.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 55179
   :PG.Title: One of The Six Hundred
   :PG.Released: 2017-07-23
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: James Grant
   :DC.Title: One of The Six Hundred
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1875
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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ONE OF THE SIX HUNDRED
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      ONE OF
      THE SIX HUNDRED

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      A Novel

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      BY JAMES GRANT

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      AUTHOR OF "THE ROMANCE OF WAR."

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   |  "Half a league, half a league,
   |    Half a league, onward,
   |  Into the Valley of Death,
   |    Rode the Six Hundred!"
   |                    TENNYSON.

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      LONDON:
      GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS
      THE BROADWAY, LUDGATE
      NEW YORK: 416 BROOME STREET

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      1875

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.. _`CHAPTER I.`:

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   ONE OF THE SIX HUNDRED.

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   CHAPTER I.

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..

   |  To be handsome, young, and twenty-two,
   |  With nothing else on earth to do;
   |  But all day long to bill and coo,
   |   It were a pleasant calling.—THACKERAY.

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I was just in the act of humming the above verse, when the
following announcement was put into my hand—

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"Regimental Orders.—Head-quarters, Maidstone,
December 31st.

"As the regiment is to be held in readiness for foreign
service in spring, captains of troops will report to Lieutenant
and Adjutant Studhome, for the information of the commanding
officer, on the state of the saddlery, the holsters and
lance-buckets; and the horses must be all re-shod under the
immediate inspection of the veterinary surgeon and
Farrier-Sergeant Snaffles.

"Leave of absence to the 31st proximo is granted to
Lieutenant Newton Calderwood Norcliff, in consequence of his
urgent private affairs."

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"Hah! this is what most concerns *me*,"  I exclaimed, as I
read the foregoing, and then handed the order-book, a squat
vellum-bound quarto, to the orderly-serjeant who was in
waiting.

"Any idea of where we are likely to go, sir?" he asked.

"The East, of course."

"So say the men in the barracks; for the present, good-bye,
sir," said he, as he wheeled about on his spurred heel, and
saluted; "I wish you a pleasant journey."

"Thanks, Stapylton," said I; "and now to be off by the
night train for London and the north.  Ugh! the last night
of December; I shall have a cold journey of it."

Despatching my man, Willie Pitblado—of whom more
hereafter—to the mess-house to report that I should not dine
there that evening, I proposed at once to start for home,
resolved to make the most of the favour granted me—leave
between returns, as it is technically termed.

I propose to give the story of my own adventures, my
experiences of life, or autobiography (what you will); and
this I shall do, in the face of a certain writer, who asserts,
with some truth, doubtless, that she does not "believe that
there was, or could be in the world, a wholly true, candid, and
unreserved biography, revealing all the dispositions, or even,
without exception, *all the facts of any existence*.  Indeed,"
she adds, "the thing is next to impossible; since, in that case,
the subject of the biography must be a man or woman without
reserve, without delicacy, and without *those secrets* which
are inevitable even to the most stainless spirit."

With all due deference to this fair writer, I beg to hope
that such a candid spirit may exist; and that, without
violating the delicacy of this somewhat (externally) fastidious
age on the one hand, and without prudish or hypocritical
reserve on the other, I, Mr. Newton Norcliff, will relate the
plain, unvarnished story of a cavalry subaltern's life during
the stirring events of the last ten years.

My regiment was a lancer one.  I need not designate it
further; though, by the way, it has always struck me as
somewhat peculiar in our cavalry of the line, that while we have
our Scottish corps, the famous old Greys, and no less than
three Irish, we have not one English regiment, provincially
designated as such.

I despatched a note of thanks to the colonel, handed over
my cattle to the care of my friend Jack Studhome, the adjutant,
and had a hasty interview with Saunders M'Goldrick, our
Scots paymaster—not that I wish the reader to infer that he
was my chief factor and reliance (heaven help those in a
dragoon regiment who find him so!).

Glad to escape, even for the brief period of a month, from
the monotony of routine parades, the stable duty, the barrack
life, and useless hurly-burly of Maidstone—to be free from
all bother, mess, band, and ball committees, courts-martial,
and courts of inquiry; from having to remember when this
parade took place, and when that particular drill, and all that
sort of thing—glad, I say, to escape from being saluted by
soldiers and sentinels at every turn and corner, and to be
once again lord of my own proper person, I relinquished my
gay lancer trappings, and resumed the less pretending mufti
of the civilian—a suit of warm and strong heather-mixture
tweed—and about nine o'clock P.M. found myself, with some
light travelling baggage, my gun-case, railway rugs, &c. (in
care of Willie Pitblado, who was attired in very orthodox
livery—boots, belt, and cockade), awaiting the up train for
London, at the Maidstone station, and enjoying a last friendly
chat and a cigar with Studhome, as we promenaded to and
fro on the platform, and talked of the different work that
would soon be cut out for us, too probably, about the time my
short leave expired.

The British fleet was already in the Bosphorus; the field
of Oltenitza had seen the terrible defeat of the Russians by the
troops of Omar Pasha, generalissimo of the Porte, avenge the
recent naval massacre at Sinope.  Ere long, the Turks were
to be again victorious at Citate.  General Luders was about to
force his way into the Dobrudcha; Britain, France, Russia,
Turkey, and Sardinia were gathering their hosts for the strife;
and amid these serious events, that absurdity might not be
wanting, the sly broad-brims and popularity-hunters of the
Peace Society sent a deputation to the Emperor Nicholas, to
expostulate with him on the wickedness of his ways.

"Egad! if the weather proves cold here, what will you find
it at home, in Scotland?" said Studhome, as we trod to and
fro; for there is no knocking the idea out of an Englishman's
head that the distance of some four hundred miles or so must
make a more than Muscovite difference in soil and temperature;
but it was cold—intensely so.

The air was clear, and amid the blue ether the stars
sparkled brightly.  Snow, white and glistening, covered all
the roofs of the houses and the line of the railway, and the
Medway shone coldly, like polished silver, under the seven arches
of its bridge, in the light of the rising moon; and now, with
a shrill, vicious whistle, and many a rapidly iterated grunt
and clank, came the iron horse that was to bear me on my
way, as it tore into the station, with its mane of smoke, and
its red bull's-eyes that shed two steady flakes of light along
the snow-covered line of rails.

The passengers were all muffled to their noses, and their
breath coated and obscured the glasses of the carefully-closed
windows.

Pitblado brought me *Punch*, the *Times*, and "Bradshaw,"
and then rushed to secure his second-class seat; Studhome
bade me farewell, and retired to join Wilford, Scriven, and
some others of the corps, who usually met at a billiard-room,
near the barracks, leaving me to arrange my several wrappers,
and enjoy the society of one whom he laughingly termed my
railway belle—a stout female with a squalling imp, whom,
notwithstanding my secret and confidential tip of half-a-crown,
the deceitful guard had thrust upon me; and then,
with another shriek and a steady and monotonous clanking,
the train swept out of the station.  The town vanished with its
county court house, barracks, river, and the fine tower of All
Saints' Church; and in a twinkling I could survey the
snow-covered country stretching for miles on each side of me, as
we scoured along the branch line to the Paddock Wood, or
Maidstone Road Junction, of the London and Dover Railway,
where I got the up train from Canterbury.

Swiftly went the first-class express.  The fifty-six miles were
soon done, and in an hour I was amid the vast world, the
human wilderness of London, even while worthy Jack
Studhome's merry smile and hearty good-bye seemed to linger
before me.  How glorious it is to travel thus, with all the
speed and luxury that money in these our days can
command!

A hundred years hence how will they travel—our
grandchildren?  Heaven alone knows.

I was now four-and-twenty.  I had been six years with the
lancers, and already the novelty of the service—though loving
it not the less—was gone; and I was glad, as I have said, to
escape for a month from a life of enforced routine, and the
nightly succession of balls, card and supper parties among the
garrison hacks or *passé* belles, whose names and flirtations
are standing jokes at the messes of our ungrateful lancers,
hussars, and dragoon guards, wherever they are stationed,
from Calcutta to Colchester, and from Poonah to Piershill.

A day soon passed amid the whirl of London, and night
saw me once more seated in the *coupé* of a well-cushioned
carriage for the north.

This time I was alone, and had the ample seat all to myself,
thereon to lounge with all the ease of a sybarite; and
with the aid of a brandy-flask, cigars, and warm wrappers and
plaids, prepared for the dreary journey of a winter night.

On, on went the train!

Lights, crimson and green, flashed at times out of the
darkness.  Here and there the tall poplars of the midland
counties stood up, like spectres in the moonlight, above the
snow-clad meadows.  Hollowly we rumbled through the
subterranean blackness of a tunnel; out in the snow and
moonlight again, amid other scenes and places.  Anon, a hasty
shout from some pointsman would make me start when just
on the eve of dropping asleep; or it might be a sudden
stoppage amid the lurid glare of furnaces, forges, and coalpits,
where, night and day, by spells and gangs the ceaseless work
went on.  Then it was the shrill whistling and clanking of the
train, the bustle, running to and fro of men with lanterns, the
banging of doors, tramping, and voices, with the clink of
hammers upon the iron wheels, as their soundness was tested,
which announced that we were at Peterborough, at York, or
Darlington.

But every station, whether we tarried or rushed past it,
seemed wonderfully alike.  There were always repetitions of
the same glazed advertisements in gilt frames; the same
huge purple mangold-wurzel, with its tuft of green leaves;
the same man in the hat and surtout, with the alpaca
umbrella, under the ceaseless shower of rain; Lea and Perrin's
sauce-bottles; somebody else's patent shirt; the florid posters
of *Punch*, the *Illustrated News*, and the *London Journal*;
and the same parti-coloured volumes of railway literature.

Rapidly we rushed through England.  Yorkshire and its
Ridings were left behind, and now the Borders, the old land
of a thousand battles and a thousand songs, drew near—the
brave green Borders, with all their solemn hills, upheaved in
the light of the faded stars.

Grey dawn of the coming day saw us traversing the fertile
Merse, with glimpses of the gloomy German sea, tumbling
its whitened waves upon bleak promontories of rock, such as
Dunbar, Fastcastle, and the bare, black headland of St. Abb.
Then, as I neared home, and saw the sun brightening on the
snow-covered summits of Dirlton and Traprainlaw, many an
old and long-forgotten idea, and many a sad and affectionate
thought of the past years, came back to memory, in the
dreary hour of the early winter morning.

I have said I was but four-and-twenty then.  When I had
last traversed that line of rail, it was in the sweet season of
summer, when the heather was purple on the Lammermuirs;
and a sea of golden grain clothed all the lovely valley of the
Tyne.  I was proceeding to join my regiment, a raw, heedless,
and impulsive boy, with bright hope and vague ambition in his
heart, and with a poor mother's tears yet wet upon his cheek.

I had been six years with the lancers, and four of these
were spent in India.  While there, my dear mother died;
and the memory of the last time when I saw her kind and
affectionate face, and heard her broken voice, as she prayed
God to bless my departing steps, came vividly, powerfully,
and painfully before me.

It was on the morning when I was to leave home and her
to join the corps.  Overnight, with all a boy's vanity and
glowing satisfaction, I had contemplated my gay lancer
trappings, had buckled on my sword, placed the gold
cartouche-belt and glittering epaulettes on my shoulders.

At that moment I would not have exchanged my cornetcy
for the kingdom of Scotland.  These alluring trappings were
the last things I thought of and looked on ere my eyes were
closed by slumber, and the grey dawn of the next eventful
day saw them still lying unpacked on the floor, when my poor
mother, pale, anxious, unslept, and with her sad eyes full of
tears, and her heart wrung with sorrow, stole softly into my
room, to look for the last time upon her sleeping boy, and her
mournful and earnest face was the first sight that met my
waking eyes, when roused by a tear that dropped upon my
cheek.

I started up, and all the consciousness of the great separation
that was to ensue—the terrible wrench of heart from
heart that was to come—burst upon me.  Then sword and
epaulettes, cap and plume, and the lancers, were forgotten;
and throwing my arms around her neck, as I had done in the
days of childish grief, I wept like the boy I was, rather than
the man I had imagined myself to be.

I was going home now; but I should see that beloved face
no more, and her voice was hushed for ever.

In that home were others, who were kind and gentle, and
who loved me well, awaiting my arrival, and to welcome me.
And there was my cousin Cora Calderwood—she was
unmarried still.

Cora I was about to see again.  It seemed long, long since
we had last met, though we had frequently corresponded, for
my uncle had a horror of letter-writing; and certain it was
that she had inspired the first emotion of love in my
schoolboy heart, and during my sojourn in India, and amid the
whirl and gaiety of barrack-life at Bath, at Maidstone, at
Canterbury and elsewhere, her image had lingered in my
mind, more as a pleasing memory connected with ideas of
Scotland and my home, rather than with those of a passionate
or enduring attachment.

Indeed, I had just been on the point of forming that
elsewhere; but now, having no immediate attraction beside me,
I began to wonder whether Cora had grown up a beauty;
how tall she was, whether she was engaged, and so forth;
whether she still remembered with pleasure the young playmate
who had left her sorely dissolved in tears, half lover and
wholly friend.

As we progressed northward, and crossed the Firth of
Forth, the snow almost entirely disappeared, save on the lofty
summits of the Ochil mountains, whose slopes looked green
and pleasant in the meridian sun; and my friend Studhome,
had he been with me, might have been much surprised in
finding the atmosphere warmer north of Stirling Bridge than
we found it at Maidstone—so variable is our climate.

We changed carriages at Stirling, where I was to imbibe
some hot coffee, while Pitblado looked after my baggage, and
swore in no measured terms at the slowness of an old,
cynical, and hard-visaged porter, on whose brass badge was
engraved a wolf—the badge of Stirling.

"Now then, look alive, you old duffer!" I heard Willie
shouting.

"Ou, aye!" replied the other slowly, with a grin on his
weather-beaten and saturnine face; "ye think yoursel' a braw
chiel in your mustaches and laced jacket—there was a time
when I thocht mysel' one too."

"What do you mean?" asked Pitblado, whose dragoon air
even his livery failed to conceal.

"Mean!" retorted the other; "why, I mean that at the
point o' the bayonet I helped to carry Badajoz and Ciudad
Rodrigo to boot; and now, for sax baubees, I'm thankfu' to
carry your bag.  Sae muckle for sodgerin'!"

"It is not very encouraging, certainly," said my man, with
a smile.

"Ten years' service, two wounds, and a deferred pension of
threepence per diem," growled the other, as he threw my
traps, with an oath, on the roof of the carriage.

"What regiment, my friend?" I inquired.

"The old Scots brigade, second battalion, sir," he replied,
with a salute, as I slipped a trifle into his hand.

"The weather seems open and fine here."

"Aye," said he, with another saturnine grin; "but a green
yule maketh a fat kirkyard."

In five minutes more we were *en route*, sweeping along the
little lonely branch line, that through grassy glens, where the
half-frozen runnels oozed or gurgled among withered reeds
and bracken bushes, led us into the heart of Fife—"the
kingdom," as the Scots call it; not that it ever was so in any
time of antiquity, but because the peninsular county contains
within its compact and industrious self every means and
requisite for the support of its inhabitants, independent of the
produce of the whole external world—at least, such is their
boast.

I was drawing nearer and nearer home; and now my heart
beat high and happily.  Every local feature and casual
sound, the little thatched cottages, with rusty, antique risps
on their doors,[\*] and the clatter of the wooden looms within,
were familiar to me.  We swept past the quaint town,
and the tall, gaunt castle of Clackmannan, where its aged
chatelaine—the last of the old Bruce line—*knighted* Robert
Burns, with the sword of the victor of Bannockburn, saying,
dryly, that she "had a better right to do it than *some people*,"
and ere long I saw the spires that overshadow the graves of
Robert I. and many a Scottish monarch, as we glided past
Dunfermline, old and grey, with its glorious ruined palace,
where Malcolm drank the blood-red wine, and where Charles
I. was born, and its steep, quaint streets covering the brow
of a sloping ridge that ends abruptly in the wooded glen of
Pittencrief.


[\*] The old Scottish tirling-pin—to be found now
nowhere save in Fife—in lieu of bells and knockers.


My delight was fully shared in by Willie Pitblado, my
servant, the son of old Simon, my uncle's keeper.  He was a
lancer in my troop, for whom I had procured a month's
furlough; thus the hedgerows where he had bird-nested,
the fields where he had sung and whistled at the plough, the
farm-gates on which he had swung for hours—a truant boy
from school—the woods of Pitrearie and Pittencrief, the
abbey's old grey walls, and the square tower that covers
Bruce's grave, were all hailed by Willie as old friends; and
strange to say, his Doric Scotch came back to his tongue
with the air he breathed, though it had been nearly well-nigh
quizzed out of him by our lancers, nearly all of whom were
English.

He was a smart, handsome, and soldier-like fellow, who
bade fair to be "the rage" among the servant-girls at the old
house, the home-farm, and the adjacent village, and a source of
vexation to their hobnailed country admirers.

A few miles beyond the old city I quitted the train, and
leaving him to follow with my baggage in a dog-cart, I struck
across the fields by a near path that I remembered well, and
which I knew would bring me straight to Calderwood Glen,
the residence of my uncle, Sir Nigel—save Cora, almost the
last relation I had now on earth.





