eagle of Muscovy fled alike before the crescent and star of Mahommed. And now Silistria, on the Danube—“the thundering river”—became the base of operations; and there Moussa Pasha, Butler, an Irish officer, and my countryman, Naysmith, covered themselves with glory, while the Hungarian exile, Omar Pasha, opposed the foe with all his available troops.

During this time the French continued pouring into Varna, by marching across the Balkan, the great mountain barrier of Turkey, the rocky passes and deep defiles of which are almost impassable in winter.

On the 28th of July the Russians were driven from Wallachia; but the Turks were utterly defeated by them at Bayazid, on the slopes of Western Armenia, and again at Kuyukdere. Our fleets bombarded Kola, on the White Sea, and the 4th of September saw the eagle of victory hovering over the armies of the Czar at Petropaulovski; but thus the summer passed with us ingloriously away, and still our army lay inactive amid a hotbed of fever and suffering at hated Varna.

The most of these stirring events I learned after my recovery from that illness which so nearly carried me off. I knew nothing of them while in the house of the Armenian, and equally little did I know that Mr. De Warr Berkeley, in the hope that I might never rejoin, was doing all he could to blot my military reputation in the brigade to which we belonged.

It was on a morning in June—the 23rd, I think—the same day on which the Russians raised the siege of Silistria, leaving twelve thousand dead before its walls—that I seemed to wake from a long and refreshing slumber.

The vague, drowsy sense of having been surrounded by phantasms and unrealities, and that it was not Newton Norcliff, but some one else, who was lying there, sick and weary, had passed away with sleep. I was conscious and coherent now, but weak with past suffering.

Through the lattices of a pretty kiosk (for that word signifies alike a room or a house), I could see the great rose trees, covered with their fragrant glories, standing in rows, or trained over gilded iron bowers or arches. The leaves of the apricot, the purple plum and greengage trees, rustled pleasantly in the passing breeze, and pleasantly, too, there came to my ear the plashing of a marble fountain that stood in the shaded verandah without.

Around that white marble fountain grew the great scarlet pumpkin and the golden-coloured water-melon, their gaudy brilliance contrasting with the green leaves amid which they nestled. The garden was an epitome of Turkey, for there the blood-red ilex of Italy, the rose tree of Persia, the palm of Egypt, the Indian fig, and the African aloe, with the tall, solemn cypress, all grew side by side in the lovely parterres, through which the sunshine fell aslant in golden flakes.

The kiosk in which I lay was floored with marble slabs. Its walls were painted gaily with a panoramic view of Constantinople. I could recognise the heights of Pera, and all the Propontis, from the Seraglia point to the Seven Towers, with all the glories of the Golden Horn, Sophia’s shining cupola, the Serai Bournou, and the cypress groves, where the dead of ages lie.

I was reposing in a pretty bed, with spotless white hangings, and lace all so charmingly arranged, that it reminded me of a baby’s cradle. A divan of yellow silk cushions surrounded the apartment on three sides. On the fourth it was entirely open to the verandah and garden. On this divan I saw my undress uniform, neatly folded, with my forage-cap, sword, and cartridge-box placed above it.

My watch and purse, Louisa’s miniature and ring—I felt for the latter involuntarily—were all lying on a little white marble tripod table by my side, together with a beautiful china drinking vessel, which seemed familiar to me.

A sigh of thankfulness that I was conscious, free of pain, and at comparative ease, escaped me, and I turned to survey again the other side of my chamber, when a remarkable female figure met my eye.

She was seated on the low divan, quite motionless. She was reading intently, and by her costume I knew at once that she was a French sister of charity—one of those pure in heart, great in soul, and unflinching in purpose, who, on their saint-like mission of mercy and humanity, had followed the allies from France.

Her dress was a plain black serge gown, with a spotless white coif, which fell in soft folds upon her shoulders, pure as the feathers of a dove. In her gentle face, which seemed familiar—for doubtless it had often been before me in the intervals of suffering and delirium—there was a kind, a peaceful, and divine expression, that underlay the lines of premature care, suffering, and privation.

She was young; but among the dark brown hair that was braided smoothly and modestly over her pale, serene brow, I could detect already a silver thread or two.

So perfectly regular were her features, so straight the lines of eyebrow and nose, that the dark, speaking eyes, and that drooping form of eyelid peculiar to the south of Europe, alone relieved them from tameness, for I had seen more sparkling beauty in a somewhat irregular face; but in those dark eyes there ever shone the steady light of a soul devoted to one great purpose; and yet at times, as I afterwards found, her manner could become merry, almost playful.

Slight though the motion of simply turning my head, she heard it, arose anxiously, and, coming forward, handed to me a cooling drink.

“Mademoiselle, I thank you!” said I, gratefully.

“You must not thank me, monsieur. I am simply your nurse.”

“And I have disturbed you—“

“At my office—merely, monsieur, at my office, which I can read at any time within the twenty-four hours.”

“And how often do you do this?”

“Every day—all these pages—see!”

Her voice was so very silvery, her eyes so calm and lustrous, her hands so white and small, that it was impossible not to see that she had been highly bred, delicately nurtured, and came of some good French family.

“How long have I been here, mademoiselle?” I asked, after a pause.

“I do not know. Monsieur was here when I came.”

“And who brought you to nurse me?”

“Lieutenant Jolicoeur, of the 2nd Zouaves, heard somehow that you were here, suffering under a perilous illness. An Italian surgeon chanced to mention it at the Restaurant de l’Armee d’Orient, and they brought me here. We are in the house of a rich Armenian trader—a good Christian, after his own fashion; but, O Sacre Coeur! what an odd fashion it is!”

“Ah! mademoiselle—“

“I am Archange, of the Order of Charity.”

“Well, Sister Archange, you are really an angel!”

“Oh, fie! don’t say so! You must think very poorly, very meanly, of me to give me a title I dare not hope to merit, even by a thousand actions such as attending you.”

“Pardon me; I did but—but say what I thought.”

“You are a child, and thought wrong,” she replied, with playful asperity. “But you have already spoken too much for one who is only beginning to recover; so try to sleep, mon frere.”

And, waving her hand with a pretty gesture of authority, she resumed her missal, and read on in silence.

I slept for a time—I know not how long—it might have been an hour, or perhaps two: but, when I looked up, she was still seated, motionless and reading.

“Ma soeur!” said I, as our eyes met, and my heart swelled with gratitude for her generous watchfulness; and she came hastily towards me.

“Mon frere, what do you want?”

“You mistook my meaning when I called you an angel, and were angry with me.”

“Angry?—I? Ah, no! no! Don’t say so—I am never angry; it would not do for me to be so now.”

“But I think you quite a saint to watch me thus.”

“You must not say that either.”

“You are so good, and I so unworthy.”

“Good I may be thought, monsieur; but I shall never be a saint, like Father Vincent de Paul—I am too wicked for that,” she added, laughing merrily; “but I try to be as good as I can.”

“Have any letters come here for me?”

“Letters!” she said, with alarm in her fine eyes, and withdrawing a pace.

“Yes; I am so anxious for them.”

“Ah! now you are beginning to rave again. In your pain and delirium you always raved about letters.”

“There are, then, none?” said I, with a groan.

“I shall see, mon frere,” and, in the kindness of her heart, after pretending to search for what she too well knew were not to be found, she came again to my bedside, and said there would, perhaps, be some to-morrow.

“Still no letter!” I exclaimed, sadly, with tears in my eyes.

She laid a soft hand caressingly on my brow.

I besought her, in the most moving terms, to inquire if there were any letters for me at our cantonments in the vale of Aladyn, heedless of the distance and of the trouble I gave her; for I thought only of Louisa Loftus, and that her answer to my Gallipoli missive might have reached the regiment during my illness and absence.

“Monsieur, then, belongs to the English service?”

“No.”

“The Osmanli army, then?”

“No, mademoiselle; I belong to the British,” said I.

“Ah! true. But your uniform is not red?”

“All our light cavalry wear blue. Ah, ma soeur, seek the quarters of the lancers serving in the Light Brigade, and see if there is a letter for me. It will do me more good than all the doses of our Italian doctor.”

“Ah! you will be dosed by him no more.”

“I am truly glad to hear it. Some of his messes were vile enough.”

“Do not speak so ungratefully; but you know not what I mean or what has happened.”

“How?”

“Poor monsieur le docteur is dead.”

“Dead!”

“He died of cholera in the cavalry camp yesterday. He had volunteered to attend the sick soldiers in the vale of Aladyn, and perished at his post among them.”

I was greatly shocked by this intelligence, which perhaps, it was not wise in my little nurse to afford me at such a time.

When again I woke from sleep the shadows of evening were darkening the room; the trellis-work and Venetian lattices that had opened to the sunlit garden were closed now, and the sun had set. Sister Archange was seated in her usual place upon the low divan, but looking pale and exceedingly fatigued.

She had been at the British cavalry camp, and she had seen my friends, but no letters had arrived for me, of that she was assured, as she had taken one of my cards from its case to show the commanding officer.

“No letters?” I repeated, in a hollow tone.

“No; but, monsieur mon frere, must take courage. Many, many ships have perished in a recent storm in the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmora, and your letters may have gone to the bottom with the mail steamer. Monsieur Estoodome—monsieur l’adjudant he is, I think, of your regiment—and monsieur le colonel, too, will ride over here to-morrow to see you. And now there must be no more talking, but to sleep, mon ami—to sleep. I must take care of you now, for la soeur Archange will not be with you always.”

“What are you doing?”

“Making the sign of the cross on your forehead, mon frere. To-morrow I shall tell you what it means, if you will remind me; but, for to-night, adieu.”

*CHAPTER XXXIII.***

The clatter of spurs and scabbards, and the firmer tread of feet than one usually hears among the slipshod or slippered Moslems, next forenoon, announced the arrival of my friends, and most welcome to me was the appearance of Colonel Beverley, Studhome, Wilford, and Jocelyn of ours, all fearless of cholera, as they came through the verandah of the kiosk where I lay; and there, too, lingering without, I saw my faithful follower, Pitblado.

They were all in full uniform and accoutred, for it was the day of a great review; and all bowed with politeness to the sister of charity, who immediately withdrew to the shadow of the verandah.

“I rejoice to see you, my dear boy,” said the colonel; “we had all given you up as lost to us and to the regiment.”

“Lost, colonel?” I repeated.

“Faith, did we, Newton,” said Studhome. “We concluded that you had been waylaid—cut off in the flower of your youth and day-dawn of ambition, as the novels have it—by some Bulgarian footpads or rascally Bashi Bazooks, for I presume you know that no one can go beyond the advanced posts with safety without a revolver.”

“A rumour reached us of a British cavalry officer being conveyed seriously ill to the house of an Armenian gentleman,” resumed Beverley. “We strongly suspected that you were the person, and the presumption became a certainty when yesterday this young lady brought your card to my tent at the cavalry camp.”

“She is a good little saint,” said I, with enthusiasm.

“And so, Norcliff, you have actually had cholera—that foul pest which is destroying our noble army piece-meal?”

“I am recovering, as you see; but pray don’t linger here, colonel. There is danger by my side.”

“Norcliff, the air we breathe is full of cholera,” said Beverley, impatiently twisting his grizzled moustache; “our poor fellows are dying of it like sheep with the rot!”

“If the Emperor of Russia had planned the whole affair himself, he could not have taken better measures to weaken and decimate us than this useless camp at Varna.”

“You are right, Studhome—to decimate us before the war begins,” added Jocelyn.

“When do we take the field, colonel?”

“No one knows.”

“Then how long are we to remain here?”

“No one can tell. Satisfactory, isn’t it? In fact, no one knows anything.”

“Except,” said Studhome, “that we are giving the Russians plenty of time to prepare a hot reception for us, if we venture to seek ‘the bubble reputation’ in the Crimea—or military fame, which, as some one says, consists of ‘a few orders on a tight uniform.’”

“How far am I from the camp, colonel?”

“About five miles.”

“Five miles!” I exclaimed, “Then you, my poor friend, Sister Archange, actually walked for me ten miles under a broiling sun yesterday?”

“Yes, monsieur le capitaine,” she replied; “and happy would I have been could I have returned with what you wished for.”

“How sorry I am! How can I ever repay, ever apologize, for the amount of trouble I have given you?”

“Apologies are not to be thought of,” said she, quietly; “and as for repayment, we do not look for that—here, at least.”

She smiled, and looked very beautiful. Twirling his carefully-bandolined moustache, Jocelyn, who had been observing her admiringly, was about to address her in, perhaps, rather a heedless way, when Beverley said to him pointedly—

“Those French sisters of charity are the admiration of all the troops. Even the stupid Turks adore them, and are bewildered by a devotion and purity of purpose which their sensual souls cannot understand. Mademoiselle, we have no language to describe what we owe to your order.”

The sister of charity gave the colonel a pleasant smile, and a bow full of grace and good humour.

“Our visit,” said he, “is necessarily a hurried one. We are all in full puff, as you may see, Norcliff, for this afternoon the cavalry division is to be reviewed before Omar Pasha and Marshal St. Arnaud.”

“Hence my Lord Lucan is most anxious that each and all should appear in his best bib and tucker,” added Studhome.

After they were gone, I turned again to thank the gentle sister of charity for the journey she had made, on a hot and breathless day, through a camp of more than eighty thousand foreign troops, to serve me.

She only gave me one of her pleasant smiles, and; taking the miniature of Louisa from the tripod table, said in a low voice, “Is this the lady from whom you expect letters?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head sadly, as if her survey of the tiny portrait had not proved satisfactory.

“Why do you look thus, ma soeur? What do you see?”

“Much of dangerous beauty; but more of pride, of caution, tact, and cold decision. The eyebrows nearly meet—I don’t like that. The eyes are lovely; but—but—“

“What?” I asked, almost imperiously.

“I dare not say it. I may be guilty of the sin of detraction.”

“Nay, speak, I beg of you. The eyes are lovely, you say, but—“

“Have an untruthful expression.”

“Ah, good heavens, don’t say so!”

My heart sank as she spoke, and I sighed deeply.

“I have seen such eyes and brows once before, and I remember the sorrow they wrought.”

The paragraph which I had read in the London morning paper, on board the Ganges, in the harbour of Valetta—that fulsome paragraph, at which Berkeley had smiled so complacently and covertly—came to my memory word for word now. Was it possible that the journal was true, and Louisa false? After an uncomfortable pause, I related to the sister the strange episode which occurred at the house of the hakim Abd-el-Rasig.

“Magique!” she exclaimed, while her large eyes became larger still, and she crossed herself three several times with great earnestness. “O Sainte Dame! you tried the art of the great fiend, did you?”

“Who—I? Not at all! How could I? Don’t imagine anything so absurd. The man is only a trickster, like Houdin or Herr Frickel.”

But she seemed so horrified at me, and “the art that none may name,” that I was fain to explain that the whole affair originated in the suggestion of Studhome, and some of the officers of the 2nd Zouaves, in a moment of idleness.

“I can tell you many a tale of the wickedness of having recourse to magic, and the retribution which falls on those who do so,” said she. “Have you ever read the writings of the fathers?”

“No, I regret exceedingly,” I was beginning, when I could not help laughing at her conceiving such a course of reading palatable to a young cavalry officer. Even the pundits who “go in” for cramming, that they may have the magical letters “P.S.C.”*** after their names in the “Army List,” do not go that length.

“Have you ever heard of St. Jerome?” she asked, gravely.

“I think so, ma soeur.”

“Well, I shall tell you a tale he records concerning magic, and one who resorted thereto. Once upon a time in France, your odious Abd-el-Rasig would have been burned alive, for there can be no doubt that, like those of the Egyptian magicians of old, his operations are conducted with infernal agency. Can the accounts we hear of those magicians from Moses admit of any other construction?”

“Of course not, though I can’t for the life of me see what you are driving at.”

“If ever you see him again, mon frere, make the sign of the cross, and then you will see how he will shrink and whine, like Mephistopheles in the opera, for it is a sign that always sends the thoughts heavenward. We are told that, if St. Ephrem saw a little bird fly, he always remembered that, with pinions outspread, it made the sign of the cross as it soared towards heaven; but that when it folded those wings the holy sign was marred, and the poor bird fell at once, grovelling and fluttering, on the earth.”

“Well, ma soeur; but the story and St. Jerome?”

“Pardon me, I had forgotten. He tells, in his life of St. Hilarion the Hermit—ah, you never heard of him either—that a gay young man of the town of Gaza, in Syria, fell deeply in love with a young lady, whom he used to see occasionally in those beautiful gardens of tamarisks, figs, and olives for which the place is still so famous; but she was pious, devoted to Heaven and to religion, and, consequently, shunned him—a course which only added the stings of jealousy and attraction to the passion which she had inspired.

“His glances, his tender whispers, his presents, and professions she treated with coldness; his attempted caresses she repulsed with anger and disdain, till, finding all his attempts baffled and ineffectual, in a fit of rage and despair he went to Memphis, which was then the residence of many eminent magicians, all reputed to possess wonderful power.

“There he remained a whole year, studying the dark mysteries under the tutelage of the most learned, until he deemed himself sufficiently instructed; and, exulting in his unholy knowledge, acquired chiefly among the graves which still lie to the south and westward of Memphis, and where one may walk for miles and miles amid bones and fragments of crumbling mummies, he returned to Gaza, confident that now he could bend the inflexible beauty to his will.

“Beneath the marble peristyle of her father’s house he contrived to lodge at midnight a plate of brass, whereon he had engraved a potent spell. Hence, the first time she passed over it a wondrous illness seized her! She became furious, says St. Jerome; she tore her glorious hair, she gnashed her teeth, and raved over the name and image of the very youth whom she had so repeatedly driven from her presence in despair by her coldness and hauteur.

“In sorrow and terror her parents conducted her to the hermitage of St. Hilarion; and then, when the holy hands of the old man crossed her, the devil that was within her began to howl, and to confess the truth.

“‘I have suffered violence!’ he exclaimed, speaking with her tongue, to the fear of all.

“St. Hilarion took a branch of blessed palm, and, having dipped it in holy water as an esperges, threw the sparkling drops profusely over her, on which the devil exclaimed again—

“‘I have been forced here against my inclination! Alas! these drops are as freezing ice! Oh, how happy I was at Memphis among the tombs of the dead! Oh! the pains, the tortures I suffer!’

“Then the hermit commanded him to come forth; but the devil told him that he was detained by a brazen spell beneath the peristyle of the maiden’s house.

“So cautious was the saint, however, that he would not permit the magic figures to be searched for till he had released the virgin, for fear he should seem to have intercourse with incantations for the performance of a cure, or to have believed that a devil could ever speak truth. He observed that demons are always liars, and cunning only to deceive.”

“So the damsel was released?” said I, who had listened with some amusement to the story, which was told me with implicit faith in its veracity.

“Yes; but the devil, ere he went back to Memphis, paid a terrible visit to his first summoner; for the young man was found in the garden of olives, strangled, with the marks of talons in his throat. So, mon ami, never again have recourse to such persons as Abd-el-Rasig. Promise this to your little sister, Archange!”

“I may well promise you that, or anything else you ask,” said I, charmed by her winning manner. “How sweetly your name sounds when pronounced by yourself.”

“Do you really think so?” she asked, while her dark eyebrows arched up. “My godfather named me Archange, that I might be under the protection of the archangels. You comprehend me, monsieur? When I joined the order of the soeurs de la charite for my noviciate in the Rue du Vieux Colombier, to share with the Sisters of St. Martha the care of the sick in the hospitals of Paris, they saw no reason to change it; and hence I am still, as I was before—before I thought of being a sister of charity—Archange.”

To a sick man’s ear, there was a soothing charm in the girl’s voice and its intonation. Then her broken English, her earnestness, truthfulness, and intense faith in all the little religious legends and anecdotes with which she amused us, were all fascinating, and there came a time when I missed her, and then sorely. Add to all these that, in the girl’s beautiful but colourless face, there was an expression singularly pure, noble, and frank, lofty, and at times sublime. I was very curious to know her surname, and the reason why she had adopted a life of such privation and peril as that of a Sister of Charity—an order so severe, and whose duties were a ceaseless round of privation and peril. Without being uncourteously curious, I knew not how to approach the subject; but next day, after Jack Studhome and Fred Wilford (who rode over from the camp) had retired, she imparted the little story of her past life of her own accord, and the circumstance came about very simply, through a mere remark of mine. The mail steamer had come in from Constantinople, but Studhome had no letter for me.

“Ah, ma soeur Archange, I begin to be torn by jealousy,” said I.

“Why?” she asked, gently.

“I cannot say why, as the only man in England I have reason to fear is a creature so contemptible.”

“Then wherefore give way to a weakness so odious and so tempting?”

“Tempting?” I repeated.

“Yes; I mean tempting to crime.”

“How strangely you speak!”

“But truly,” she replied, sadly.

“I do not understand—“

“I can tell you a horrible episode,” she began, impetuously; “but no, ’tis better forgotten—forgotten, if possible, than to recollect it now, in all its sad details,” she added, after a pause.

“Why?”

“You have unbosomed yourself to me, and have told to me your only sorrow; why should I conceal mine? or why be less communicative to you? Well, I shall tell you why I—for the sake of others, rather than even for my own soul’s welfare—dedicated myself to God and the order of charity. By jealousy, and the revenge it inspired, I lost a brother whom I idolized, and two friends whom I loved dearly; and, monsieur, it all happened thus.”

After a short pause, with her long dark lashes cast down, and her little white hands folded on her knees, she told me the following story:—“My father, M. Marie Anatole Chaverondier, resided in a little antique chateau among the mountains of Beaujolais, where we had a property which, though small, is fertile, and in some places is covered with fine old wood. Our chateau is very ancient, for it had anciently been a hunting-seat of the illustrious family of Beaujeu, who gave their name to all that district; and thus we have rooms that many a time were honoured by the presence of the Great Constable and the Dukes of Bourbon.

“I can, in fancy, see that dear old chateau now, with its round turrets, its gilded vanes, and white facade, rising above the green woodlands, with the blue Saone flowing in front under an ancient bridge, the central arch of which had been blown up in the wars of the old revolution, but was now partly repaired by logs of oak, that were half-hidden by luxuriant ivy, and beautiful red and white roses. Ah!” she exclaimed, while her splendid eyes became suffused with tears, “shall I ever again see the old Chateau de Chaverondier?

“My mother was dead. My father—a gentleman of the ancien regime, a strict legitimist, or adherent of the old monarchy, and a worshipper in secret of Henri V.—resided there in seclusion with his family, which consisted of myself, my brother Claude, and three or four servants; and, save our tutor, who was the old cure of the neighbouring village, or monsieur le maire of Beaujeu, we had few or no visitors; and our time glided away amid quiet pleasures, but with no sorrow, till Claude, a tall and handsome youth, left us for the military school of St. Cyr.

“There he soon received the commission of sous-lieutenant in the 3rd Light Infantry of the line, then commanded by Colonel Francois-Certain de Canrobert, now marshal of our army in the East.

“I sorrowed for my brother, my lost companion, long and earnestly. We had no more rambles now by the Sacine, in search of flowers and ferns, or in the deep dark woodland dells around the old chateau. There was a sad emptiness and loneliness in and around it, too. I no longer heard my brother’s clear voice singing merrily as he prepared his flies and fishing-rod, or the report of his gun waking the echoes of the forest; and I went to mass, to confession, and to communion alone, for my father had become too feeble now to leave his apartment, and my chief solace was in attending him; so, monsieur, you see that I served an early apprenticeship in the sick chamber.

“But there were others who sorrowed for the absent Claude—the two daughters of Montalle, the maire of Beaujeu, a wealthy proprietor of several forges and furnaces, whose alliance my father would have opposed with disdain and wrath; but that did not prevent us from being great friends with Lucrece and Cecile, whom we had been in the habit of meeting so regularly at mass, and with whom we worked in common to decorate the altar of monsieur le cure on holidays.

“Both were remarkably handsome and sprightly girls. Cecile was fair and gentle, and Claude, I knew, loved her, and sighed for her, even as a boy; but Lucrece, the elder, I also knew, loved him in her secret heart, for she had frequently told me so after his departure for St. Cyr, and more than once I had seen a dangerous expression in her pale face and dark eyes when Cecile spoke of him with regret or affection. Dark as night were the eyes of Lucrece. Her nose was aquiline, and over it her eyebrows nearly met; and she had a general expression not unlike that which I saw in your miniature. Letters came at times to our old chateau among the mountains of Beaujolais from the absent Claude; but it was soon too evident that Cecile Montalle was in correspondence with him as well as I; for she knew quite as soon as we did of Claude’s movements, and those of the 3rd Light Infantry, with which he was serving in Africa; and she knew before we did of how he had distinguished himself in Canrobert’s famous expedition against Ahmed-Sghir, when that chief rallied the tribes of the Bouaoun in revolt against France.

“In 1850, Claude wrote us that he had been wounded in Canrobert’s expedition against Narah, that Colonel Canrobert had granted him leave of absence, and that he was coming home. No hearts were so happy as ours at the old chateau, on learning that Claude was returning, and covered with honour, too—save, perhaps, the fair-haired Cecile Montalle. There was a radiance in her pink cheek, a sparkle in her beautiful blue eyes, when we met at church in Beaujeu, which showed that she, too, was mistress of the same joyous tidings; and, in the fulness of her heart, she confessed to me that she and Claude had corresponded long, had exchanged rings, and were mutually attached and engaged. I loved my brother. Could I wonder that Cecile Montalle did so too? Lucrece, who stood by us, heard all this with a lowering brow, and there was the old and strange expression in her face which had terrified me before as I kissed her, and got into our old-fashioned carriage to return to the chateau, which stands some five leagues or so from Beaujeu.

“For days I busied myself, preparing for the reception of Claude. His old room was put in order by my own hands. Alas! I could little foresee that he was never to tread its floor again! In fact, the unhappy Lucrece was the victim of an absorbing and corroding jealousy; and in her heart she was beginning to hate and to loathe her guileless and unsuspecting sister. To add to this evil feature in our mutual relations, when I ventured timidly to speak of Claude’s engagement to my father, he became inflamed with sudden fury. All the buried pride of the old days of the monarchy—the days of periwigs and pasteboard skirts, of shoe-buckles and rapiers—with the memory of past greatness, and the time when the Constable and Dukes of Bourbon had joined our forefathers in the chase, and shared their hospitality in Chaverondier—all this I saw blazed up within him! His eyes flashed with fire, and his thin bent form became erect. He had been proud of his son’s brilliant career under Canrobert; he had pictured for him a brilliant future; he already saw him ranked among the marshals of France, reviving the past glories of ancestors who had left their bones at Pavia, Rocroi and Ramilies.