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.. _`CHAPTER II.`:

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   CHAPTER II.

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..

   |  Pure as the silver wreath of snow
   |    That lies on yonder wintry hill,
   |  Are all the thoughts that peaceful flow,
   |    And with pure joy my bosom fill.

   |  Soft as the sweet spring's morning breath,
   |    Or summer's zephyr, forth they roam;
   |  Until my bosom grows more kind,
   |    And dreams of thee and all at home.

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The winter day was cold and clear, but without frost, save
on the mountain tops, where the snow was lying.  Though
vegetation should have been dormant, the swelling uplands,
the pastoral hills and braes of Fife, looked green and fertile;
and there was a premature budding of young shoots, which
the bitter frost of to-morrow might totally destroy.

Fires glowed redly through the little square windows of the
wayside cottages, and from their massive stone chimneys the
smoke ascended into the thin air in heavy volumes, that told
of warmth, of comfort, and industry within.  Ere long I
could see the woods, all bare and leafless, that covered the
slopes of Calderwood Glen, and the vanes of the old house
shining in the light of the setting sun, which streamed along
the green slope of the western Lomond.

I passed unnoticed through the secluded village which
stood, I knew, upon the verge of my good uncle's property,
and where the old signboards of the smithy, the bakery, and
alehouse were familiar to me.  The clock of the old Gothic
kirk struck the hour of three, slowly and deliberately, as only
such clocks do in the country.

Many years ago, in boyhood, I remembered the familiar
voice of that village monitor.  What changes had taken
place since then, in myself and others, and even in the scene
around me!  How many, whose daily routine, and whose
labours—the heritage of toil—were timed by its bell and
dial, were now in other lands, or sleeping in their humble
graves beneath the shadow of the spire, and yet the old
moss-grown clock ticked on!

Since then I had grown to manhood, had seen many of the
dearest of my kindred die.  Since then I had become a
soldier, and had served in India, and on the staff in the late
Burmese war.  At the bombardment of Rangoon, I received
a wound in the night attack made by the enemy on our camp
at the heights of Prome.

Thousands of stirring scenes and strange faces had flitted
before me.  I had traversed twice the great Atlantic and
Indian oceans, and had twice passed the Cape, on the first
occasion looking with anxious eyes and envious heart at every
homeward-bound sail; and now all these events seemed as a
long dream, and as if it were but yesterday when last I heard
the voice of the old village clock.

In that timeworn fane, Row, the Covenanter, had preached,
and the great archbishop, too—Sharpe, the recreant, or the
martyr (which you will), who died on Magus Muir; and, that
the marvellous may not be wanting, there is a legend which
tells us that, in the year before the Covenanters invaded
England, and stormed Newcastle, thereby seriously injuring
the London coal market, there used to issue from the empty
loft where, in old Catholic times, the organ stood, the sound
of such an instrument in full play, together with the voices of
the choristers singing a grand old Gregorian chant.  These
sounds were only heard in the night, or at other times when
Calderwood kirk was empty, for the moment any one entered
they ceased, and all became still—still as the dead Calderwoods
of the Glen and of Piteadie, stretched in effigy, each
upon his pedestal of stone, in St. Margaret's aisle; but this
marvel was universally believed to portend the ultimate return
of prelacy.

So rapidly and totally does the speed of the railway annihilate
alike the extent of time and space, that it seemed difficult
to embody the fact that, but four-and-twenty hours ago,
I had been in my quarters at Maidstone barracks, or amid
the splendour of a fashionable hotel in London; and yet it
was so.

Treading deep among the last year's crisp and withered
leaves, I proceeded down the sombre and winding avenue,
with a heart that beat quicker as I drew near a man, whose
figure I remembered instantly, for he was my early friend, my
second father, my maternal uncle, good old Sir Nigel
Calderwood.  Occupied with a weeder, which he always carried,
and with which the ends of all his walking-sticks were
furnished, he was intent on up-rooting some obnoxious weed;
thus I could approach him unobserved.  He seemed as stout
and hale as when I saw him last.  The grey hair, that was
wont to escape under his well-worn wide-awake, was thinner
and more silvery, perhaps; but the old hat had its usual row
of flies and fishhooks, and his face was as ruddy as ever, and
spoke of high health and spirits.  He stooped a little more,
certainly; but his figure was still sturdy, and clad, as usual,
in a rough suit of grey tweed, with his stout legs encased in
long brown leather leggings, that had seen much service in
their time among the turnips and heather in the shooting
season, and in the trouting streams that traverse the fertile
Howe of Fife.

An old, half-blind, and wheezing otter terrier crept close to
his heels as I came up.  With a polite bow the worthy
baronet surveyed, but failed to recognise me, and waited, with
a glance of inquiry, until I should speak; for, sooth to say,
in the tall, rather well-knit figure, bronzed face, and heavy
moustaches I exhibited, he could scarcely be expected to
recognise the slender and beardless lad, whose heart was so
heavy when he was conveyed away from his mother's arms,
to push his way in the world as a cornet of cavalry some six
years before.

"Uncle—Sir Nigel!" said I, in a voice that became
tremulous.

"Newton—my dear boy, Newton—am I blind that I did
not recognise you?" he exclaimed, while he grasped my hand
and threw an arm round me; "welcome back to
Calderwood—welcome home—and on the second day of the New Year,
too! may many many joyous returns of the season be yours,
Newton!  What a manly fellow you have become since I
saw you last in London—quite a dragoon!"

"And how is Cora—she is with you, of course?"

"Cora is well; and though not a dashing girl, she has
grown up an amiable and gentle little pet, who is worth her
weight in gold; but you shall see—you shall see, and judge
for yourself.  The house is full of visitors just now—I have
some nice people to present you to."

"Thanks, uncle; but you and Cora were all I cared to see."

"But how came you to be here alone, and on foot too?"

"I left the train at Calderwood station, and wished to come
quietly back to the old house, without any fuss."

"To steal a march upon us, in fact?"

"Yes, uncle, you understand me," said I, looking into his
clear dark eyes, which were regarding me with an expression
of great affection, which recalled the memory of my mother,
his youngest and favourite sister.  "Pitblado will drive over
with my traps before dinner."

"Ah, Willie, the old keeper's son?"

"Yes."

"And how is he?"

"Quite well, and become so smart a lancer, that I fear
there will be a great pulling of caps among the housemaids.
I am loth to keep him out of the ranks, but the worthy fellow
won't leave me."

"Many a good bag of grouse from yonder fields and the
Lomonds, and many a good basket of trout from the Eden,
has poor Willie carried for me.  But, come this way; we shall
take the near cut by the keeper's lodge to the house; you
have not forgotten the way?"

"I should think not, uncle; by the Adder's Craig and the
old Battle Stone."

"Exactly.  I am so glad you have come at this time; I
have such news for you, Newton—such news, boy."

"Indeed, uncle?"

"Yes," he continued, laughing heartily.

"How?"

"Calderwood Glen is a mere man-trap at present."

"In what manner?"

"We have here old General Rammerscales, of the Bengal
army, who has come home with the liver complaint, and a
face as yellow as a buttercup, and his pale niece—a girl worth
heaven knows how many sacks or lacs of rupees (though, for
the life of me, I never knew what or how much a lac is.)  We
have also Spittal of Lickspittal and that Ilk, M.P. for the
Liberal interest (and more particularly for his own), with his
two daughters, rather pretty girls; and we have that beautiful
blonde, Miss Wilford, who has a cousin in your regiment—a
Yorkshire heiress, whom all the men agree would make such
a wife!  We have also the Countess of Chillingham, and her
daughter, Lady Louisa Loftus, really a very charming girl;
so, as I told you, Newton, the old house is baited like a
regular man-trap for you."

Had my uncle's perception been clearer, or had he been
less vigorously using his weeder, as he ran on thus, he could
not have failed to observe how powerfully the last name he
uttered affected me.

After a pause—"In none of your letters," said I, "did you
mention that Lady Loftus was here."

"Did I not?  But Cora is your chief correspondent, and no
no doubt she did."

"On the contrary, my cousin never once referred to her."

"Strange!  Lord Chillingham left us a week ago in haste
to attend a meeting of the Cabinet; but his women folks
have been rusticating here for nearly three months.  Charming
person the countess—charming, indeed; but the daughter
is quite a Diana.  You have met her before—she told us so,
and I have made up my mind—ah, you know for what, you
rogue—eh?"

What my uncle had made up his mind for was not very
apparent; but he concluded his sentence by poking the weeder
under my short ribs.

"To have me marry in haste and repent at leisure, eh,
uncle—is it for this that your mind is made up?"

"I am a man of the old school, Newton; yet I hate proverbs,
and everything old, except wine and good breeding."

"You are aware, uncle," said I, to change the subject, "that
the lancers are under orders for Turkey?"

"Where women are kept under lock and key, bought, and
secluded from society; just as in Britain they are thrust into
it for sale."

"And so, my dear uncle, supposing that a lively young lancer
will make a most excellent husband for your noble and beautiful
*protégée*, you are resolved to make a victim of me, is it
not so?"

"Precisely; but according to the old use and wont in drama
and romance, you must not be a willing one; you must be
prepared to hate her cordially at first sight, and to prefer some
one else—of course, some amiable village damsel, of humble
but respectable parentage," replied Sir Nigel, laughing.

"Hate *her*—prefer another!" I exclaimed; "on the
contrary, I—I——"

I know not what I was about to say, or how far I might
have betrayed myself.  The blood rushed to my temples, and
I felt giddy and confused, for the kind old baronet knew little
of the hopeless passion with which the fair one of whom he
spoke had inspired me already.

"You have met the Lady Lousia before, you say?"

"Nay, 'twas she who said she had met me," said I, glad to
recall by this trifling remark that I was not forgotten by her.

"Ah, indeed—indeed; where?"

"Oh, at Canterbury, at Tunbridge Wells, Bath; all those
places where people are to be met.  In London, too, I saw her
presented at Court."

"The deuce!  You and she seem to have gone in a leash,"
said Sir Nigel, laughing, while the colour deepened on my
cheek again; "but you must look sharp, for one of your
fellows who is here is for ever dangling after her."

"One of *ours*?" I exclaimed, with astonishment.

"Yes; a solemn, dreary, dandified fellow, whom I met at
Chillingham's shootings in the north, and invited to spend the
last weeks of his leave of absence here, as we were to have
you with us; and he spared no pains to impress upon me
that he was a particular chum of yours."

"Is he Captain Travers—Vaughan Travers?  He is on
leave."

"No; he is Lieutenant De Warr Berkeley."

"Berkeley!" I repeated, with some disgust, and with an
emotion of such inconceivable annoyance that I could scarcely
conceal it; for decidedly he was the last man of ours whom I
should have liked to find domesticated at Calderwood Glen.

Berkeley was well enough to meet with in men's society, at
mess, on parade, on the turf, or in the hunting-field; but
though handsome and perfectly well-bred, for his manners were
generally unexceptionable, he was not a man for the drawing-room.
He was master of a splendid fortune, which was left
him by his father, a plain old Scotchman, who had begun life
as a drayman, and whose patronymic was simply John Dewar
Barclay.  He became a wealthy brewer, and somehow his
son like all such *parvenus*, despising his name, was gazetted
to the lancers as De Warr Berkeley, and as such his name
figured in the "Army List."

The carefully-acquired fortune of the plodding old brewer
he spent freely, and without being lavish, though as an Eton
boy, and afterwards as a gentleman commoner of Christchurch,
he had plunged into dissipation that made his name proverbial.
He was one of those systematic *roués* whom prudent mothers
would carefully exclude from the society of their daughters,
nathless his commission, his cavalry uniform, his fortune, his
decidedly handsome person and bearing, which had all the
"tone of society"—whatever that may mean.

Hence I was rather provoked to find that the kind and
well-meaning but blundering old baronet had, as a favour to
me, installed him at Calderwood, as a friend for my pretty
cousin Cora, and an admirer of Lady Louisa.  As I thought
over all this, her name must have escaped me, for my uncle
roused me from a reverie by saying—

"Yes; she is a charming, a splendid girl, really!  A little
too stately, perhaps; but I would rather have my little
rosebud, Cora, with her peculiar winning ways.  Lady Louisa
may be all head—as I believe she is; but our Cora is
all heart, Newton—all heart!"

"And Lady Louisa is all head, you think, uncle?"

"I could see that at a glance—yes, with half an eye; and
yet there are times when I wish Cora had been a boy——"

My uncle leaned on his stick, and sighed.

His eldest son had been killed in the 12th Lancers, at the
battle of Goojerat; the other had died prematurely at College—a
double loss, which had a most fatal effect on their delicate
mother, then in the last stage of a mortal disease.  Now the
affection of the lonely Sir Nigel was centred in Cora, his only
daughter, the child of his declining years; and thus he had a
great regard for me as the son of his youngest sister; but he
sorrowed in secret that his baronetcy—one of the oldest in
Scotland, having been created in 1625 by Charles I.—should
pass out of his family.

Sir Norman Calderwood of the Glen, who had attended the
Scottish princess, Elizabeth Stuart, to Bohemia, was the first
patented among the baronets of Nova Scotia; and was therefore
styled *Primus Baronettorum Scotiæ*, a prefix of which
my uncle, as his ancestors had been, was not a little vain.

"The estates are entailed," said he, pursuing this line of
thought; "they were among the first that were so, when the
Scottish parliament passed the Entail Act in 1685; and
though they go, as you know, to a remote collateral branch,
the baronetcy ends with myself.  Cora shall be well and
handsomely left; for she shall have the Pitgavel property,
which, with its coal and iron mines, yields two thousand per
annum clear.  And you, my boy, Newton, shall find that,
tide what may, you are not forgotten."

"Uncle, you have already done so much for me——"

"Much, Newton?"

"Yes, my dear sir."

"Stuff! fitted you out for the lancers—that is all."

"You have done more than that, uncle——"

"I have lodged the purchase money for your troop with
Messrs. Cox and Co.; but most of this money must, under
other circumstances, have been spent on your cousins, had
they lived.  So, thank fate and the fortune of war, not me,
boy, not me.  But there are times, especially when I am alone,
that it grieves me to think that instead of leaving an heir to
the old title, one boy lies in his grave in the old kirk yonder;
and the other, far, far away on the battle-field of Goojerat."

He shook his white head, and his voice became tremulous,
his chin sank on his breast, and he added—

"My poor Nigel!—my bonnie Archie!"

The baronet was a handsome man, above six feet in height,
and, though he stooped a little now, had been erect as a pike.
He possessed fine aquiline features, a ruddy and healthy
complexion; clear, and bright dark grey eyes; a well-shaped,
though not very small, mouth; and a Scottish chin, of a curve
that evinced perseverance and decision.  His hair was nearly
white, but there was plenty of it; his hands, though browned
by exposure and seldom gloved—for the gun, the rod, the
riding-whip, and the curling stone were ever in them by
turns—were well shaped, and showed by their form and nails that
he was a gentleman of good blood and breeding.  His plain
costume I have described, and he was without ornament, save
a silver dog-whistle at his button-hole, and a large gold
signet-ring, which belonged to his grandfather, Sir Alexander
Calderwood, who commanded a frigate under Admiral Hawke, in
the fleet which, in 1748, fought and vanquished the Spanish
galleons between Tortuga and the Havannah.

A sturdy old Fifeshire laird, proud of a long line of warlike
Scottish ancestors, uncrossed by any taint of foreign blood, he
was fond of boasting that neither Dane nor Norman—the
Englishman's strange vaunt and pride—could be found among
them; but that he came of a race, which—as our Highlanders
forcibly phrase it—had sprung from the soil, and were
indigenous to it.

But, indeed, the alleged foreign descent of nearly the whole
Scottish aristocracy is a silly sham, existing in their own
imagination, having arisen from the ignorance of the monkish
Latin writers, who in rolls and histories prefixed the Norman
*de* or *le*, in many instances, to the most common Celtic
patronymics and surnames.

Sir Nigel had "paraded," to use a barrack phrase, more
than one man in his youth, and enjoyed the reputation of
being an unpleasantly good shot with his pistol.  He could
remember sharing in the rage of the high-flying Tory party
among the Fife lairds, when Sir Alexander Boswell, of
Auchinleck, was shot by James Stuart, of Dunearn, in a
solemn duel, where personal and political rancour were
combined, at Balmuto, for which the victor had to fly to
England, and from thence to France.

"It seemed strange on reflection, Newton," I have frequently
heard Sir Nigel, say, "that poor Boswell was the first
to propose in Parliament the repeal of our old Scottish
statutes anent duelling, and that, after all, he should fall by
the pistol for a mere newspaper squib, in which Sir Walter
Scott was, perhaps, as much to blame as he."





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   CHAPTER III.

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   |  Sing on, thou sweet mavis, thy song to the ev'ning,
   |    Thou'rt dear to the echoes of Calderwood Glen;
   |  Sae dear to this bosom, sae heartless and winning,
   |    Is charming young Jessie, the flower o' Dunblane.
   |                                            TANNAHILL.

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"Here is the old house, and here we are at last, Newton,"
said my uncle, as an abrupt turn of the private path through
the woodlands brought us suddenly in front of the ancient
mansion, in which, after the early death of my father, I had
spent my boyhood.

It stands in a well-wooded hollow, or glen, overlooked by
the three Lomonds of Fife—a county which, though not
renowned for its picturesque scenery, can show us many
peaceful and beautiful landscapes.

Calderwood is simply an old manor-house, or fortalice,
like some thousand others in Scotland, having a species of
keep, with adjacent buildings, erected during quieter or more
recent periods of Scottish history than the first dwelling,
which had suffered severely during the wars between Mary
of Guise and the Lords of the Congregation, when the
soldiers of Desse d'Epainvilliers blew up a portion of it by
gunpowder—an act terribly revenged by Sir John Calderwood
of the Glen, who had been chamberlain of Fife and captain
of the castle of St. Andrew's for Cardinal Beaton.  Overtaking
a party of the Bandes Françaises in Falkland Woods,
he routed them with considerable slaughter, and hung at
least a dozen of them on the oak trees in the park of the palace.

The latest additions had been made under the eye of Sir
William Bruce of Kinross, the architect of Holyrood—the
Scottish Inigo Jones—about a hundred and ninety years
before the present period, and thus were somewhat florid and
Palladian in their style, their fluted pilasters and Roman
cornices and capitals contrasting singularly with the grim
severity and strongly-grated windows of the old tower, which
was founded on a mass of grey rock, round which a terraced
garden lies.

Within this, the older portion, the rooms were strange and
quaint in aspect, with arched roofs, wainscoted walls, and
yawning fireplaces, damp, rusty, cold, and forlorn, where the
atmosphere felt as if the dead Calderwoods of other times
visited them, and lingered there apart from the fashionable
friends of their descendants in the more modern mansion;
and within the tower Sir Nigel treasured many old relics of
the palace of Dunfermline, which, when its roof fell in, in
1708, was literally plundered by the people.

Thus, in one room, he had the cradle of James VI., and
the bed in which his son, Charles I., had been born; in
another, a cabinet of Anne of Denmark, a chair of Robert
III., and a sword of the Regent Albany.

The demesne (Scotice, "policy") around this picturesque
old house was amply studded with glorious old timber, under
which browsed herds of deer, of a size, strength, and ferocity
unknown in England.  The stately entrance-gate, bearing the
palm-tree of the Calderwoods, a crusading emblem, and the
long avenue, of two Scottish miles, and the half-castellated
mansion which terminated its leafy vista, well befitted the
residence of one whose fathers had ridden forth to uphold
Mary's banner at Langside, and that of James VIII. at the
battle of Dunblane.

Here was the well where the huntsman and soldier, James
V., had slaked his thirst in the forest; and there was the
oak under which his father—who fell at Flodden—shot the
monarch of the herd by a single bolt from his crossbow.

In short, Calderwood, with all its memories, was a
complete epitome of the past.

The Eastern Lomond (so called, like its brothers, from
Laomain, a Celtic hero), now reddened by the setting sun,
seemed beautiful with the green verdure that at all seasons
covers it to the summit, as we approached the house.

Ascending to the richly-carved entrance-door, where one,
whilom of oak and iron, had given place to another of plate-glass,
a footman, powdered, precise, liveried, and aiguilletted,
with the usual amplitude of calf and acute facial angle of
his remarkable fraternity, appeared; but ere he could touch
the handle it was flung open, and a handsome young girl, with
a blooming complexion, sparkling eyes, and a bright and
joyous smile, rushed down the steps to meet us.

"Welcome to Calderwood, Newton," she exclaimed; "may
our new year be a happy one."

"Many happy ones be yours, Cora," said I, kissing her
cheek.  "Though I am changed since we last met, your eyes
have proved clearer than those of uncle, for, really, he did
not know me."

"Oh, papa, was it so?" she asked, while her fine eyes swam
with fun and pleasure.

"A fact, my dear girl."

"Ah!  I could never be so dull, though you have those new
dragoon appendages," said she, laughingly, as I drew her arm
through mine, and we passed into a long and stately corridor,
furnished with cabinets, busts, paintings, and suits of mail,
towards the drawing-room; "and I am not married yet,
Newton," she added, with another bright smile.

"But there must be some favoured man, eh, Cora?"

"No," she said, with a tinge of hauteur over her
playfulness, "none."

"Time enough to think of marrying, Cora; why, you are
only nineteen, and I hope to dance at your wedding when I
return from Turkey."

"Turkey," she repeated, while a cloud came over her pure
and happy face; "oh, don't talk of that, Newton; I had
forgotten it!"

"Yes; does it seem a long, or a doubtful time to look
forward to?"

"It seems both, Newton."

"Well, cousin, with those soft violet eyes of yours, and
those black, shining braids (the tempting mistletoe is just
over your head), and with loves of bonnets, well-fitting gloves
and kid boots, dresses ever new and of every hue, you
cannot fail to conquer, whenever you please."

She gave me a full, keen glance, that seemed expressive of
annoyance, and said, with a little sigh—

"You don't understand me, Newton.  We have been so
long separated that I think you have forgotten all the
peculiarities of my character now."

"What the deuce can she mean?" thought I.

My cousin Cora was in her fullest bloom.  She was pretty,
remarkably pretty, rather than beautiful; and by some
women she was quite eclipsed, even when her cheek flushed
and her eyes, a deep violet grey, were most lighted up.

She was fully of the middle height, and finely rounded,
with exquisite shoulders, arms, and hands.  Her features
were small, and perhaps not quite regular.  Her eyes were
alternately timid, inquiring, and full of animation; but, in
fact, their expression was ever varying.  Her hair was black,
thick, and wavy; and while I looked upon her, and thought
of her present charms and of past times—and more than all
of my uncle's fatherly regard for me—I felt that, though very
fond of her, but for another I might have loved her more
dearly and tenderly.  And now, as if to interrupt, or rather
to confirm the tenor of such thoughts as these, she said, as a
lady suddenly approached the door of the drawing-room,
which we were about to enter—

"Here is one, a friend, to whom I must introduce you."

"No introduction is necessary," said the other, presenting
her hand.  "I have had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Norcliff
before."

"Lady Louisa!" I exclaimed, in a breathless voice, and a
heart that trembled with sudden emotion, as I touched her
hand.

"I am so glad you have come before we leave.  I shall
have so much to ask you about our mutual friends—who are
engaged, and who have quarrelled; who have come home,
and who gone abroad.  We have been no less than four
months in Scotland.  Meantime," she added, glancing at her
tiny watch, "we must dress for dinner.  Come, Cora; we
have barely half an hour, and old General Rammerscales is
so impatient—he studies 'military time,' and with a
'military appetite.'"

And with a bow and smile of great brightness and sweetness
she passed on, taking with her Cora, who playfully
kissed her hand to me as they glided up the great staircase
into which the long corridor opened.

Lady Louisa was taller and larger in person than Cora.
Her features were singularly beautiful, and clearly cut; her
forehead was low; and her nose had the gentlest approach
to the aquiline.  She was without colour, her complexion
being pale, perhaps creamy; while in strange contrast to this
aristocratic pallor of delicacy, her thick, wavy hair, her long
double eyelashes, and her ever-sparkling eyes, were black as
those of a Spanish gitano or a Welsh gipsy.

To this pale loveliness was added a bearing alternately
haughty and playful, but at all times completely self-possessed;
an exquisite taste in dress and jewellery; a very
alluring voice; a power of investing even trifles with interest,
and of conversing fluently and gracefully on any subject—whether
she was mistress of it or not mattered little to Lady
Louisa.

She was about my own age, perhaps a few months younger;
but in experience of the fashionable world, and in knowledge
of the manners and ideas of the upper ten thousand, she was
a hundred years my senior.

Suffice it to say that I had lost my heart to her—that I
thought she knew it well, but feared or disdained to
acknowledge a triumph so small as the conquest of a lieutenant of
lancers among the many others she had won.  So thought I,
in the angry humility and jealous bitterness of my heart.

For a minute I felt as one in a dream.  I was sensible
that my uncle had said something about changing his costume,
and, suggesting some change in mine, had apologised,
and left me to linger in the corridor, or in the drawing-room,
as I chose; but now a personage, who had been lounging on
a *fauteuil* in the latter, intent on a volume of *Punch*, and the
soles of whose glazed boots had been towards me, suddenly
rose and approached, in full evening costume.

He proved to be no other than Berkeley of ours, who had
been in the room alone, or, at least, alone with Lady Louisa
Loftus.  He came slowly forward, with his sauntering air, as
if the exertion of walking was a bore, and with his eyeglass
retained in its place by a muscular contraction of the right
eyebrow.  His whole air had the "used-up" bearing of those
miserable Dundrearys who affect to act as if youth, wealth,
and luxury were the greatest calamities that flesh is heir to,
and that life itself was a bore.

"Ah, Norcliff—haw—glad to see you here, old fellow.
Haw—heard you were coming.  How goes it with you, and
how are all at Maidstone?"

"Preparing for foreign service," said I, curtly, as the tip of
his gloved hand touched mine.

"Horrid bore!  Too late to send in one's papers now, or,
by Jove, I'd hook the service.  Don't think I was ever meant
for it."

"Ere long many more will be of your way of thinking,"
said I, coolly.

Berkeley had a cold and cunning eye, which never smiled,
whatever his mouth might do.  His face was, nevertheless,
decidedly handsome, and a thick, dark moustache concealed
a form of lip which, if seen, would have indicated a thorough
sensualist.  His head was well shaped; but the accurate
division of his well-oiled head over the centre of the caput
gave him an air of intense insipidity.  Mr. De Warr Berkeley
never was a favourite of mine, though we had both joined
the lancers on the same day, and it was with very ill-concealed
annoyance I found myself compelled, with some apparent
cordiality, to greet him as a brother officer and an inmate of
my uncle's mansion.

"And—haw—what news from the regiment?" he resumed.

"I really have no news, Berkeley," said I.

"Indeed.  You have got a month's leave?"

"Between returns, yes."

"Is the route come?"

"A strange question, when you and I are here."

"Haw—yes, of course—how devilish good."

"It has *not*," said I, coldly; "but we are under orders for
foreign service, and may look to have our leaves cancelled by
a telegram any day or hour."

"The devil—really!"

"Fact, though, however unpleasant it may be.  So my
uncle, Sir Nigel, met you at—where was it?"

"Chillingham's shooting-box, in the Highlands."

"I was not aware that you knew the earl."

"Losing my gillies—I think you call them in Scotland—one
evening in the dark, I lost my way, and luckily stumbled
on his lordship's shooting quarters, in a wild and savage
place, with one of your infernally unpronounceable Scotch
names."

"Oh, you think changes more euphonious at times; but I
suppose your father, honest man, could have pronounced it
with ease," said I, quietly, for Berkeley's, or Barclay's
affectation of being an Englishman was to me always a source of
amusement.  "You have to learn Russ yet, and it will prove,
doubtless, more unpalatable than the tongue your father
spoke.  In the north, did you appear *en montagnad*?"

"Hey—haw, the devil! no; as the Irish Gil Blas says,
'Every one's legs can't afford publicity,' and mine are among
the number.  Leather breeches, when I don the pink, must
be all the length.  I don't care about going, though Lady
Louisa pressed me hard to join the Mac Quaig, the Laird of
Mac Gooligan, and other natives in tartan at a gathering.  I
had a letter from Wilford yesterday.  He writes of a famous
match between Jack Studhome and Craven, on which the
whole mess had a heavy book, that great stakes were pending,
and that Craven won, scoring forty-two running off the
red ball; and considering that the pockets of the table were
not bigger than an egg-cup, I think Craven a trump."

"I heard something of this match at morning parade on
the day I left; but being a bad stroke, you know, I seldom
play billiards."

"Why was Howard's bay mare scratched at the last
regimental race?"

"Don't know," said I, so dryly that he bit his nether lip.

"Some nice people visiting here," said he, staring at me
steadily, so that his eyeglass glared in the light of the lustre,
which was now lit; "and some very odd ones too.  Lady
Loftus is here, you see, in all her glory, and with her usual
come-kiss-me-if-you-dare kind of look."

"Berkeley, how can you speak thus of one in her position?"

"Well, you-don't-dare-to-do-so-again sort of expression."

"She is my uncle's guest; not a girl in a cigar-shop or a
casino!" said I, with growing *hauteur*.

"Sir Nigel's guest—haw—so am I, and I mean to make
the best use of my time as such.  Nice girl, Miss Wilford,
from York—cousin of Wilford of ours—a doocid good style
of girl; but have no intentions in that quarter—can't afford
to chuck myself away, as I once heard my groom observe."

"You must learn to quote another style of people to make
yourself understood here.  You don't mean to infer that you
have any intentions concerning Lady Louisa!" said I, with
an air which was really impertinent.

"Why not?" he asked, failing completely to see it.  "I
have often such attacks, or affections of the heart, as she has
given me."

"How?"

"Just as I had the measles or the chicken-pox in childhood—a
little increase of the pulse, a little restlessness at night,
and then one gets over it."

"Take care how you address her in this bantering fashion,"
said I, turning sharply away; "excuse me, but now I must
dress for dinner."

And preceded by old Mr. Binns, the white-headed old
butler, who many a time in days of yore had carried me on
his back, and who now welcomed me home with a hearty shake
of the hand, in which there was nothing derogatory to me,
though Berkeley's eyes opened very wide when he saw our
greeting, I was conducted to my old room in the north wing,
where a cheerful fire was blazing, with two lights on each side
of the toilette-table (the manor-house was amply lit with gas
from the village), and there was Willie Pitblado arranging all
my traps and clothes.  But dismissing him to visit his family
(to his no small joy), I was left to my own reflections and
proceeded to dress.  A subtle and subdued tone of insolence
and jealousy that pervaded the few remarks made by Berkeley
irritated and chafed me; yet he had said nothing with which
I could grapple, or with which I could openly find fault.  I
was conscious, too, that my own bearing had been the reverse
of courteous and friendly, and that, if I showed my hand thus,
I might as well give up the cards.  Suspicion of his native
character, and a foreknowledge of the man, had doubtless
much to do with all this; and while making my toilet with
more than my usual care—conscious that Lady Louisa was
making hers in the next room—I resolved to keep a lynx-like
eye upon Mr. De Warr Berkeley during our short sojourn at
Calderwood Glen.  My irritation was no way soothed, or my
pique lessened, by the information that for some time past,
and quite unknown to me, he had been residing here with
Lady Louisa, enjoying all the facilities afforded by hourly
propinquity and the seclusion of a country house.

Had he already declared himself?  Had he already proposed?
The deuce!  I thrust aside the thought, and angrily
gave my hair a finishing rasp with a pair of huge ivory-handled
hair-brushes.





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.. _`CHAPTER IV.`:

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   CHAPTER IV.

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   |  And, oh! the memories that cling
   |    Around this old oak-panelled room!
   |    The pine logs flashing through the gloom,
   |  Sun sparkles from life's early spring.

   |  After long years I rest again;
   |    This ancient home it seems to me,
   |    Wearied with travel o'er the sea.
   |  Holds anodyne for carking pain.

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As I surveyed my old apartment the memories of other years
stole over me with somewhat of a soothing influence, for when
I thought of the past, the littleness of the present, the
evanescent nature of all things could not fail to impress me.

It was in that room I had the last vivid recollection of my
dear mother's face, on that farewell morning, when with early
dawn she stole in on tiptoe to look for the last time upon her
boy as he slept, and before he went forth into the world beyond
her maternal care for ever.

The thunder of a gong in the corridor cut short further
reflections, recalling me to the present; and giving a finishing
touch to my costume, which was not the blue lancer uniform,
faced with white, and laced with gold, but the solemn funereal
suit and white necktie of civil life—a horrid costume that has
crept among us, heaven knows how—I descended to the outer
drawing-room, where I found my uncle and cousin marshalling
their guests, of whom there appeared to be a goodly number.

Berkeley had already monopolized Lady Louisa, with whom
he was conversing in a low tone, while busy stroking his
moustaches, which were darkened by the "Guards' dye," and the
pointing and twirling of which afforded him endless employment.

There was no denying that the fellow looked well, and that
the result of riding, drilling, dancing, and fencing had been
to impart to him much of that unmistakable air which, I may
say without vanity, belongs particularly to the officers of our
branch of the service.

The odd minutes which precede dinner are seldom very
lively, and rather depress than raise the spirits.  To Cora I
was a species of "lion;" and as such underwent, through her,
a process of introduction to several people I cared not a jot
about, and never would.

I discussed the weather with General Rammerscales, as if I
kept a rain-gauge and barometer, and was own brother to
Admiral Fitzroy; touched on politics with the M.P., and on
clerical innovations with a divine; kissed Cora's hand in play,
and drew near to Lady Louisa, nearer still to her awful mother,
whom I felt the necessity of conciliating to the utmost.  Every
one talked in a monotone, except jovial Sir Nigel, who was
always cheery, brisk and bustling about from guest to guest.

With the Countess of Chillingham (who accorded me a
calm, but courteous bow), my uncle, whose costume was a suit
of accurate black, led the way past Binns and a line of liveried
and powered gentlemen drawn up in the corridor.

She was a stately woman, of ample proportions, with a
diamond tiara glittering on her grey hair.

Her face was fine in feature, and very noble in expression,
showing that in youth she must have been beautiful.  Her
costume was magnificent, being maroon-coloured velvet over white
satin, trimmed with the richest lace.  I rather dreaded her.