“But now he thought all those ancient triumphs and those revived hopes would be blighted and blotted by a disgraceful marriage with a mere bourgeoise—a vulgar smelter of iron—a man who had begun life with a hammer and bellows; a grimy manufacturer of spades, ploughs, and pickaxes for the markets of Beaujeu, Belleville, and Chalieu!

“My father thought of his sixteen heraldic quarters, among which were the arms of Cressi, Sante-Croix, and Segonzoe, the three noblest families in Beaujolais, and swore by the souls of his fathers that such a marriage could never be. He did more. He wrote a severe and sarcastic letter to the maire of Beaujeu, warning him of his most severe displeasure, if the correspondence between his daughter and ‘Monsieur my son, the Captain Chaverondier,’ was not at once and for ever ended. To have read that letter might have made one think that the Grand Monarque was still flirting at the Trianon, and that the fleur-de-lis still waved above the Bastille of St. Antoine. On the other hand the maire Montalle was a sturdy and purse-proud republican; one who in his youth had fought at the barricades, had sacked the Tuileries, and had actually beaten on his drum, by order of Santerre, to drown the dying words of the son of St. Louis! So he retorted in a manner which I do not choose to repeat; but therewith ended all the hopes of the sweet and gentle Cecile, and of my brave brother, who was travelling, as fast as the railway trains could fly, through the provinces from Marseilles, to see us all, and his own happy home again.

“At those malignant letters, the dark Lucrece laughed bitterly. At Beaujeu poor Claude learned the state of affairs between the families, and, weak as he had become by hard service in Africa, and the wound he had received at Narah, he could barely withstand the shock. It filled him with despair; but he loved Cecile too well to relinquish her. They had many interviews, contrived I know not how, and a secret marriage was arranged and concluded before even the watchful and jealous Lucrece could discover them, or interrupt it; so nothing remained now but for Claude to carry off his bride, to reach the old chateau among the mountains of Beaujolais, and trust to his father’s old parental love and pride in his recent bravery for forgiveness.

“A powerful Arab horse, with which Canrobert had presented him (and which had borne a warrior of the Kabyles in many a bloody conflict) was accoutred with a market saddle and pillion to bear the lovers, who were to be disguised as a farmer and his wife, lest monsieur le maire and his workmen might assume arms and fire on them; for the Revolution of two years before had left much bad feeling between the aristocrats and the canaille (as the former most unwisely termed the latter), and thus in the provinces many a lawless act was done that never reached Paris, or figured in the pages of the Moniteur.

“So Claude wore a blue blouse over his uniform, a straw hat, in lieu of the smart scarlet kepi; and Cecile was disguised as a paysanne of Beaujolais. All this was achieved with the assistance of Lucrece. Dull despair had settled on her heart now, and, finding that Cecile was irrevocably the wife of Claude Chaverondier, she could only endeavour to be resigned, and to complete the happiness she had failed to mar or interrupt, and could never hope to enjoy.

“The night on which they were to set forth was dark and tempestuous. Near Beaujeu there rolls a mountain torrent, a tributary of the Saone. It was crossed by a narrow wooden bridge, at a place where, between two high and impending banks, on this night, it was foaming white and furiously, as snows were melting in the mountains, and every tiny rivulet was full to overflowing.

“Lucrece had secured the key of the private gate which closed the end of this bridge, and she was to lock it after the lovers had passed through, and thus bar pursuit in that direction. With a sad heart she issued forth to undo the barrier. So wild was the tempestuous wind that she could barely keep afoot, and she felt her aching heart tremble when she saw the blackness of the fast-flying clouds, between which the pale stars shone coldly forth at intervals; and now she came to where the black and hideous chasm yawned in the rocks, and she could see, far down below, the snow-white flood boiling hoarsely over its stony bed, deep, fierce, and swollen, as it rushed to join the Saone, hurling rocks and trees together to the sea.

“The wild winter flood and the stormy night were both in accordance with the tempestuous spirit that writhed in her bosom. She heard the hoofs of Claude’s Arab horse, as their clatter was swept past on the wind, that blew her black, dishevelled hair in disorder about her pallid face; and as she unlocked the gate, a sob of astonishment and terror escaped her.

“The wooden bridge had fallen, or been torn by the tempest from its posts, and the gulf was impassable.

“To warn the lovers was her first good impulse; to be silent was the second.

“As they rode up to thank and bid her adieu, she saw their mutual endearments; she saw the strong arm of Claude caressingly round the waist of Cecile, and her head reposing trustfully on his shoulder, as she sat on the saddle before him. Then a madness seemed to sting the heart of Lucrece! She felt herself to the fullest extent the neglected, the discarded, the unloved one, and revenge and hatred filled her soul with a dreadful fury.

“‘Adieu, dear, dear Lucrece!’ cried Cecile; ‘adieu! and pray for us.’

“‘Ride on; the way is clear,’ she replied, in a breathless voice.

“And Claude gave the spur to his Arab. Like an arrow it shot past her. In another instant a scream rang upward on the stormy wind, as the horse and its double burden went headlong into the wild abyss of rushing water far below, and disappeared for ever!

“So perished my dear brother Claude, and with him my friend Cecile.

“Lucrece stood there for a time like one bewildered and aghast, for the whole episode resembled a sudden and ghastly dream, from which she might yet awaken. She saw only the river foaming past like a white flood amid the blackening gloom, and its roar seemed deafening and stunning, and she placed her hands on her ears to shut out the sound, as she went slowly home, and for days and nights the roar of the river seemed never to leave her. From that hour she was quite insane, and, if still alive, is an inmate of the lunatic asylum at Beaujeu.

“This double catastrophe had such an effect upon my spirits that, after the death of my father, by the advice of monsieur le cure, I quitted the Chateau de Chaverondier, joined the order to which I now belong, and was soon after sent hither with the army of the East.”

Such, as nearly as I can remember, was the sad story of her early life told me by Mademoiselle Chaverondier.

It was not until I began to recover that I became fully aware of the vast debt of gratitude I owed to this good sister of charity, and that I completely knew how much I owed to her sisterly and motherly care of me during that perilous and loathsome disease.

But there were no means of repaying her. Gratitude of the heart was all she would accept, and that I gave her to the full, but now daily, as I became convalescent, and as my brother officers cantered over from the vale of Aladyn to visit me, she left me more and more alone, and there were three whole days during which she never came at all.

I rather think she was scared by Studhome, who had ridden over with a couple of champagne bottles in his holsters, and whom she found smoking in my kiosk, with his shell-jacket open, and his stock off, and singing a song, the first verse of which was something in this style—

How much I missed her!

When she did return it was to bid me adieu, and to say that she had been ordered to attach herself to the 45th regiment of the French line, where severe duties awaited her, and that in all human probability I should never see her more.

Those farewell words sounded sadly. We shook hands kindly, affectionately, and parted with tears in our eyes. In my heart I felt the love of a brother for that self-devoted French girl, and at that time she could but little foresee the sad offices I was to render her in the hour of suffering that was to come.

*CHAPTER XXXIV***

On the 5th of September the allied armies embarked at Varna, and the 14th of the same month saw us landing in the Crimea, on ground near the Lake of Kamishlu—not that chosen by the gallant Lord Raglan originally—some miles north of the Bulganak river, at a place where the cliffs, a hundred feet in height, overhung the beach. But, save a boat-load of Zouaves, who were run down by a steam-transport, all were disembarked safely under cover of the cannon of the allied fleets, and without molestation from the enemy. The change of landing-place was owing to the treachery of the French, who altered the buoys in the night.

Lord Raglan could scarcely forget, what many an old peninsular veteran remembered, that the auspicious day on which we made this landing in the country of the foe was the anniversary of the death of his former leader, the great Duke of Wellington.

We were exactly thirty miles westward of Sebastopol. The morning was fine, and the surface of the Black Sea was smooth as glass. The whole of the troops of the light division were in their boats, in heavy marching order, with sixty rounds per man; packed close, each soldier sat with his firelock between his knees, and the seamen, with their oars out in the rowlocks, all motionless, and awaiting the signal.

It was given, and instantly a hum, rising to a cheer, passed over all that vast array of men and boats; a gleam passed over the bright accoutrements, and the oars fell plashing into the water.

“Give way, lads—lay out upon your oars!” was the order.

And the whole line of boats—a mile in length—shot off from the fleet; and at half-past eight A.M. the first, which belonged to the Britannia, landed her living freight.

Mid-leg deep in the surf, the sailors lent us valuable assistance in getting ashore. Fusiliers, Highlanders, guardsmen and rifles, lancers and hussars, all rapidly formed line upon the beach, where the infantry piled arms, and the cavalry stood by their horses. Those who may have witnessed the trouble and care requisite for the landing of one horse from a vessel, with all the appliances of a spacious quay, can imagine the difficulties attendant on the disembarkation of one thousand chargers, armed and accoutred on an open beach.

The French were landing elsewhere, under St. Arnaud and Canrobert; and ere long, sixty thousand men stood to their arms on that remarkable peninsula, Crim Tartary—of old, the Isle of Kaffa, and known to recent fame as the Crimea!

We were entirely without baggage. Our tents, and everything that might encumber us in advancing to meet the enemy, had been left on board the fleet; thus, few of us had cause to forget the night of the 14th of September, when the army halted to sleep in an open bivouac, on bare ground, for we had learned nothing in the art of conducting a war since Moore fought and fell at Corunna.

Without cessation the drenching rain fell down. Thus our thin uniforms and blankets were speedily soaked; but all ranks suffered in common. I saw the Duke of Cambridge sleeping amid his staff, with his head protected by a little tilt cart. For myself, I chiefly passed that miserable night muffled in my cloak, dismounted, in the ranks beside my horse, with my right arm twisted in the stirrup-leather for support, and my head reposing on the holster flap. Thus I snatched a standing doze, with the cold rain pouring down the nape of my neck; and in this fashion most of the cavalry division passed this night, the effects of which were speedily shown in the ranks of our young and as yet untried army.

Many of our battalions were already in possession of a hill on the right of our landing place, and commanding it; and all the evening of the 14th its sides were brightened by the glitter of their arms shining brightly in the sun (that was then setting in the golden Euxine), as they formed along its green slope in contiguous close columns of regiments.

“But,” says an eye-witness, “what were those long strings of soldiery now beginning to come down the hillside, and to wind their way back towards the beach? and what were the long white burdens horizontally carried by the men? Already—already on this same day? Yes, sickness still clung to the army. Of those who only this morning ascended the hill with seeming alacrity, many now came down thus sadly borne by their comrades. They were carried on ambulance stretchers, and a blanket was over them. Those whose faces remained uncovered were still alive. Those whose faces had been covered by their blankets were dead. Near the foot of the hill the men began to dig graves.”

Each poor fellow was buried in his uniform and blanket. Thus began our war in the Crimea!

The reason for our tents being left on board was occasioned by the curse of the red-tapeism and ignorance in London. On the outbreak of the conflict, we were destitute alike of the materiel and the personnel for a transport corps of any description whatever, beyond a few Maltese mule carts; and had the Russians availed themselves of the ample time so kindly given them by our ministry, and swept every species of horse and waggon from the Crimea, our advance upon Sebastopol had been a movement of greater difficulty than it proved to be. All our most useful baggage was thus left at Varna, and there I lost with mine much of the lumber with which I had provided myself at Maidstone, and at good Sir Nigel’s expense. At last we were on Russian ground. I reminded Studhome of the conduct of Mr. Berkeley, and urged that now a meeting should be arranged beyond the outposts. I remember how palpably Jack changed colour at my angry suggestion. He concealed from me a fact, which afterwards came to my knowledge, that Berkeley had circulated injurious reports concerning me through not only the lancers, but the hussar corps of our brigade. But now Studhome put it to me, as a matter of feeling and discretion, whether I should insist on this secret duel, for a matter that was long past, when we would soon be face to face with the enemy, and when one of us, perhaps both, might not be spared to see another muster day. These arguments prevailed; I smothered my wrath, and met Mr. De Warr Berkeley (as he chose to designate himself) on duty with cold civility, but nothing more. To be cordial was beyond my powers of acting or endurance. And thus, for the time, our quarrel stood. When those who were ignorant of the cause of coolness between us remarked it, his general answer was—

“Aw—haw—don’t know the reason, ‘pon my soul; but those Scotsmen are such doocid awd fellahs.”

Our contingent consisted of twenty-six thousand foot, one thousand mounted cavalry, and sixty pieces of cannon, divided into five divisions of infantry and one of horse; an absurdly small force to attempt an invasion of Russia, even with the greater strength of the French and Turkish allies—the former being thirty thousand, and the latter seven thousand bayonets. Our first division, led by his Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge, consisted of the Grenadier, Coldstream, and Scots Fusilier Guards, with three Highland regiments—the Black Watch, the Cameron, and 93rd Highlanders, all considering themselves the corps d’elite of the army. The other divisions, under Sir George Brown, Sir De Lacy Evans, Sir Richard England, and Sir George Cathcart, were composed of our splendid infantry of the line—as I have elsewhere said—the noble and carefully developed army of forty years of peace; and the Earl of Lucan, who in his youth had served as a volunteer with the Russians against the Turks in the campaigns under Diebitch, led our mounted chivalry—the cavalry division—the flower of the British Isles—yet to be covered with glory in the disastrous Valley of Death! While the armies were advancing, with my troop I was repeatedly despatched by the Quarter-master-General, Major-General Richard Airey, to procure provisions and carriages, for that officer, beyond any other, had seen from the first the necessity of procuring supplies and means of transport. On one of these occasions, by his orders, I had the good fortune to capture twenty-five kibitkas, or waggons, in a village near our line of march. On the same day I think it was that his aide-de-camp, the gallant Nolan, when exploring for water, came upon a Russian government convoy of eighty waggons laden with flour, and seized them all, routing the escort. In all we obtained three hundred and fifty waggons, with their teams and Tartar drivers.

The chief proprietor of the kibitkas I had taken was the patriarch or leading man of the village—a Tartar of venerable aspect, wearing a pelisse or long robe of blue stuff, with a small black lambskin cap, not unlike an Egyptian tarboosh, from under which his white hair flowed upon his shoulders.

Accustomed only to the lawless and brutal military tyranny of the Muscovites and Cossacks, nothing could equal the good man’s astonishment when I informed him, by means of an interpreter, that we merely required the loan of the carts, and that he would be duly paid. Allah, ho Ackbar!—think of that—actually paid, for any inconvenience or loss the villagers might suffer by their detention.

On the morning of the 19th we quitted our miserable bivouac, and commenced our march in search of the enemy, for we were on perilous ground, and had the Russians come suddenly upon us, we might have been compelled to risk a battle with our rear to the cliffs which overhung the Euxine (where the sea-calves basked on the beach a hundred feet below), and on a field where defeat would have been certain ruin and death to all. But, as the French had assumed to themselves the honour of the right wing, they had thus a greater risk than we British, who had quietly taken the left flank, as the allies advanced along the coast.

The 11th Hussars and 13th Light Dragoons, under Lord Cardigan, formed an advanced guard; and in their rear marched a detachment of rifles, in extended or skirmishing order. We knew that the enemy was somewhere in front; but in what force, or where or how posted, we were in perfect ignorance. Occasionally an excited voice in the ranks would exclaim that a Russian vedette was in sight on the distant hills.

The atmosphere was calm, the sky almost cloudless, and high into its azure ascended the smoke of the allied fleet, which kept moving under steam far away on the right flank of the French army, which rested on the shore. The sun shone hot and brightly; but at times there came pleasantly a light, fresh breeze from the shining Euxine.

The colours were all uncased and flying; the bands of the cavalry and infantry, with the merry bugles of the rifles, filled the air with music; and I could hear the pipes of the Highlanders, under the Duke of Cambridge, alternately swelling up or dying away upon the ambient air, as the first division traversed the undulating country in front.

As we proceeded, I could not resist letting my horse’s reins drop upon his neck, and soaring into dreamland, my thoughts went far away to our distant home beyond the sea. Sometimes I imagined how my name would look in the list of killed or wounded, and of what Louisa Loftus would think then. And with this morbid fancy came always another idea—was it a conviction?—that such an announcement would cause a deeper and more lasting grief in Calderwood Glen than at Chillingham Park; and I thought of my good uncle reading the heavy news to his two faithful old henchmen, Binns, the butler, and Pitblado, the keeper.

Louisa’s lock of raven hair which I had received at Calderwood, the miniature which she had sent to me afterwards at the barracks, were with me now; and with me, too, was the memory of those delicious words she had whispered in my ear in the library at Chillingham—

“Till we are both in our graves, dear Newton, you will never, never know how much I love you, and the agony which Berkeley’s cunning cost me.”

This was strong language: yet it would seem now that, amid the whirl of fashionable life at Chillingham Park, balls, routs, dinners, suppers, and reviews, the race, and the hunting-field dotted with red coats, she had been compelled, or had allowed herself, to forget me—I, who thought of her only. And amid that more brilliant vortex, the world of London life, the Queen’s Court, the royal drawing-rooms, the crowded parks, the gaieties of Rotten Row and the Lady’s Mile, the splendours of the opera, and the wonders of the Derby, it seemed likely enough that a poor devil of a lancer serving in the East was to be forgotten, and for ever too!

From such a reverie I would be roused by Jocelyn, Sir Harry Scarlett, or some other of ours, exclaiming—

“Look out! By Jove! there’s a Russian vedette!”

Then through my field-glass I might discern, between me and the sky, a Cossack in a fur cap, riding along the green ridge in the distance, with his knees up to his girdle, his back bent, his lance-head glinting in the sunshine, and the snub nose of his Calmuck visage planted almost between the drooping ears of his shaggy little horse, as he uttered a shrill whoop and galloped away.

“We seem to be coming closer and closer to those fellows,” said the colonel. “Every moment I expect to see Cardigan with the advanced guard draw the cover, and receive a dose of grape from flying artillery.”

“And those vedettes seem to be thrown forward from a large force, colonel,” said Studhome. “I have already detected five or six different uniforms.”

“Yes, Jack. So I would advise you to write a dutiful letter to your friends.”

“Why, colonel?” said our adjutant, laughing.

“Because we shall certainly be under fire to-morrow.”

To-morrow proved to be the day of the Alma—an eventful day for many.

The approach of danger made all who were in health grow high in spirit and hilarity.

“Rather different work this from the gravelled yards at Canterbury and Maidstone,” said Wilford, joining us at a canter, to share a little conversation.

“Ay, Fred,” said the colonel; “and very different from our daily service of a year or so ago.”

“At Allahabad and Agra—eh?”

“Yes. Lying half the day on an easy fauteuil, in a silk shirt and cotton drawers, fanned by an Indian girl; or cooled by a punkah, and guarded by mosquito-curtains, making up our books on the Meerut race meeting; calculating the rising or falling of the thermometer, and studying the ‘Army List?’”

(Another year or two was to see very different work cut out at Cawnpore and Delhi for our Indian comrades.)

Five nights spent amid the mud of our bivouac had somewhat tarnished the finery of our lancer uniforms. Already the bullion of our large epaulettes was crushed and torn, our gorgeous lace defaced and frayed; but our horses were all in high condition, and our arms and appointments bright enough to have satisfied even Count Tilly himself.

On this short day’s march we lost one lancer of Wilford’s troop. Passing where a Coldstream guardsman lay by the wayside, black in visage, and dying of weakness, thirst, and heat, he gave him the entire contents of his wooden canteen, and falling from his saddle soon after, died himself for lack of that which he had so generously given another, as there was not a drop of water with the regiment; for, in the Crimea, by the end of August, all springs, rivulets, and fountains are alike dried up; verdure disappears, and the thermometer, even in the shade, rises to 98 or 100 degrees.

Twice on this march I saw a sister of charity kneeling beside the sick or dying, and rode on to learn whether she might prove to be Mademoiselle Chaverondier, or, as I preferred to call her, my dear sister Archange, but on both occasions I was disappointed. All were high in courage, and full of ardour; but their spirit changed and sunk as the hot and breathless day wore on, and our poor men’s strength became worn out. The music ceased, as band after band gave in, and the drummers slung their drums wearily on their backs. Even the Scotch bagpipes died away, and the massed columns, each some five thousand strong, trod silently over the undulating steppes, with all their sloped arms, and the glazed tops of their shakos, glittering in the sun. But long ere the noon of that first day of toil, many had begun to fall out, in all the agonies of cholera. At one place my horse had actually to pick his way among them. All looked black in the face, and choking; the heavy bearskin caps and thick leather stocks were cast aside, and their jackets were torn open. Some were writhing in agony, and others, weakened by toil and thirst, lay still and voiceless. On we marched, on and on, and the sufferers were left to the Cossack lances, or a more lingering death, while the wolves from the groves of the Alma, and the Alpine vulture and kite from the rocks of Kamishlu, hung on our skirts, and waited for their prey. Our thirst was intense and indescribable, when a shout of joy announced that the advanced guard, under Lord Cardigan, had reached that long-wished-for river the Bulganak, where we were to bivouac for the night. The moment a division came in sight of the cool stream that rippled between its green banks, and groves of wild olive and pomegranate trees, the men burst with a shout from the ranks, and rushed forward to slake their burning and agonizing thirst.***

The infantry were speedily bivouacked along the bank of the stream; but we—the cavalry—were fated to have a little passage at arms with the Russians before the sun set.

*CHAPTER XXXV***

Physical endurance is not a more necessary quality to the soldier than mental elasticity. There seemed to be no want of the latter among our fellows, when we unbitted our horses and sat down to a meal which was improvised by our servants near a grove of turpentine and caper trees. It was a lovely evening now, and many a wreath of purple and golden cloud lay cradled in the amber sunset. The infantry had piled their arms by regiments, brigades, and divisions, and the thousands of our host lay panting on the sward, or preparing to cook their rations in such a fashion as suited the emergency or their fancy. In the distance were flocks of bustards crossing the now arid plain, which in summer had been covered by a profusion of aromatic herbs. Our accoutrements were cast on the grass, our uniforms were unbuttoned, cigar-cases went from, hand to hand, freely interchanged, and even the last copies of Punch were conned over and laughed at.

Thanks to me, and the use of a kabitka I procured, we had plenty of provisions. A ham, some cold fowls, Bass’s pale ale, sherry, even champagne, were produced by some of ours; and these, with a few cucumbers and gourds, medlars, and filberts, which Willie Pitblado had found in the deserted garden of a Tartar, formed, all things considered, a sumptuous repast, and what it lacked in style and equipage was amply made up for in fun and jollity, for “men accommodate themselves unconsciously to the modes of living that are forced upon them. It is a law of our being, and it is well that it should be so. A bomb bursting in the midst of a fashionable London dinner party would do no more mischief than one of the numbers which used to burst daily within the walls of Lucknow; but assuredly it would produce a far greater impression.”

“This is really the tug of war!” exclaimed Wilford, who, after various ineffectual efforts to uncork a champagne bottle, adroitly struck off its head by the stroke of a knife.

“Yes, by Jove! and think of the mess!” added Jocelyn.

“To feel,” said the colonel, “that one has a soul—and what is more, an appetite, a taste, and decided predilection for turtle soup and recherche entrees—and yet compelled to appreciate this style of thing!”

“I can appreciate everything and anything,” exclaimed the paymaster.

“Even an ‘aggis, eh?—haw!” said Berkeley.

“Yes, even a haggis. My stomach is as empty as a kettledrum,” replied the paymaster, as he sliced away at the ham.

“I think there is something going on in front,” observed Wilford, pausing in the act of dissecting a fowl.

“Yes,” said Beverley; “Lord Raglan, with some squadrons of the 11th and 13th, has crossed the river to reconnoitre; but let us make the most of the present, our turn will come all in good time. Pass the wine, M’Goldrick; a slice of meat, Studhome—thanks.”

“Ugh!” remarked the paymaster; “‘the bed of honour,’ as Jean Paul Richter says, ‘since whole regiments lie on it, and frequently have received their last unction, should really be filled anew, beaten and sunned.’”

“What—aw, haw—does that quotation mean?” asked Berkeley, adjusting his eyeglass, contracting the muscles of his eye, and giving our old Scots paymaster an inquiring and quizzical stare. “It sounds doocid queer, and—haw—unpleasant.”

“I was thinking of the hard bed I shall sleep on to-night, sir,” replied M’Goldrick, rather sternly.

“By Jove, some of us may sleep sound enough to-night yet,” said the colonel, half starting up. “There is a decided movement in front, and here comes a French mounted officer.”

At that moment a subaltern of Zouaves, mounted on a French dragoon horse, in a somewhat excited manner, dashed up to where we lay lounging on the grass, reined his trooper sharply in on the bit, shouting something of which I could only make out the prefix, “Messieurs les officiers!”

“Diable! you don’t speak French?” he added, in English, to Travers of ours.

“No, sir; I am sorry—“

“Peste!” interrupted the Frenchman; “every staff officer should speak at least two European languages.”

“Dioul na bocklish! There, I can speak my mother tongue, being an Irishman; and if that won’t do, the devil is in it. But I am not a staff officer,” he added, to the stranger, in whom I now recognized M. Jolicoeur, of the 2nd Zouaves.

“The enemy is in great force in front, and your commander-in-chief, with the two regiments of your advanced guard, will be surrounded and cut off.”

“Lord Raglan, with the 11th and 13th!” we exclaimed, starting to our feet; and just at that moment an aide-de-camp, Captain Bolton, of the 1st Dragoon Guards, came galloping up, and exclaimed—

“Boot and saddle, Colonel Beverley; the 11th and 13th, under Lord Cardigan, are engaged in front. Cavalry supports and horse artillery are instantly required.”

The trumpets sounded, the regiment formed by troops, and joined the brigade, which formed in squadrons, and advanced rapidly in search of the enemy.

“Aw—doocid bore, after our pleasant little tiffin,” I heard Berkeley say, with a bantering air; but I could see that he looked very white for all that, and Beverley only smiled superciliously, as he twisted his thick moustaches.