She had all the peerage—"the Englishman's second
Bible"—committed to memory; and, through the pages of Burke
and Debrett, knew all the available and suitable heirs
presumptive by rote—their ages, rank, title, and order of
precedence; for it was among the strawberry leaves she chiefly
expected to find a husband for her daughter—a marquis at least;
and as she swept out of the room, with a velvet train like a
coronation robe, she cast a backward glance to see to whose
care that fair lady was confided.

Seeing Berkeley paired off with Miss Wilford, I hastened
towards Lady Louisa.  With her I was sufficiently intimate to
have offered my arm.

As I have stated, we had met frequently before, at
Canterbury, Bath, and elsewhere.  Her society had been to me a
source of greater pleasure and excitement than that of any
other woman in whose way chance had thrown me.

Her rank, as the daughter of an earl, and her rare beauty
had dazzled me, while her coquetry had piqued my vanity;
though I imagined that, without discovering the deep interest
she excited in my heart, I had taught her to view me as an
object of more interest than other men.

I approached, and she received me calmly, placidly, with a
bright but conventional smile, from which I could augur or
gather nothing.

In her there was none of the clamorous tremor which I felt
in my own breast, where something of annoyance at the
coldness of her mother's bow was rankling.

"Lady Louisa—permit me," said I, proffering my arm.

"Too late, Mr. Norcliff.  I am already engaged," she
replied, rising, and placing her pretty gloved hand on the arm
of old General Rammerscales, who, bowing and smiling with
gratified vanity, remarked to me in passing—

"Been to India, I presume?"

"Yes, general, and Rangoon, too."

"Bah! 'tisn't what it used to be in my time—the Indian
service is going to the deuce."

"But I belong to the Lancers."

"Ah!"

A daughter of the liberal M.P., Spittal, of Lickspittal, fell
to my lot—a pretty piece of muslin and insipidity; but luckily
we were seated not far from Lady Loftus.  Near us were Miss
Wilford and Berkeley, who proved less inattentive than I
during the dinner, which proceeded with more joviality and
laughter than is usual in such society; but the guests,
twenty-four in number, were somewhat varied, for on this occasion
the minister, doctor, and lawyer of the parish, the provost of
a neighbouring burgh, and other persons out of the baronet's
circle, were present.

In that old Scottish château, the mode of life was deprived
of all ostentation, though luxurious and even fashionable.

The great oak table in the dining-room was covered with
plenty, and with every delicacy of the season; but in its details
it partook more of the baronial hall than such apartments
usually do.

It was floored with encaustic tiles, amid the pattern of which
the arms of the Calderwoods were reproduced again and again;
and at each end sparkled and glowed a great fire of coals
from the baronet's own pits, with the smouldering remains of
a great yule log that had grown in his own woods, and had
been perhaps a green sapling when James V. kept court in
Falkland.

In the centre of this dining-hall lay a soft Turkey carpet for
the feet of those who were seated at table.

The chairs were all square backed, well cushioned with
green velvet, and dated from the time of James VII.; the
walls were of dark varnished wainscot, decorated with old
portraits and stags' antlers; for there was here a curious
blending of old baronial state with the comforts and tastes of
modern times and modern luxury.

Above each of the great fireplaces, carved in stone, were
the arms of the Calderwoods of Calderwood and Piteadie;
*argent* a palm-tree growing out of a mount in base,
surmounted by a saltire gules; on a chief azure, three mullets,
the crest being a hand bearing a palm branch, with the
motto, "*Veritas premitur non apprimitur*."

Amid the buzz of tongues around me—for, sooth to say,
some of my uncle's country guests made noise enough—I
looked from time to time beyond the great épergne to where
Lady Louisa sat, evidently bored and amused by turns with
the laboured conversation of the old sepoy general.

It was impossible to refrain from turning again and again
to admire that pale and creamy complexion, those deep black
eyes and eyelashes, the small rosy mouth, the thick dark hair
that grew in a downward peak, the lovely little ears with their
diamond pendants, those hands and arms, which were perfection
in colour, delicacy, and symmetry.

Twice her eyes met mine, giving me each time a bright
glance of intelligence, and making my heart beat happily.

I fear that the young lady by whose side I was seated
must have found me anything but a satisfactory companion,
and her simple remarks concerning the coming war, our
chances of going abroad, the latest novelty in music or
literature—Bulwer, Dickens, Thackeray, and so forth—fell on a
dull or inattentive ear.

The dinner passed away as others do; the dessert was
discussed.  The fruit came, and now, as this was but the second
eve of the new year, the old family wassail-bowl was placed
before my uncle.  Thanks to railway speed, I was enabled to
partake of this old-fashioned libation.  The great silver
vessel in which it was compounded was the pride of Sir
Nigel's heart, having been taken by an ancestor at the
storming of Newcastle by the Scots in 1640, when the "Fife
regiment entered by the great breach in the fore wall."  It had
four handles of chased silver, each representing a long, lanky
hound, with his hind feet on the bulb of the cup, and his
nose and fore paws on the upper rim.

It held four bottles of port, which were spiced with cloves,
nutmeg, mace, and ginger; the whites of six eggs well
whisked and sugared; and six roasted apples were swimming
on the top.

To prepare this potent draught was the yearly task of old
Mr. Binns, the butler, and my cousin Cora.  Sir Nigel rose,
and filling his glass from the gigantic tankard, exclaimed, ere
he drained it—

"A happy new year to you all, my friends!  May the year
that is gone be the worst of our lives, and may the new one,
that opens full of promise, give joy to all!"

"A happy new year to all, Sir Nigel," went round the table,
as we emptied our glasses; and as Binns replenished them
from the wassail-bowl, the conversation became more free and
unrestrained, for the celebration of the new year is a festival
which has not yet fallen into desuetude in Scotland, though it
has nearly done so in the sister kingdom.

Wherever Scotchmen go, they never forget the associations
or the customs of their fatherland; thus, in England
and Ireland, and still more amid the goldfields of Australia,
or the rice-swamps of Hong Kong, in the cities, camps, and
barracks of India and America—ay, and in our ships far out
upon the lonely sea, ten thousand miles, perhaps, from Forth,
or Tay, or Clyde, on New Year's morning there are claspings
of toil-hardened hands, good wishes exchanged, with the
thoughts of home, its familiar faces, and its old fireside; the
heather hills, and the deep grassy glens, that some may never
see more; but still, amid joy and revelry, and, perhaps, the
songs of Burns, the new year is ushered in.

On that morning, as soon as the clocks strike twelve, a
cheer passes over all the towns and hamlets of Scotland,
from the German to the Atlantic sea; many a bottle is
broached, and many a bagpipe blown; and though the wild
orgies and uproar, and sometimes the discharge of firearms,
with which it used to be welcomed at every market-cross, are
passing away, still the New Year's tide is a time of feasting,
merry-making, and congratulations with all.

Even that solemn "Dundreary," my brother officer, Berkeley,
thawed under the jovial influence of the society around
him; but I was provoked to find that it led simply to very
animated conversation between himself and Lady Louisa
across the table.  It referred to a past hunting affair, in which
they had had some adventures together.

"We—haw—had not been there more than half an hour
before there was a find," said he; "you remember, Lady
Louisa?"

"How could I forget?" she responded, with charming
animation.  "The fox, a dull, reddish fawn one, with black back
and shoulders, broke cover from among some gorse at the
foot of the Mid Lomond."

"The hounds were instantly in full cry, and away we
went.  By Jove, it was beautiful!  We cleared some garden-walls,
where we left the general up to the chin in somebody's
hothouse; and after that we took the lead of the entire
field."

"We?" said I, inquiringly.

"Lady Louisa and myself," replied Berkeley, with one of
his quiet, deep smiles; "we were better mounted, and in
riding I—haw—flatter myself that few—few even of your
Fifeshire hunt will surpass me."

"Well?" I said, impatiently, crushing a walnut to pieces.

"The meet was at the base of the Mid Lomond; the
morning was everything that could be desired; the field was
very small, but select; Sir Nigel, the general, Mr. Spittal,
Lady Louisa, Miss Calderwood, Miss Wilford, and—haw—a
few others.  The pack was in a most workman-like condition,
and, as Lady Louisa remembers, they soon proclaimed a find,
with open mouth."

"Yes," said she, with her dark eyes lighting up; "away
we went at racing speed, through the park of Falkland, a
two miles open run at least, on, on, over 'bank, bush, and
scaur——'"

"But the fox was evidently an old one.  He tried some
old coal mines, and then some field drains; but they had
been carefully stopped by old Pitblado, the keeper.  Yet we
lost him at a deep pool on the banks of the Eden."

"But for a time only, Mr. Berkeley," resumed Lady Louisa.
"You remember how oddly he was found in a cabbage-garden,
and how we cleared the hedges at a flying leap, you and I
going neck and neck; you must remember, too, how Sir
Nigel's shout made all our hearts rebound!"

"Quitting the river-side, he broke southward for two fields,
and ran straight through the home farm of Calderwood; on, on
we rode, and drove him right in Kinross-shire; but doubling on
the dogs, he led us back.  Doubling again, we pursued him
once more into Kinross; what did you think of that, general?"

"Left to my own reflections among the melon-beds, ten
miles in your rear, I thought it devilish poor work when
compared to tiger-hunting," growled the general.

"In and out of each county he went no less than three
times in as many half-hours," said Lady Louisa; "and but for
the darkness of the December evening, he would have been
compelled to yield up his brush, had we not lost him in a
thicket near Kinies Wood, at Loch Leven side."

"We lost more," said Miss Wilford, with a very decided
expression of mischief in her very beautiful blue eyes; "for
when the whole hunt assembled, Lady Louisa and Mr. Berkeley
were nowhere to be found—the keepers shouted, and horns
were blown in vain.  Having taken the wrong road, they did
not reach the Glen till half-past nine, when a storm of snow
was falling."

"Which compelled us, Miss Wilford, to take shelter in
wayside cottages at Balgedie and at Orphil," said Lady Louisa,
with a tone of real annoyance, while her eye, like a gleam of
light, dwelt for an instant on me; but the hunting anecdote
and its conclusion piqued—cut me to the heart.

With such opportunities could Berkeley have failed to press
his suit?

I glanced at him.  His temporary animation had subsided;
his pale and impassive face wore its usual quiet and cold
expression; yet his eyes were keen, restless, and watchful, even
cunning at times.  He smiled seldom, and laughed—so to
say—never.

Whether it was simply the memory of that winter day's
sport, with all its excitement and concomitant danger, in
counties so rough and hilly as Fife and Kinross, or whether it was
some particular incident connected therewith that inspired
her, I know not; but a flush on the usually pale cheek of
Louisa Loftus made her look radiantly beautiful—like a dash
of rouge, lending a glorious lustre to her deeply-lashed dark
eyes.  But now my Lady Chillingham, who evidently did not
share her daughter's enthusiasm for field sports, exchanged an
expressive glance with Cora, who, of course, occupied the
head of the table, with the parish minister in the post of honour
at her right hand.

Then we all rose like a covey of partridges, while the ladies
retired in single file to the drawing-room, whither I longed to
accompany them; but now the gentlemen drew their chairs
closer together, side by side; Sir Nigel announced that "the
business of the evening was only beginning;" the wine
decanters and the claret jugs were replenished; Binns appeared
with water steaming hot in an antique silver kettle, followed
by a servant bearing liqueur-frames, filled with "mountain
dew," for those who preferred toddy, the national beverage,
to which fully half the company, including my jolly old
kinsman, at once betook themselves.

Somehow those "trifles light as air," which are the torments
of the jealous and the doubtful, were added to fears, to
crush me now.

Even without the danger of a rival, I knew that "La Mère
Chillingham," as the mess called her, would keep a sharp eye
upon me, as the possessor of only my subaltern's commission
in the lancers, with a couple of hundred or so per annum; for
she believed that all men so circumstanced were little better
than well-accredited sharpers, and, as such, certain to have
nefarious designs upon her wealthy and beautiful daughter—designs
which our plumes, epaulettes, and lancer trappings
were every way calculated to render more dangerous.

I felt sure that, by such as she, even the wealthy parvenu,
De Warr Berkeley, would be less dreaded than I; and as I
looked round the old hall of Calderwood, and saw the grim
portraits of those who had preceded me, looking disdainfully
out of their stiff ruffs and long doublets, and thought of my rival's
puerile character, and his father's beer vats, an emotion of
real contempt for the cold-blooded and match-making countess
stole into my heart.

Louisa Loftus was, indeed, a proud and glorious beauty.  I
knew not yet what were my chances of success with her, and,
in short, I "had nothing for it but to wait and try my best to
be sanguine."

The brave old axiom, that "no fortress is impregnable," is
a valuable worldly lesson, and one ought never to forget that
a storming party rarely fails.

There was some consolation in this reflection.

I took another glass of sparkling hock, another, and
another, and somehow through their medium the world began to
look more bright and cheering.





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.. _`CHAPTER V.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V.

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..

   |  Come, let us enjoy the fleeting day,
   |    And banish toil, and laugh at care,
   |    For who would grief and sorrow beat
   |  When he can throw his griefs away?
   |  Away, away! begone, I say!
   |    For mournful thought
   |    Will come unsought.
   |                        BOWRING'S "POETRY OF SPAIN."

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"Provost," said my uncle to the jovial and rubicund magistrate
who sat on his left hand, now that he had taken Cora's
place at the head of the table, "try the Johannisberg.  It is
some given to me by Prince Metternich when I was at Vienna,
and is from grapes raised in his own vineyards.  Rare stuff it
is for those who like such light wines."

"Thank you, Sir Nigel; but Binns, I see, has brought the
three elements, so I'll e'en brew some whisky-toddy," replied
the magistrate.

The conversation now became more noisy and animated.
The approaching war, the treaty of neutrality between the
Scandinavian and the Western Powers, whether our fleet had
yet entered the Euxine, or whether Luders had yet burst into
the Dobrudscha, became the prevailing topics, and in interest
seemed fully to rival that never-failing subject at a country
table, fox-hunting.

The county pack, the meet of the Fifeshire hounds at the
kennels, or on the green slopes of Largo; of the Buccleuch
pack at Blacklaw, Ancrum, and so forth; their runs by wood
and wold, loch and lee, rock and river, with many a perilous
leap and wild adventure in the field, over a rough and hilly
country, were narrated with animation, and descanted on with
interest, though all such sank into insignificance beside the
history of a hunt in Bengal, where General Rammerscales had
figured in pursuit of a tiger (long the terror of the district),
seated in a lofty *howdah* of basket-work, strapped on the back
of an elephant, twelve feet high to the shoulder, accompanied
by the major of his regiment, each armed with two
double-barrelled guns.

The tiger, which measured nine feet from his nose to the
tip of his tail, and five in height, had been roused from among
the jungle grass, and was a brute of the most ferocious
kind, yellow in hide, and striped with beautiful transverse
bars of black and brown.  He was well-known in that district.
With his tremendous jaws he had carried off many a
foal and buffalo; by a single stroke of his claws he had
disembowelled and rent open the body of more than one tall dark
sowar of the 3rd Bengal Light Cavalry; and as for sheep and
goats, he made no more account of them than if they had been
so many shrimps.

With a shrill, short scream of rage, on finding that he was
brought to bay at last, he threw himself in cat-fashion on his
back, belly upwards, his small and quivering ears close on the
back of his head, his dreadful claws thrust out, his eyes
glaring like two gigantic carbuncles, his wide, red mouth
distended, and every wiry whisker bristling with rage and fury.

The general fired both barrels of his first gun.  One shot
failed; but the other wounded the tiger in the shoulder, and
only served to make him more savage; though, instead of
springing upwards, he lay thus on the defensive, gathered up
in a round ball.

The major, an enormously fat man, weighing more than
twenty stone, now leant over the *howdah* to take a cool and
deliberate aim; but the elephant in the same moment happened
to bend his fore-knees, for the claws of the tiger were
inserted in his trunk.

Losing all balance by this unlucky motion, the poor major
toppled headlong over the *howdah*, just as both barrels of his
gun exploded harmlessly, amid a yell from the Indian hunters
as they thought of his fate.

But, "with a mighty squelch," as the general phrased it,
the major, with his twenty-two stone weight of flesh and bone,
fell prone upon the fair, white, upturned belly of the tiger!

Terrified, breathless, and bewildered by an antagonist so
ponderous, and by such an unexpected mode of attack, the
tiger started up, and fled from the scene, leaving the major
untouched and unharmed, but seated ruefully among the
jungle grass, and with considerable doubts as to his safety and
his own identity.

The parish minister fairly overmatched this story by the
narrative of a fox which had been drowned by a mussel.

Prior to being appointed pastor of Calderwood Kirk, through
the favour of its patron, Sir Nigel, he had been an assistant
in a parish situated on the borders of one of the great salt
lochs in the western highlands.

When riding one morning along the shore, opposite the
Summer Isles, he was surprised to see a large grey fox busy
among the basket-mussels, thick clusters of which were
adhering to the dark whin rocks which the ebb tide had left
dry.  The sea was coming in fast; but, strange to say,
Reynard seemed to be so much engaged in breakfasting on
shell-fish that he was heedless of that important circumstance.

Dismounting, and tying his horse to a tree, the minister
made a circuit to reach the place, and being armed with a
heavy-handled riding-whip, he had no fear of the encounter;
but by the time he arrived at the mussel-beds, the rapid tide
had overflowed them, and the fox had disappeared.  So,
remounting, the minister pursued his way into the mountains.

Returning along the shore by the same path in the evening,
when the tide had ebbed, he again saw Reynard in the same
place, but lying quite dead, and, on examination, discovered
that he was held fast by the tongue between the sharp shells
of one of the basket-mussels, which are sometimes seven
inches long, and adhere with intense strength to the rocks by
the beard, known to the learned as a powerful *byssus*.  Seized
and retained thus, as if in the grasp of a steel vice, the
fox, which had been in the habit of seeking the sea shore
to feed on the mussels, had been held fast, until drowned
by the advancing tide, which there flows rapidly in from the
Atlantic.

This story elicited roars of laughter from the fox-hunters,
who had never heard of a brush being taken in such a fashion;
and Berkeley expressed astonishment that the anecdote had
never found its way into the columns of *Bell's Life*, or other
sporting journals.

The provost and minister gabbled about presbyteries and
synods, the moderation of calls, elders, deacons, and overtures
to the General Assembly, anent sundry ecclesiastical matters,
particularly the adoption of organs, and other innovations
that savoured of prelacy, making up a jargon which, to many
present, and even to me, proved quite unintelligible; but now,
as a military man, old Rammerscales seized me by a button,
for there was no eluding being bored by him.

He had been so many years in India that he found a
difficulty in assuring himself that he was not "up country"
and in cantonments still.

Thus, if the rooms were warm, the general grumbled that
there was no *punkah* to swing over his head, the baldness of
which he polished vigorously, and muttered about "tatties of
iced water."

He calculated everything by its value in rupees, and talked
much of compounds and cantonments; of *batta* and marching
money, of *chutney* and *chunam*, and all manner of queer
things, including sepoys and *sowars*, *subadars*, *havildars*,
and *jemidars*; thus the most casual remark drew forth
some Indian reference.

The cold of last night reminded him of what he had endured
in the mountains of Affghanistan; and the dark clouds of this
morning were exactly like some he had seen near Calcutta,
when a sepoy was killed by his side by a stroke of lightning,
which twisted up the barrel of his musket like a screw—"yes,
sir, like a demmed corkscrew!"

Next, the gas offended his eyes, which had been so long
accustomed to the oil lamps or oil-shades of his bungalow;
and then he spoke to all the servants, even respectable old
Mr. Binns (who had been for forty years like Sir Nigel's
shadow) as if they had been so many *sycees*, grass-cutters, or
tent-pitchers, making them start whenever he addressed
them; for he seemed to bark or snap out his words and wishes
at "the precious Griffs," as he termed them.

On the other hand, I was bored by the provost, who, like
the M.P. (a peace-at-any-price man), by no means approved
of the expected war, and informed Berkeley and myself that—

"Our trade—soldiering, to wit—was a deuced poor one—a
speculation, a loss, and never profit to any one, individually
or collectively."

Berkeley smiled superciliously, eyed the provost through
his glass, and blandly asked him to repeat his remark twice
over, professing that he did not understand the worthy man.

"If you mean that you disapprove of the intended war,
my good friend," said he, "I—haw—quite agree with you,
Why the deuce should I fight for the 'sick man' at
Constantinople; or for the Turks or the Tartars of the Crimea?
It's a horrid bore."

Amid all this uncongenial conversation, I longed for the
time when the seniors would move towards the drawing-room,
from whence the sounds of music and of voices sweetly
attuned were heard to issue at times; for there my star was
shining—Louisa Loftus, so beautiful to look upon, and yet
whom it seemed so hopeless in me to love!

Lost in reverie, and full of her image, it was some time
before I became aware that my distinguished brother in arms,
Mr. De Warr Berkeley, was addressing me.

"I beg your pardon," said I, nervously; "did you speak?"

"I was remarking," he lisped, languidly, "that these good
people here are—haw—very pleasant, and all that sort of
thing; but have little of the—haw—the—haw——"

"What?"

"Oh—the *odeur de la bonne société* about them."

"The deuce!" said I, with some annoyance, for I was
conscious that at our end of the table were really gathered the
lions of my uncle's dinner party.  "I hope you don't include
our host in this—he represents the oldest line of baronets in
Scotland."

"In Scotland—haw—very good," he drawled.

"Sir Nigel is my uncle," said I, pointedly.

"Yes, by the way, I crave pardon; so deuced stupid of me,
when I know well that there are no such sticklers about
precedence and dignity as your little baronets."

Coming from a conceited *parvenu*, the cool impudence of
this remark was so amusing that I burst into a fit of laughter;
and at that moment, by a singular coincidence, Sir Nigel,
who had been engaged in an animated discussion, almost
amounting to a dispute, with Spittal of Lickspittal, the M.P.,
now suddenly raised his voice, and without at all intending
it, sent one random shot after another at my fashionable
comrade.

"I can assure you, sir," he continued, "that such cosmopolitan
views as yours, politically and socially, can never be
endorsed by me.  Thackeray says—and he says truly—that
God has created no more offensive creature than a Scotch
snob, and I quite agree with him.  The chief aim of such is to
be thought an Englishman (just as some Englishmen affect
the foreigner), and a deplorable caricature he makes of the
Englishman in language, bearing, and appearance.  An
English snob, in whatever his line may be, is, as Thackeray
has shown us, a great and amusing original; but a Scotch
snob is a poor and vile imitation, and like all counterfeits is
easily discernible: Birmingham at once.  I know no greater
hot-bed of snobbery than our law-courts, sir, especially those
of Edinburgh.  Binns, pass the claret."

The M.P. bowed, and smiled deprecatingly, for he had
long figured among the said courts as one who would joyfully
have blacked the boots of the lord advocate or the ministry.

I felt almost sorry for Berkeley while my uncle spurred his
hobby against the M.P.; the ugly cap fitted so exactly.

"I know," resumed Sir Nigel, "that in a nation of tuft-hunters
like the British, whose Bible is the 'Peerage,' a man
with a handle to his name, however small it may be, is a
trump card indeed; hence the adoration of rank, which, as
some one says, 'if folly in London, deepens into positive vice
in the country.'"

"Then what do you say of your poor Scottish metropolis,
whose aristocracy consists of a few psalm-singing—aw—bailies
and young legal prigs of the bar, whose importance is
only equalled by their necessities—boiled mutton and thin
Cape Madeira?" said Berkeley, glad of an opportunity to
sneer at something Scotch.

"I have known a few honest fellows—and men of first-rate
ability, too—connected with the Scottish Parliament House,"
said Sir Nigel.

"But that, I suppose, was in the old Tory days, when all
Edinburgh fell down in the mud to worship George IV., the
first gentleman in Europe," said the M.P. as a retort, at
which my uncle laughed loudly.

But thus, by his remarks at the fag end of some discussion,
Sir Nigel had the effect of completely silencing, and
unintentionally mortifying, Berkeley, who continued to sip his
wine in silence, and with something of malevolence in his
eye, till Binns announced coffee, and we repaired to the
drawing-room.





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   CHAPTER VI.

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   |  No, tempt me not—love's sweetest flower
   |    Hath poison in its smile;
   |  Love only woos with dazzling power,
   |    To fetter hearts the while.
   |  I will not wear its rosy chain,
   |    Nor e'en its fragrance prove;
   |  I fear too much love's silent pain—
   |    No, no!  I will not love.

.. vspace:: 2

Through the cool and airy corridor, with its cabinets full of
Sèvres jars, Indian bowls, and sculptured marble busts—on
one side the Marli horses in full career crowning a buhl
pedestal; on the other a bronze Laocoon, with his two sons,
in the coils of the brazen serpents—we proceeded to the
drawing-room, a merry and laughing party, for it was impossible
to resist the influence of a good dinner, good wines, and
jovial company.

On entering we found the ladies variously engaged.  A
graceful group was about the piano; the Countess of
Chillingham was half hidden in the soft arms of a vast velvet
chair, where she was playing indolently with her fan, and
watching her daughter; others were busy with books of
engravings, and some were laughing at the pencil sketches of a
local artist, who portrayed the wars of the Celts and
Anglo-Saxons, and other nude barbarians, while old Binns and two
powdered lacqueys served the tea and coffee on silver trays.

I had hoped to meet Lady Louisa's eye on entering, but
the first smile that greeted me was the sweet one of Cora,
who, approaching me, put her plump little arm through mine,
and said, half reproachfully and half jestingly—

"How long you have lingered over that odious wine, and
you have not been here for six years, Newton.  Think of
that—for six years."

"How many may elapse before I am here again?  Do you
reproach me, Cora?" I was beginning, for her voice and
smile were very alluring.

"Yes, very much," she said, with playful severity.

"Your papa, my good uncle, is somewhat of a stickler for
etiquette, consequently I could not rise before the seniors;
and then this is the festive season of the year.  But hush;
Lady Louisa is about to sing, I think."

"A duet, too."

"With whom?"

"Mr. Berkeley.  They are always practising duets."

"Always?"

"Yes; she dotes on music."

"Ah, and he pretends to do so, too."

Spreading her ample flounces over the carved walnut-wood
piano stool, Lady Louisa ran her white fingers rapidly and
with some brilliancy of execution—certainly with perfect
confidence—over the keys of a sonorous grand piano; while
Berkeley stood near, with an air of considerable affectation
and satisfaction, to accompany her, his delicate hands being
cased in the tightest of straw-coloured kid gloves; and all
the room became hushed into well-bred silence, while they
favoured us with the famous duet by *Leonora* and the *Conde
di Luna*, "Vivra!  Contende il Guibilo."

Berkeley acquitted himself pretty well; so well, that I
regretted my own *timbre* tones.  But I must confess to being
enchanted while Louisa sang; her voice was very seductive,
and she had been admirably trained by a good Italian master.
I remained a silent listener, full of admiration for her
performance, and not a little for the contour of her fine neck
and snowy shoulders, from which her maize-coloured opera
cloak had fallen.

"Lady Loftus," said Berkeley, "your touch upon the piano
is like—like——"

"What, Mr. Berkeley?  Now tax your imagination for a
new compliment."

"The fingers—haw—of a tenth muse."

She uttered a merry laugh, and continued to run those
fingers over the keys.

"Homely style of thing, the baronet's dinner," I heard him
whisper, as he stooped over her, with a covert smile in his eyes.

"Ah, you prefer the continental mode we are adopting so
successfully in England?"

"The dinner *à la Russe*; exactly."

"Ah, you will get dinners enough of that kind in the
Crimea, more than you may have appetite for," she replied,
with a manner so quiet, that it was difficult to detect a little
satire.

"Most likely," drawled Berkeley, as he twirled his moustaches,
without seeing the retort to his bad taste; and then,
without invitation, the fair musician gave us a song or two
from the "Trovatore;" till her watchful mother advancing,
contrived to end her performance, and, greatly to my
satisfaction, marched her into the outer drawing-room.

"Cora must sing something now," said I; "her voice has
long been strange to me."

"I cannot sing after Lady Loftus's brilliant performance,"
she said, nervously and hurriedly.  "Don't ask me, pray,
Newton, dear."

"Nonsense! she shall sing us something.  We were talking
about snobbish people in the other room," said honest,
old blundering Sir Nigel.  "I have observed it is a
peculiarity of that style of society in Scotland to banish alike
national music and national songs.  But such is not our
*rôle* in Calderwood Glen.  A few of our girls certainly
attempt with success such glorious airs as those we have just
heard, or those from "Roberto il Diavolo" and "Lucia;"
but I have heard men, who might sing a plain Scottish song
fairly enough, and with credit, make absolute maniacs of
themselves by attempting to howl like *Edgardo* in the churchyard,
or like *Manrico* at the prison-gate—an affectation of
operatic excellence with which I have no patience."

"To take out in fashion what we lose in genuine
amusement and enthusiasm is an English habit becoming more
common in Scotland every day," said the general.

"So, Cora, darling, sing us one of our songs.  Give Newton
the old ballad of 'The Thistle and the Rose.'  I am sure
he has not heard it for many a day."

"Not since I was last under this roof, dear uncle," said I.

This ballad was one of the memories of our childhood,
and a great favourite with the old Tory baronet; so I led
Cora to the piano.

"It will sound so odd—so primitive, in fact—to these
people, especially after what we have heard, Newton," she
urged, in a whisper; "but then papa is so obstinate."

"But to please me, Cora."

"To please you, Newton, I would do anything," she
replied, with a blush and a happy smile.

I stood by her side while she sang a simple old ballad,
that had been taught her by my mother.  The air was plaintive,
and the words were quaint.  By whom they were written
I know not, for they are neither to be found in Allan
Ramsay's "Miscellany," or any other book of Scottish songs that
I have seen.  Cora sang with great sweetness, and her voice
awakened a flood of old memories and forgotten hopes and
fears, with many a boyish aspiration, for music, like perfume,
can exert a wonderful effect upon the imagination and on the
memory.

   |  THE THISTLE AND THE ROSE.

   |  It was in old times,
   |  When trees composed rhymes,
   |    And flowers did with elegy flow;
   |  In an old battle-field,
   |  That fair flowers did yield,
   |    A rose and a thistle did grow.

   |  On a soft summer day,
   |  The rose chanced to say,
   |    "Friend thistle, I'll with you be plain;
   |  And if you'd simply be
   |  But united to me,
   |    You would ne'er be a thistle again."

   |  The thistle said, "My spears
   |  Shield me from all fears,
   |    While you quite unguarded remain;
   |  And well, I suppose,
   |  Though I were a rose,
   |    I'd fain be a thistle again."

   |  "Dearest friend," quoth the rose,
   |  "You falsely suppose—
   |    Bear witness ye flowers of the plain!—
   |  You'd take so much pleasure
   |  In beauty's vast treasure,
   |    You'd ne'er be a thistle again."

   |  The thistle, by guile,
   |  Preferred the rose's smile
   |    To all the gay flowers of the plain;
   |  She threw off her sharp spears,
   |  Unarmed she appears—
   |    And then were united the twain.

   |  But one cold, stormy day,
   |  While helpless she lay,
   |    No longer could sorrow refrain;
   |  She gave a deep moan,
   |  And with many an "Ohone!
   |  Alas for the days when a Stuart filled the throne—
   |    OH! WERE I A THISTLE AGAIN!"
   |

Sir Nigel clapped his hands in applause, and said to the
M.P.—

"Lickspittal, my boy, I consider that an anti-centralization
song—but, of course, your sympathies and mine are widely
apart."

"It is decidedly behind the age, at all events," said the
member, laughing.

"You have a delightful voice, Cora—soft and sweet as
ever," said I in her ear.

"Thanks, Cora," added Sir Nigel, patting her white
shoulder with his strong embrowned hand.  "Newton seems
quite enchanted; but you must not seek to captivate our
lancer."

"Why may I not, papa?"

"Because, as Thackeray says, 'A lady who sets her heart
on a lad in uniform, must prepare to change lovers pretty
quickly, or her life will be but a sad one.'"

"You are always quoting Thackeray," said Cora, with a
little perceptible shrug of her plump shoulders.

"Is such really the case, Mr. Norcliff?" asked Lady Louisa,
who had approached us; "are you gentlemen of the sword so
heartless?"

"Nay, I trust that, in this instance, the author of 'Esmond'
rather quizzes than libels the service," said I.  "How beautiful
the conservatory looks when lighted up," I added, drawing
back the crimson velvet hangings that concealed the door,
which stood invitingly open.

"Yes; there are some magnificent exotics here," said the
tall, pale beauty, as she swept through, accompanied by Cora
and myself.

I had hoped to have a single moment for a tête-à-tête with
her; but in vain, for the pertinacious Berkeley, with his slow,
invariable saunter, lounged in after us, and, with all the air of
a privileged man, followed us from flower to flower as we
passed critically along, displaying much vapid interest, and
some ignorance alike of botany and floriculture.  Without the
conservatory, the clear, starry sky of a Scottish winter night
arched its blue dome above the summits of the Lomonds; and
within, thanks to skill and hot-water pipes, were the yellow
flowering cactus, the golden Jobelia, the scarlet querena, the
slender tendrils and blue flowers of the liana, the oranges and
grapes of the sunny tropics.

"What is that dangling from the vine branch overhead?"
asked Lady Louisa.

"Just above us?" said Cora, laughing, as she looked up
with a charming smile on her bright girlish face.

"Haw—mistletoe, by Jove!" exclaimed Berkeley, looking
up too, with his glass in his eye, and his hands in his pockets.

I am not usually a very timid fellow in matters appertaining
to that peculiar parasite; yet I must own that when I saw
Lady Loftus, in all the glory of her aristocratic loveliness, so
pale and yet so dark, with cousin Cora standing coquettishly
by her side, under the gifted branch, that my heart failed me,
and its pulses fairly stood still.

"My privilege, cousin," said I, and kissed Cora, as I might
have done a sister, ere she could draw back; and the usually
laughing girl trembled, and grew so deadly pale, that I
surveyed her with surprise.