“I wonder Berkeley has not his white gloves on,” he whispered to me, and I saw some of our men smiling, for it was a regimental joke, or notoriety, that he was in the habit of pencilling on his gloves the words of command he had to issue in succession.

As the junior regiment, we were in the centre of the brigade, the senior corps being on the right, and the next in seniority on the left; and we advanced at a rapid trot, in a column of squadrons at wheeling distance, while the artillery, making a dreadful clatter, with all their tumbrils limbered up, their spare wheels, forge waggons, rammers, sponges, buckets, and other apparatus, went thundering at full gallop to the front.

“In a few minutes, my lads, we may be hand to hand with the enemy,” shouted Beverley, as he stood up in his stirrups and brandished his sword; “let us be true to the old motto of the regiment!”

All knew what he meant, and responded by a long and ringing cheer, for our lancers had been raised as light dragoons in 1759, by Colonel John Hale, the officer who came to London with the news of Wolfe’s fall and victory at Quebec; and in that year it was ordered by his Majesty George II. that “on the front of the men’s caps, and on the left breast of their uniforms, there was to be a death’s head, with two crossbones over it, and underneath the motto, ‘Or Glory.’” And this grim but significant badge we still wear on all our appointments.*** It would appear that, early in the afternoon, and before the whole army had halted, our old and one-armed leader, the good Lord Raglan, who had ridden far in advance of the first division of infantry, observed a group of Cossacks hovering on the brow of a green hill, towards the south, on which he ordered part of Lord Cardigan’s command, the 11th Hussars and 13th Light Dragoons, forward to reconnoitre. On this occasion Lord Lucan was also present.

Where the road from Eupatoria to Sebastopol crosses the Bulganak, the bank of the river rises for several hundred yards, and then the ground slopes down into a valley, beyond which rises a succession of grassy undulations. The hussars and light dragoons rode boldly forward. Formed in four squadrons, they splashed through the stream, galloped up the bank, and descended into the hollow, before they became aware that no less than two thousand Russian cavalry were advancing to meet them, with a line of skirmishers in front in extended order.

“Forward, skirmishers!” was now the command.

The trumpet sounded, and from the flanks of each squadron, as it halted to form line, the few selected men for this duty spread at intervals of twenty yards from each other, at the distance of two hundred yards from the column; sheathing their swords and unslinging their carbines, as they took up their dressing from the right. Beyond the crest of the second eminence, a steady glittering in the sunshine revealed to the keen eyes of General Airey that it came from the points—the mere tips—of fixed bayonets, and that there were concealed in the hollow way many battalions of an infantry force, quietly waiting to open a close and murderous fire upon our little body of cavalry, when they were lured sufficiently far forward to secure their total destruction. In fact, our advanced guard, composed of only two slender regiments, was thus suddenly opposed to six thousand men of the 17th Russian division, posted in ambush, with two batteries of artillery, a brigade of regular cavalry, and nine sotnias of Cossacks, the whole under General Carlovitch Baur. It was a perilous—a terrible dilemma! Lord Raglan knew that he must avoid an action on one hand, and secure the retreat of the 11th and 13th with complete honour on the other. To the roughly-mounted and loosely-handled Russian horsemen, the beautiful and ceremonious formation of our gay hussars, with their glittering dolmans, and our smart light dragoons in blue and buff, with all their swords and bright appointments flashing in the sunshine, was a cause of hesitation. They could not suppose but that this slender force had a greater body of troops at hand, and feared the very snare they were preparing for others; thus they were quietly and tranquilly confronting each other, out of musket-range, when we, with the light and second division, the 8th Hussars, and nine-pounder batteries, came up at a gallop, to succour our comrades, and got into position. After this, the wily and savage Muscovites found their opportunity gone, and the gallant Baur was rather nonplussed.

When the regiments of the infantry divisions came up, they deployed into line, and all their bright steel ramrods glittered in the sunshine, as they loaded with ball cartridge and “capped.” We, the cavalry support, took up a position in the left rear of the advanced force under Lord Cardigan, and rapidly loaded our pistols and carbines, awaiting further orders. In each of my holsters I carried a six-chambered revolver. So close were we to our advanced guard, that we could hear the officers of the 11th and the 13th recalling their skirmishers.

“Retire the skirmishers,” rang again and again on the clear air; “shorten stirrups—girth up—reload and reform.”

Every heart was beating high, for we were now face to face with an enemy—many among us for the first time.

“Keep your dressing, squadron leaders,” said Colonel Beverley, whose eyes were lit up by a strange brightness—indeed, it seemed to spread over all his handsome and sunburned face; “close up, gentlemen. We have all been used to ride to hounds, and that is more than any of those Russian fellows have done. By Jove! I should like to see them crossing a stiff stone-wall country. In a few minutes, lancers, I repeat we may be hand to hand with the enemy; so, when we come to close quarters, remember the old fencing-school advice, ‘Watch your antagonist’s eyes, not his blade.’”

I was leader of our left squadron, and had my post, of course, half a horse’s length in front of the standard, which was carried by Sergeant Stapylton. It was a white swallow-tailed pennon, with a skull, and the words, “Or Glory” embroidered beneath—terribly significant at such a time, as it rustled out in the breeze. My secret enemy, Mr. Berkeley, was a troop leader on my left, at some little distance, and at this exciting moment there was a singular expression in his eyes. I thought he was about to ride up and extend his hand to me, for I had known of forgiveness being often asked and accorded when men were face to face with death; but if it were so, I was pitiless. I remembered Lady Louisa Loftus, and the cottage by the Reculvers, and resolved that the hard expression of my glance should chill him. Little did I know the ideas that were in his mind, and the mischief he was yet to work me, ere we passed the heights of Alma. On this evening, so cool were some of our fellows, that I detected several of the rear-rank men tickling the front-rank horses, to make them kick. Lord Raglan now became apprehensive that the numerous cavalry of General Baur, in their longing for a little sword exercise, might be tempted to charge the Earl of Cardigan’s slender force; thus it became necessary to draw it off without further delay, and to express his desire to that officer, despatched General Airey, whose movements we watched with irrepressible excitement.

“Your brigade will immediately retire, my lord, and by alternate squadrons,” said the general, reining in his horse, and saluting.

Lord Cardigan bowed, and gave the necessary orders for throwing back the squadrons of direction.

“Right squadron and left—threes about—march—trot!”

The remainder of the 11th and 13th remained motionless in their saddles, with swords drawn, waiting till the flank squadrons halted and fronted, about a hundred yards in their rear, when their own turn came to retire, and so the movement of retreating alternately in this fashion went on. But the moment it began, General Baur’s Russian brigade of horse artillery came galloping out of the hollow, and were wheeled round and unlimbered in battery on the ridge. The red flash of the first field-piece made every heart bound and every pulse quicken; and ere we had time for reflection, another and another boomed, with a cloud of white smoke, from the green eminence. Then a gap appeared here and there in the ranks of the 11th and 13th, as a horse, a hussar, or light dragoon went down, and we saw them rolling in agony on the sward; but their comrades closed in, holster to holster, and still the retreat by alternate squadrons went coolly and quietly on. The six-pounder guns attached to Cardigan’s force had no power upon the enemy; but the nine-pounders which accompanied our brigade slew many of the Russians at their guns. At every boom that echoed through the still evening air, the scared birds flew about, screaming and flapping their wings wildly, till, at last, they actually grovelled among our horses’ hoofs.

The 11th and 13th retired beyond us, and then came our turn to go threes about, and fall back by squadrons, under cover of our artillery, whose balls told so well that Beverley mentioned he could reckon through his glass at least thirty-five Russian dragoons, with their horses, lying stiff enough on the slope, where our nine-pounders had roughly loosed their “silver cords” for ever. Prior to this, we had moved ten paces to the left—a lucky thing for me, as a shrub which my horse had been nibbling was torn into pieces by a five-inch shell a second or so after. Glory apart, I was not sorry when we got the order to retire, for we could achieve little honour here. My horse seemed sensible of our danger, when the balls of the Russian artillery began to plough and tear up the earth at his feet, or to hum past with a sound that made him shrink. He kicked, lashed out behind, pawed with his forefeet, bore with his teeth on the bit, and uttered strange snorts.

“By heaven! there is one of ours down!” exclaimed Jocelyn, my sub, in an excited manner, as he turned in his saddle; and we saw a lancer in blue lying on his back in our rear, his horse galloping away, and three Russian skirmishers busy about him, while four dragoons were cantering on to join them.

“’Tis poor Rakeleigh,” said Studhome, galloping up; “a shot has just smashed his right thigh.”

“Colonel, may I try to save him—to recover his body?” I asked, hurriedly.

“Certainly; but, Norcliff, be wary.”

“Who will come with me?” cried I, wheeling round my horse.

“I, sir,” replied Sergeant Dashwood.

“And I!” added Pitblado.

“And I! and I!” said others, unslinging their lances.

“Thanks, my brave lads!” cried Beverley. “Go at those devils like bricks, and show them what true British pluck is!”

Attended by the first six who spoke, I galloped back to where the poor fellow lay, heedless of the Russian cannon shot, and the three skirmishers, in long grey coats and flat blue caps, who, after firing their rifles without effect at us, scampered off to meet their troopers. We found poor Rakeleigh quite dead, almost stripped already, and hideously mutilated about the body. He had always been particular in his person, and studiously fashionable in his dress. How often had we quizzed those bandolined moustaches, now covered with froth and blood gouts! His handsome face was terribly distorted, and his uniform was almost gone—torn from him by those brutal Russian plunderers! Watch, purse, and rings were also gone. We could but cut off a lock of his rich brown hair to send to his poor mother in Athlone. He probably had not been dead when overtaken by the Russians, as a bayonet wound was perceptible in his breast. I had barely time to remark this, when a shot from a Minie rifle whistled past me; and just as I sprang into my saddle there was a shout and a crash—we were engaged in a melee with the seven Russians. Sergeant Dashwood pinned an infantry man to the turf with his lance, and shot a trooper with the pistol which he grasped in his bridle-hand. A gigantic Russian dragoon, with a red snub nose, a thick black beard, and coarse green uniform, all over red braid, cut through the shaft of Pitblado’s lance, inflicting on his shoulder a wound which many a volunteer officer would give a good round sum for the honour of possessing; but, quick as lightning, Willie’s sword was out, and, after a few passes, he clove him through the glazed helmet down to the nose. It was one of those tremendous strokes we read of sometimes, but seldom see; such a stroke as that which Bruce gave Bohun, when he “broke his good battle-axe” in front of the Scottish line. It rather appalled our new acquaintances, who spurred away, dragging their two infantry men with them. We then rode back to the regiment at a hand-gallop; for we were compelled to leave the body of poor Rakeleigh. What became of it I know not; but every vestige of it had disappeared when we marched past that way on the morrow.

And so, as the twilight came down on land and ocean—on the plains of the Chersonesus Taurica, and the waters of the Black Sea—ended this “first approach to a passage at arms between Russia and the Western Powers;” and Lord Raglan rejoiced in the steadiness and coolness displayed by his slender force of cavalry in the now forgotten skirmish of Bulganak, which the greater glories of the following day so completely eclipsed.

“Poor Rakeleigh,” said Beverley, as we gradually gathered at the place where we had squatted before the alarm was given, and threw off our accoutrements, while the grooms were unbitting our horses; “poor lad—lying yonder to-night, mutilated and unburied—his first engagement, too! Thank Heaven, his mother and sister don’t see him as we have done! But greater work is to come.”

“Aw—the dooce, colonel!” said Berkeley, who, after the past danger, was smoking his cigar vigorously, in a great flow, or rather revulsion, of spirit; “what do you mean—haw—to infer?”

“That to-morrow we shall see the Russians, where their strength is all concentrated in position on the heights of Alma!”

His words were rather prophetic; but all knew that matters must come to the musket ere long. We passed the wine bottle from hand to hand, and wrapped our cloaks and blankets about us preparatory to passing the night as best we could. We were certainly less chatty and hilarious than before, and had quite relinquished our jovial friend, Mr. Punch. Doubtless each one was reflecting that poor Jack Rakeleigh’s fate might have been his own. If mine, would Louisa have shed a tear for me? The doubt was a pang! We saw no more of General Baur, who fell back towards the river Alma in the night; but long after we thought the affair over, a shell, the last missile fired, came souse from a long gun into our bivouac, and caused a new alarm.

Pitblado, after his wound was dressed, was about to feed his horse, and placed the corn in a tin platter on the ground. While grooming the charger, he saw a large raven come to feed at the corn. Twice he threw a stone at it in vain—the greedy bird continued its repast obstinately. On the third occasion, armed with another stone, he ran towards it, on which the raven flew into a tree, where he croaked as angrily as if he had Elijah to feed as well as himself. At that moment a shell—a five-inch one—came whistling from the other side of the stream, and exploded on the very place Pitblado had left, disembowelling and killing his horse; so, in this instance, a raven was not the precursor of evil fortune, or, as Willie said, sadly, while contemplating his dying charger, “one hoodiecrow didna bode an ill wind.”

At a future period I was fated to see more of the gallant Schleswiger who commanded the Russian reconnaissance at Bulganak; but there is an anecdote connected with his origin, and how he became a soldier, so creditable to human nature, and that which is dying fast among us, genuine love of home, that I may be pardoned relating it here, just as Beverley told it in our bivouac—especially as it is only to be found in the old Utrecht Gazette, or the scarcer memoirs of a Scottish soldier of fortune, Count Bruce, neither of which may be within the reader’s reach. Prior to the conclusion of the dispute between Denmark and the ducal house of Gottorp, when the Muscovite troops were in Schleswig and Holstein, their cavalry were commanded by a general named Baur—a soldier of fortune, who had attained his rank by merit and bravery alone, his family and country being secrets to all save himself. His troops occupied Husum, a small seaport at the mouth of the Hever, while he, with his staff, lived in the old palace of the Duke Karl Peter of Gottorp, who became Emperor of Russia, and lorded it over the people with somewhat of a high hand. The little bailiwick was then a charming place. The green meadows were fertile and rich, and spotted by golden buttercups; the uplands were well tilled, and covered with wavy corn, or deep rich clover; the farmhouses, of red brick and bright, yellow thatch, were wondrously clean and pretty, their quaint porches covered with flowing trailers, and borders gay with gorgeous hollyhocks.

The windmills whirled gaily in the breeze, and the laden boats, their brown sails shining in the sun, floated lazily down the clear waters of the river towards the calm and dark blue sea that stretched in the distance far away—that sea where, as the Schleswigers aver, Waldemar and Paine Jager, the Wild Huntsman, and Gron Jette, were never tired of hunting and killing the mermaids, who sat on the slimy rocks, combing their hair, and singing in the moonshine. All was peaceful, and all so calm and rural, that the good men of Schleswig, their plump wives and pretty daughters, trembled at the woes that might be wrought among them by their bearded visitors from the Neva and the Wolga; and more than ever were they alarmed on hearing that the general of the Muscovites had sent for poor old Michel Baur, the miller by the wooden bridge, and also for his wife, who went with many misgivings to the palace of the duke, over which the standard with the cruel double eagle of the Czars was flying.

“Make yourselves easy, my good people,” said the Russian general, kindly, as they entered the great hall, with eyes abashed and shrinking hearts; “I mean only to do you a service, so this day you shall dine with me.”

Dine—dine with him—the general of the Muscovites? Did they hear aright, or did their ears deceive them? Then he set the goodman Michel and his goodwife Gretchen at table among the splendidly attired and brilliantly accoutred officers of his staff—those counts and colonels of Uhlans, hussars and cuirassiers, who gnawed their moustaches, and raised their fierce eyebrows superciliously, with wonder and inquiry, at proceedings so novel; while some of the younger laughed covertly at the terror and bewilderment of the worthy couple, who, however, ate heartily of dainties to which they were all unused, after their first alarm subsided. The Muscovite general, who sat between them, at the head of the table, with a kind smile on his handsome face—for handsome it was, though his hair was now thin and grey—asked Michel many questions about his family and household affairs—how the mill prospered and flour sold in the market.

Then Michel, who scarcely ventured to raise his eyes from the order, with the cross batons and crown of St. Andrew of Russia, which sparkled on the general’s breast, told him that he was the eldest son of his father, who had been a miller at the same mill years and years ago, even when Frederick V. of Denmark, married to the Princess Louisa of Great Britain, was a boy.

“The eldest son, say you, Michel?”

“Yes, herr general,” replied the miller, smoothing down his white hair nervously.

“Then you had, at least, a brother?”

“Yes, herr general; poor Karl. He disappeared.”

“How?”

“Some said he became a soldier, others that he was spirited away by the fairies,” said Gretchen.

“Many a prayer my good wife and I have said for Karl, though it is so long since he was lost; and in his memory we have named our only son Karl, too.”

On hearing this, the Russian general became greatly moved, and, seeing that the astonishment of his officers at the interest he took in these humble rustics could no longer be repressed, he rose, and taking Michel and his wife by the hand—“Gentlemen,” said he, “you know me but as a soldier of fortune, and have often been curious to learn who I am, whose breast the Emperor has covered with stars and orders, and whence I came. This village is my native place. In yonder crumbling mill by the wooden bridge I was born. This is my brother Michel, and Gretchen, his wife! I am Karl Baur, son of old Karl, the miller of Husum. Here was I bairn ere I relinquished my miller’s dusty coat to become a soldier. Oh, brother Michel, who then could have spaed*** the present?” he added, in their old native dialect, as he embraced the wondering pair.

“I was supposed to have been stolen on St. John’s night by the golden-haired Stillevolk of the marshes, or the cranky old red-capped Trolds, who dwelt among the green holms; but it was not so. I became a hussar under Duke Karl Peter of Gottorp, and have risen to be what thou seest—general of cavalry under our father the Emperor! So drink a deep becker of our Danish beer, brother Michel; drink to the old times of our boyhood, and fear not. I know our patrimony is but one of the poor Bauerhafen, which are divided according to the number of ploughs; but to-morrow thy hufe shall be a Freihufen, Michel, free of all burdens, even to the duke’s bailiff or the King of Denmark.”

Next day the general dined at the old mill, where he sat upon the same hard stool he had used in boyhood, supping his Schleswig groute with a horn spoon from a wooden platter. In memory of the olden time, he placed a marble cross above his parent’s grave. Three days after the trumpets were heard, and the army marched from Schleswig to return no more; but the general—the same General Bauer who served under Suwarrow in the famous campaigns of Italy—made a plentiful provision for his poor relatives, and sent the miller’s only son, his namesake, Karl, to Court for his education, Karl rose to a high place in the household of the Czar, and it was his son, Karlovitch Bauer, who prepared so specious a trap for our advanced guard on the Bulganak—a trap happily rendered useless by the skill and foresight of our leader, the good and brave Lord Raglan.

*CHAPTER XXXVI.***

Wrapped in my cloak and blanket, I had fallen into an uneasy slumber, close by a fragment of ruined wall, the boundary, perhaps, of a deserted Tartar garden, when I was roused by Sergeant Stapylton of my troop.

“I beg pardon, sir, for disturbing you,” said he, in an apologetic way; “but as I was returning from the river side with water for some of the wounded horses, I passed a Frenchwoman, as I take her to be, dying to all appearance, and thought, as she can’t be left where she is, that if you would come and speak to her—“

“Of course,” said I, springing up; “where is she?”

“Near a grove of olive trees—just a pistol-shot or so beyond our advanced sentries. You can pass me to the front, sir, as your guide.”

Leaving the sleeping group of my brother officers, I accompanied Stapylton, with stiffened joints and chattering teeth. The morning was yet dark, but a red streak of light above the hilly ground that rose between our left flank and the Perekop road, showed where the dawn was about to break. All was still around me. Save the occasional neigh of a horse, scarcely a sound broke the silence of that place, where so many thousands of our soldiers were sleeping, or dozing as men may do, after reflecting that the night which was passing away might be their last in the land of the living, and that the coming day must find them face to face with danger, and—death! On the chill breeze of the September morning, I could hear the rush of the Bulganak over its stony bed, between which and our bivouac could be traced the line of our cavalry vedettes, seated, cloaked, in their saddles, with carbine on thigh, and the advanced sentinels, muffled in their great coats, standing motionless, with “ordered arms,” and their faces turned to the southward, where all knew the enemy lay. Passing through the Light Brigade, where each man slept beside his horse, I stumbled over a sleeper, in whom I recognized a medical officer, and asked him to accompany us, which he did readily; and, guided by Stapylton, we proceeded towards the grove of olive trees.

As we quitted the bivouac, the medical officer said—“You perceive that vapour which is rising so steadily from the ground?”

“Yes,” said I, with an irrepressible shudder; “I saw enough of it at Varna.”

“You are right,” he continued, in a low and impressive voice; “that pale, blue, fetid vapour is the cholera mist—always a bad sign. We shall have many cases on our lists ere sunset to-morrow, and Heaven knows they are full enough already. Nearly all the women and children of my regiment were buried on the roadside yesterday. A sick Frenchwoman, I think you said, sergeant?” he observed, recurring to the business in hand.

“Yes, sir,” replied Stapylton, saluting.

“Strange! What should bring her here? The French are at present far away on our right, and in the rear. I presume you have heard of what took place this evening, Captain Norcliff?”

“Where?”

“At head-quarters.”

“The little post-house on the Bulganak, where Lord Raglan passes the night?”

“Exactly. Marshal St. Arnaud, attended by Colonel Trochier, of the imperial army, rode up there to concert the plan of an attack to-morrow. So, whatever it is, our part in the play of to-morrow is already assigned us; and now, sergeant, your Frenchwoman.”

“Is here, sir, to speak for herself, if she can, poor thing.”

Close by the grove of olive trees, with a coarse blanket spread over her, lay the woman of whom Stapylton had spoken.

“Cholera!” said the surgeon, as he turned down the blanket, and knelt beside her; “cholera, and in the last stages, too. No pulse can be felt, the extremities cold and rigid, the face ghastly, the strength exhausted. I can be of no use here,” he added to me, in a low voice. “A little time and all will be over.”

From my hunting flask he poured a little brandy between the lips of the sufferer, who proved to be a soeur de charite, by her white coif and black serge dress; and, on drawing nearer, imagine what were my sensations on recognising, through the twilight of the coming day, the pale and convulsed features of Sister Archange—of Mademoiselle de Chaverondier! An exclamation of sorrow and astonishment burst from me. All the memory of her kindness when I lay sick in the house of the Armenian merchant at Varna; all her singleness of heart; all her purity and self-devotion; all the memory of her story, and of her own happy home amid the mountains of Beaujolais, and how and why she had devoted herself to Heaven and acts of charity; all her simple belief in magic and miracles, with her child-like love and piety; her regard for her brother Claude, the gallant officer of Canrobert’s regiment, his wife, Cecile Montalle, and the cruel Lucrece, whose revenge wrought all their sorrow—all the memory of these things, I say, rushed upon me like a flood, as I stood, bewildered, by the side of the dying girl—dying like an outcast in that wild and savage place—and they deeply moved me. To leave her to die thus, untended and uncared for, was impossible. Yet what was to be done? How was I to succour her? Already the trumpets of the cavalry, and the ringing bugles of the infantry, were sounding the “rouse” and the “assembly,” and the army was getting rapidly under arms—all the more rapidly that there were no tents to strike and no baggage to pack. Each man fell into the ranks on the ground where he had slept; the cavalry were mounting, the artillery were tracing their horses and limbering up, and long ere the Bay of Kalamita glittered in the rising sun, the whole British army was on the move towards the Alma.

My friend the surgeon, finding that he could do no more—that he had, perhaps, patients enough elsewhere—suggested, ere he departed, that she might be put into one of the kabitkas of the ambulance corps; but, as he assured me that she could not live above an hour, I despatched Stapylton to explain the matter to Colonel Beverley; and in a few minutes he returned with Pitblado, Lanty O’Regan, my groom, and four other lancers and our horses, and with permission for me “to look after my sick friend; but, at all risks, not to be ten minutes’ march behind the rear guard, as General Bosquet’s division was already advancing rapidly on our right flank, and the French sister might be more properly handed over to her own people.”

We lifted her into the olive thicket, out of the way of the passing troops; for already our advanced guard, under Lord Cardigan—“Prince Albert’s Own,” with their blue jackets and scarlet pelisses covered with glittering lace, and the 13th Light Dragoons—were once more splashing through the Bulganak, laughing and joking merrily, as if it were a fox that was to break cover in the Lincolnshire fens, and not the hordes of the southern and western Russias that were before them. By means of three barrel-hoops and a horse-sheet, we improvised something like that which the French term a day-tent, to hide her and her sufferings. Then the idea occurred to me as to what I could do if she survived beyond the time allotted to us by the colonel. Could I leave her in that wild place to die alone, and to lie unburied, save by the wolves and birds of prey? Alas! a very brief time now resolved all my doubts and fears. A little way apart from us, a silent and sympathetic group, my seven lancers stood, each by his horse’s head, leaning on his lance, and awaiting me. If they conversed, it was in half whispers, for they sincerely pitied the girl, those French sisters of charity being the admiration of the whole army. I was bathing her lips with some diluted brandy, when she fully, and for the first time, recognised me. Then a little smile of joy passed over her ghastly face, and she began to speak, painfully, huskily, and at long intervals.

“It is my turn now; but I am dying, you see, mon frere,” said she, “dying. Many of my sisters have died in the camp—but—but few thus.”

“Few, indeed,” said I, in a low, sad voice.

“In ardent prayers for the repose of my soul you find no solace. I say not this upbraidingly, yet the mortuary chants of the ‘Dies Irae’ and the ‘De Profundis’ will never be said for me, because I die—die thus!” she said, in a low and piercing voice, as she closed her eyes.

Perplexity was now added to my sorrow, for I knew not what the poor girl wished or meant; but I implored her to tell me how she came to be left thus alone and in illness. In the night when, asleep and weary, she had fallen unseen from a French ambulance cart, some scouting Cossacks had found and carried her off in mocking triumph; but, on finding that the deadly pestilence had seized her, they barbarously flung her into the Bulganak. She had crept ashore, and was making her way to our bivouac, when the progress of her illness became so rapid and destroying that she was reduced to the condition in which Stapylton found her. Such was the short story she told me, in long and painful intervals, her voice being at times so low that I had to place my ear close to her lips.

“And now,” she added, with a divine smile, which brought back much of the wonderful beauty of her face, “I am so glad—so happy that I shall die!”