Lady Louisa hastily drew aside, as I bent over her hand,
and barely ventured to touch it with my lips; but judge of my
rage and her hauteur when my cool and sarcastic brother
officer, Mr. Berkeley, came languidly forward, and claiming
what he termed "the privilege of the season," ere she could
avoid it, somewhat brusquely pressed his well-moustached lip
to her cheek.

Though affecting to smile, she drew haughtily back, with
her nether lip quivering, and her black eyes sparkling
dangerously.

"The season, as you term it, for these absurdities is over,
Berkeley," said I, gravely.  "Moreover, this house is not a
casino, and that trophy should have been removed by the
gardener long since."

I twitched down the branch, and tossed it into a corner.
Berkeley only uttered one of his quiet, almost noiseless, laughs,
and, without being in the least put out of countenance, made
a species of pirouette on the brass heels of his glazed boots,
which brought him face to face with the Countess, who at that
moment came into the conservatory after her daughter, whom
she rarely permitted to go far beyond the range of her eyeglass.

"Lady Chillingham," said he, resolved at once to launch
into conversation, "have you heard the rumour that our friend,
Lord Lucan, is to command a brigade in the Army of the East?"

"I have heard that he is to command a division, Mr. Berkeley,
but Lord George Paget is to have a brigade," replied the
Countess, coldly and precisely.

"Ah, Paget—haw—glad to hear it," said he, as he passed
loungingly away; "he was an old chum of my father's—haw—doocid
glad."

It was a weakness of Berkeley's to talk thus; indeed, it was
a common mess-room joke with Wilford, Scriven, Studhome,
and others of ours, to bring the peerage on the *tapis*, at a
certain hour of the evening, and "trot him out;" but on hearing
him speak thus of his father, who—honest man—began life as
a drayman, it was too much for me, and I fairly laughed
aloud.

The salute he had so daringly given Lady Loftus was to me
a keen source of jealous anger and annoyance, which I could
neither readily forgive nor forget, and had the old duelling
fashion still been extant, the penalty might have proved a dear
one.  I had the bitter consciousness that she whose hand I
had barely ventured to touch with a lip that trembled with
suppressed emotion had been brusquely saluted—-actually
kissed before my face—by one for whom I had rather more,
if possible, than a profound contempt.

What she thought of the episode I know not.  A horror of
what all well-bred people deem a scene no doubt prevailed,
for she took her mother's arm, and passed away, while Cora
and I followed them.

Jealousy suggested that much must have passed between
them prior to my arrival, otherwise Berkeley, with all his
assurance, dared not have acted as he did.  This supposition
was to me a source of real torture and mortification.

"When love steals into the nature," says a writer, "day by
day infiltrating its sentiments, as it were, through every crevice
of the being, it will enlist every selfish trait into the service, so
that he who loves is half enamoured of himself; but where
the passion comes with the overwhelming force of a sudden
conviction, when the whole heart is captivated at once, self is
forgotten, and the image of the loved one is all that presents
itself."

Sleepless that night I lay, tormenting myself with the
"trifles light as air," that to young men in my condition are
"confirmations strong as proofs of Holy Writ."

At last I slept; but my dreams—those visions that come
before the sleeping mind and eye towards the hours of
morning—were not of her I loved, but of my pretty and playful
cousin, fair-skinned and dark-haired Cora Calderwood.





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   CHAPTER VII.

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   |  What though our love was never told,
   |    Or breathed in sighs alone;
   |  By sighs that would not be controlled
   |    Its growing strength was shown.
   |  The touch that thrilled us with delight,
   |    The glance, by heart untamed,
   |  In one short moon, as brief as bright,
   |    That tender truth proclaimed.
   |                                ALARIC WATTS.

.. vspace:: 2

Next morning I resolved that, if possible, it should not pass
without some attempt being made to discover the state of
Lady Louisa's heart—how she was affected towards me, and
whether I had any chance, however remote, of reviving or
securing the interest I trusted she had in me when last we
met in England.  But over night the snow had fallen heavily;
it was six inches deep on the lawn, as Willie Pitblado told
me.  The Lomonds were clothed in ghastly white to their
summits, and as we seemed fated to be caged up in doors all
day, my chances of seeing Louisa alone would be remote
indeed.

In the library and drawing-rooms I found all the guests of
last night assembled, save the minister, doctor, and lawyer,
who had ridden home, and save her I sought.

The snow caused universal regret, for various excursions
had been in progress—some for visiting the ruined castle at
Piteadie; some for riding as far as Lochleven; and others,
farther still, to see the fragments that remain of the old abbey
of Balmerino.

The Countess and her daughter, arrayed in a charming
morning toilette, appeared just as the roar of the gong
summoned us to a Scottish breakfast; and of the splendours of
such a repast, what gourmand hath not heard?

There were venison, mutton, cold grouse, and ptarmigan,
rizzard haddocks from the Firth of Forth, salmon from the
Tay, and honey from the Lomond hills; a *liqueur*-stand,
containing whisky and brandy, stood at Sir Nigel's right hand.
At one end of the table was tea, presided over by Cora; at the
other, where Miss Wilford officiated, was coffee.

Over the snowy landscape a glorious flood of sunshine was
pouring through the stone mullions of the oriel windows, casting
shadows of the old and leafless trees far across the waste
of dazzling white.

I had the pleasure of being seated by the side of Lady
Loftus, and we chatted away pleasantly of people whom we
had met, and places where we had been.  The links of the
old chain were being rapidly taken up, and every time I
looked into the quiet depths of her dark eyes I felt a strong
emotion pass over mine.

Berkeley sat on her other side, but I could perceive that she
was politely reserved with him; so the art of impudence, an
art which he had studied carefully, had availed him but little
after the use to which he had put it last night.

"And you go to the East with pleasure?" she asked,
casually, after a pause.

"With pleasure, and yet with one great regret," said I, as I
lightly touched her hand.

"And this regret, is it a secret?"

"It cannot be spoken of here; and yet a little explanation—one
word, it may be—shall send me away the happiest
fellow in the Crimean expedition."

"Take courage," she said, in a low voice, that made my
heart leap with hope and anticipation.

"Newton, what are you and Lady Loftus talking about so
impressively?  But, perhaps, I should not inquire," said my
uncle, as he carved the cold grouse, and a faint shade of
annoyance flitted over the pale face of my companion.

"Well, Sir Nigel," I replied, "I was simply about to say that
ere we see such a breakfast as this again, we shall have had a
rough turn with the Russians, and talked polyglot-wise with
fellows of all nations in the allied camp; have drunk sherbet,
perhaps, with the Sultan, ogled his ladies at the gilded lattices,
and smoked a *chibouque* with Giafar, Mesrour, and other
friends of the Commander of the Faithful."

The flow of my spirits contrasted somewhat with the ebb of
Berkeley's.  He sat silent, and pulled from time to time his
long moustaches and whiskers, which were mingled together—the
envy of our apple-cheeked cornets.

But now Mr. Binns came in with the household letter-bag—a
leather case, which bore Sir Nigel's name and arms on a
brass plate, and its contents (always so welcome at a country
breakfast-table) were distributed amongst us.

There were newspapers and letters for all present but me,
luckily.  I say luckily, for I was hourly in fear of having my
short leave cancelled, and receiving a summons from the
colonel to head-quarters.

"Lord Slubber de Gullion expresses great surprise that we
are staying so long in Scotland," said the Countess of
Chillingham, as she rapidly read over a letter written in a large,
round-text hand.

"An old bore, mamma."

"Don't say so, Louisa."

The name, which is as near the original as I dare give it,
sounded oddly; but there came a time when it was to prove a
sad name to me.

"You know Slubber?" said Berkeley, in a low voice, to me.

I shook my head.  On which he resumed—

"He is an old peer of a good Anglo-Norman line, as the
name imports; rich as a Jew, and sails one of the best yachts
that ever loosed canvas at Cowes; a house in Piccadilly; a
box at the opera; another of a different kind in the
Highlands; a moor in Ireland—bog, some people call it; an
excellent stud, and pack of hounds; a glorious cellar.  Rich old
fellow, indeed; a great chum of my father's.  His dinners are
said to be—haw—perfection, from the caviare on sliced bread,
*à la Russe*, to the coffee and curaçoa, the mocha and
maraschino."

The ladies were all busy with their crossed and recrossed
epistles from friends, gossips, and correspondents.  My uncle
was put in excellent humour by a missive from a meeting of
the heritors and others interested in the county hunt, assigning
to him the mastership of the hounds, with a couple of
thousands per annum towards his expenses, and the defray of
damages, if he undertook to hunt the country between the
Firths of Forth and Tay.

"You have some jolly good hunters in the—haw—stables, Sir
Nigel," said Berkeley, who was somewhat of a sporting man.

"Yes, fairish."

"Dunearn is a clean-limbed animal," said the general.

"Yes; but he was not improved by your gallop among the
melon beds," replied Sir Nigel, laughing.  "Cost me four
hundred and fifty pounds, that horse did.  Saline, the grey,
with the dark fetlocks, is a better hunter for clearing fences,
and crossing a stiff country, and yet cost me only two hundred
and ten pounds."

After opening his third or fourth letter, Berkeley evidently
received news that was not pleasant, for I heard him mutter
almost an oath, as he said, uneasily—

"Jockeyed!  Sold by the jockey, Trayner!  A cheque on
his bank for the amount; about as good as one on the Banks
of Newfoundland."

"No bad news, Berkeley, I hope," said my uncle.

"Oh—haw—nothing, Sir Nigel," said he, and retiring into
an oriel, he drew forth a memorandum book, and proceeded
to consider the weights for a forthcoming race; and so absorbed
was he that Cora laughed aloud on hearing him mutter in this
fashion, pulling his long moustaches the while—

"Mail-train, five years, eight stone two pounds.  Swish-tail,
three years, six stone four pounds.  Queen Victorina, aged,
rather, six stone four pounds," and so on.

As we rose from the breakfast-table, and broke into groups,
he dropped a letter in a female handwriting.  I picked it up,
and followed him.  It was open, and the signature, "*Agnes
Auriol*," caught my eye.

By that name I knew the writer, and could have crushed
Berkeley's chances, perhaps, for ever; but as no such use
could be honourably made of it, I touched him on the shoulder,
simply saying—

"Pardon me, you have dropped this."

He changed colour painfully as he received the letter,
walked to the fire, cast it in, and carefully waited until it was
consumed.

I was not without hopes of luring Lady Louisa into the
library, the conservatory, or some quiet nook, as a ride or a
ramble out of doors was not to be thought of; but my uncle
destroyed my chances, by suddenly announcing, with one of
his loud and merry laughs, that the glass was rising, the day
would yet be fine, and that gentlemen must kill their next day's
dinner or go without.  He was going to beat the thickets for
a few birds, and he had guns for all the party.

The old general grumbled an unmistakable dissent, and
Berkeley pocketed his betting-book, drawling out, as he looked
at the snowy landscape and left the room—

"A horrid bore!"

"Come, general," said my hearty old uncle, who had not
heard Berkeley's uncivil response, "don't think yet of
substituting flannel bags for top-boots; Ascension turtle and pink
champagne for patience and water gruel; hot fomentations for
hot whisky-toddy!  Come! put on your shot-belt; the gout
is a long way off yet."

"Gad!  I am not so sure of that, Sir Nigel; and then there
is this cursed jungle-fever, which I got when up the country
with the 3rd Bengal, and I have a horror of toast and water,
even when flavoured with pale dry sherry."

"Where is Mr. Berkeley loitering; what is he about?"

"Making up his mind, papa, or what he considers to be
such," said Cora.

"Fie, Cora," said the old baronet, "you should never quiz
a guest."

Berkeley, re-entering, urged that he had letters to write, and
so must remain behind; so said Mr. Spittal, the M.P.  Thus
the shooting party was reduced to Sir Nigel, the keeper, and
myself.

Cora brought us each a flask of brandy, then a little packet
of sandwiches cut by her own pretty hands in the housekeeper's
pantry.  These she stuffed into our pockets, and away we
went to the keeper's lodge, I, for cogent reasons of my own,
most unwillingly, though Lady Louisa smilingly kissed her
hand twice to me from the drawing-room window; but as
Cora and all the ladies did so at the same time, and waved
their handkerchiefs, I could gather but little from that mark
of her attention.

Pitblado's cottage was more than a mile distant.  The snow
was thawing fast, in the sunshine; but we were accoutred in
stout leather leggings, and thick, warm shooting coats and caps.

My uncle's manner was fidgety, as we walked onward.  He
had evidently something on his mind, which he could not
express in words, and I could give him no aid.  After a pause—

"Newton, lad," said he, "I don't think that you take to
your gun very willingly to-day."

"What leads you to think so, uncle?"

"You continued to look back at the house, as long as even
the vanes of it were in view, as if the game there had more
attractions than the birds out of doors."

"I merely looked back to bow to Lady Loftus and the
others," said I, laughing.

"There it is!  Why do you put Lady Loftus first?"

"Perhaps because her figure was tallest—I don't know—perhaps
I should have named Cora, as the Lady of Calderwood,"
said I laughing, to hide my growing confusion.

"Newton Norcliff, you have a tenderness for Lady Chillingham's
daughter," said Sir Nigel, gravely.

"Have I?  Don't know that I have, sir," I repeated, actually
flushing.

"Of course you have, and you know it," said he, emphatically.

"But who told you of this?"

"Cora."

"Cora?"

"Yes, with tears in her eyes, this morning."

"Tears!  This is incomprehensible.  I have only been a
single night under the same roof with Lady Loftus."

"Yet Cora has discovered your secret.  Girls are
quick-sighted in such matters, I can tell you."

"But why had Cora tears?"

"Don't for the life of me know, unless it be that she fears
your love will be but moonshine in the water.  They are a
cold, calculating, and ambitious family, Lord Chillingham's,
and will fly their hawk at higher game than mere landed
gentry."

"She is a good girl, Cora," said I, thoughtfully

"If you have any fancy for Louisa Loftus, I will back you
to any amount," said my blunt uncle, stoutly; "but I don't
think my lady mother would relish such a suitor as a
lieutenant of cavalry.  I have already heard her hint that Lord
Slubber has made proposals, with offers of a brilliant
settlement; but the man is older than I, and could no more hunt
a country or march up a snow-covered brae, as we do now,
than fly through the air.  At all events, don't throw your heart
away farther than is necessary, and what is more, in the
meantime, look sharp, I say."

"Sharp!" I exclaimed, bewildered by this odd jumble of
advice.  "How—why?"

"Don't you perceive what is going on?"

"What, uncle?"

"That yaw-hawing donkey, Berkeley, is doing all he can
to take the wind out of your sails."

"Uncle, I have indeed felt a dread of this.  He has, you
know, a handsome fortune."

"I would not let a fellow like that go neck and neck with
me," said Sir Nigel.  "I'd cut in and win at a hand gallop.
It is your talking, pushing, forward men—seeming always
confident of what they say, never acknowledging an error or
confessing a defeat, that are too often allowed to take the lead
in life.  With average ability, and ten times the average
amount of assurance, they often reach the goal that bashful
merit never gets a sight of.  So cut in, I say, and win, if you
want her."

While he was running on thus, I could not but admire, at
his years, the hale, sturdy figure, and bluff, hearty bearing of
Sir Nigel, in his old shooting toggery.  He was always a crack
shot, and in youth and middle life had been one of the keenest
curlers and golfers between the West and East Neuks of Fife.

It was his great boast that he could yet, if he chose, strike
a golf ball from the street over each of the tallest spires of
St. Andrew's.  A fair hand, too, with the pistol, he had, as I have
stated, winged more than one political antagonist, in squabbles
about the old Reform Bill, in the days of Brougham, Grey, and
Russell.  Throw your glove in the air, and he would shoot any
finger off it you named; and he would hit a cricket ball, were
it cast ever so high, with a single rifle bullet.  Thus in his
hands I was sent to join the lancers somewhat of a master-of-arms,
and certainly a complete horseman.

Sir Nigel, withal, had much the air of a Scotch man-about-town;
in Edinburgh a different style of man from he of the
same genus in London—he of the glazed boots and
carefully-trimmed whiskers, exquisitely solemn and unimpressionable,
as if he had seen all the world, and found there was nothing
in it.

The "dandy" who hovers about the New Club in Princes-street
is usually a six-foot man, bronzed and sunburnt (he has
served somewhere—in India generally), and heavily
moustached.  He carries a huge stick; he wears rough Tweed
suits, and double-soled brogues, with toe-pieces and rows of
hobnails, as if ever ready for facing the hills and the frozen
heather.  He may be a snob, like his English brother
Dundreary; but he has something rough and service-like in his
bearing that is suggestive of climbing rocks, fishing, hunting,
and shooting.

But now Sir Nigel's warning, Cora's sharp discovery of my
secret, and the knowledge that Berkeley remained behind in
full possession of the field, filled me with anxiety and
annoyance.  The shooting excursion bored me, and I looked for the
end before we had well begun.

What might those hours of absence from her cost me?

We reached the gamekeeper's cottage, which was situated
amid a dense copsewood, beside a wimpling burn, and near
King James's Well.  Moss of emerald hue covered all the
thatched roof, and in summer green trailers and scarlet-runners
made all the white-washed walls and little windows gay.