“Why, ma soeur?”

“Lest I should live longer; because, in doing so, I could scarcely fail in some way to offend heaven,” replied the poor girl. “I confessed me two days ago—I die in peace, and forgive those Cossaques—mon ami—mon frere, I should say—you will close my eyes—you will see me buried—promise me that you will!”

I could only answer her by my tears; and strange it seemed that all around the thicket where this solemn scene was acting, and when the spirit of this good being was hovering between eternity and time, the thousands of our army, horse, foot, and artillery, with ammunition and stores, were pouring past in the bright morning sunshine, towards the passage of the Bulganak.

All around was instinct with the glitter and bustle of martial life; but within that olive grove was death, sublime humility, and suffering.

“Are you in pain now?” I asked, as this thought occurred to me.

“Oh, no—pain is long since passed away. If I could but live till three in the afternoon, I could then die more than ever happily.”

“Why at three?”

“For at that time our Blessed Lord yielded up his soul on Calvary!” said she, with a voice of enthusiasm, while a strange brightness seemed to pass over all her face.

As she turned restlessly her eyes fell upon Sergeant Stapylton and the lancers, and beckoning them forward, she bestowed her blessing on each; and they listened with bowed heads, and took off their caps. I was deeply moved, and drew a pace or two aside.

“Heaven has always been so good to me,” she muttered, in broken English, as the sergeant placed his cloak as a pillow under her head; “because, as you must know, messieurs les soldats, my mother dedicated me to heaven, and I am a child of the Holy Virgin.”

Poor Stapylton, a worthy but stolid John Bull, looked rather bewildered by this information; but my Irish groom understood her.

“Thrue for you, miss,” said Lanty, wiping his eyes with the worsted tassels of his yellow sash. “Oh, it’s fast she’s goin’ to glory, the poor cratur. Oh, never a ha’porth she thinks of herself; but it is us she’s prayin’ for, boys.”

“Other souls than mine shall pass away to-day, for ere nightfall a great battle is to be fought—I know that.”

At that moment, through an opening in the olive trees, we saw a regiment of infantry marching past in close column of subdivisions, with the band in front, colours flying, and bayonets gleaming in the sun. It was our 88th, of gallant memory, with Colonel Shirley riding at the head of the column, and the drums and fifes made the blue welkin ring to the air of “The Young May Moon.” She looked wistfully at the defiling ranks; there was so much of life there, so much of death here! Then, clasping her white hands, which were so thin and tremulous, and, closing her eyes, she began to repeat a little prayer in Latin, for those who were to fall on both sides—the Russians as well as the English.

Of that prayer I can only remember a single sentence—

“O clementissime Jesu, amator animarum, lava in sanguine Tuo peccatores totius mundi, nunc positos in agonia et hodie morituros.”***

Then, whispering something of her “mother who was in heaven, kneeling for her before the Mother of God,” the pure spirit of this French girl passed out into the black night of eternity. We stood for a time silent, and nothing roused us but our rear-guard defiling to the front from the right of troops, and then the orders of the colonel recurred to me. Were I to live a thousand years I shall never forget the calm and soothing, yet sorrowful, impression made upon me by this poor girl’s death. I closed her eyes, and their long, dark lashes fell over the pale cheek, from which they never more would rise, and she lay under the poor horse-rug, looking so calm, with a peaceful and beautiful expression on her sweet dead face. Her hands were now folded on her breast; her black ebony crucifix had fallen from them; but Lanty O’Regan replaced it gently, and kindly closed the stiffening fingers round it, and there was a big sob in Lanty’s throat as he did so. Death brought back all the strange loveliness of other days to Sister Archange; and I could not behold her lying there, looking so peaceful, so white and still, without feeling my heart very full indeed. For when I saw so much self-devotion, poverty, and charity united with peace and goodwill to all mankind—to Christian and Osmanli, to friend and foe alike—it seemed to me truly that of such as she was the kingdom of God. I kissed the dead girl’s forehead as we drew the horse-rug over her, and prepared for her interment, as we had not a moment to lose.

The soil was soft, and we had only our sword-blades and hands to dig with; but we contrived to scoop a hole about three feet deep. Reverently, as if she had been their sister, my comrades laid her in it, and then we heaped the mould above her. She lies in that little thicket of olives, about a mile from Bulganak, and sleeps in what is called unconsecrated earth; though the ashes of that sister of charity might bring a blessing on the city of the Sultan. We now mounted, put our horses to full speed, and soon passing our rear-guard, came up with our brigade, and rejoined the regiment. By this time the whole army was on the march to force the position of the Alma, and already our right flank was almost united to the left of the French column under General Bosquet, as the allies advanced together.

*CHAPTER XXXVII.***

While these events were occurring by the shore of the Euxine, brown autumn was spreading her sober tints upon the Scottish woods; and one seldom sees the country more attractive than when its beauty is decaying, and a soothing sadness mingles with our delight.

The long grass is dank in the shady places, for there the dew falls early at eve, and lingers long after sunrise; and now in Calderwood Glen the dark leaves of the chestnuts were varied by the golden yellow of the lime tree, whose frail leaves are among the earliest to whirl before the gusty autumn wind.

Already the first leaves—the early spoil of the season—were lying in the long, shady avenue, or were gathered in heaps, even as the breeze had swept them, about the well of James V., the yew hedgerows, and the grass walks of the antique Scottish garden, where tradition avers that Anne of Denmark flirted with the bonnie Earl of Gowrie. There the asters and dahlias still contended for a place with the old-fashioned hollyhock. Summer had gone; but the corn-marigold and the gorgeous crimson poppy yet lingered among the yellow stubble, or on the green burn braes; scarlet hips and haws made gay the hedgerows, and the ladybirds were pecking at the sweet apples in the orchard. The shadows of the flying clouds passed over the green mountain slopes, over Largo’s lofty cone, the round swelling Lomonds—the Mamelles of Fife, as a French officer not inaptly termed them—the breeze of the German Sea came up the long, fertile Howe, and brought softly to the ear the lowing of cattle from Falkland Woods and many a cosy homestead. The autumn was lovely in Calderwood Glen; but the old manor house seemed empty and silent, and the heart of Cora was sad, for—

and she knew that the same autumnal sun which was browning the woods of Scotland was lighting her kilted regiments on their path of death and peril by the Alma. There were times when Cora thought that, bitter though it was, this hopeless sorrow for the absence of one she loved, how sweet it might have been—how sadly sweet—had Newton loved her in return. Ah! it had not been hopeless then; but Newton loved another, who loved him too. Yet, did that other love him so well as she, poor quiet Cora, did? And would she love him always? Then, when she heard the thistlefinch, with its golden wings, singing among the linden trees, the words of the old, old song seemed to come home truly to her heart as she hummed them over.

Ladies were setting forth to join the army of the East as nurses! An idea occurred to her, and then she shrank from it, for Cora was not one of our strong-minded British females but a good and kind-hearted, earnest and high-souled Scottish girl; and it is a peculiarity of the women of Scotland ever to shrink from publicity; and, somehow, public life seems neither their forte nor their role.

“Ah, oh!” thought Cora; “what if this is not merely a separation, but a loss for ever!”

No battle had yet been fought; but already many men had perished at Varna, at Scutari, and elsewhere, of fever and cholera. And so, often as she wandered alone in the garden walks, by the old Battle Stone in the woods, by the Adder’s Craig, or King James’s Well, she wept, as she thought of the lively young lancer whom she had last seen marching for the East, and still more for her early playmate and cousin, who in boyhood so petted her at home.

And when Cora would say, or old Willie Pitblado would read, that the lancers had embarked, that they had touched at Gibraltar, at Malta—that they were at Varna or elsewhere—he would pause, and look up wistfully, saying—“Nae word yet o’ my Willie?”

“But the papers don’t mention Captain Norcliff either.”

“Ay, ay, true, Miss Cora,” the old man would mutter, and shake his head at omissions so strange.

Anxiety, love, and fear injured the poor girl’s health. She was alternately resigned and gentle, or short-tempered and irritable. Though frequently self-absorbed and pre-occupied, she strove, by affected gaiety, to prove to those about her that she was neither. By turns she was grateful for sympathy or irritated by it, while her craving for news about the army of the East became a source of speculation—shall we call it friendly?—among such sharp-witted visitors as the Mesdames Spittal and Rammerscales, the wife of the parish minister, or the slavishly suave Mrs. Wheedleton, the rib of the village lawyer.

To add to her annoyances, she had a new admirer in young Mr. Brassy Wheedleton—a newly-fledged legal prig—who had in his hands a dispute concerning a bond over a portion of the Calderwood property, and whom, as Sir Nigel patronized him, being the son of a neighbour, a dependent, and beginner at the bar, she saw rather oftener than she cared for as a visitor at the Glen. Cora was always most irritable when a letter came from her English friends in Kent. However, her correspondence with Chillingham Park had lessened every day since the regiment left England, why neither could exactly say. Louisa’s missives were generally full of gaiety and the world of fashion, with all its tinsel glitter and heartless frivolity. As for the war, and our poor soldiers in the East, she heeded them no more than the clock of St. Paul’s, or the last year’s snow. Her last letter had been all concerning the elevation of my Lord Slubber to a marquisate (skipping the intervening titles of viscount and earl,) and enclosing a slip from a fashionable morning paper, which announced that the garter king had given to the noble peer “a coat of augmentation, in addition to the three guffins’ heads mange, of the grand Anglo-Norman line of De Gullion, with the cage in chief granted to the fourth baron of that illustrious name, by the greatest of the Plantagenets, when that chivalrous monarch hung the Scottish Countess of Buchan outside the walls of Berwick for four years in an iron cage, and when ‘ye potente and valyant Lord Slobbyr de Gulyone was captain yairof with CCC archeris.’”

This afforded her father the first hearty laugh in which he had indulged for some time past, for he, too, had become somewhat dull and peevish.

“Three guffins’ heads; Cora, this is excellent!” said the old baronet, laughing still; “it is very droll how the English snob of high family boasts of his descent from the rabble of William the Norman, just as our Scotch snob likes to deduce his pedigree from those Saxon hildings who fled from Hastings, or the savage Danes we licked at Luncarty and elsewhere. There were Calderwoods in the Glen before either of those times! What says the old rhyme?

Sir Nigel’s old chum, General Rammerscales, was laid up with the gout and jungle fever, and their political friend, Lickspittal, was absent in Parliament—where, like a true Scottish M.P., he served to fill the house, to vote with the lord advocate or the majority, to work on all committees (which paid); but, of course, remaining as oblivious of Scottish interests as of those of the Sioux Indians.

Now that he was residing almost permanently at the old manor house—the Place of Calderwood, as it was named par excellence—Sir Nigel became somewhat infected by his daughter’s melancholy. Thoughts of his two dead sons—Nigel, who fell at Goojerat, of his pet boy Archie, and also of his nephew, his favourite sister’s only son, exposed to all the perils of disease and war in Turkey—recurred to him again and again, as he wandered through the rooms and under the old linden trees that had often echoed to their voices in infancy; and he thought of how the old estates, and the title first granted by King Charles to Sir Norman Calderwood, Primus Baronettorum Scotiae, would go after his death, an event which he knew must happen some day; for, though hale and hearty yet, he felt that he rode a stone or two heavier now, was apt to “funk” at a sunk fence, and was finding that noble brute Splinterbar a trifle hard in the mouth for his bridle-hand now.

Even Cora’s old song of “The Thistle and Rose” only served to make him sad—to make him think of those who had sung it long, long ago; and then he would order another bottle of that rare, creamy old claret, that Mr. Binns kept among the cobwebs, in a particular corner of the cellar, for themselves.

Faithful old Davie Binns! He had grown grey, white, and bald in the service of the Calderwoods, like his fathers before him, and like many other servants in that kind old Scottish household—one, indeed, “of the olden time.” If he had been dismissed for a dereliction of duty, he would have thought the world was coming to an end, and doubtless would have flatly refused to go; for Davie was one of a class of servitors that are passing away, even in Scotland and Ireland; and from the sister-kingdom I fear they have long since vanished.

Accompanied by old Willie, Sir Nigel and a friend or two had occasionally a shot at the partridges in the stubble or the turnip-fields; but when the first meet of the hounds took place their master was absent.

In vain the horns were blown by Largo’s slopes and Balcarris Wood; in vain the dogs gave mouth, and yelped, and wagged their upright tails. The cover was drawn, and every spur struck deep, as the huntsmen sped over dyke and ditch, by loch, and moor, and mountain; but Sir Nigel was sorrowing at his house in the Glen, and his favourite hunters, Saline and Splinterbar, were forgotten in their stalls.

Why was this?

On a Sunday towards the end of September—a Sunday which many must recall with sorrow—mysteriously, as if borne in the air, there passed a whisper over all the land of a great event that had happened far, far away; and that whisper found an echo in many a heart and home in England—in many an Irish mud cabin and Scottish glen—in many a high and many a humble dwelling.

In the quaint old village kirk of Calderwood, during the morning service, it passed along the pews from ear to ear among the people, even to the old haunted aisle of St. Margaret, where Cora sat (her sweet, earnest eyes intent on the preacher, though her thoughts were far away) beside her father in his carved oak seat, with all its armorial bearings overhead; for he was lord of all the glen and manor—a little king, but a very kind one, among the peasantry there.

So, on this calm, sunny summer morning, when no sound disturbed the preacher’s voice but the rustle of the oak woods without, or the twittering of the martins in their nests among the Gothic carvings, there came vaguely to the pastoral glen—vaguely, wildly, no one knew how—news that a great battle had been fought far, far away in the East, and that we had lost four, five, some said even six thousand men; but that we were, thank God, victorious.

Pausing in his sermon, while his eyes kindled and his cheek flushed as they had never done when detailing the bloody wars of the Jews and Egyptians, the aged minister announced the tidings from the pulpit, adding (the first false rumour) “that the Duke of Cambridge had fallen at the head of the Guards and our own Highland lads, as he led them, sword in hand, up the braes of the Alma.”

Every eye turned to St. Margaret’s aisle, where, through the painted windows, the yellow sunshine streamed on Sir Nigel’s silver hair and Cora’s smooth dark braids, for all knew that they had a dear kinsman in that distant field, and when the minister asked the people to join with him in prayer for those who might fall, and for the widows and orphans of the slain, it was with earnest, humble, and contrite hearts that the startled and anxious rustics added their voices to his.

Cora covered her face with her handkerchief; and old Pitblado looked round him, grim and sternly as any Covenanter who ever wore a blue bonnet; but the poor man’s heart was full of tears, as he prayed to heaven that his Willie might be safe. Besides, as a native of Fife, he had much of the old and inbred horror of soldiering peculiar to that peninsula, since those dark days when the Fifeshire infantry found their graves on the field of Kilsythe.

Ere the red autumn sun went down beyond the green hills of Clackmannan, the electric wire had announced the passage of the Alma over all the length and breadth of the land—flashing over all Europe, from the shores of the Bosphorus to those of the Shannon.

But in reply to a message sent by Sir Nigel to the War Office—a telegram despatched to soothe the agony of love—came the brief but terrible answer—

“The name of your nephew is among the killed!”

“Papa—papa—among the killed—among the killed!” Cora exclaimed, after the first stunning paroxysm of her grief was past.

“Yet I do not despair, Cora,” said the old man, in his bewilderment, caressing her, and not knowing what to say, while remembering the keen bitterness that the gazette of Goojerat brought to his heart, when there he read the name of his eldest son and hope—his dark and handsome Nigel.

“Oh, do not speak of hope to me, papa. Poor Newton, I did so love him! I cannot dare to hope!”

“Dearest Cora, we have no details. He may be missing. I have heard of many returned so in the old Peninsular times. My old friend, Jack Oswald, of Dunnik, among others; but he was always found under a heap of dead men, or so forth.”

“But the telegram says distinctly, among the killed—his body, his poor, mangled body, must have been seen—“

“Colonel Beverley will write to me. In a few days we shall know all the particulars.”

“Even were he only wounded, I should be miserable; but to know that he is dead—dead—Newton dead—buried far, far away by strangers, and among strangers, and that I shall never, never see him more! Oh, papa—my dear papa!” she exclaimed, as she flung herself upon his breast, “I loved Newton dearly—far more dearly than life!”

And so the great secret escaped her in her grief.

*CHAPTER XXXVIII.***

After the troops crossed the Bulganak, strict silence was enjoined, and no drum was beaten or bugle blown. Scattered parties of Russian cavalry scoured all the ground before us; and as they galloped to and fro, the gleam of Cossack lances, the flash of a carbine, or the steady glitter of sword-blades and cuirasses, shone at times from among the groves of the turpentine trees, and between the rocky undulations of the landscape. Thus we, the British, could not make ourselves quite aware of the nature of the ground we were approaching, while the French marched straight and confidently towards certain great cliffs, which had been carefully reconnoitred from the sea on the extreme right, and which they were to storm, with the village of Almatamack, at the point of the bayonet. At nine o’clock, the French on our right—Bosquet’s column—halted, and quietly cooked their coffee, while our troops were still moving laboriously over rough ground, to bring our flank closer to theirs; and now, far beyond the extended columns of the allies—those long, bright lines of bayonets, sloped barrels, and waving colours that shone in the sun of a lovely morning—we saw the dark smoke of the war-steamers towering into the clear air, as they crept in-shore, seeking opportunities to open fire upon the Russian’s lofty position; and at twenty minutes past ten we heard the first cannon booming, as they threw their shot among the imperial troops in rear of the telegraph station, which was distant nearly five thousand metres from the shore. Two more protracted halts took place, while final consultations were made between Lord Raglan and Marshal St. Arnaud; but still we were drawing nearer the scene of the coming conflict.

Before us rolled the Alma—a picturesque river—which takes its rise among the western slopes of the Chatyrdagh, in Crim Tartary, and falls into the Euxine, about twelve miles from Sebastopol. High rises its southern bank into picturesque rocks, that in some places are precipitous, and terminate in a lofty cliff which overhangs the sea; and this formidable position was to be defended against us by more than thirty-nine thousand Russians and one hundred and six pieces of cannon, led by Prince Alexander Menschikoff, one of the Emperor’s most distinguished generals, who had entered the world as the son of a poor pastrycook, but who now held the supreme civil and military command in the Crimea. A round shot from a Turkish cannon had mutilated him severely at the siege of Varna, and hence the hatred he bore the race and faith of the Osmanlis was deep and fierce. His skill was not equal to his presumption, for he fully thought—as a letter found in his carriage by Captain Travers of ours, after the battle, asserted—that if the three invading armies were not routed at the Alma, he would be fully able to defend its hills for three weeks, until the Emperor sent him reinforcements from the steppes of Bessarabia.

Two miles from the mouth of the Alma stood the picturesque little village of Burliuk. It was now in flames, and the smoke of the conflagration was rolling among the vineyards, which covered the slope that extended between the stream and the base of those cliffs along which glittered the hostile lines of the Russian army. Two miles in length those lines extended along the hills, which were intersected by deep ravines. On every ridge strong batteries of cannon swept the approaches to these; deep trenches were dug along the mountain slopes, and therein were posted the infantry. Constructed on the side of the Kourgane Hill, which rises to the height of six hundred feet above the Alma, was an enormous battery, forming two sides of a triangle, and mounting fourteen heavy guns, thirty-two pounders, and twenty-four pound howitzers. The ascent to this was commanded by three other batteries, mounting twenty-five guns. To assail the Kourgane Hill—the right wing of the Russian army—with all its cannon, howitzers, and trenches, was the task assigned to the Light Division under Sir George Brown, supported by the Duke of Cambridge, with the Guards and Highlanders; and so intent was Menschikoff on its defence, that he had there concentrated sixteen battalions of regular infantry, two battalions of sailors, and two brigades of field-pieces. Near them were many ladies in carriages from Sebastopol, and elsewhere, waiting to see the “English curs” beaten.

During one of the protracted halts referred to, I could not help thinking how lovely was the morning for the unholy work we had in hand! The sun was without a cloud, and the soft breeze of the September morn played along the grassy slopes, rustling the leaves of the olive and turpentine groves, and the broader foliage of the vineyards, till at last even its breath died away upon the summit of the hostile hills. “It was then that in the allied armies there occurred,” says Kinglake, “a singular pause of sound—a pause so general as to have been observed and remembered by many in remote parts of the ground, and so marked that its interruption by the mere neighing of an angry horse seized the attention of thousands; and although this strange silence was the mere result of weariness and chance, it seemed to carry a meaning; for it was now that, after nearly forty years of peace, the great nations of Europe were once more meeting for battle!”

The French steamers were now shelling the heights, the Russians making but a poor response; and just as a bomb, splendidly thrown by the former, among the smoke wreaths that curled round the brow of the cliffs, unmasked an ambush which had been prepared for the advancing Zouaves, after the smoke cleared away, showed by the prostrate forms of the riflemen it slew, how well it had done its fatal work—just as I was watching this episode, through my glass, I heard Studhome say, “Norcliff, we are to go to the front.”

“Ours, alone?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Can’t say; but you see the danger of having a reputation, Newton,” said Jack, laughing, for he was in unusual high spirits. “We lancers served against the Pindarees in Central India, at Neerbudda, and elsewhere—the men and horses, poor nags, change; but the name and the number remain. Thus, you see what the honour of having a good name and gallant number costs us. The lancers must advance.”

“Only your squadron, Captain Norcliff,” said Colonel Beverley, cantering up to where we were halted in brigade; “you will advance and extend to double the usual skirmishing distance, simply to feel the enemy.”

I saluted and gave the command, “Threes right—left-wheel—forward,” and away we went at a swinging trot, with plumes and pennons glittering in the air.

“If they hit you, Bill?” cried one of our men to Sergeant Dashwood, of Wilford’s troop, which formed the left of my squadron.

“Bah! I escaped often enough in India,” said the sergeant, laughing; “and, please Heaven, were it only for my poor wife’s sake, I shall do so again.”

It did not please Heaven, however, for within one hour after this worthy Sergeant Dashwood was lying on his back, pale and stiff, with a bullet in his heart.

As we halted, formed line to the front, and extended from the right at full speed, I heard Jocelyn of ours, a wild and extravagant fellow, say to Sir Henry Scarlett, “I wonder how many infernal post obits will be cancelled to-day!”

We now advanced slowly over the open ground, halting at times, and every moment gave us a clearer and nearer view of the enemy’s position.

I looked to the rear. How steadily they were coming on, those splendid lines of British infantry—the Royal and the Welsh Fusiliers, the 19th, and 33rd, and Connaught Rangers—stretching far away from flank to flank, in scarlet—that glorious and historic colour, which fills at once the eye and the mind—their bayonets flashing in the sun, and their colours threateningly advanced, but hanging listless, for the wind had died away. Thousands of those who were now marching there, in youth, and pride, and health—whose place at home was still vacant in many a parent’s heart—were doomed to fatten the earth with their bones, and make the grass of future summers grow greener on the slopes of the Alma. Strong memories of my early youth, of my dead mother’s face and voice, were with me now, and tears came too—I scarcely knew why; but I felt somewhat as if in a dream. I had a strong yearning also to see the proud Louisa, the tender Cora Calderwood, and my kind old uncle—those I might never see again.

I strove to imagine how Louisa Loftus would bear the shock of hearing that I had fallen—if fall I should. When and by whom would the news be broken to her? I thought, too, of the quiet old woods of Calderwood Glen, under the shadow of the greater Lomond. There, at least, all was peace, thank Heaven; and in my heart I prayed that long, long might it be so. And strange it was, too, that in this exciting time, when so many thousands of various races were about to close in the shock of battle—when a few minutes more might see me face to face with death—death by the cannon, the rifle, or the sabre—even while the explosion of the French shells rung every instant in the air—there flickered in my memory snatches of frivolous musical strains, and one or two trivial mess-room incidents; so that the vast array along the Alma seemed almost a phantasmagoria. But here a hand was laid upon my bridle arm. It was the hand of my faithful follower, Willie Pitblado, who slung his lance, and, sinking the soldier in the friend and countryman, said, while his bright grey eyes sparkled under his lancer cap—

“Hear you that, sir? It is the pipes of the Highland brigade!”

We were so far to the right of our squadron as to be close to the division of the Duke of Cambridge, which was composed of the Grenadier, Coldstream, and Scots Fusilier Guards, with three of the Highland regiments (the 42nd, 79th, and 93rd), whose pipers were now playing each the pibroch of their corps during the second halt; and then over all the field the old wild “memory of a thousand years” was kindled in every Scotchman’s heart. I felt his enthusiasm; I saw that Willie felt it too, and in the kindly smile we exchanged there was conveyed a world of hidden sentiment. Wild, barbarous, and uncouth as it may be deemed—an instrument, perhaps, beyond improvement—the voice of the war-pipe seldom falls without a strange and stirring effect upon the Scottish ear; and let neither Englishman nor Irishman ever trust that Scot who hears it unmoved by the love of country and of home. There is something rotten at his heart’s core! In whatever part of the distant world a Scotchman hears its strange notes, and the hoarse hum of its deep bass drones, it sets him dreaming of home; of the old thatched cottage in the mountain-glen, where the trouting burn gurgles under the long yellow broom, or “the auld brigstane” where he fished in boyhood; and with its voice come back the faces of “the loved, the lost, the distant, and the dead,” and the glories and the battles of the years that are gone. He sees, too, the old kirk, where he prayed by his mother’s knee; the graveyard, with all its mossy stones, and the forms of those who are lying there rise again in memory’s eye. So the storm-beaten Isleman may seem to hear once more the waves that lash on Jura’s rocks, or the scream of the wild birds over Scarba’s shore, when ploughing far away in the wastes of the Indian Sea. It is difficult to define what this influence is; but that Scot is little to be envied who hears the warpipe unmoved, when far away from home, or as we heard it on that day beside the Alma; and though proud of his lancer regiment, I could see that my comrade Willie’s heart was with the Highlanders, whose dark plumes were tossing on our right. It was at this time that Sir Colin Campbell, in his quiet, grave way, said to one of his officers, as the historian before quoted records, “This will be a good time for the men to get loose half their cartridges.”

“And when the command travelled along the ranks of the Highlanders, it lit up the faces of the men one after another, assuring them that now, at length, and after long expectance, they indeed would go into action. They began obeying the order, and with beaming joy, for they came of a warlike race; yet not without emotion of a grave kind. They were young soldiers, and new to battle.”