Now the former were ornamented by ghastly rows of half-decayed
hawks, wild cats, fiumarts, and weasels, while the
white, bare skull of a stag, with its gallant antlers outspread,
was fixed above the door.  Along the garden paling the dead
hawks hung in dozens, as a regular war was waged between
them and old Pitblado, who spent half his days in baiting
traps; thus the breeze that passed his cottage was laden with
odours, but not those of "a bank of violets."

He was a fine, hale old man, with a weather-beaten aspect,
short, grizzled hair, and keen grey eyes, that glistened and
grew moist as he warmly shook my hand, and welcomed me
to the glen again.

Though respectful and kind, his bearing was not without a
native dignity, for he was proud of considering himself the last
representative of an old line of Fifeshire lairds, the Pitblados
of Pitblado and that ilk, who had lost their land and position
long ago; but in his old velveteen coat of no particular colour,
his blue bonnet, network game-bag, and long, greasy overalls,
Pitblado looked just as I had seen him last.  Though "as
soldiers in the march of life, we may never learn to mark
time, time never fails to mark us."

"It was kind ond thochtfu' o' you, Maister Newton, to bring
my laddie, Willie, hame to see me ere ye baith gaed to the
wars; and when there, I hope you ond he will tak' a' the
care o' ilk ither ye can, for I could as ill spare him as Sir
Nigel could spare you; and gang where ye may, Maister
Newton, ye'll ne'er ha'e a truer or a sibber friend than Willie
Pitblado."

While the old man ran on thus, the dogs came bounding
forth.

"Here," said my uncle, "is your old favourite pointer, the
white and tan, alive yet."

"But he's a *dis*-appointer noo, Maister Newton, being
blind, or bleared a bit; yet I ha'e na the heart, or rather want
o' heart, to put the puir beast awa'."

"And here is Keeper, too—brave old Keeper, that I played
with when a boy," I exclaimed, as a grand old mastiff, which
knew my voice, sprang upon me with joy, whining and barking
the while—a dog that was always gentle with children;
that wagged his aristocratic tail at all ladies and gentlemen,
but howled and growled fearfully at all beggars and
poorly-clad folks.

There in that cottage old Willie now lived alone with his dogs
and a tame otter.  This was a somewhat remarkable animal.
He had found it as a cub in a pond near Calderwood Glen, and
gradually made it so domesticated that it responded to his
voice, followed him about, and employed its talents in fishing
for him, bringing each fish regularly to his feet, and at a signal
diving in for more; and, strange enough, the terriers that
hunted other otters never molested this one.

A pair of brisk young pointers were selected.  We loaded,
capped, shouldered our guns, and set forth.  This was but
the beginning of the day's sport, and I sighed with impatience
for the end.

"Shall we try the belt of pines on the Standing Stane Rig?"
said I.

"It used to be a braw cover for patricks (partridges), and
in my father's day for grouse," said Pitblado; "but those
Roosians, the weasels, the piots, the hawks, and the shepherd's
collies, ha'e played the de'il wi' it.  At yon belt o' neeps,
where ye see the shaws aboon the snaw, the deer often come
out o' the pine wood to ha'e a feed, so that we may chance to
get a pot shot at one to-day."

"Come on, then," said Sir Nigel, impatiently.  "Blaze
away while you can, Newton.  In the first week of next month
partridge and pheasant shooting ends."

"By that time, uncle, in these swift days of steam, I may
be sabreing or potting the Russians."

"Then sabre and pot with a will, boy."

It was from old Pitblado I had received all my early lessons
in shooting and fishing, in the art of casting bullets and
making flies; and I remember one special piece of advice he
always gave me concerning salmon.

"Aye *droon* your salmon before ye land it, Maister Newton,
for the dunt on the heid spyles the quality o' the fish; ond if
ye hook a grilse, keep its tail up and well in the water till it's
clean deid."

We saw no deer that day, and I shot so wildly and queerly,
and generally bang into the centre of every covey, without
selecting or covering the outside birds, that Sir Nigel was
bewildered, and old Pitblado lost all patience with me.

I traversed the snow-covered fields with them as one might
do in a dream.  I heard an occasional shot from my uncle's
gun, the birds rose whirring in the air, and then one or two
came tumbling down, to beat the snow with their wings, and
stain it with their blood, ere Pitblado thrust them into his
ample bag.

I heard his deep impressive voice saying from time to time,
"Mark!" when the coveys rose, and to watch where they
alighted; then "Seek dead" to the pointers usually followed
the bang! bang! of Sir Nigel's barrels; but my mind was
completely absorbed in reverie.  I saw only the face of Louisa
Loftus, with Berkeley hovering about her.

I imagined him having achieved the tête-à-tête I had
failed to procure.  I imagined him opening the trenches by
apologies, in set phraseology, for the offence he had
perpetrated in the conservatory; and if he succeeded with such a
basis for his operations, where might the matter end?
Heavens! for all I knew to the contrary, in a solemn engagement,
pending mamma Chillingham's consent, for his lordship,
the earl, was somewhat of a cypher in these matters, and in
his own house generally.  How ingeniously one can torment
oneself when afflicted by jealousy! and thus much real misery
was mine during that day's weary shooting, and right glad
was I when the sun of January, declining beyond the western
Lomond, warned my indefatigable uncle that it was time for
us to return homeward, after having traversed in our
peregrinations some fifteen miles of country.

He had shot four hares, and eighteen brace of birds, four of
which were beautiful golden pheasants; while I had knocked
over only two partridges—a result at which Cora and Lady
Louisa laughed excessively, and each declared they would
have the said birds specially cooked for themselves.





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.. _`CHAPTER VIII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII.

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   |  The heavens were marked by many a filmy streak
   |    E'en in the Orient, and the sun shone through
   |  Those lines, as Hope upon a mourner's cheek
   |    Sheds, meekly chastened, her delightful hue.
   |  From groves and meadows, all empearled with dew,
   |    Rose silvery mist, no eddying wind swept by;
   |  The cottage chimneys, half concealed from view
   |    By their embowering foliage, sent on high
   |    Their pallid wreaths of smoke unruffled to the sky.
   |                                              BARTON.

.. vspace:: 2

Next day the snow had entirely disappeared; the country
again looked fresh and green; and when we met for breakfast,
and while the ladies were exchanging their morning
kisses lightly on each cheek—à la Française, rather than à
l'Ecossaise—various excursions were again projected.

Among others, Cora urged that we should visit the ruined
Castle of Piteadie, which belonged of old to a branch of my
uncle's family now extinct.

It stands on the slope of a gentle eminence, some distance
westward of the famous "long town" of Kirkaldy, a pleasant
ride of ten miles or so from the glen; and was a place we
frequently rode to in the days of my boyhood, when my feats in
the saddle were performed on a shaggy, barrel-bellied
Shetland pony; so I longed to see the old ruin again.

A message was sent to the stable-yard after luncheon, and
horses were ordered for the party, which was to consist of Lady
Louisa, Cora, Miss Wilford, Berkeley, the M.P., and myself.

The ladies soon appeared in their riding-habits; and, to my
perhaps partial fancy, there seemed something matchless in
the grace with which Louisa Loftus held, or draped up, the
gathered folds of her ample dark blue skirt in her tightly gloved
left hand.

There was the faintest flush on her usually pale cheek, a
furtive glancing in her long-lashed dark eyes, as she threw her
veil over her shoulder, gave a last smoothing to the braids of
her black hair, and tripped down the front steps, leaning on
the arm of her courteous old host, to where our cavalry stood,
pawing the gravel impatiently, arching their necks, and
champing their bright steel bits.

We were soon mounted and *en route*.  Cora and Lady Louisa,
who were resolved on having a little private gossip, after
merrily quizzing me about my dragoon seat on the saddle, rode at
first together; and, as we paired off down the avenue, followed
by my man, Willie Pitblado, and another well-mounted groom,
I found myself alongside of Berkeley, after Sir Nigel, who
had a county meeting to attend at Cupar, left us.

"Your uncle's stables make a good turn-out of cavalry,"
said Berkeley; "this grey is a good bit of horseflesh."

"'Treads well above his pasterns,' is rather a favourite
with Sir Nigel," said I, coldly, for he had a patronizing tone
about him that I did not relish.  I could laugh with Lady
Louisa when she spoke of Sir Nigel as "a queer old droll,"
or "a dear old thing;" but I could ill tolerate Berkeley, when
he ran on in the following fashion—

"He is certainly a trump, Sir Nigel, but droll, as Lady
Loftus says—exquisitely droll!  If he—haw—spills salt, no
doubt he remembers Judas, and throws a pinch over his left
shoulder; knocks the bottoms out of his eggs, lest the fairies
make tugs of'em; and—haw, haw—would faint, I suppose, if
he dined one of thirteen."

"I am not aware that Sir Nigel has any of the proclivities
that you mention," said I; but, heedless that I was staring at
him, Berkeley, with his bland, insipid smile, continued his
impertinence.

"Things have—haw—changed so much within the last few
years, that these old fellows are actually ignorant of the world
they live in; and the—haw, haw—world goes so fast, that in
three years *we* learn more of it, and of life (Gad! they know
nothing of real life), than they did in thirty.  As a young man,
Sir Nigel was, I have no doubt, a buck in leather breeches
and hair powder—haw—drove a Stanhope, perhaps, and wore
a Spenser, *ultimus Romanorum*; paid his first visit to London
in the old mail coach, with a brace of pistols in his pocket,
and the thorough conviction that every second Englishman
was a thief."

I listened with growing indignation, for on this man, who
quizzed him thus, my poor uncle was lavishing his genuine,
old-fashioned Scottish hospitality.  I had every disposition to
quarrel with Berkeley, and had we been with the regiment, or
elsewhere, would undoubtedly have done so; but in my uncle's
house, a *fracas* with a guest, more especially a brother officer,
was the last thing to be thought of.

"You are somewhat unfriendly in your remarks, Mr. Berkeley,"
said I, haughtily.

"I am—haw—not much of a reader, Norcliff; but I greatly
admire a certain writer, who says that 'Friendship means the
habit of meeting at dinner—the highest nobility of the soul
being his who pays the reckoning!'" replied Berkeley.

"And you always thought that axiom——"

"To be doocid good!  Slubber is the only old fellow I ever
knew who kept pace with the times."

"Indeed!" said I, with an affected air of perfect unconcern.
"I have heard of him—he is said to have proposed to our fair
friend in front."

"Ah, may I ask which of them?"

"For Lady Louisa."

"It is very likely—the families are extremely intimate, and
I know that she has gone twice to the Continent in Slubber's
yacht."

Berkeley said this with a bearing cooler even than mine;
but I was aware that the fellow was scanning me closely
through his confounded eyeglass.

"His fortune is, I believe, handsome?"

"Magnificent!  Sixty thousand a year, at least—haw!  His
father was a reckless fellow in the days of the Regency, going
double-quick to the dogs; but luckily died in time to let the
estates go to nurse during the present man's minority.  I have
heard a good story told of the late Lord Slubber de Gullion,
who, having lost a vast sum on the Derby, applied to a
well-known broker in town to give him five thousand pounds on
my Lady Slubber's jewels.

"'Number the brilliants,' said he, 'and put false stones in
their places; she will never know the difference.'

"'You are mosh too late, my lord,' replied he of the three
six-pounders, with a grin.

"'Too late!  What the devil do you mean, Abraham?'

"'My Lady Slubbersh shold the diamonds to me three
years ago, and these stones are all falsh!'

"So my lord retired, collapsed with rage, to find that a
march had been stolen upon him—doocid good, that!"

The snow, I have said, had entirely disappeared, save on
the summits of the hills; but, swollen by its melting, the
wayside runnels bubbled merrily along under the black whins and
withered ferns, reflecting the pure blue of the sky overhead.
At a place where the road became wider, by a dexterous use
of the spurs, I contrived to get my horse between the pads of
Cora and Lady Louisa, and so rid myself of Berkeley.

We chatted away pleasantly as we rode on at an easy pace,
and ere long, on ascending the higher ground, saw the wide
expanse of the Firth of Forth shining with all its ripples under
the clear winter sun, with the hills of the Lothians opposite,
half shrouded in white vapour.

I would have given all I possessed to have been alone for
half an hour with Louisa Loftus, but no such chance or fortune
was given me; and though our ride to the ruined castle was,
in itself, of small importance, it proved ultimately the means
towards an end.

One old woman, wearing one of those peculiar caps which
Mary of Gueldres introduced in Scotland, with a black band—the
badge of widowhood—over it, appeared at the door of a
little thatched cottage, and directed us by a near bridle-path
to the ruin, smiling pleasantly as she did so.

"Newton," said Cora, "you remember old Kirsty Jack?"

"Perfectly," said I; "many a luggie of milk I have had from
her in past years."

Cora always wondered why people loved her, and why all
ranks were so kind to her; but the good little soul was all
unaware that her girlish simplicity of manner, her softness of
complexion and feature, her winning sweetness of expression
and modulation of voice, were so alluring.  Had she been so,
the charm had, perhaps, vanished, or had become more
dangerous by the exercise of coquetry.  Often when I looked at
her, the idea occurred to me that if I had not been dazzled by
Lady Louisa, I should certainly have loved Cora.

The cottage bore a signboard inscribed, "*Christian Jack—a
callender[\*] by the hour or piece*," an announcement which
caused some speculation among our English friends; and
ignorant alike of its origin and meaning, or what is more
probable, affecting to be so, Berkeley laughed immoderately at the
word, simply because it was not English.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] Literally a mangle, from *calandre*, the French.  The term has been
common all over Scotland for centuries.  In Paris there is a street named
Rue de la Calandre.

.. vspace:: 2

"Christian Jack—Presbyterian John, I should suggest,"
said he, as we cantered along the bridle-path, in Indian file,
Cora at our head, with a firm little hand on her reins, her blue
veil and her skirt, and two long black ringlets, floating behind her.

Lady Louisa followed close, her jet hair gathered up in thick
and elaborate rolls by the artful fingers of her French *soubrette*;
her larger and more voluptuous figure displayed to the utmost
advantage by her tight riding-habit; and now, in a few minutes,
the old ruin, with all its gaping windows, loomed in sight.

It was not an object of much interest, save to Cora and
myself, for it had been the scene of many a picnic and visit in
childhood, and had been long the seat of a branch of the
Calderwoods now extinct and passed away.

Some strange and quaint legends were connected with it;
and Willie Pitblado, old Kirsty at the Loanend, and Cora's
nurse, had told us tales of the old lairds of Piteadie, and their
"clenched hand," which was carved above the gate, that made
us feel far from comfortable in the gloomy winter nights, when
the vanes creaked overhead, and when the wind that howled
down the wooded glen shook the cawing rooks in their nests
and made the windows of old Calderwood House rattle in
their sockets.

The little castle of Piteadie stands on the face of a sloping
bank to the westward of Kirkaldy, and a little to the north of
Grange, the old barony of the last champion of Mary Queen
of Scots; and no doubt it is founded on the basement of a
more ancient structure, for in 1530, during the reign of James
V., John Wallanche, Laird of Piteadie, was slain near it, in a
feudal quarrel, by Sir John Thomson and John Melville of the
House of Raith.

The present edifice belongs to the next century, and is a
high, narrow, and turreted pile.  The windows are small, and
have all been thickly grated, and access is given to the various
stories by a narrow circular stair.

Within a pediment, half covered with moss, above the arched
gateway in the eastern wall, is a mouldered escutcheon of
the Calderwoods, bearing a saltire, with three mullets in chief;
and a helmet surmounted by a clenched hand—the initials
"W.C." and the date 1686.

Pit is a common prefix to Fifeshire localities.  By some
antiquarians it is thought to mean Pict; by others a grave.

Cora drew our attention to the clenched hand, and assured
us that it grasped something that was meant to represent a
lock or ringlet of hair.

Whether this was the case or not, it was impossible for us
to say, so much was it covered by the green moss and russet-hued
lichens; but she added that "it embodied a quaint little
legend, which she would relate to us after dinner."

"And why not now, dear Cora?" said Lady Loftus.  "If
it is a legend, where so fitting a place as this old ruin, with its
roofless walls and shattered windows?"

"We have not time to linger, Louisa," said Cora, pointing
with her whip to the great hill of Largo, the cone of which was
rapidly becoming hidden by a grey cloud; while another mass
of vapour, dense and gloomy, laden with hail or snow, came
heavily up from the German Sea, and began to obscure the
sun.  "See, a wintry blast is coming on, and the sooner we
get back to the glen the better.  Lead the way, Newton, and
we shall follow."

"With pleasure," said I; and giving a farewell glance at
the old ruin I might never see again, I turned my horse's head
northward, and led the way homeward at a smart canter; but
we had barely entered Calderwood avenue when the storm
of hail and sleet came down in all its fury.

Dinner over, I joined the ladies early in the drawing-room,
leaving the M.P. to take the place of Sir Nigel, who was still
absent.  The heavy curtains, drawn closely over all the oriels,
rendered us heedless of the state of the weather without;
and while Binns traversed the room with his coffee-trays,
a group was gathered in a corner round Cora, from whom
we claimed her story of the old castle we had just visited,
and she related it somewhat in the following manner.





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.. _`CHAPTER IX.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX.

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..

   |  "Is there any room at your head, Emma?
   |    Is there any room at your feet?
   |  Is there any room at your side, Emma,
   |    Where I may sleep so sweet?

   |  "There is no room at my side, Robin;
   |    There is no room at my feet.
   |  My bed is dark and narrow now;
   |    But, oh! my sleep is sweet."
   |                                  OLD BALLAD.