But now the trumpets recalled us to our brigade in rear of the infantry, who had the chief work of that bloody day to do. And just as we wheeled into our places, a roar of musketry on our right announced that the impetuous French had commenced the attack! The enemy’s shot and shell were coming souse among us now, and many heard for the first time the fierce rushing sound, and then the mighty shock, as a bullet ripped up the earth, or swept a man away; while shells that burst in mid-air fell in hissing showers, that tore our clothing with their jagged edges, when they failed to wound. Dashing through the Alma, in front of the steep cliffs, under a terrific shower of round shot, grape, and musketry, which clothed the whole face of the slopes with spouting lines of white smoke, streaked with flashes of fire, waking a thousand echoes in the sky above and earth below, the French poured forward in yelling and impetuous masses. Fresh from their campaigns and conquests in burning Algeria, those fierce little Zouaves, in their blue jackets, red breeches, and turbans, active as mountain goats, were seen swarming up at the point of the bayonet, and forming in two lines, which charged with headlong rush on the astonished Muscovites, whose general, being thus completely outflanked on the cliffs being scaled, sought, but sought in vain, to change his front, and drive the French from those hills they had taken so rapidly and so gallantly, but at awful loss.

“Allah-Allah Hu!” was now the cry that rent the air, as the Turks advanced.

Under their green standards—the holy colour—with the crescent and star, massed in close column at quarter distance, the Turkish troops came on; and through the sea of red fezzes the cannon balls made many a deadly lane, until the battalions deployed into line, sending, as Studhome said, “many a believer to Paradise in a state of mutilation such as the houris wouldn’t appreciate.” But on they went against that sheet of lead and iron, shoulder to shoulder with the French; and many a shaven crown and many a scarlet fez, with its broad military button and blue tassel, were lying on the turf, while, with visions of the dark-eyed girls of Paradise waving their green scarves from their couches of pearl, and crying, “Come, kiss me, for I love thee,” many a grim, Turkish soul passed forth into the night of death. On the other flank were the French linesmen, crying on “Dieu, et la Mere de Dieu,” to help them in their last agony, while the sisters of charity and the vivandieres rivalled each other in the rear in their attention to the wounded and dying.

*CHAPTER XXXIX.***

At half-past one the British infantry advanced into action; like lightning the order flew along the line, for it was borne by Nolan, the impetuous and the gallant.

The village of Burliuk, the centre of our position, was still in flames that rose to a vast height, especially from the well-filled stackyards.

To the right of the conflagration, two regiments of Adams’s brigade, the Welsh*** and 49th, or Hertfordshire, crossed the river by a deep and dangerous ford, under a galling fire from the Russian Minie Riflemen, who were ensconced among the vineyards on the opposite bank. The remainder crossed on the left of Burliuk, and, both uniting beyond it, the whole division of De Lacy Evans found themselves engaged in sanguinary strife, while we, the cavalry, could but sit in our saddles and look on, but burning with impatience to advance.

On the extreme left of the British advance, the Light Division, under Sir George Brown, G.C.B. (a Peninsular veteran of the old fighting 43rd), crossed the stream in their immediate front. Rugged and precipitous, the bank rose above them. So steep was it in some places that one of our officers, when in the act of climbing, was mortally wounded by having his entire spinal column traversed by a ball, which had been fired perpendicularly down from the Russian ranks above. Dense vineyards and abattis of felled trees partially obstructed the advance of our gallant Light Division; but in vain, for the 7th, the 33rd, and Welsh Fusiliers, the 77th, and Connaught Rangers pressed on under the volleying fire; and such was their coolness, that the soldiers threw to each other bunches of the delicious crimson grapes, to quench their thirst, for they had been long in marching order under a burning morning sun. The Minie balls were showering past like hail; caps, epaulettes, ears, fingers, and teeth were torn away, and every moment the men fell fast on every hand; but from right to left the cries of “Forward! on! on! forward!” were incessant, and the human surge of the Light Division swept on, bearing with it the whole 95th regiment. Rapidly they formed in line beyond the broken ground—rapidly and magnificently—and threw their steady fire into the strong redoubts with terrible effect; but hundreds were falling on both sides, and now commenced that ever memorable charge up hill by which we won the Alma. Faintly in the air came a yell of defiance from the Russians; it was very different from “the strong-lunged, massive-throated, deep-chested outbursts of cheering” that ran along the ranks of the British infantry.

Conspicuous on a grey horse, amid the clouds of passing smoke, we could see old Sir George Brown, riding as he had ridden with the Light Division of other days, at Busaco and Talavera. A deadly sheet of fire now tears through the 7th Fusiliers—led by Lacy Yea—they waver, but re-form! By the same fire the 23rd are decimated, and Colonel Chester falls at their head, shouting, “On, lads, on!” Relief after relief is shot down under the colours of the 7th. One is lost for a time; but, hurrah! it is safe among the soldiers of the Royal Welsh!

Under their colour, young Anstruther (the son of my uncle’s neighbour, Balcaskie) is shot dead, and the poor boy rolls down the hill, enveloped in its silken folds; but again it waves in the wind, as Private Evans snatches it up, and bears it on towards the Great Redoubt.

Thicker fall the dead on every hand, for it is all musketry, and the deep, hoarse boom of the cannon, surging like a stormy sea, roll upon roll. The wounded are crawling, limping, and streaming to the rear; the dead lie close as autumn leaves in Vallombrosa. On stretchers and crossed muskets, officers and men are borne to the riverside, and, reeking with blood, the stretchers return for other victims. Hythe is forgotten now, and all her science of musketry; for no man thinks of sighting his Minie rifle, but all load, and cap, and blaze away at random, though many an officer is shouting, “Steady, men, steady, and aim below the crossbelts.”

On, yet on, rolls the human surge, for what or who could withstand them—our noble infantry, our 19th and 33rd, our 77th and 88th, as they rush on, with colours flying and loud hurrahs!

But now there is a louder cry!

Their leader falls! In a cloud of dust both horse and man go down, and for a moment the advance is paralyzed—but for a moment only.

Again the grand old soldier is at their head on foot, his sword glittering above his white head, and, reckless of the tremendous fire which sweeps through them, our troops dash at the redoubts—a mighty torrent in scarlet—the flashing bayonets are lowered—man seeks man, ready to grapple body to body with his foe, and the sparks of fire rise in the midst as steel clashes on steel, for the Russian hearts are stout and their hands are strong as ours; the dead and the dying are heaped over each other, to be trampled on and smothered in their blood.

Nine hundred of our officers and men fell, killed and wounded, amid the terrible melee in the Great Redoubt, and all up the scorched slope that leads to it. In the torn vineyards, and among the leafy abbatis, the poor redcoats are lying thicker than ever I have seen the scarlet poppies stud the harvest fields in Lothian or the Merse!

The red dragon of the Royal Welsh is flying on that fatal redoubt, but not yet is the victory ours!

Descending from the higher hills, a mighty column of Russian infantry—a double column, composed of the Ouglitz and Vladimir battalions, bearing with them the image of St. Sergius, a solemn trust given to them by the Bishop of Moscow—a supposed miraculous idol, borne in the wars of the Emperor Alexis, of Peter the Great, and Alexander I.—came rushing to the mortal shock, in full confidence of victory.

Deploying into line, the great grey mass, with their flat caps and spiked helmets—for the corps were various—came boldly on, and followed up a deadly volley by a powerful bayonet charge. Then the ranks in scarlet, exhausted by their toilsome ascent, began to waver and fall back, followed down hill by the yelling Russian hordes, who had a perfect belief in their own invincibility, and barbarously bayoneted all our wounded as they came on.

Terribly fatal was this temporary repulse to the gallant Welsh Fusiliers in particular; but now the 7th and 33rd, with the Guards and Highlanders, advanced, and again the struggle was resumed.

Of the 33rd, nineteen sergeants fell, chiefly in defence of the colours; and fourteen bullet holes in one standard and eleven in the other attested to the fury of the conflict.

Throwing open his ranks to allow the retreating regiments to re-form and recover breath, the Duke of Cambridge now brought up his division, though there was a momentary fear of its success, for an officer high in rank exclaimed—

“The brigade of Guards will be destroyed. Ought it not to fall back?”

“Better that every man of her Majesty’s Guards should lie dead upon the field than turn their backs upon the enemy!” was the stern and proud response of grim old Colin Campbell, a veteran of the old and glorious wars of Wellington, as he galloped off to put himself at the head of his Highlanders, whom he had had skilfully brought on in echelon of regiments. They reserved their fire, and advanced in solemn silence.

Terribly was our splendid brigade of Guards handled, when the Highlanders came up, and then, as Kinglake tells us, a man in one of the regiments re-forming on the slope cried, in the deep, honest bitterness of his heart, “Let the Scotsmen go on—they’ll do the work!” and, with three battalions in the kilt, Sir Colin (whose horse was killed under him) advanced to meet twelve of the flushed and furious enemy.

“Now, men,” said he, “you are going into action, and remember this, that whoever is wounded—I don’t care what his rank is—must lie where he falls. No soldier must carry off wounded men. If any one does such a thing, his name shall be stuck up in his parish kirk. Be steady—keep silence—fire low! Now, men—the army are watching us—make me proud of my Highland brigade!”

The brilliant author of “Eoethen,” an eye-witness of this part of the field, describes their movements so beautifully that I cannot resist quoting him again.

“The ground they had to ascend was a good deal more steep and broken than the slope close beneath the redoubt. In the land where those Scots were bred, there are shadows of sailing clouds skimming up the mountain side; and their paths are rugged and steep; yet their course is smooth, easy, and swift. Smoothly, easily, swiftly, the Black Watch seemed to glide up the hill. A few instants before, and their tartans ranged dark in the valley; now their plumes were on the crest.”

Another line in echelon, and another—the Cameron and the Sutherland Highlanders; and now, to the eyes of the superstitious Muscovites, the strange uniform of those troops seemed something terrible; their waving sporrans were taken for horses’ heads; they cried to each other that the Angel of Light had departed, and the Demon of Death had come!

Close and murderous was the fire that opened on them; then a wail of despair floated over the grey masses of the long-coated Russian infantry, as they broke and fled, casting away knapsacks, and everything that might encumber their flight, and, for the first time, rose the Highland cheer. “Then,” says the great historian of the war, “along the Kourgane slopes, and thence west almost home to the Causeway, the hill-sides were made to resound with that joyous and assuring cry, which is the natural utterance of a northern people, so long as it is warlike and free.”***

The Heights of the Alma were won!

*CHAPTER XL.***

The battle was fought and won; the thunder had died away along the heights of the Alma; it was all over now—that “hell of blood and ferocity” was past; and little more remained but to number the dead, and lay them in their last ghastly homes. The agonies even of the wounded—that terrible grey acre of Russian wounded—were half forgotten by the untouched; but many a bright-eyed girl in England far away, and in that northern land which was to me the dearest half of “sea-walled Albion,” who was wearing her gay muslins and flowers, would be coming forth, ere long, in the crape and sable livery of grief; for many a father and mother’s hope and pride were among the redcoats that lay so motionless and still along those fatal slopes.

The sun was verging westward, the smoke of the villanous saltpetre hung like a lurid canopy over the summit of the Kourgane Hill, and that final scene of slaughter in the Great Redoubt; and now men, who had been separated in the confusion and hurry of the conflict, were meeting again, and congratulating each other that they were spared.

We, the small force of cavalry, a thousand sabres and lancers, who had hitherto been impatient onlookers, now dashed through the river, without Lord Raglan’s authority; and, though the upsetting of a field-gun, and the slippery nature of the ford, were the cause of much delay, we reached the summit of the Kourgane Hill soon after the Highlanders had swept the foe from it. We had six guns with us, and their fire told fearfully upon the retreating masses of the Russians, who left mangled piles of dead in their rear. The battery was divided; one half our force, led by Lord Cardigan, escorting those on the right, while Lord Lucan, with the rest, conducted those that were on the left. Our orders were, also, to glean up cannon, prisoners, and other trophies.

The earl rode in advance with my squadron of lancers. We picked up a good many prisoners, who sullenly threw down their arms and submitted. These men were all light infantry, wearing flat forage-caps, and long grey coats that reached to their ankles.

On this duty we had to traverse a great portion of the field, and its aspect was harrowing; a day of slaughter was to be followed by a night of agony.

Here and there were pools of blood, in which the flies were battening, and from whence the honey-bee and the snow-white butterfly strove in vain to free their tiny pinions; and on the glacis of the Great Redoubt, where men of all regiments—but chiefly Welsh Fusiliers—lay blended together, were bodies to be seen without heads, or legs, or arms, bowels torn out, brains crushed, blood oozing from eyes, or ears, or mouths—blood, blood everywhere: for it was there that grape, canister, and round-shot had bowled through the advancing columns.

Among those ghastly piles lay an ensign of one of our line regiments—a poor boy, fresh from Eton or Harrow, struck down in his first red coat. He had a miniature in his hand—a young and beautiful girl, thought I. But Pitblado handed it to me, and then I saw that it represented a grey-haired woman, of comely and matronly aspect.

She was his mother, no doubt. Could she have seen him there!

A ball had pierced his chest. He was not quite dead; for when Pitblado poured some water between his lips, his eyes opened, and he began to mutter as if speaking to his mother—that his head lay on her breast, and he heard, in fancy, her replies.

True, in the end, to the first instinct, or first tender impulse of nature, as, when a little child, he had, under pain or wrong, hid his weeping face in his mother’s lap, the old spirit came over him; and as his dying ear seemed to hear that mother’s voice, a holy light shone over his livid face, and the poor lad died happily.

He must have been shot under his colours, for the standard belt was yet over his left shoulder.

The roar of battle was gone now, and the bushes where the dead ensign lay were literally alive with larks, thrushes, and linnets in full song.

Many of the Russian slain had half-bitten cartridges in their open mouths. Many who were shot in the head lay with their faces on the sod, and their muskets under them; and when struck in the heart, death was so instantaneous that all retained the position in which they had been shot. By their attitudes, we might know the time they had been in dying.

In one place seven of the Russian 26th—for that number was on their glazed leather helmets—lay all in a line, with their bayonets at the charge. All these men had been slain by a shower of grape, and were shot in the head or breast.

As we rode on we secured many prisoners and several battery guns; all the cannon were on stocks of wood, painted green, with white crosses on the breeches and muzzles.

And now we were traversing the Kourgane Hill, where the fine fellows of our household brigade, in their bright scarlet and black bearskins, were lying in great numbers, and close by were many of the Black Watch, but all dead. I reined in my horse, and looked at them earnestly.

The countenances of some seemed as if still in life, so far as expression went. Some were calm and resigned; some as if in prayer. Others were fierce and stern; but all were pale and white as the cold Carrara marble. The evening breeze passed over them; it lifted their hair and the black plumes in their bonnets. Then the dead seemed as if about to stir. There they lay, with the blood stiffening on their tartans. My heart was very full.

In some faces I could read a ghastly and defiant smile, and several were stretched at length, as if the friends that would ere long be sorrowing for them in their distant home were about to commit them to their winding-sheet.

Where our cannon had mauled their retreating cavalry, the horses lay in close ranks, with their long necks stretched out, and their riders beneath them, all torn, brained, or disembowelled alike by the iron storm of grape-shot that had swept through the squadron. In some places we saw only a red, muddy pulp, composed of flesh and bones, where the enemy’s brigade of guns had traversed the ground.

“War!” says a French writer; “those by whose will war comes—those who make men resemble the savage beasts—will have a fearful account to render to the righteous Judge above!”

As we passed along with our prisoners, many of our wounded reviled and execrated them, for on all hands we heard stories of Russian treachery.

Our soldiers, in some instances, when supplying their wounded enemies with water from their canteens, were shot down by the very wretch whose thirst they had just quenched. Captain Eddington, of the 95th, was murdered in this fashion by a Russian rifleman, in sight of the whole regiment, and of his brother, a lieutenant, who rushed in advance to avenge him and fell riddled with bullets. Maddened by several such incidents, our soldiers, with their musket butts, dashed out the brains of several of the wounded, slaying them like reptiles, and undeserving of mercy.

Such details are only calculated to weary and revolt; but the stern scene was not without its brighter features.

Already the surgeons were busy among the wounded, and our gallant seamen were all tenderness, sympathy, and activity, as they conveyed them on board the ships, from the rigging of which the events of that exciting day had been witnessed by thousands.

“Cheer up, sodjer,” I sometimes heard them shout, as they bore a maimed victim, pale and bloody, to the boats; “we shall all eat our Christmas duff in Sebastopol.”

Many whom they bore away were “booked” for Chelsea, “the poor soldier’s last home in the land of the living;” but many were fated to die of their wounds ere the sun of the morrow lit up the waters of the Euxine.

We were now far in the rear of the original Russian position, and were actually riding along the Sebastopol road, when Captain Bolton, of the 1st Dragoon Guards, whose sword hand was muffled in a bloody handkerchief, came galloping after us, to explain that Lord Raglan desired we should fall back at once.

“His lordship fears that you are going too far in advance,” said he, “and that the Russian flying artillery may halt and open on you. Give up all pursuit of prisoners; set loose those you have, and simply escort the guns.”

On this we halted and liberated more than a hundred prisoners of all ranks, several being officers. Some of the latter shrugged their shoulders contemptuously at the commiseration we expressed for some of the Russian wounded, who lay on the road expiring of weakness and thirst.

“Bah!” said one, in French, to me; “they are only private soldiers—peasants—and will soon die.”

His sentiments were worthy of a Russian aristocrat; but he was a grim, stern, and white-moustached officer, evidently of high rank, for his breast was covered from epaulette to epaulette with stars, medals, and crosses.

I had afterwards reason to know that this officer was General Baur, who had commanded the reconnaisance at Bulganak.

As we were retiring, we came among some of the French, and I recognised Mademoiselle Sophie, the vivandiere whom I had seen at Gallipoli and Varna, and who immediately offered me a petit verre of cognac from her little store, which I gladly accepted. She looked pale and excited, and her eyes were bloodshot.

“Our regiment has suffered heavily to-day, monsieur,” said she. “I was thrice under fire with it; but so many of my comrades fell—that—that—mon Dieu! it proved too much for me.”

“Your friend, M. Jolicoeur, of the 2nd Zouaves,” said I; “he, I hope, has escaped to-day?”

“Helas! mon pauvre Jules! he is lying yonder with ever so many more of ours,” she replied, pointing with her trembling hand to the Telegraph Battery.

“Wounded?”

“Dead, monsieur, dead! He fell when planting the standard of the 2nd Zouaves on the summit, where you may still see it flying. Poor Captain Victor Baudeuf, who used to flirt so terribly with Rigolboche, and pay such frightful sums for a fauteuil every night she danced, till Mademoiselle Theresa took her place at the cafes chantants—well, he, too, and two hundred of our rank and file, are lying there.”

The vivandiere wept and wrung her hands.

All great excitements are followed by a painful reaction; and I shall not readily forget the dreary night that followed the day of the Alma.

My troop bivouacked near the old ruined walls that lie on the western flank of the Kourgane Hill.

Vast numbers of dead were lying near; they disturbed us not. But the wounded, the dying—ah, their moans and cries were frightful! I muffled my head in my cloak, and strove to shut out the piteous-sounds, and court sleep beside my jaded charger, close to whose side I crept for warmth.

*CHAPTER XLI.***

A few days after the startling telegram reached Calderwood, the newspapers teemed with despatches and details of the victory at the Alma, the flight of the shattered Russian Army towards Baktchiserai, and the advance of the Allies on Sebastopol.

Among those details were the official lists of the killed, wounded, and missing, furnished by the adjutant-general. How many a home in the British Isles did these fatal lists fill with grief? how many a heart they wrung?

Cora Calderwood, pale, and still suffering from the recent shock, read over the lists; but looked in vain for the name of her cousin Newton. It was not among the killed; neither was it among the wounded or the missing. There was no casualty among the officers of the lancers, save the death of Lieutenant Rakeleigh, who was killed by a cannon shot in the affair of Bulganak, on the evening preceding the great battle of the Alma, “and whose body Captain Newton Calderwood Norcliff, with a few lancers, made a gallant attempt to rescue and carry off.”

Poor Rakeleigh! She remembered how well he waltzed, and what desperate love he made to her at the lancers’ ball, when flushed by a furious galop and a bumper of the mess champagne. What mystery was this? Dared she hope? Might papa prove right, after all? And might Newton “turn up” as their old friend Dunnikeir had so often done, from under a pile of dead men and horses, in the old Peninsular days? Sir Nigel instantly wrote to the War Office requesting some information regarding Captain Newton C. Norcliff, and was promptly informed that the telegram should have been, “The name of your nephew is NOT among the killed.”

So the omission of those three letters—one little word—made a mighty difference to poor Cora’s anxious and affectionate heart; but the letter from the War Office added, after an apology, “We regret to state that, a day or two after the passage of the Alma, Captain Norcliff was severely wounded, mutilated, and taken prisoner in a skirmish with the enemy’s cavalry—an affair of which no detail has yet reached headquarters.”

Mutilated and taken!—taken by those odious, savage, and terrible Muscovites, of whose barbarities the newspapers were daily giving fresh details! Here was a new horror—another source of anxiety and grief; and Cora and Sir Nigel were never tired of surmising or conjecturing what might be the fate of their kinsman, or of searching the public journals, and the letters from the army with which their columns teemed, for some scrap of information regarding the lost one; but they searched in vain. Time passed on; the Russians sank their fleet across the mouth of the harbour of Sebastopol; Balaclava was captured by the British; and the second week of October saw the first bombardment of the beleagured city. These were important facts; but one was more important still to Cora Calderwood—there came no tidings of her lost cousin Newton. Had he died in the hands of the Russians, or been sent to dig copper in the mines of Siberia?—a place of which she had rather vague ideas, and of which, with its capital, Tobolsk, she had read such thrilling accounts, when at school, in Madame Cottin’s celebrated “Elizabeth, or the Exiles,” &c. Her heart sank within her at this conjecture, and all that such a fate suggested. She penned several letters on the subject to Lady Louisa Loftus. Now, they could mingle their tears, she wrote; now they could commune and sorrow in common; now—. But she could not tell her that she loved Newton, too, and could only profess a sisterly affection for Louisa.

The responses of the latter were cold—singularly so. She was greatly shocked, no doubt; it made her quite nervous, and all that sort of thing, to think that Captain Norcliff should be mutilated. Had he lost his nose (it was a very handsome one)?—or his ears?—or what had the Russians cut off? If it was a leg, Lord Slubber jocularly suggested that it would mar his fox-hunting and round-dancing for the future; and to think of a husband with a wooden leg, or an iron hook for an arm, like the poor old creatures one sees at Chelsea, would be so funny—so very absurd!

“Oh,” exclaimed Cora, “to write thus, how heartless! To write thus, when now, of all men in the world, he most requires commiseration! How horrible! How worldly and selfish she is! She never loved him—never, never loved him—as—as—I do,” she dared not add, even to herself.

Then the letter described the new lining of the carriage; the last thing in bonnets, and—but here Cora crushed it up in her quick, impatient little hand, and, with a gesture of impatience, flung it in the fire. November kept on, and the woods in the old sequestered Glen became leafless and bare.

The snow powdered white the bare scalps of the hills, and old Willie Pitblado, the keeper, predicted that the coming winter would be a bitter one, for numbers of strange aquatic birds had been floating on Lochleven and in the Forth above Inchcolm; and one morning the woods round the Adder’s Craig, and all the slopes of the Western Lomond, were covered by flocks of wild Norwegian pigeons—large white birds, whose appearance in Scotland always indicates a severe winter in the Scandinavian peninsula—a winter in which all the north of Europe is sure to share; so Cora trembled, in her tenderness of heart, as she thought of our poor soldiers before Sebastopol, and her secret love, Newton, who, if surviving, was a suffering prisoner in the hands of the Russians.

Cora often visited the cottage of old Willie, in the copse near King Jamie’s Well (though the rows of half-decayed hawks, wild cats, and weasels, with which its eaves were garlanded, made the atmosphere thereabout redolent of anything but perfume), for Willie’s heart, like her own, was with the army of the East; and he “devoured” all the newspapers she gave him for intelligence of the war. But he used to shake his white head, and speak often of the old times of Wellington and his boyhood—of the many fine lads who had gone forth to Spain and Holland—“forth frae the Howe o’ Fife, to return nae mair,” and he greatly feared such would be the fate of his Willie, now that the poor young master was gone.

The veteran keeper’s spirits had sunk considerably. He was rheumatic and ailing now; but he still crept about the woods and preserves with his old double-barrelled Joe Manton and his favourite dogs, and said hopefully, at times, “Aye ailing, ye ken, never fills the kirk-yard, Miss Cora.”

But Cora’s visits to the gamekeeper’s lodge, to the Adder’s Craig, the ruined castle of Piteadie, and other old familiar haunts, became circumscribed, when she had the annoyance of Mr. Brassy Wheedleton’s company. For there were times when that legal sprout came on the circuit, or visited Sir Nigel on business “anent the bond,” or begged leave to have a few blundering shots at the pheasants; and he seldom failed to combine these objects with a more ambitious one, by a pretty close attention upon Cora, and a marked attention, that to her was only productive of extreme annoyance.

Yule-tide had come and gone at Calderwood; again Cora’s pretty hands had spiced the great wassail bowl, and all the household had partaken of its contents; but there were heavy hearts at the Glen, as in many a home circle elsewhere. For every icicle that hung from the eaves; every flake of snow that drifted past; every biting gust that swept through the bare woods, made old Sir Nigel and his people think of the horrors our poor fellows were enduring among the frozen trenches of Sebastopol. The golden pheasants and the brown partridges were alike forgotten, and old Pitblado wandered about, alone and forlorn, among them, “though sic a season for breedin’ he couldna ca’ to mind!”

The meets of the county pack took place at Largo, at Falfield, and elsewhere. The foxes, tan, grey, and brown, were thick as blackberries in Calderwood Glen—ay, thick as the black rabbits on the Isles of the Forth—but the “M.F.H.” heeded them little. He had only ridden to the hounds once that season, and preferred in the cold evenings his seat by the ruddy dining-room fire, with his steaming tumbler of toddy on a gueridon table close at hand; and there he dozed in his cosy easy-chair, with his favourite dogs at his slippered feet; or he beat time dreamily to Cora, as she ran her fingers over the keys of the cottage piano, and sang some such old-fashioned song as the “Thistle and the Rose.”

*CHAPTER XLII.***

The letter from the Under Secretary of State for War, which announced my capture by the Russians, unfortunately proved more correct in its tenor than the telegram; but the mode in which I fell into their hands, through the foul treachery of Mr. De Warr Berkeley, shall be detailed by myself in the following chapter.

On the 23rd of September, early in the morning, we bade adieu to the Alma, and to all those sad mounds that now lay along its southern bank, marking where seven thousand seven hundred and eighty soldiers were taking their last long slumber.

The dying Marshal St. Arnaud—for he took the field literally in a dying state—wished us to advance on the day immediately after the battle, as his intention was to be at Sebastopol by the 23rd, at latest.

“If,” said he, in one of his letters, “I land in the Crimea, and it pleases God to give me a smooth sea for a few hours, I shall be master of Sebastopol and of the whole Crimea; I will push on this war with an activity and energy that shall strike the Russians with terror!”

But the humane Lord Raglan declined to advance until the wounded of all countries were attended to; and to that high-spirited hero and Christian gentleman, Dr. Thompson, of the 44th—still remembered in his native Scottish village as “the surgeon of the Alma”—was committed the care of seven hundred and fifty Russian soldiers, who had lain in their blood on the field for sixty hours. Accompanied by one attendant, with only a flag of truce displayed upon a lance to protect him from the savage and vindictive Cossacks who were hovering about, that self-devoted man worked without ceasing in the care and cure of those miserable creatures, who were all lying side by side, collected in one place—the acre of wounded—a task which proved too great in the end for his energies, as he died of fatigue and cholera soon after the battle.

The day after we marched, Death, who had hovered beside the great French marshal, even while his baton directed the movements of his zouaves and riflemen, seized more firmly on his victim, and on the 29th St. Arnaud died of cholera—that fatal pest, which still hung upon our skirts.

Our wounded, after the Alma, were conveyed in great numbers in those kabitkas, some of which I had personally secured; and these, after delivering their suffering and dying loads to the boats’ crews, had to bring back supplies to the camp. Many of those open carts broke down, and were abandoned on the road with their contents; and thus, after we marched, it was no uncommon event for us to find seven or eight soldiers, dead, or dying of wounds and cholera, above the bags of biscuit intended for the use of the troops.

The morning of the 23rd beheld us set forth hopefully on our march to Sebastopol, where we hoped to crown our efforts by its speedy capture and destruction.

No enemy was visible to oppose our advance, and save here and there a broken-down kabitka, a dead Russian, who had fallen in his flight, and lay by the wayside in his leather helmet and long coat, with the vultures hovering over him; save these, and a deserted cannon, and the deep wheel-tracks in the rough old Tartar road, no trace remained of the great host we had swept before us in disorder and dismay.

In the afternoon of that day, we reached the beautiful valley of the Katcha (seventeen miles from Sebastopol), a river which has its source among the mountains of Taurida, and flows into the Black Sea, a little below Mamachai.

The valley is fertile, and we had all the enjoyment of abundant provender and water. We occupied the pretty little village of Eskel, which Baur and Kiriakoff’s retreating Cossacks had plundered and partially destroyed, and piles of broken furniture around the tastefully-decorated villas of the more opulent residents evinced their destructive spirit.

Studhome, Travers, Sir Harry Scarlett, and I possessed ourselves of a pretty little villa, with painted lattices of coloured glass, and rooms neatly—even handsomely—furnished. A piano, and some pieces of music from Rossini’s “Guillaume Tell,” Strauss’s waltzes, &c., were scattered about, showing that the fair occupants had fled at our approach; but nearly all the furniture and every utensil had been destroyed.

With his carbine, Pitblado had shot a brace of fine fat ducks, just in time to anticipate those most active of foragers, the Zouaves, and they were stewed in a warming-pan, which he had luckily discovered, and utilized for culinary purposes, the fuel used being the front door of the villa, the wood that came most readily to hand.

We had a comfortable supper, and Travers and Scarlett, who were wont to be fastidious enough with the mess-waiters about the icing of their sparkling hock or Moselle, were now content to wash down their stewed duck with a draught of water from a stale wooden canteen. But then we had gorgeous bunches of emerald green and dewy purple grapes, from the vineyards close by, and melons and peaches, too; and these we ate in defiance of prudence and the cholera.

We had just lit our cigars, and my cornet, Sir Harry, was trying his hand on the piano, through which some inquiring Cossack had poked his lance two or three times, when the trumpet-major arrived with letters for us all; the mails from England had just come in and been distributed. Many a letter was there for those whom we had left in their graves behind us!

A letter from Sir Nigel! I recognised his bold, old-fashioned handwriting. There was none from Cora (but she had scarcely ever written to me), and there was none yet from Louisa Loftus!

Alas! I had ceased to hope for one from her. Yet I paused with good Sir Nigel’s letter unopened in my hand, while my friends were busy with theirs.

How was it that, as doubt, jealousy, and irritation gathered in my mind concerning Louisa, I thought more of Cora, and that her soft features, her sweet, earnest expression, her nose, that bordered on the retrousse, her thick dark hair, and brilliantly fair complexion, came before me?

I opened my uncle’s letter. It contained little else than country gossip, and his usual ideas on things in general; but some of these seemed odd and startling to me then, as I read them in that Russian villa, far away in Crim Tartary, with the hum of our camp mingling in my ears with the rush of the mountain Katcha, as it poured through its stony vale towards the sea.

The letter had been posted before news had reached Calderwood of our departure from Varna.

“So the army is to remain inactive till half its number die of cholera; and then the rest are to open a campaign against Russia at the beginning of winter. History has no parallel for such—shall I call it madness? But I tell you,” continued the furious old Tory, “that the Whigs—a party which never yet made war with honour—have sold you to the Russians, and Punch alone dares boldly to expose it.” (Pleasant, thought I, to read this within a short ride of Sebastopol!) “Every Scottish statesman had, and still has, his price. In the olden time they were always ready to sell Scotland to England, and why should one of the same brood hesitate in selling both to the Russians now?

“My friend, Spittal of Lickspittal, the M.P., of course ridicules this idea; but that is no proof of our suspicions being incorrect. He and the Lord Advocate—that especial ministerial utensil for Scotland—have put their small brains in steep to prepare some bill for the assimilation of our laws; but strive though they may, they can never assimilate them. And while Englishmen may bow with respect to the decision of Mr. Justice Muggins, to our ears an interlocutor sounds better when delivered by my Lord Calderwood, Pitcaple, or so forth.

“By the way, Cora has had a dangler, a new admirer, for some time past; and who the deuce do you think he is? Young Mr. Brassy Wheedleton, son of old Wheedleton, the village lawyer here—one of those fellows who should be in front of Sebastopol just now, with sixty rounds of ammunition at his back, instead of loafing about the Parliament House with his hands in his pockets.

“He is a greater snob than your brother officer, Mr. De Warr Berkeley (whose patronymic was Dewar Barclay, and who once asked, when I was fishing six miles up the Eden, if I ‘’ad ‘ooked many ‘addocks’). Whenever little Brassy comes here anent that d—d bond, he lays close siege to Cora, with flowers, books, music, and pretty nothings; but she only laughs at this Edinburgh goose, who neither speaks English nor Irish, Scotch nor the unknown tongue; who pronounces lord ‘lud,’ and cat, what, or that as ‘ket, whet, or thet,’ and so forth. Believe me, Newton, there is no more grotesque piece of human carrion than a genuine Scotch snob, in a high state of Anglophobia.

“I am sorry to say it, but the honourable position of the Scottish bar is simply traditional—a thing of the past. To the English barrister, the House of Lords, the woolsack, and the highest offices of the state are open; but to his poor Scotch brother, since the Union, after blacking the boots of the Lord Advocate, and scribbling in defence of his party, whatever it may be, a wretched sheriffship is all he may get, unless, like Mansfield, Brougham, or Erskine, he casts his gown inside the bar, and crosses the border for ever.

“Any way, I don’t like Cora’s dangler; but the fellow is plausible, and will be deuced hard to get rid of, unless Pitblado could mistake him for a partridge, or Splinterbar bolt across country with him, after we have given her a feed of oats, dashed with brandy.

“I wish you could see Cora, as the good girl sits opposite me just now, reading. Her dark hair smoothly braided over her tiny ears; a muslin dress of pink and white, fastened by your old Rangoon brooch; and she blushes scarlet with pleasure as she desires me to send her love to you.”

So ended this eccentric letter.

I felt irritated. But why should I? Cora might have a lover if she chose. But then to throw herself away upon old Wheedleton’s son—old Wheedleton, whose father was the village tailor!

Something like an oath escaped me; but at that moment Sergeant-Major Drillem made his appearance, to announce that my squadron, with that of Captain Travers, was detailed for the advanced guard of cavalry on the Belbeck road, and that the trumpets would sound “boot and saddle” an hour before dawn to-morrow.

In the dusk we got under arms, mounted, and, with the troops riding in sections of threes, I rode from Eskel at a slow pace, crossed the Katcha—a position stronger, in some respects, than the Alma, and which the Russians might have disputed by inches, had we not cowed them; and then we took the road towards Belbeck, while the whole army was getting under arms.

My orders were simply to be on the alert, to advance in line when the ground was sufficiently open for such a formation, and to “feel the way” towards Belbeck, which lay only four miles distant. Such were the instructions given to me by Colonel Beverley, whose eyes sparkled at the coming work, for he was one of that race of men “known by the kindling grey eye and the light, stubborn, crisping hair—disclosing the rapture of instant fight.”

As we moved off we nearly trampled down a wounded cornet of the 11th Hussars, who lay under a tree.

“That wretched little cornet of yours,” said Berkeley to a captain of the 11th; “he reminds me—haw—of one of the new Minie rifles.”

“How?” asked the other, coldly.

“He is a small bore—haw—what do you think of the pun?”

“That it is poor, and the occasion is bad,” replied the hussar, sternly. “The poor boy will be dead before sunset.”

“A doocid good thing for himself, and—haw—for us, too. He always beats us at billiards,” was the heartless response of Berkeley.

“Is it true,” said I, “that Lieutenant Maxe, of the navy, has opened a communication with our fleet at Balaclava?”

“Yes,” said Travers. “Bolton and Nolan informed me that the allied generals were most anxious to secure it by a flank movement, especially as it is slightly defended; and to announce this intention to the fleets, which follow our movements, became the task of Maxe, who rode by night through a woody district, literally swarming with Cossacks, skirting Sebastopol; and with no aid but his brave heart, his sword and pistols, arranged the combined sea and land movements so essential to our success.”

“Gallant, indeed!” we exclaimed, as we rode off.

On our right lay the ocean, its waves, as they rose and fell, beginning to be tipped with light, as the dawn brightened over the high ground that rose on our left. The country became hilly in our front, and, as it was open for a time, I formed the squadron, and advanced in line, diverging a little to the east, in the direction of Duvankoi, a village which is exactly five miles from Belbeck.

In fact, we advanced straight between these two places towards the valley through which rolls the river that bears the latter name, and which comes from the lofty table land of the Yaila, fed on its course by all the mountain streams of the Ousenbakh.

The birds were singing merrily among the trees when the sun burst forth, to light the glancing bayonets of the advancing columns in our rear; and now before us opened the vale of the Belbeck, with all its groves of vine and olive, as we crowned an eminence, from whence we could see the woody ravines of Khutor-Mackenzie, and, ten miles to the westward, the gilded dome of Sebastopol shining like a huge inverted bowl. From this point the road lay through woods so thick, that we found it impossible to preserve much military order, and the utmost vigilance was necessary on the part of our exploring squadron, as scattered troops of the enemy were supposed to be in our vicinity.

Lord Raglan, with his staff, usually rode in advance of our main body; but on this morning my little party was in advance of the whole. As we defiled between the trees, that covered all the slope, by sections, by subdivisions, and frequently by single files, struggling along at a slow pace, but with our horses well in hand, I had repeatedly to address Berkeley in a tone of reprimand, for the loose and unnecessary manner in which he was permitting the men to straggle, and his mode of response was rather sullen, defiant, and, on one occasion, jeering.

“Aw—the dooce! very easy for you to speak. I didn’t make the road to Belbeck,” he would mutter. And once he added, “A demmed fool I not to send in my papers long ago—aw—aw—doocid deal too good-looking to be shot in a ditch.”

Suddenly I called out—

“Front form troops at wheeling distance, and halt!” for now I perceived that Sir Harry Scarlett, who was in advance with four lancers, halted them, and sent back a corporal, who came along at a hand-gallop.

“Hullo, Travers, old fellow, what’s up, do you think—aw—aw—what’s the row in front?” asked Berkeley, with haste and anxiety, as he stuck his glass in his eye, and fidgeted in his saddle.

“The Russians, no doubt,” said Travers, drily, as his handsome face brightened with courage and excitement.

“Ah, I thought so,” said I. “Are they in force, Corporal Jones?”

“We can’t tell, sir; but lance-heads, and bayonets too, are visible among the coppice in front.”

By this time the two troops had formed, and halted in open column, quietly and orderly, the leading three files of each having advanced for three horses’ lengths, and then reined in as if upon parade.

“We can’t well use the lance here. Unsling carbines! Remain where you are, Travers,” said I. “Mr. Berkeley and two files from the right, forward with me—trot!”

I drew my sword, cast loose my holster flaps, and rode on with the little party, all of whom followed me willingly enough, save one.

On joining the advanced party, we made ten horsemen altogether. Proceeding farther, to where the ground dipped somewhat suddenly down towards the Belbeck river, we could see, about a mile distant, a body of Russian cavalry, whose spiked leather helmets and lance-heads glittered in the sun. They were drawn up in line, their flanks being covered by thickets, which concealed their actual strength, so that we knew not whether they were a mere squadron or an entire brigade.

Berkeley, who was nervously busy with his powerful racing-glass, muttered—

“I see an officer on a white horse. By Jove! a doocid swell—aw, aw—all over decorations.”

After using my own telescope, I exclaimed—

“He is the same fellow we released in the evening after the Alma, when Bolton came up with orders for the cavalry to fall back and abandon prisoners. I know him by his grim visage and enormous white moustache.”

“Aw—aw—a general officer, I take him to be.”

“Now, lads,” said I, “be steady. I think I saw the glitter of a bayonet among that brushwood in front. There may be an ambush prepared thereabout, and into that we must not fall.”

I could not help thinking how useful a few hand-grenades would have been on this occasion, as they would soon have solved our doubts.

To have fallen back would have served only to draw their fire upon us instantly, if any men were concealed there.

“Follow me, lads!” I exclaimed. “Mr. Berkeley, keep the rear rank men in their places.”

“Captain Norcliff, asthore!” cried Lanty O’Regan, shaking his lance, “lead the way, and, be me troth, we’ll ride through the whole rookawn o’ them Roosians!”

Followed by my nine horsemen, I rode resolutely forward a few lance-lengths, my heart beating wildly with excitement; but a climax was soon put to that, for a hoarse voice in a strange language suddenly rang among the underwood; fire flashed redly on both sides of us; I heard the whistle of passing bullets, and amid the explosion of thirty Minie rifles a double cry, as Berkeley and one of my men fell heavily on the turf. The horse of the former was shot; but the poor lancer was mortally wounded, and his charger galloped madly away.

“Good-bye, old nag. You will never carry Bill Jones again, I fear,” cried the bleeding corporal, as he was hurrying to the rear with his lance on his shoulder, when a second shot pierced his back, and finished his career.

“Retire, Travers, retire!” I shouted at the fullest pitch of my voice; “right about, lads, and away!”

The firing from the thicket was resumed, and another lancer fell dead from his saddle.

“Aw—aw—for Heaven’s sake, don’t leave me here!” cried Berkeley, piteously, while we heard the steel ramrods ringing, as the Russians cast about and reloaded.

While the rest of my party retired at a gallop, I caught the fallen lancer’s horse by the bridle, and—in less time than I take to write it—dragged up the pale and crestfallen Berkeley, who scrambled rather than mounted into the blood-covered saddle, and we galloped off together, another shot or two adding spurs to our speed, and strewing the leaves about us. So close were we to this ambush that I heard many of the percussion caps snapping, as the Russian muskets doubtless remained foul since the Alma.

Berkeley’s fresh horse carried him half its length before mine; he was riding with wild despair in his heart; and bitter malice glittering in his eye, for he felt that I had been heaping coals of fire upon his head. I could read the double emotion in his pale face, as he glanced fearfully back.

He had drawn a pistol from its holster, and, inspired by the spirit of the devil, the unnatural wretch discharged it full into my horse’s head!

Wildly it plunged into the air, and then fell forward on its head, and, as its forelegs bent, I toppled heavily over, and fell beneath it.

The whole affair passed in a moment, and the next saw me surrounded by fierce and exulting Russian riflemen, with muskets clubbed and bayonets charged.

*CHAPTER XLIII.***

ALBANY. O save him! save him!

The prayer of Hezekiah for the prolongation of life flashed on my memory, and rose to my lips, as with rage, and almost with despair at my heart, I struggled to my feet, half-stunned, and groping blindly for my sword-hilt, which hung from my wrist by its gold knot and tassel.

Just as I grasped it firmly, the nearest rifleman charged me with his fixed bayonet, which ran through the left side of my full-dress jacket, and came off. Clutching his weapon by the barrel, I closed in, and plunged my sword twice into his breast. As he fell back, groaning heavily, the bayonet of another struck me; but luckily, those fellows, who belonged to the Kazan column, had blunted their weapons by broiling beef on them over their wood fires.

A third rifleman fired full at my head; but, by a singular chance, the nipple of his rifle was blown out by the explosion, and buried itself in his forehead, just above the nose, severing the optic nerve, and nearly forcing his eyes out. (In two hours after he died, raving mad.)

This incident created, for a moment or two, a diversion in my favour; but a Cossack officer, armed with a great crooked sabre, assailed me. Like one of Caesar’s Legionaries of old, this fellow seemed bent on cutting only at my face; and having some regard for my personal appearance, I was not sorry when he fell backwards over my dead horse, and in doing so, snapped his blade off near the hilt.

Could I have reached my holsters, in which were a pair of six-chambered Colts, I might have escaped; but now I was hemmed in on all hands by a band of fierce, ugly, beetle-browed, and snub-nosed Russians, in flat caps and long great-coats.

In an instant my gold epaulettes, my rings—Louisa’s miniature and her ring, the treasured pearl in blue enamel—my purse and watch, were rent from me as if I had been in the hands of common footpads; and one of those who assisted in such work was the Cossack officer, whose name I afterwards ascertained to be Lieutenant Adrian Trebitski of the Tchernimoski corps.

In fact, he made himself very busy about the knees of my trousers in search of my portmonnaie (as the Russians usually carry their purses strapped to the knee), while his Corporal found it in my pocket; and each acquisition was greeted by a torrent of uncouth sounds, expressive, I presume, of great satisfaction.

My sabretache was torn away. It contained only my uncle’s letter, which I afterwards learned, was duly translated into choice French for any secrets it might contain, and for the information of Princes Menschikoff and Gortschikoff, who, I hope, were much edified by Sir Nigel’s description of Mr. Brassy Wheedleton, and of Scotch prigs in general.

Having stripped me of every article of value, and ripped all the gold lace from my lancer jacket and blue pantaloons, I have no doubt those savage wretches would soon have despatched me; but a wounded officer rode up—the same personage with the many decorations and long grim moustache. He ordered them to desist, striking those who were near him with a whip that was attached to his bridle. He then placed me in charge of his aide-de-camp, Captain Anitchoff, a fashionable-looking young Muscovite, who wore the light blue and yellow-laced uniform of a hussar corps (the Princess Maria Paulowna’s), and who has since that time published a work on the Crimean campaign. He courteously informed me, in French, that he was on the general staff of the Russian army, and that the name of my preserver was Lieutenant-General Karlovitch Baur.

He also desired me to remain close by his side, while we proceeded quickly to the rear. By this time, every trace of Travers and my squadron had disappeared.

And so I was actually a prisoner!

I was, perhaps, the sole trophy of the Russian army, so they were disposed to make the most of me. I had a special escort of a corporal and two well-bearded and ill-washed Cossacks, who rode one on each side of me, and one in the rear, each trussed up among his forage plunder and fleas—their shaggy little horses being so laden that little more than their noses and tails were visible. If I lagged, the corporal used to grin and shake his lance ominously; and when not occupied in scratching themselves, they were very merry and not unpleasant, though totally incomprehensible companions.

I knew not in what direction they were conveying me, and our mutual ignorance of each other’s language prevented me from discovering. I could but trust to chance and patience.

Meanwhile, my friends were, I am pleased to say, under no small concern on my account elsewhere.

The army halted at Belbeck, where five hundred sick—among whom were many of my lancer comrades—were left behind, all ill with cholera. Lord Raglan occupied the chateau of a fugitive Russian noble, and there Travers rode to report that he had seen the Russians in strength among the woods between Belbeck and Khutor-Mackenzie, where, as all the world knows, a sharp engagement took place with them soon after, and where they were driven back with the loss of baggage and ammunition for more than twenty-five thousand men. Among the former were a great quantity of watches, jewellery, and gay hussar jackets, in which the artillery and Highlanders masqueraded for a time.

After making his report to Lord Raglan and General Airey, Travers rode to Colonel Beverley, who occupied a Tartar’s cottage near the river side. There he found several of ours, including Fred Wilford, old M’Goldrick, the paymaster, and Studhome, making a hearty repast on some well-cooked wild boar, with caviare, biscuits, and plenty of champagne, which had been found in the broken-down carriage of General Kiriakoff, whose crest and initials were painted on the lid of his canteen, which contained a tiny dinner service for four, but all of Dresden china.

“Gentlemen,” exclaimed Beverley, starting to his feet, as Travers, Berkeley, and young Scarlett entered, “I am sorry to see you return alone. Where is our friend Norcliff?”

“Gone to the—aw—devil by the down train, probably,” muttered Berkeley, whose teeth chattered as he drained a glass of champagne.

“He has fallen into the enemy’s hands,” said Captain Travers; “a rescue was impossible, as we knew not the extent of the ambush into which we fell. I saw him riding after us, with Berkeley—“

“Aw—yes, colonel—we were covering the rear of the squadron, in fact,” interrupted that personage.

“Suddenly there was heard a single shot, and on looking back, I saw Berkeley galloping on alone—“

“Alone!”

“And poor Norcliff in the hands of the Russians, who were cutting him to pieces apparently.”

“His horse had been shot under him?” said the colonel.

“Yes—but—aw—not by the Russians,” said Berkeley.

“By whom, then?” asked the colonel, sharply.

“By himself,” was the unhesitating response.

“Himself?”

“Absurd!”

“Impossible!” exclaimed his hearers, in succession.

“It is neither absurd nor impossible. The horse was killed by a pistol-shot, and he fell into the power of the Russians.”

“Do you mean to say,” asked the colonel, slowly, after a very ominous and unpleasant pause, during which Berkeley’s paleness increased, and he tugged his moustache with his effeminate, girlish-like fingers, feeling evidently the loss of a toothpick, with which, like other fops, he soothed his leisure moments; “do you mean to say that this event was not accident, but design?”

“Can’t tell, ‘pon my life—aw—haw—would rather not say anything about it—it was doocid odd, anyway,” drawled Berkeley, applying himself to the champagne again.

“Mr. Berkeley, I must insist upon your explaining.”

“Can’t say, I repeat—his pistol exploded—the bullet went through his horse’s head—“

“Killing it on the spot?”

“Of course—aw—of course.”

“What could be his reason—“

“Perhaps he thought—aw—it safer work to fall quietly into the hands of the Russians thus than to ride back under their fusilade.”

“Are you aware, Mr. Berkeley,” said the colonel, with increasing gravity, while all present exchanged some very peculiar glances, “that this is tantamount to branding our friend with cowardice?”

“I shall—aw—aw—answer that question, Colonel Beverley, when the time comes, and he returns,” replied Berkeley; “but I don’t think those Russian riflemen were in the mood to show much mercy or quarter to-day.”

“And Norcliff was not such a muff as to surrender quietly,” said M’Goldrick.

“You will answer the colonel’s question when Norcliff returns say you?” exclaimed Studhome, starting forward, pale with passion; “answer it you shall, and now, to me!”

“Studhome!” said the colonel, interposing angrily, “this is some mistake—some wretched misconception. We all know that Captain Norcliff was incapable of committing the act you, Mr. Berkeley, impute to him.”

“I have seen him lead his troop under fire ere now,” growled Studhome; “and lead it when Mr. Berkeley might have thought it unpleasant work to follow him.”

“Aw—haw—well, disprove it if you can,” said Berkeley, with one of his old insufferable smiles, as he stuck his glass in his eye, and lounged out of the cottage, near which my poor fellow, Willie Pitblado, was lingering to pick up some certain information about me from the colonel’s servants.

“Eh, me! this will be sair news for the folk at Calderwood Glen,” he sighed, as he and Lanty O’Regan turned away together.

As Berkeley and I had been in the rear, none save myself could be cognisant of his foul act of treachery. He never doubted that I had been bayoneted by the Russians, and, confident that I should never return, he thus crowned his villany by attempting to destroy my honour.

Ere long we shall see what this availed him.

*CHAPTER XLIV.***

The first halting-place of my escort was in a wood of wild pear trees, among some of those ancient burial mounds or green tumuli which stud all the Crimea, but more particularly the peninsula of Kertch, where one still marks the tomb of Mithridates. In that solitude we heard only the voices of the birds, the lark, the tomtit, and the wren, as they twittered among the caper bushes.

The Cossacks hobbled their horses, and proceeded to seat themselves on the green sward that covered the bones of the classic warriors of other times. In their havresacks they had some black bread and salt, with a flask of quass. These they shared freely with me; and with such coarse fare I was forced to be content.

The corporal had a Russian poodle, red-eyed, fox-headed, and white as snow, which he pretentiously named Olga, after the Grand Duchess, and with this cur, to which he was much attached, he freely shared his repast, and that piece of felt which serves the Cossack alike for cloak, tent, and bed.

I could not be prevailed upon to join them in partaking of some wild horseradish, which Corporal Pugacheff discovered, and unearthed with his sabre, exhibiting a root as thick as his arm. After they had smoked for nearly an hour, during which I was left to my own unpleasant reflections, the march was once more resumed—leisurely, because I was afoot—towards the east, as the sun informed me, and that was all I could learn about it.

The uniforms of these Cossacks were richer than any I had yet seen. Each had a blue jacket, edged with yellow lace, hooked over a scarlet silk vest; loose blue trousers, fastened high above the waist; busbies of black shining wool, terminating in a crimson sack, with a scarlet sash, cartridge-box, and sabre, completed their costume. Like ourselves, they rode with the lance slung, and resting on the right toe.

That night we halted at a Tartar village. The inhabitants of the cottage to which we proceeded were somewhat over-awed by the three Cossacks—a race at all times rather unscrupulous—but were disposed to view me with a commiseration that made me begin to conceive hopes of escape.

Escorted by Corporal Pugacheff and his poodle, I was conducted to the humble apartment used by the males of the family. A wooden basin, filled with clear water, and a napkin, were presented to me by the master of the house—a venerable Tartar of the old nomadic race—that I might lave my face and hands; a pipe of the cherrywood tree, which grows in the mountains, was then given me to smoke, while a repast—not of horseflesh, happily—but of goat’s milk, poached eggs, and cheese, was prepared; and these we ate with our fingers, seated on mats on the earthen floor, around the little stool on which the supper-tray was placed, for, in their household and habits, the poor Tartars are nearly as primitive as their forefathers were in the days of the valiant Batu Khan, the destroyer of Moscow.

A dish of sour milk and water—the veritable yaourt of the Osmanlis—was passed round; the master of the house returned thanks without uncovering his shaven head, the Cossacks resumed their pipes, the repast was over, and the day was closing in.

The hope of escape was growing stronger in my heart; but the corporal crushed it, as if he had divined my thoughts, by quietly securing my right hand to his left, with the small steel bridle of his horse, before we lay down to take our repose, and the escort, with their pistols loaded, slept side by side across the only doorway. In addition to all these precautions, if I ventured to move, almost to wink, the poodle, Olga, was on the alert, with cocked ears and bristling hair, barking furiously. How I hated that dog!

Though weary in mind and body, I could not sleep, even if the deep bass snoring that issued from the snub noses of my three keepers would have permitted me to doze.

Berkeley’s infamous treachery made my heart glow like a furnace! How deeply I repented now that, instead of succouring and remounting him, I had not left him, as his prior conduct deserved, to the chances of war and fate, and to take the place now occupied by me!

How long might I be a prisoner!

Of this war with the greatest empire in the world none could foresee or calculate the end.

Years, perhaps, might pass, and find me still a captive. By the troops of General Canrobert, some men had been discovered who had been lost by the French on their fatal retreat from Moscow in 1813, and who had, from youth to age, been slaves in the Tartar fortresses or the Siberian mines.

My blood ran cold with this idea. Oh, if such were to be my fate!

If Berkeley returned to England after all, and married Louisa! And then, if this wretched Brassy Wheedleton succeeded in marrying Cora, while I was industriously quarrying for copper and assafoetida in the vicinity of that pleasant city, Tobolsk by name!

But what was Cora to me? She was my cousin, and, of course, my cousin must not throw herself away and make an unequal marriage.

“There are men in this world,” says a female writer, “who are quite capable of being in love with two women at once.”

This was not at all my case; but I fear that Louisa’s cold and cutting neglect was causing me to think more than I used to do of Cora Calderwood, who I knew loved me well, and I remembered the strange episode of the spell, or mesmeric riddle, wrought by the hakim Abd-el-Rasig, the surgeon of the 10th Egyptian Infantry.

But to be a prisoner—the prisoner of these filthy wretches—and to be conveyed by them, like a helpless Polish exile, I knew not whither!

If in boyhood, and even in infancy, I had ever a horror of study and restraint; if in later years, even regimental discipline sometimes galled me by its monotonous trammels, the reader may imagine how I writhed, how my soul revolted, at the idea of being a Russian captive, and how I longed for vengeance on Berkeley. I swore to horsewhip him in front of the line, and pistol him after! There was no extravagant length in punishment to which my fancy did not resort and my fury indulge in. No MacGregor with the dirk at his lips, swearing vengeance for Alaster of Glenstrae; no Corsican De Franchi, vowing a dreadful vendetta on his foe, could harbour feelings more bitter than I did in those moments of futile anger in that poor Tartar cottage.

I talked to myself wrathfully and incoherently.

I dozed at last; but my slumber was haunted by dreams and nightmares, like those of a fevered patient. I saw Louisa Loftus, with her pale and lovely features distorted by fear, her black hair floating all dishevelled about her white shoulders. She was clinging to the verge of a lofty rock, towards which an angry tide was advancing, while I, chained, withheld by some mysterious power, was unable to succour or to save her. My voice was gone, and my agonies were unbelieved, as she only beheld them with proud smiles of scorn and derision.

The scene changed. Now she had married, or was about to marry the Marquis of Slubber, believing me dead—that I had perished in the East. I heard her say so, distinctly and tearlessly, with a calm sympathetic smile, which my Lady Chillingham, with an impatient motion of her fan rebuked. Still I was deprived of all power of volition, and a spell tied up my utterance, till Berkeley—I saw him to the life, in his lancer uniform, hovering about her, to the evident annoyance of the senile marquis—told her, in his drawling lisp, that he had seen me killed, and she quite believed him. Then a painful cry escaped me, and I awoke. I had other dreams, and these were, perhaps, the worst of all. I was free! I had exposed and punished Berkeley. I was again among my friends; handsome Beverley, Travers, bluff Jack Studhome, Fred Wilford, and the others were around me. The lancers were on parade, I heard the neighing of the chargers; and saw the long line of glittering lances, the plumes and banperoles waving in the sunshine; I heard the music of our band; we were laughing, talking, smoking; we were in the mess or billiard-room, and I could hear the bells of Canterbury ringing in the cathedral towers.

At other times I was in Calderwood Glen, under the old, old trees that had echoed to the hunting-horn of many a kingly Stuart; or I was on the heather muirs, gun in hand, with old Sir Nigel, knocking over the whirring partridges and the golden pheasants, the plash of the mountain burn and the hum of the mountain bee coming together on the balmy breeze, as I trod the green Lomond side, and saw the grassy glens of Fife, the blue Forth, and many a village spire among the woodlands far away.

Then to waken and find myself chained to the Cossack corporal, in that loathly Russian den, in the wilds of Crim Tartary, was a disappointment cruel and bitter!

The rising sun saw us once more on the road; but for what place I was still ignorant. Before we started Corporal Pugacheff released my hand, but pointed significantly to his pistols.

On this day, as we proceeded eastward, there rose in the distance on our right the mountain of the Tents, the highest in the Crimea (the Tchatir Dagh, a mass of red marble), so named from its resemblance to the dwellings of the Nogai Tartars. Five thousand feet it towered above the Euxine, with its summit crimsoned in the morning sun.

Through a defile, named Demir-Kapon (or the Iron Gate), we entered the valley of the Angar, a tributary of the Salghir (which flows into the Putrid Sea); and here, from the slopes of the mountain, the scenes we saw were full of rural loveliness—picturesque Tartar villages, laden orchards and blushing vineyards, and flocks and herds without end; everywhere softness blending with sublimity. I noted every foot of the way well, as I had but one thought—escape.

I remember that near the Tartar town of Sivritash, which lies twenty miles north-east of Sebastopol, we passed a body of Russian recruits for various regiments, all hastening to get into the latter place before the Allies could invest it.

These recruits were escorted by a squadron of the hussars of the Princess Maria Paulowna (sister of the Emperor). They were certainly gorgeously-equipped and accoutred troopers, mounted on fine Arab horses; but my admiration for them was not increased by a blow which one of them dealt me, in mere wantonness, with the flat of his sabre, as I trudged past wearily and afoot: but this insult honest Pugacheff resented by laying his lance heavily across the shoulders of the hussar.

Many questions were asked of him by the officers of these troops, who altogether mustered about five thousand men; and from the frequency with which the name Kourouk occurred in his replies, as well as the direction in which we were travelling, I surmised that we were proceeding to the fortress at that place.

In this conjecture I was right, for on the evening of the third day after my capture, I found myself a prisoner in the secluded Russian fort or outpost of Kourouk, which lies on the northern slope of the mountain of Karaba Yaila, and is distant exactly seventy miles, as a bird flies, from Sebastopol.

No parole was offered me; I was without money, and my name and rank were alike unknown; I was clad only in the tatters of my own regimental finery; and I felt a deep gloom steal over me, when the little wicket gate in the massive wooden and iron barriers of the fortress was closed behind me. And now, cast utterly among strangers, I parted with regret even from the snub-nosed Corporal Pugacheff, who had been my guide thus far, and from his red-eyed poodle, Olga, too.

I was the only prisoner of war in the fortress of Kourouk.

*CHAPTER XLV.***

Situated on a rocky slope, under the shadow of the hills of Karaba Yaila, stand the town and castle of Kourouk.

Built by the Genoese upon the ruins of a fortress erected by a khan of the house of Zingis (under whom the Crimea became an independent monarchy in 1441), the castle had been in its glory in the days when Genoa the superb was mistress of the coasts of Asia, and the islands of Cyprus, Lesbos, and Scio; but when Mohammed II. conquered Constantinople, he destroyed all the colonies of the Genoese republic upon the shores of the Euxine.

The defenders of the Castle of Kourouk, under a Scottish soldier of fortune, made a gallant resistance; but were all put to the sword, and their skulls are now built into a portion of the rampart which faces Mecca. The rocks of red and white marble on which it stands have been excavated, like those of its contemporary, the old Genoese Castle of Balaclava, into magazines and stately chambers, the sides of which are covered with coloured designs in stucco.

The two old round towers of the Genoese days were crowned by Russian cupolas—one striped like a melon, the other cut into facets, like a pineapple, all red and yellow alternately, and each surmounted by a glittering cross. These, with the great white banner of St. Andrew, with its blue saltire over all, made Kourouk look gay at a distance.

Within all was grim and sombre enough.

The garrison consisted of a four-company battalion of Russian infantry, under a chef-de-bataillon, named Vladimir Dahl, a tall, grisly-moustached old soldier, who wore on his breast the embroidered representation of a Turkish standard, which he had taken from the Infidels, in the days of Navarino. Each of his companies consisted of two hundred men, and belonged to a regiment three thousand strong. Such corps are the usual Russian formation, and are commanded by a pulkovnick, or colonel.

These troops wore long, loose, dirty-grey capotes, reaching to their ankles. On their shoulders, and in front of their flat cloth caps, was sewn a piece of green stuff, with the regimental number, 45; and this was all their finery.

They were on parade in line as Corporal Pugacheff conducted me into the fortress; and I thought them a strange array of sorry-looking wretches, so stolid in aspect, that I was reminded of the traveller, who, on seeing a Russian and a British regiment under arms in the same square at Naples, exclaimed—

“There is but one face in that whole regiment, while in this” (pointing to the British) “every soldier has a face of his own.”

I was treated with the greatest respect and kindness by old Vladimir Dahl and the officers of the 45th, or Tambrov Infantry, for the outrages of the French at Kertch, and the infamous massacre of our seamen at Hango, had not yet occurred to impart a bitterness to the war.

Neither he nor I knew the other’s language; his capitans, fiarooschicks, and praperchicks (i.e., lieutenants and ensigns) were in the same condition. Thus we had no means of communication, save by clinking our glasses, and exchanging cigarettes, nods, winks, and grins.

An old Times newspaper was given to me. It was dated months back, and detailed the battle of Oltenitza; but its columns had been carefully purged by the censor of everything political—an ingenious process achieved by gutta-percha and ground glass.

The reader has, perhaps, heard of how a farrier-sergeant of the Emperor Alexander’s Dragoon Guards predicted the destruction of the grand army of Napoleon I., on being shown a horseshoe dropped by the retreating cavalry of France.

“What! not frosted yet,” he exclaimed, professionally, “and the snow to fall to-morrow! Holy St. Sergius! these fellows don’t know Russia!”

Vladimir Dahl was the son of the farrier-sergeant who thus predicted the downfall of the enemies of Russia; and he was more proud of his father than if he had been, like the best of the Muscovite nobles, descended from Ruric the Norman.

The days passed slowly away. I might as well have been dumb, having no one to converse with. I could not pass the castle gates, as every avenue, angle, and outlet was guarded by snub-nosed Muscovites, in grey capotes, with loaded rifles and fixed bayonets.

Hope of escape as yet I had none!

On the morning of the fourth day, a mounted Paulowna hussar delivered at Kourouk a letter, with a shred of the feather of the quill with which it had been written inserted among the wax of the seal—a Russian mode of signifying speed.

It announced the arrival of General Baur, with all his staff. Baur had been wounded in the encounter with our troops at Khutor-Mackenzie; and I was very well pleased when the evening of the same day saw him ride into Kourouk, of which I was heartily weary; and I was not without hopes that the general, on remembering how we had released him after the Alma, might do something for me in the way of exchanging or paroling me; and in his aide-de-camp, the gay young Captain Anitchoff, of the Maria Paulowna Hussars, I was glad to see a face that I knew, and to meet one with whom I could converse.

The general had been wounded by a musket shot in the bridle arm. It was severely inflamed. Ease had been recommended, so he had come to spend a week or so at Kourouk, which was in his own military district; and on the very evening of his arrival, Anitchoff brought me an invitation to dine with him.

Anitchoff was eminently a handsome Russian. His eyes were dark, and had a latent fire in them that showed some Tartar blood; the lids were full and white, the lashes long and dark. His nose was straight and thin, and his ponderous moustache was as black as his close-shaven hair, or the wolf’s fur that trimmed his light blue uniform.

My costume was of the most sorry description; but a few discrepancies were made up by Vladimir Dahl, who, among other things, presented me with a full uniform, silver epaulettes and all, of the Tambrov infantry.

French is not so much spoken in Russia as people in Britain suppose; yet, luckily for me, General Baur and Anitchoff could speak it fluently.

Before proceeding to the General’s I asked—

“Can you inform me, Captain Anitchoff, if parole is to be accepted?”

“I cannot say, but rather think not,” he replied, with hesitation.

“The deuce!” I exclaimed, haughtily; “then I shall escape, if I can.”

“Pray don’t think of it,” said he, earnestly.

“Why?” I demanded, with intense chagrin.

“We have rather a summary mode of dealing with prisoners who attempt to escape. So be wary, my friend.”

“Indeed, summary. How?”

“We don’t always keep them on our hands,” said he, with a smile that was grimly significant, while he played with the gold tassels of his hussar busby.

“Well, ‘twere better to be shot than kept lingering here.”

“Oh, you won’t be kept here, my friend.”

“Where then?”

“In a few days you will probably be sent with a convoy of sick and wounded by the way of Perecop and the desert plains towards Yekaterinoslav.”

“I shall escape by the way,” said I, doggedly.

“I repeat, my friend, don’t think of it, for Trebitski, who will command, does not stand on trifles; and yet,” he added, with a smile, “there are two persons who seldom fail in what they attempt—a prisoner and a lover.”

“Why?”

“Stendahl, a Russian author, says, ‘The lover thinks oftener of obtaining his mistress than the husband does of guarding his wife; the prisoner thinks oftener of escaping from his prison than the gaoler does of keeping him safe within its walls. Therefore, the lover and the prisoner should succeed.’ You see,” he continued, laughing, “we have some authors in snowy Russia, whatever you Britons may think to the contrary. But here is the general.”

Passing through the officers of the 45th, who all made way for us, I was ushered into the presence of General Baur, the grim soldier, who was related to the hero of Beverley’s interesting anecdote—Karlovitch Baur, son of Karl, the brother of Michel, the old miller of Husum.

He received me with studious politeness, though he could not help smiling at my Tambrov uniform. His left arm was in a sling, and, as he shook hands with me, I felt that he had but two right fingers remaining. A Turkish sabre had shorn him of the rest at Kalafat, on the Danube, in the year before.

Baur was every way a man of a severely impressive presence and aspect. He had an enormous white moustache, the long, snaky curls of which floated almost over each of his large silver epaulettes. His forehead was high, massive and stern; his hair, shorn short, was rough and grizly. His dark eyes were keen, bold, and inquiring at times; but at others they wore a deep, sombre and melancholy expression, as if he was always thinking of a world beyond the present—to be looking into it, in fact—and this was not to be wondered at when we consider that Karlovitch Baur was the hero of one of the most remarkable episodes ever committed to paper.

His manner was that of one who is prompt and ready alike in thought and action, and yet who never unsaid or undid anything.

Over his grass-green and silver-laced uniform, he wore a loose, wide souba, or fur coat with sleeves, for service, and this he cast aside when the trumpets announced that dinner was served; and then, among many other orders that glittered on his warlike breast, I saw that of St. Andrew, which was founded in 1699 by Peter the Great, and is only bestowed on crowned heads and officers of the highest rank.

It reminded me much of our own Order of the Thistle, being a blue enamelled saltire; but on the reverse was a Muscovite eagle, with the initials “S.A.P.R.” (Sanctus Andreas, Patronus Russiae).

At the table I was seated between the general and his chief aide-de-camp, Anitchoff, both of whom conversed with me in French.

“How did it come to pass that you were taken prisoner?” asked the former.

“My horse was shot under me.”

“Near the Belbeck?”

“Yes,” said I, blushing like a school-girl, as I could not, for the soul of me, say that a British officer had degraded his epaulettes by the perfidy of which Berkeley had been guilty.

“Ah! unlucky; but such things will happen. Your troops and the French, with the Turkish dogs, are now almost in front of Sebastopol.”

“Indeed!” said I, with a joy which I could not conceal.

“You think, no doubt, to take it under our moustaches, or, as you Britons say, under our noses; but you won’t,” he added with a grave smile. “St. Sergius has ordained it otherwise, and Todleben, the wary old Courlander, is busy fortifying it. His sappers are at work day and night.”

“Pho! don’t talk of Sebastopol, general,” said his aide-de-camp, laughing. “Our feeding there was so bad that I felt inclined to try whether the Allies fared better than we did; but after the Alma, I thought that the less I considered the matter the better.”

“Ah, that day at Alma played the deuce with many a family circle in Sebastopol,” said Baur, twisting his moustache angrily.

“Yes,” added Anitchoff; “many a widow is there now, weeping for the dear defunct with one eye, and ogling his successor with the other.”

At this jest a dark frown gathered on the long, stern visage of Baur.

Dinner proceeded briskly. It was served up in a kind of hall, which had arched and painted windows, flanked by the round Genoese towers, whose gilt cupolas formed the chief features of the fortress.

The walls were simply whitewashed, and the furniture was somewhat of the “barrack ordnance” description of our own equipments in quarters at home.

The repast was rather military in fashion, and by no means a dinner a la Russe, all flower vases, bouquets, and kickshaws; but was composed of substantial edibles for hungry and soldierly stomachs.

We began with small glasses of kimmel, and then came caviare, made from the roe of the sturgeon of the Don, spread on thin slices of bread; then followed the fish—turbot and mackerel from the Black Sea; yellow-fleshed sterlets from the Volga, salted in oil; wild boar hams from the forest of Khutor-Mackenzie; mutton fed on the Tauridian steppes; pies of holy pigeons from the gilt domes I had admired at a distance; piles of Crimean fruit; the wines of Ac-metchet and Kastropulo, with Cliquot; and there, too, were London stout and Bass’s pale ale, taken from some of our wrecks in the Black Sea.

During dinner I was amused by hearing the ideas entertained by the Russians of our British soldiers, with whom they were now for the first time in actual conflict; for Prince Menschikoff had industriously spread among his troops a rumour that we were only beardless seamen, dressed up as soldiers; and that, however formidable on the ocean, we were worthless ashore.

To this contemptuous notion was added a sublime faith in their own valour, and the miracles to be wrought by St. Sergius, whose image they bore at Alma, and whose fourth reappearance was confidently predicted by Innocent, Archbishop of Odessa, in his sermon to the garrison of Sebastopol, for Sergius was a patriotic saint and warrior who defeated the Tartars—whose “uncorrupted body” lies in a silver shrine, like a four-post bed, and whose shoes (sorely worn at the heels) are still preserved in the Troitza, or monastery, of the Holy Trinity at Moscow.

General Baur, a man deeply imbued with the most gloomy superstition, believed in all these delusions devoutly. His aide-de-camp and Vladimir Dahl, however, laughed at him covertly; but admitted that the appearance of the Highland regiments filled the columns on the Kourgane Hill with a strange terror; for being, as the author of “Eoethen” records, “men of great stature, and in a strange garb, their plumes being tall, and the view of them being broken and distorted by the wreaths of smoke, and there being, too, an ominous silence in their ranks, there were men among the Russians who began to conceive a vague terror—the terror of things unearthly; and some, they say, imagined that they were being charged by horsemen, strange, silent, and monstrous, bestriding giant chargers.”

Dinner was drawing to a close, or giving place to the dessert, when my former acquaintance under less pleasant circumstances, Lieutenant Adrian Trebitski, of the Tchernimoski Cossacks, appeared, travel-stained, and splashed with the mud of a journey on his boots and sabretache, having arrived on duty with sick soldiers, and a deserter, who was to be shot on the morrow.

“Why not to-night?” asked the stern Baur.

“The sentence says to-morrow, general,” replied Anitchoff consulting a despatch.

“Then to-morrow be it—I am not a messman, and so don’t begrudge the poor wretch his last supper. Is he one of your corps, Trebitski?”

“Yes, general, I regret to say, a Cossack of our sotnia, from the Lena, in Siberia,” replied Trebitski, who was eyeing me with an aspect of discomposure, evidently fearing that I might report the pillage I had undergone at his hands. But this fear subsided when I drank wine with him, clinking my glass over and under his, for I felt that my position was too perilous to make an enemy of this man, especially as Anitchoff informed me that he was to have command of the convoy which would take me towards Perecop.

“I hope he will treat me with courtesy,” said I, “and remember that I am a commissioned officer.”

“Why do you doubt him?” asked Anitchoff, with a quiet smile.

“I—I don’t like the expression of his eyes.”

“They are as keen as those of a Tartar; but, then, he has Tartar blood in him, for his mother was a woman of the middle Kirghis hordes, lately added to our empire.”

“Are they remarkable for a curious expression of eye?”

“Yes; any Tartar can discern a single Russian horseman at a quarter of the distance that a Russian will discover a whole troop of Tartars, even with lances uplifted; hence they make our best vedettes.”

I now heard complete details of the defeat of twenty thousand Russians at Khutor-Mackenzie; and that, on the morning of the 26th September, Balaclava had been taken, that its safe and secluded harbour was now full of our war ships and transports, and that already our army was on the heights above Sebastopol.

And so, while the great game, on which the eyes of all the world were turned, was being played by my noble comrades, I—the victim of treachery, ignorant alike of my fate and of the future—was to be marched towards the desert plains of Yekaterinoslav, in the custody of an unscrupulous ruffian like Trebitski, parooschick of the Tchernimoski Cossacks; one who knew as little about the position or feelings of a British officer as he did about those of the Great Llama.

On my bed that night I tossed restlessly to and fro, revolving a hundred plans for escape, but could decide on none. Bribery will achieve anything in Russia; but I had no money. I was also without weapons, a horse, or knowledge of the language. I determined, however, to look well about me; to study a map of the Crimea if I could find one; to act surely, warily, and resolutely; and to take the first opportunity of escaping, even if I should be shot down in the attempt. I was all the more free to make this essay, that, as yet, not a word had been spoken either of parole or exchange by the gloomy General Baur, or ‘his more genial aide-de-camp.

By dawn next morning, the hoarse roll of the wooden drums summoned the garrison of Kourouk to witness the execution of the deserter; and by the time I came forth, as a spectator, the battalion of the 45th was under arms, formed in three sides of a hollow square, facing inwards; all silent, motionless as statues, closely ranked in their grey capotes and flat blue caps, with rifles shouldered and bayonets fixed.

The fourth side of the square was enclosed by the inner wall of a rampart, and there stood the culprit, pale and dejected in aspect, accompanied by a silver-bearded priest of the Greek church in white, with a gorgeous stole of cloth-of-gold, edged with fine lace. A dog bounded towards them—a fox-headed, snow-coloured, and red-eyed Russian poodle, whose bark was familiar to me; and then I was greatly concerned to recognise in the deserter, who was stripped of his uniform, and stood in his loose wide trousers and red flannel shirt, poor Corporal Pugacheff, who had escorted me from the Belbeck river.

“Had I known your disposition for levanting, my friend,” thought I, “gladly would I have availed myself of it in time.”

“Was he deserting towards the Allies?” I inquired of Anitchoff.

“No; he was supposed to be making off to his own country by the peninsula of Arabat, which encloses the Putrid Sea. Ah, pardonnez moi,” added the hussar, and he yawned lazily in the chill air of the early morning, as he buttoned his well-furred pelisse over his uniform.

“But is not the punishment excessive?”

“Not for a soldier in time of war, surely! There are two classes in Russia exempt from all corporal punishment, severe as you may deem us—nobles, and soldiers who have been honoured with medals. Pugacheff served against the Turks at the frontier town of Isaktcha last year. He has a medal, so there is no resource but to shoot him; and here comes the firing company under a praperchick? (This grotesque word in Russ signifies an ensign.)

“What is he saying?” I asked, as the poor Cossack now threw himself on his knees, and raised his trembling hands and haggard eyes to heaven in supplication.

“He is praying to St. Sergius, and saying that, if his life that is to come in heaven were to be no better than it is on earth, as a corporal of Cossacks, pain and death would, indeed, be terrible!”

“Poor fellow!”

His sentence had been read over by Vladimir Dahl; and he and General Baur—both of whom wore cocked hats with immense green plumes, and well-furred soubas—withdrew a little way, and leaned composedly on their sabres, while the ramrods glittered in the rising sun, as the stolid-visaged firing party of twelve men loaded their rifles, cast them about, and capped. Now the chapel bell began to toll solemnly, and the standard waved, half-hoisted, in the wind.

The small, keen eyes of Pugacheff seemed fixed on vacancy. The old priest, in full canonicals, was praying with great earnestness and devotion; but the prisoner scarcely seemed to hear him.

Perhaps his eyes at that moment saw in fancy his father’s cottage by the broad waters of the Lena; the grove of dark green pines that cast their shadows on the deep snow-wreaths, and the sharp, flinty summits of the distant hills, where the stalwart Siberian Cossack galloped in freedom, with his long, ready spear at his stirrup.

The fawning of the dog, Olga, now attracted the attention of the doomed man. He lifted it up, stroked, caressed, and kissed it tenderly, for the poor dog was, perhaps, his only friend. His rugged nature was melted, and I think there was a tear in his eye, as he looked with a haggard expression around him.

Suddenly his glance fell on me. He beckoned me to him, and gave me the dog, saying something, I know not what, hurriedly, and in a husky voice—a request, no doubt, that I would keep and be kind to the little animal when he was gone; and I led it away by its leather collar, just as the firing party brought their muskets to the “ready” and cocked them.

The dog whined and struggled fiercely with me. It broke away at last, and rushed to the side of its kneeling and blindfolded master, leaping, frisking, and barking joyously about him, just as the twelve death-shots flashed from the muzzles of the firing party.

When the smoke cleared away I saw the Cossack and his dog lying dead on the gravel, side by side. They had been shot at the same moment. Pugacheff had several balls in his head and breast, and from the white coat of the still quivering poodle a crimson current was pouring.

The corporal was buried in the dry ditch of Kourouk, and ere the last sods were put over his grave by the pioneers, his faithful little four-footed friend was thrown in beside him, by order of Vladimir Dahl, and they were covered up together.

The tolling of the chapel bell died away; hoisted to the truck, the Russian cross streamed out upon the morning wind; and so ended this little tragedy.

*CHAPTER XLVI.***

BEN. This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves! Supper is done, and we shall come too late.

The noon of the succeeding day saw me several miles from the Castle of Kourouk, and pursuing the rugged old Tartar highway that was to conduct me to Yekaterinoslav, under the escort of Trebitski’s Cossacks, about a hundred of whom, armed with sabres, pistols, and lances, and carrying their forage, food, and in most instances, plunder, rode in double file on each side of a train of kabitkas, which were filled with sick and wounded Russian soldiers, and, in a few instances, I saw Frenchmen among them.

Every jolt of those wretched waggons over the rough and rocky roads caused wounds to burst out afresh; groans and curses rose in the air, and blood was soon oozing or dripping through the salt-encrusted planking on the dusty highway.

These kabitkas are Tartar waggons, which are driven in vast numbers to Perecop for the conveyance of the salt, which, in the dry season—from June till August—lies on the plains or steppes so thick that they are usually driven axle-deep among it for loading.

A number of these waggons had been improvised by General Baur for ambulance purposes; and now I found myself seated in one, among some bloody and dirty straw, with three severely wounded men of the 45th, or Tambrov regiment, and a French officer, whose face was half hidden by a large bandage, discoloured by the blood of a sword-wound, which had laid open his right cheek.

Intent upon escape, I looked earnestly and constantly before me; but we were now traversing an undulating plain, that was dotted by a few trees, of strange aspect, and the flocks of the Nomadic Tartars. And as the path dipped down over an eminence, I took a last farewell, but certainly not “fond look,” of Kourouk, with its two burnished domes, which glittered brightly in the sunshine, while the Mountain of the Tent looked faint and blue in distance.

Trebitski, the Cossack officer, had conceived, I knew why, a personal animosity for me; and ever and anon, as if he would anticipate any attempt on my part to escape, he hovered about the kabitka in which I was reclining, and recoiling in disgust from the grey-coated Muscovites who lay beside me, and whose presence made the air redolent of Stamboul tobacco, bloody bandages, and the Russian leather of their clumsy boots and coarse accoutrements.

One of the first acts of the pitiful Trebitski was to deprive me of a small basket of rations—cold fowl, wine, &c.—provided for me by the kindness of Vladimir Dahl and Captain Anitchoff, and to substitute in their place a meagre allowance of the black bread, salt, and vodka used by the half-barbarian escort.

I determined to report this petty theft on reaching his head-quarters; but where were they?

At Yekaterinoslav, on the banks of the Dnieper, in the territory of the Cossacks of Azof, far over the desert plains that lie beyond the Isthmus of Perecop, whose vast fortress bars the way from the Crimea to the mainland of Europe.

My blood boiled up with vengeance against Berkeley, my betrayer, and my entire soul revolted at the prospect of such a heartless and hopeless journey, with a doubtful termination—a captivity, the end of which none could foresee; and the desire—a deep, clamorous, and heart-burning desire—of escape at any hazard grew strong within me; but I was without weapon, money, or a horse.

Oh, that I had but five minutes’ start, with such an animal under me as that ridden by Trebitski, which was a beautiful and powerful Arab, whose actions were full of lightness and grace!

To increase my annoyance, this bearded commander got tipsy more than once on brandy and absinthe; and then he would shake his crooked sabre at me with many “strange oaths,” of which I could make nothing; but I thought that, if some of those “wives and daughters of England,” who think foreigners so interesting, had been with us in the Crimea, their ideas of continentals might have changed in favour of their more prosaic countrymen.

“Ouf! pst! pst!” I heard the wounded Frenchman muttering, as he raised himself from an uneasy doze, and looked about him with one eye, that glared wildly, for bandages concealed the other. “But for this devilish Crimean business, I should have been flirting in the Bois de Boulogne, lounging in the Gardens of the Tuileries, eating ices at Tortoni’s, or drinking lemonade at a cafe chantant with la belle Rogolboche. Pst! pst! c’est le diable!” Then, addressing himself to me, he said, “Ah, le Cossaque!—yon devil of a Trebitski—is a shocking ruffian—a veritable brigand! Luckily, the Russian savage does not understand a word we say. He has stolen your rations, and left you—pah! what a dog wouldn’t eat; but I have something better, and you shall dine with me.”

“I thank you, monsieur,” said I.

“Comrades in glory, we shall be friends in misfortune!” exclaimed the Frenchman, with great emphasis. While he ran on thus, something in his voice seemed familiar to me.

“You are, monsieur—you are—“

“Exactly, my friend; Victor Baudeuf, at your service—Captain of the French line.”

“I thought you were killed at Alma!”

“Only half killed, as you may see. Pardieu! but who told you so?”

“Mademoiselle Sophie.”

“The vivandiere of the 2nd Zouaves?”

“Yes.”

“Ah! she had always a spite at me—that dear little Sophie. You should see her riding at the head of the 2nd, with her canteen slung over her shoulder, and a cigarette between her little fingers, and a saucy twinkle in her bright eyes as she sings—

“I hope she may escape all this wild work, and see our beautiful France again. No, monsieur, I was not killed, but most severely wounded—left for dead—and thus fell into the hands of these beastly fellows. I remember you now, monsieur. We often met at Varna, at the Restaurant de l’Armee d’Orient. A droll den it was! And you remember Jules Jolicoeur, of the 2nd Zouaves. Poor Jules! A round shot finished him at Alma. He has gone to his last account. Heaven rest him! You are a Scotsman, I believe, though I always took you for a Jean Boule—a biftek; and so you shall dine with me. ‘Fier comme un Ecossais,’ is still a proverb among us in France, in memory of the old times, which our Zouaves are about to renew, I think; for they boast themselves ‘les Ecossais de l’Armee Francaise,’ and fraternize like brothers with your sans culotte regiments, in what you call ‘lakeelt.’”

All this sounded so like some of Toole’s “French before breakfast,” that I could almost have laughed at my garrulous friend, who produced from a small havresack, which he opened with his left hand—the right being severely shattered by a grape shot—one of those pates de foies gras for which Strasbourg is so famous; made from the livers of geese, after the poor birds have undergone a process there is no use in detailing here. Heaven knows how M. Baudeuf came by it, but the pate, with his biscuit, he divided very liberally with me, and with the three wounded Russians, who shared with us the soft comforts of the kabitka, and whose glances of hungry appeal there was no resisting.

Aware that they knew not a word we were saying, we conversed freely; and I told the Frenchman that, as no parole had been offered us, we should escape together. He replied that the hazard was great; yet that he would have shared it with me, but for his shattered hand, which made him every way so helpless. He wished me every success, and gave me secretly a little map of the Crimea, which he had concealed in the lining of his tattered uniform; and this on every occasion I studied intently.

“Mutilated as I am, it is of no use to me,” said he; “but may serve you, mon camarade, at a pinch.”

It was small, and by Huot and Demidoff; but was extremely correct.

On our arrival at Karasu-bazar, sixteen or eighteen miles from Kourouk, I was separated from this pleasant Frenchman. I never saw him again, and have too much reason to fear that he perished amid the horrors of a catastrophe which ensued subsequently.

It was evening when, after traversing a pleasant valley, we entered Karasu-bazar, so slow had been the progress of our primitive train of cars, with their melancholy load of human suffering. Situated on the Karasu, an affluent of the Salghir, this town is the great wine and fruit mart of the Crimea; and there a strange rabble of Tartars in short jackets, with open sleeves, high caps, and high boots; Greeks in scarlet fez and baggy blue breeches; Russians, with fur caps and canvas doublets, trimmed with fur; and Armenians, in long, flowing garments, crowded around us.

These escorted us through the narrow and tortuous streets in the dusk. To attempt an escape there would be futile, notwithstanding that the Tambrov uniform which I wore seemed to favour the idea.

Darkness set in. We were closely guarded; and now I heard the shrill, vicious whistle of a railway engine, and found the train of kabitkas halted near some wooden booths, where the wires and posts of a telegraph, a platform, and covered passenger shed, with other familiar features of the usual kind, indicated a railway station!

In fact, we had reached the head of a single track line of railroad, which had been hastily constructed for the conveyance of troops and munition of war a portion of the way towards Perecop; and probably it might have been carried to Arabat, at the head of the Putrid Sea, or to Sebastopol itself, but for the rapid advance of the Allies.

Roughly constructed and hastily laid down, it led from the banks of the Karasu I knew not at the time whither, as it was not depicted in the map given to me by Captain Baudeuf, from whom I was now, as I have said, separated.

We were all hurriedly thrust into carriages, or rather trucks, like those for conveying cattle in Britain, without seat or other accommodation, save a little straw for the miserable wounded, whose numbers were greatly augmented by some fugitives from Khutor-Mackenzie.

The line of trucks might be, I suppose, about forty, including one which bore the gallant Trebitski with his “Araby steed;” and three quaint and old-fashioned locomotives, with large wheels and high chimneys, were getting up their steam—one in front, one in rear, and one in the centre; and these, after much wheezing and puffing, screaming and clanking, with other discordant noises, got into motion simultaneously, and in the dark we shot away from the streets and bazaars of the Karasu, for where was yet a mystery to me.

The Cossack escort was now reduced to twenty dismounted men, who left their horses and lances behind them, and were distributed among the carriages; but luckily there were none in mine.

We had scarcely left the lights of the town behind us, when an odour of burning attracted my attention, and the attention of those who were penned up like sheep in the same truck with me. We could only communicate our fears by signs, and heads were constantly put forth on both sides of the train, and withdrawn, always with exclamations of excitement, while the alarming odour increased strongly.

The lines of rail were laid on sleepers of wood, and I imagined that, perhaps, the hot ashes dropping from the three engines might cause the smell of burning that was filling the air heavily, as we tore along past hills and rocks, the domes of village mosques, or churches, tipped with silver light by the rising moon; along wooden bridges that spanned hoarse and brawling mountain streams; across open wastes, where the millet, rye, and hemp had been reaped and gathered, or where the wild tobacco still grew; past slopes clothed by dark waving woods, the chestnut, the oak, and the wild pear tree, the rush of the train, and the scream of the engine scaring away the goshawks, the magpie, and kite from their nests; past round towers, arches, and aqueducts, the crumbling ruins of the old Genoese days; past where flocks and herds were grazing, till they fled on the noise of our approach.

And now the train dashed into a forest of pine and turpentine trees, through which it seemed to rush for miles upon miles, its speed augmenting every instant, while the odour of burning increased with every revolution of the wheels.

Anon, loud cries of terror and agony rang out at times upon the night breeze; and now a light—actual flames, other than those which came from the furnaces—occasionally shed its swift red gleam upon the gnarled tree stems that stood in thick ranks on each side of the way; and then came the appalling conviction upon all our minds that, in addition to having run off, or having been abandoned by its stupid Muscovite engine-drivers, the train was on fire!

In those open and rudely-constructed trucks, there were no windows to lower. I thrust my head through the nearest opening, and found that the two carriages in front of ours were a mass of flames, which burst forth fiercely from all the apertures, and these, as they rushed in streams behind, in consequence of the intense draught caused by the wild speed at which the train careered through the forest, were setting our carriage on fire also. Fortunately I was in the rear compartment, and for a time could look steadily ahead.

Oh, what a sight it was!

The footways on each side of the carriages that were on fire were literally alive with sick and wounded wretches, who had crept out, and now clung to the steps and handles, by which the guards usually clamber about, afraid alike to fall or cast themselves off; but every instant a shriek was heard, as the grasp of some maimed or feeble unfortunate relaxed, and he vanished from sight as the train swept on. Some fell into watercourses, some fell over banks, and were flung into the forest, the turpentine trees of which, in many places, were now in flames.

The straw amid which the more helpless wounded lay was soon on fire. Many of them were literally roasted alive, and I heard the pistols of the Cossacks exploding, as they went off in the heat, or as their despairing wearers shot themselves or each other.

The engine-drivers, for some reason unknown to me, must have jumped off and abandoned the train, for it swept through the forest unchecked, a mass of flames, from which the yells and shrieks were appalling. More than one carriage was literally burned down to its iron, all within perishing miserably.

Even at that desperate time the hope of escape grew strong within me, for every confusion was favourable. Being locked in on both sides, I crept through an aperture which served for a window, and found footing on the side gangway, with two or three others, who clung to the carriage and moaned fearfully, for the exertion had made their gunshot wounds burst out afresh. They soon dropped off, and I was left alone.

The rush of the glowing flames came hotly aft upon my face and hands. I saw the clinging mass ahead, swaying to and fro, their faces and figures reddened in the scorching glare, which lit up the line of rails like two red-hot wires that vanished into the forest—all this I saw for a moment, and a moment only.

I was about to drop off, and trust to Providence for the sequel, when there was a sudden shout, a crash, a vast shower of ruddy sparks, that seemed to fill the air with fire, a piercing yell, and then, in silence and darkness, I found myself rolling down a grassy bank for some twenty yards or so, until I was arrested from further harm by some soft tobacco plants, which there grew wild and thickly.

Unhurt, but greatly confused, and completely breathless I staggered up to look around me.

The coupling of two of the burning carriages had broken; they had tumbled heavily down the bank, breaking to pieces as they fell, scattering the brands of their blazing woodwork far and wide, killing outright some of the scorched and wounded occupants, several of whom I saw lying near me in the moonlight, blackened and mutilated, while the remainder of the train, with its three engines, all abandoned by their cowardly conductors, swept on its errand of destruction and death through the now flaming forest.

As I rose from amid the strange debris of smouldering wood and shattered iron, of dead or dying, and half-burned men, and was considering in which way to turn, I was met face to face by one whose right arm was broken, but who, nevertheless, uttered a hoarse and guttural malediction, with which I was not unfamiliar, having heard it frequently from his lips before. Drawing a pistol from his belt, with his left hand he levelled it at my head.

Luckily the percussion cap snapped, and the weapon hung fire. But to close with Trebitski—for he it was—to wrench the pistol away, and knock him mercilessly down with the butt-end, were all the work of a moment, and then I felt that I was “the monarch of all I surveyed.”

I was turning away, when a peculiar snorting sound attracted my attention, and in a well-padded horse-box, which lay on its side far down the slope, I saw the head of Trebitski’s Arab charger, as the poor animal lolled out its red tongue, and threw back its small close ears in terror and anger, for the sides of the horse-box were all scorched by flame; and the mere odour of fire is sufficient to inspire a horse with the most bewildering fear.

Here had Providence given me an additional chance for escape. But I had no time to lose; the train might be stopped by this time (though no sound, save the moans of the maimed, now disturbed the silence of that woody solitude), and succour might be sent to the sufferers, though human life is but little valued in Russia, and human suffering is viewed there with an amount of indifference that savours more of Asia than of Europe.

My dragoon knowledge served me usefully here. I contrived to calm and soothe the Arab horse, to unbuckle the braces that secured it in the partly-shattered stall, and it came forth, half-scrambling and half-crawling, trembling in every limb, and every fibre quivering under its glossy coat, which was flecked with white foam. Cowed, calmed, and terrified by the recent catastrophe, the horse was as docile as if Mr. Rarey had been whispering his magic in its ear.

A noble Arab, with all the peculiarities of its breed—the square forehead and fine black muzzle, the brilliant eyes and beautiful veins, the withers high and body light, and standing somewhere about fourteen hands and a half—it was whinnying, and rubbing its nose on my hand as if for protection and fellowship.

He was saddled and accoutred, and the bridle was hanging on the pommel.

In a moment I had it over his head, and buckled to perfection, the bridoon touching the corners of the mouth, but low enough not to wrinkle them.

I vaulted into the saddle, leaving the adjustment of the stirrups to a more leisure time, as Trebitski, in Cossack fashion, rode with his knees up to his elbows; and just as that redoubtable personage was reviving after his rough tap on the head, I dashed into the forest, and soon left the scene of suffering far behind me.

In several places the wood was on fire, and, being dry with the heat of the past summer, the branches and crisp leaves, particularly those of the turpentine trees, burned briskly. Thus I could see the wavering flames reddening the clouds above, while riding on, and ignorant of the route I was pursuing, through this dense old forest, the jungle and underwood at times completely retarding all progress.

I paused only to lengthen the stirrups, and give my newly-acquired steed—in which I began to feel all the interest of proprietorship—a draught at a runnel, and then sought the recesses of the densest thicket I could find to wait for day, that I might look warily about, and consider what to do next, for, if taken with the horse of the Parooschick Adrian Trebitski in my possession, the chances of being shot, or sent to life-long slavery, were great. Anyway, I feared there would be a vacant troop in Her Majesty’s lancers—a troop, perhaps, given to Berkeley; and I feared that few Russian officers like the gay young Anitchoff or kind old Vladimir Dahl might come in my way again.

My more immediate fear was for the wolves, which there roam in packs, and were, no doubt, by this time howling and snarling among the victims on the railroad. If any of them scented me, I should have to take refuge in a pine, where I might be starved to death, after they had devoured my horse.

Every sound startled me; but I heard only the occasional gobble of the wild bustards, which usually go in great flocks through all the wild places of the Crimea.

I unbitted the Arab, and let him graze, but hobbled him so that he could not escape; and as day began to steal redly through the distant dingles of the wood, the light slowly descending from the summits to the lower stems of the lofty pines, I found some wild grapes whereon to breakfast, and quench the fierce thirst which recent excitement had induced.

When the light sufficed I drew forth the map given me by poor Captain Baudeuf, and began to study my whereabouts. Through the openings of the trees I could see, about a mile distant, the current of a broad and evidently deep river shining in the morning sun.

The railway had not, to my knowledge, crossed such a stream; it flowed from the west towards the east; hence, from its magnitude, it could only be the Salghir, which, after being joined by the Karasu, flows into the Putrid Sea.

This stream has usually little water in its bed, save after the melting of the winter snows; but recent rains among the mountains of Ac-Metchet had swollen it beyond its usual size. And now I beheld what must have been a bend or sweep of it flowing between me and the tract of country where our armies lay—the tract that stretched away towards Sevastopol, which I supposed to be at least a hundred miles distant; and that idea afterwards proved to be correct.

For a time my spirit quailed at the prospect before me. I was nearly in the middle of the savage and hostile Crimea, ignorant of the many languages spoken there, ignorant of the roads, and with no money to bribe or arms to intimidate.

No house or town was visible, or a sign of any living thing, save the goldfinches that twittered in the trees, and the heron and wild duck that waded or squattered among the green weeds and long trailers on the bank of the rushing stream. The latter was nearly eighty yards broad. I knew that it must be crossed, as the south side was the safest. Crossed! but how?

While considering this, the sound of a Cossack trumpet among the woodlands in my rear gave me a nervous start, and made me resolve on instant action. I put my treasured map carefully away, mounted, and urged my horse at once to the bank of the river.

I took my feet out of the stirrups, which I then crossed above the saddle—a precaution no dragoon or other horseman should ever forget when about to cross a river mounted; for if the horse should sink his hind-legs to seek for footing, or, worse still, should he “turn a turtle,” while the rider’s feet are in the stirrups, the most fatal results may ensue, and he will be helplessly drowned.

I was without spurs, yet I rushed him at the stream, for there are times when rider and horse feel as one. He took the water well, and struck out bravely, for I leant well forward, so that my body rested on his crest. I had no occasion to touch the rein or use the bit; but steered him by a switch torn from a tree.

With his neck stretched out like that of a dog, he swam coolly and steadily across, with the ripples of the water under my armpits. When he grounded, and scrambled up the other side, I dismounted, and led him by the bridle into a thicket beyond.

This was scarcely achieved, when some tall lances glittered on the other side of the stream, where a party of twelve Cossacks were scouting; and had my horse neighed they must have discovered me. However, they all disappeared in the wood; after which I breathed more freely, and proceeded to rub down my Arab with tufts of dry grass, and to wring out my wetted garments.

All that day I travelled through the woods, and at times along the highways, avoiding even the Tartar herdsmen and field-labourers, steering in the direction of Sebastopol, guided by my tiny map and the sun; and towards nightfall I was lucky enough to meet with some French troops, though at first I narrowly escaped being shot by their advanced guard—a favour procured me by my Tambrov uniform. Luckily I could muster sufficient French to make myself known as an officer of her Britannic Majesty’s service, and was conducted to the commander.

These troops proved to be the 77th Regiment of the Infanterie de la Ligne, under Colonel Jean Louis Giomar, Commander of the Legion of Honour, on their march towards Sebastopol.

I was in safety now, and was treated by him and his officers with every attention and kindness, and, in truth, after all I had undergone during the last twenty-four hours, I required both.

The 77th had landed but a few days before from La Reine Blanche*** a French ship of the line, in which the Emperor had revived the old Parisian name for Mary Queen of Scots.

1. A piece of painted canvas, to cover the saddle, bridle, and girths of a cavalry horse, and sometimes pegged to the ground. The name of the corps was usually painted on the outside; and when the trooper was mounted for service, the deck was strapped over his portmanteau. ↩

2. The disastrous and reckless duel referred to—the last, I think, fought in our service—occurred in 1844, between the husbands of two sisters, in a quarrel about monetary matters—Lieutenant-Colonel David L. Fawcett, C.B., of the 55th Regiment, and Lieutenant and Adjutant Alexander T. Monro, of the Royal Horse Guards. The former was killed, and the latter, after suffering a short imprisonment, was restored to the service, but not to his regiment. The circumstances must be fresh in the memory of some of my readers. ↩

3. When serving in the East, a paragraph in a Welsh newspaper recorded the death of Agnes Auriol in the parish where her father had been incumbent. She was found dead at the stile which led to the village burying-ground; and the verdict of the jury was “Death by the visitation of God.” ↩

4. This circumstance delayed for a time the appearance of the Greys in the ranks of the allied army. They departed from Nottingham in July, 1854, with their band playing “Scots wha hae,” &c. ↩

5. Order for marching. ↩

6. The same defect was observed on that great day when Her Majesty distributed the Victoria Cross. The bands of the Guards played Scottish airs for the Highlanders, and “Rule Britannia” for the Marines; but otherwise “favoured the troops and the people with a great deal of German music, to which no attention was paid. National airs would have gratified both, and stirred up the patriotism of the people. The Enniskilling Dragoons and Rifles were chiefly composed of Irishmen; but the bands did not venture upon a single air peculiar to Ireland.”—Nolan’s History of the War, p. 770. ↩

7. A corps disbanded in 1818; and formerly the 29th Light Dragoons, were raised in 1795. ↩

8. There was another pet of the 8th Hussars, which met with a different fate. The jet-black horse, on whose back their colonel, T. P. Vandeleur, was killed at the battle of Leswaree “long kept his place with the regiment, and afterwards became the property of Cornet Burrowes, who took great care of him until the corps left India, when he was shot, that he might not fall into unworthy hands.”—Narrative of Leswaree. By Dr. Ore. ↩

9. It was a tradition, when the author was there, that in 1810 an exploring party, under Lieutenant Buchan, R.N., was sent to cultivate friendship with the Red Indians, and left with them, as hostages, two marines. Returning to the Bay of Exploits (about seventy miles westward from Bloody Bay) next summer, he found the savages gone, and the headless remains of his two marines lying in the bush. ↩

10. A character not unlike Urbain Gautier figures in the account of the first or second expedition of Sir John Franklin. ↩

11. “There is but one God, and Mahomet is his Prophet.” ↩

12. In the Daily News. ↩

13. Camp phrase for the French linesmen. ↩

14. Al Koran, chapters iii., xvii., and xxiv. ↩

15. The Mahommedan Angel of Death. ↩

16. Lieutenant-Colonel Cannon. ↩

17. Passed (final examination) at the Staff College, ↩

18. In one brigade a stronger governance was maintained. Sir Colin Campbell would not allow that even the rage of thirst should loosen the discipline of his splendid Highland regiments. He halted them a little before they reached the stream, and so ordered it that, by being saved from the confusion that would have been wrought by their own wild haste, they gained in comfort, and knew that they were gainers. When men toil in organized masses, they owe what well-being they have to wise and firm commanders.”—Kinglake’s “Invasion of the Crimea,” vol. ii. ↩

19. Our predecessors in the service were the old Scots 17th Light Dragoons, raised at Edinburgh in the winter of 1759, during the alarm of the projected invasion under the Marechal Duc d’Aiguillon, by Sholto, Lord Aberdour, afterwards sixteenth Earl Morton, who died in Sicily in 1774. This corps, which never consisted of more than two troops, served in the Seven Years’ War, and was disbanded in 1763. One of its officers, Lieutenant the Honourable Sir T. Maitland, son of the Earl of Lauderdale, died so lately as 1824, a lieutenant-general, G.C.B., governor of Malta and the Ionian Isles. ↩

20. Foretold. ↩

21. “O most merciful Jesus, lover of souls, wash in Thy blood the sinners of the whole world who are now in their agony and are to die this day!” ↩

22. 41st—so called since 1831. ↩

23. Kinglake, vol. ii. ↩

24. Now an armour-clad, of six-inch iron plate. ↩