.. vspace:: 2

During the time of King Charles I. and the wars of the
great Marquis of Montrose, his captain-general in Scotland—that
terrible period when the civil war was waged in England,
and Scotland was rent in twain between the armies of the
Covenant and of the Cavaliers—William Calderwood of
Piteadie was the lover of Annora Moultray,[\*] daughter of Symon,
the Laird of Seafield; a tower which stands upon the
seashore, not far from Kinghorn.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] Pronounced "Moutrie" in Scotland.

.. vspace:: 2

Both were young and handsome; both were the pride of
the district at kirk, market, and merry-meeting; and a time
had been fixed for their marriage when the troubles of the
Covenant came.  Calderwood adhered to the king, and the
father of his bride to Cromwell, and the Puritan English.

So the poor lovers were separated; their engagement deemed
broken by the parents of Annora, who were dark, gloomy, and
stern religionists—true old Whigs of Fife; but on the day
before William Calderwood departed to join the great Marquis,
who was advancing from the north at the head of his victorious
Highlanders, he contrived to have a farewell interview
with his mistress at the little ruined chapel of Eglise Marie,
which stood, within a few years ago, at Tyrie, in the fields near
Grange.

In those days of ecclesiastical tyranny and social espionage,
little could escape the parish minister; so the Reverend Elijah
Howler promptly apprised Symon of Moultray of his daughter's
"foregathering" with the ungodly one at that relic of Popery,
the chapel of Mary.  They were surprised by the furious father,
who exclaimed—

"Sackcloth and ashes! ye graceless limmer, begone to your
spindle, and thou, mansworn loon, draw!"

Unsheathing his sword, he rushed upon Calderwood, and
would have slain him, notwithstanding the sanctity of the
place, but for the interference of his youngest son, Philip, who
accompanied him, and parried the threatening sword.

He hurled, however, the deepest and most bitter reproaches
upon Calderwood, as "an apostate from the kirk of God; the
adherent of a king who had broken the Covenant; a leaguer
with the mansworn and God-forsaken James Grahame of
Montrose, and his murdering gang of Highland Philistines; the
representative of a false brood, among whom no daughter of
his should ever mate without a father's curse resting on her
bridal-bed," with much more to the same purpose.

The young gentleman strove to deprecate his anger; but,
"Away!" the fiery old man resumed; "hence, ye troubler o'
Israel, who hast hearkened unto the devil and his prelates;
and beware how ye cross the purpose o' Symon o' Seafield, for
all the powers o' hell may fail to balk my vengeance!"

Under his shaggy brows his eyes glared at Calderwood as
he spoke; and fiercely he drew his blue bonnet over them,
as he hurled his broadsword into its scabbard, struck its
basket-hilt significantly, and, grasping his terrified daughter
by the wrist, dragged her rudely away.  A farewell glance,
mute and despairing, was all that the parted lovers could
exchange.  As for the injurious reproaches of the irate old man,
Willie Calderwood heeded them not.  He only mourned in
his heart this civil and religious war, that had engendered hate
and rancour in the breasts of those at whose board he had long
been a welcome guest, and who certainly, at one time, loved
him well.

If Symon of Seafield was rancorous in his animosity, his wife,
the Lady Grizel Kirkaldie of Abden, was doubly so.  Thus the
poor Annora, as she sat by her side, guiding the whirling
spindle, or spinning monotonously at her wheel, was compelled, in
the intervals of prayer, bible reading, catechizing, and mortification
of the body and spirit, to hear the most insulting epithets
heaped upon the name of her young and handsome lover,
whose figure, as she saw him last at Eglise Marie, with his
long, black cavalier plume shading his saddened face, and
his scarlet mantle muffling the hilt of the rapier he dared not
to draw on *her* father, seemed ever before her.

To prevent their meeting again, Annora was secluded and
carefully watched in the upper storey of Seafield Tower; and
by her brothers' fowling-pieces many a stray pigeon was shot,
lest a note might be tied under its wing.  The tower forms a
striking feature on the sea-beaten shore, midway between the
Kirkcaldy and Kinghorn-ness.  It rests on one side on a mass
of red sandstone rock; on the other it was guarded by a fosse
and bridge, the remains of which can yet be traced.  To the
seaward lie the Vows—some dangerous rocks, on which, on
a terrific night in the December of 1800, a great ship of Elbing
perished with all her crew.

A roofless and open ruin now, exposed to the blasts which
sweep up the Firth from the German Sea, it has long been
abandoned to the seamew, the bat, and the owl, or the ugla, as
it was named of old in Fifeshire.

But the seclusion of Annora was not required; for, on the
very day after the interview which was so roughly interrupted
at Eglise Marie, Willie Calderwood, at the head of sixteen
troopers, all sturdy "Kailsuppers of Fife," well mounted and
accoutred in half armour—*i.e.*, back, breast, and pot, with
sword, pistol, and musketoon—had departed for the king's
host, and joined the Marquis of Montrose, whose troops,
flushed with their victorious battles at Tippermuir, Alford,
Aldearn, and the Brig o' Dee, came pouring over the Ochil
mountains, to sack and burn the Castle of Gloom.

Tidings of this advance spread rapidly from the West to
the East Neuk of Fife.  Great numbers of the Whig lairds
repaired to the standard of Baillie, the covenanting general;
and among others who drew their swords under him at the
battle of Kilsythe, were Symon of Seafield and his three sons.

The latter, fiery and determined youths, had but one object
or idea—to single out and slay without mercy William
Calderwood, on the first field where swords were crossed.

The parting injunction of their father to Dame Grizel was
to leave nothing undone to urge on the marriage of Annora
with the Reverend Elijah Howler, a sour-visaged saint, in
Geneva cloak and starched bands, with the lappets of a
calotte cap covering his grizzled hair and cadaverous cheeks,
who, during the troubles that seemed to draw nearer, had
taken up his residence in that gloomy tower, which was half
surrounded by the waves.

At another time, had she dared, Annora, who was really a
merry-hearted girl, with curling chestnut hair and clear bright
hazel eyes, might have laughed at such a lover as this "lean
and slippered pantaloon," who now, in scriptural phraseology,
culled chiefly out of the Old Testament, besought her to share
his heart and fortunes; but the dangers that overhung her
affianced husband and her father's household, whichever side
conquered in the great battle that was impending, and the
monotony of her own existence, which was varied only by the
long nasal prayers and quavering psalmody in which the
inhabitants of the tower (chiefly old women now) lamented the
iniquity of mankind, and "warsled wi' the Lord"—prayers
and psalms that mingled with the cries of the sea-birds, and
the boom of the ocean on the rocks around the tower, all
tended to crush her naturally joyous spirit, and corrode her
young heart with artificial gloom.

She was frequently discovered in tears by Dame Grizel; and
then sharp, indeed, was the rebuke that fell upon her.

"Oh, mother dear," she would exclaim, "pity me!"

"Silence! bairn, and greet nae mair," the lady would reply,
sharply.  "Hearken to the voice of ane that loves ye; but
not after the fashion of this miserable world—the Reverend
Elijah.  Bethink ye on whom your hellicate cavalier may e'en
the now be showering his ungodly kisses.  Bethink ye—

   |  That auld love is cauld love,
   |  But new love is true love.

Elijah loves ye weel, and, though the man be auld, his love is
new and true."

Annora shuddered with anger and grief; while her stern
mother, giving additional impetus to her spinning-wheel, as
she sat in the ingle by the hall fire, eyed her grimly askance,
and muttered—

"Calderwood, forsooth!  There never cam' faith or truth
frae one o' the line o' Piteadie since the cardinal was stickit
by Norman Leslie, a hundred years ago.  Are ye a daughter
o' mine and o' Symon Moultray, and yet are hen-hearted
enough to renounce God and his covenanted kirk, and adhere
to bishops and curates?—to seek the fushionless milk that
cometh frae a yeld bosom, sic as the kirk o' prelacy hath?
Fie! and awa' wi' ye!"

"I forsake nae kirk, mother," urged the poor lassie; "but
I will adhere to my Willie.  Falsehood never came o' his line,
and the Calderwoods are auld as the three trees o' Dysart."

"And shall be shunned like the de'il o' Dysart," replied her
mother, beating the hearthstone with the high heel of her red
shoe.

The cornfields were yellowing in the fertile Howe of Fife,
and the woods were still green in all their summer beauty,
when, about Old Lammas-day, in the year 1645, there went a
vague whisper through the land—none knew how—that a
bloody battle had been fought somewhere about the Fells of
Campsie; that many a helmet had been cloven, many a
blue-bonneted head lay on the purple heather; and that many a
Whig Fife laird had perished with his followers.

Sorely troubled in spirit, the Reverend Elijah Howler took
his ivory-handled staff, adjusted his bands and his beaver
above his calotte cap, and, in quest of sure tidings, set forth
to Kinghorn, at the market-cross of which he had heard the
terrible intelligence, that the sword of the ungodly had
triumphed—that Montrose had burst into the lowlands like a
roaring lion, seeking whom he might devour; and all along
the Burntisland Road Elijah saw the Fife troopers come
spurring, with buff-coats slashed, and harness battered, bloody,
dusty, and having all the signs of discomfiture and fear.

Ere long he learned that Symon of Seafield and his three
sons were in safety (thanks to their horses' heels); but that
the Marquis of Montrose had encountered the army of the
covenant on the field of Kilsythe, where he had gained a great
and terrible victory, slaying, by the edge of the sword, six
thousand soldiers; that the killing covered fourteen miles
Scottish—*i.e.*, twenty-five miles English—and that on the men of the
Fifeshire regiments had fallen the most serious slaughter.

In fact, very few of them ever returned, for nearly all
perished, and the terror of that day is still a tradition in many
a hamlet of Fife.

Annora felt joy in her heart when her father and brothers
returned; yet it was not without alloy, for where was he whom
she had sworn to love, and a lock of whose dark brown hair
she wore in secret next her heart?

Lying cold and mangled, perhaps, on the field of Kilsythe!

There one of her father's men, Roger of Tyrie, had found a
relic of terrible import.  It was a kilmaur's whittle; the blade
was of fine steel, hafted with tortoiseshell, adorned with silver
circlets.  It was graven with the Calderwood arms, and
spotted with blood; but whose blood?

Symon and his sons came home to the tower crestfallen,
and with hearts full of bitterness.  Symon's steel cap, with its
triple bars, had been struck from his head by the marquis's
own sword, and now he wore a broad bonnet, with the blue
cockade of the Covenant streaming from it, over his left ear.

Long, lank, and grizzled, his hair flowed over his shoulders
upon his gorget and cuirass.  His complexion was sallow, his
expression fierce, as he trod, spurred and jack-booted, into the
vaulted hall of the tower, and grimly kissed Dame Grizel on
the forehead.

"The godless Philistines have been victorious, and yet ye
have a' come back to me without scratch or scar," she
exclaimed, with Spartan bitterness.

"Even sae, gudewife—even sae; but for that day at Kilsythe
vengeance shall yet be ours!"

"Yea, verily," groaned Elijah Howler; "for it was a day of
woe, a day of 'wailing and of loud lamentation,' as the
weeping of Jazer, when the lords of the heathen had broken down
her principal plants; and as the mourning of Rachel, who
wept for her children, and would not be comforted."

"Get me a stoup o' ale," said Symon, with something like
an oath, as he flung aside his sword and gauntlets.  "And
thou, minion, after that day o' bluid, will ye cling yet to that
son o' Belial, Willie Calderwood?" asked Symon, sternly, of
his shrinking daughter.  "Thrice I saw him in the charge,
and covered him ilk time wi' my petronel; but lead availed
not, and I hadna about me a siller coin that fitted the muzzle
of my weapon, else he had been i' the mools this nicht.  But
horse and spear lads!" he added, turning to his sons.  "Ere
we sleep, we shall ride by Grange, and rook out Calderwood
Glen wi' a flaming lunt!"

So Symon and his sons had a deep carouse in the old hall
with their troopers, all sturdy "Kailsuppers of Fife," drinking
confusion to their enemies.

Now it is an open ruin; then it was crossed by a great oak
beam, whereon hung spears and bows.  On the walls were
the horns of many a buck from Falkland Woods.

Many an oak almerie and meal-girnel stood round; and
rows of pots and pans, pell-mell among helmets and corslets,
swords and bucklers, spits and branders, made up the decorations
and the furniture; while a great fire of wood and coal
from "my Lord Sinclair's heughs" blazed day and night on
the stone hearth, making the hall to seem in some places all
red and quivering in red light, or sunk in sable shadow
elsewhere.

It had but two chairs—one for the laird, and one for the
lady—for such was then the etiquette in Scotland; thus even the
Reverend Elijah had to accommodate his lean shanks on a
three-legged creepie.

Dogs of various kinds were always basking before the fire
on dun deer-skins; but the chief of them was Symon's great
Scottish staghound, which was exactly of the breed and
appearance described in the old rhyme—

   |  Headed lyke a snake,
   |  Neckèd lyke a drake.
   |  Footed lyke a catte,
   |  Taylèd lyke a ratte,
   |  Syded lyke a team,
   |  Chynèd lyke a beam.
   |

On that night Symon and his sons, with Roger of Tyrie,
and other followers, crossed the hill to Piteadie, and sacked
and set on fire the dwelling of the Calderwoods, who, as
adherents of the king, were deemed beyond the pale of the law
by the Scottish government.

In the murk midnight, from the tower head of Seafield, the
heart-sticken Annora could see the red flames of rapine
wavering in the sky, beyond the woods of Grange, in the direction
where she knew so well her absent lover's dwelling stood; and
when her father and brothers came galloping down the brae,
and clattering over the drawbridge of the tower, they laughingly
boasted that, in passing Eglise Marie, they had defaced
the family tomb of the Calderwoods, and overthrown the
throchstone that marked where Willie's mother lay, under the
shadow of an old yew tree.

"The nest is gane, Grizy," said Symon, grimly, as he unclasped
his corslet, and hung his sword on the wall; "the nest
is scouthered weel, and the black rooks can return to it nae
mair."

"Would that we could lure the tassel to the gosshawk
again," said Lady Grizel, with a dark glance at her daughter.

"For what end, gudewife?" asked Symon, with surprise.

"To make him a tassel on the dule-tree there without,"
was the cruel response.

Annora felt as if her heart was bursting; it seemed so strange
and unnatural that all this savage hate should exist because
her poor Willie adhered to the king rather than to the kirk.

A few weeks passed, and there was loud revelry, and many
a stoup and black-jack of ale and usquebaugh drained joyfully
in Seafield, for tidings came of the total rout of the
Scottish Cavaliers at Philiphaugh, and of the flight of the
great marquis and all his followers none knew whither; but
rumour said to High Germanie.

Had Willie Calderwood escaped? asked Annora, in her
trembling heart; or had he fallen at the Slainmanslee, where
the Covenanters butchered all who fell into their hands, even
mothers with their babes that hung at their breasts?

And these acts, and many other such, did her new lover
justify by many a savage quotation from the wars of the Jews
in the days of old.  Now the kirk was triumphant, and, Judas-like,
had sold its king, as old Peter Heylin said, even as it would
have sold its Saviour could it have found a purchaser.

Winter came on—a cold and bitter one—the soft spray of
the sea froze on the tower windows of Seafield, while the moss
and the grass grew together on the hearthstones of Piteadie,
and the crows had built their nests in the old chimneys and
nooks of the ruined castle.

Hard strove father and mother with Annora; but—

   |  If a lass won't change her mind,
   |  Nobody can make her.
   |

The Reverend Elijah Howler was a happy man in one
sense; the cause of his beloved kirk was triumphant, though
Cromwell's Puritans, who had succeeded the Cavaliers of
Montrose as antagonists, bade fair to become sore troublers
of Israel; and loud were the lamentations when, by sound of
trumpet, the English sectaries warned the General Assembly
to begone from Edinburgh, and to assemble no more.  Yet
the Reverend Elijah was unhappy in another sense.  Annora
heard his pious love-making with averted ear, and he might
as well have poured forth his texts, his dreary talk, and intoned
homilies, to the waves that beat at the rocky basement of the
tower—at once Annora's prison and her home.

Meanwhile, she grew pale, and thin, and sickly.  Her
younger brother, Philip, pitied her in his heart, and, after
making inquiries, learned that Willie Calderwood was now in
France, where he had been wounded in a duel by the Abbé
Gondy, but had become his friend, and now adhered to him
when he had become famous as the Cardinal de Retz; and,
as such, served and defended him in the wars of the Fronde,
with a hundred other cavaliers of Montrose.

"Oh, waly, waly, my mother dear!" she exclaimed, using
the bitterest old Scottish exclamation of grief, as she threw
herself on the bosom of the unflinching Lady Grizel.  "Pity
me—pity me, for none love me here, and Willie is far far
awa' in France owre the sea."

"A' the better, bairn—a' the better."

"But I may never see him mair!"

"A' the better still, bairn."

"Oh, mother dear," urged the weeping girl, "dinna say sae;
ye'll rive my puir heart in twain amang ye.  And this Fronde,
and these Frondeurs, what is *it*, what are *they*?"

"What would it be but some Papist devilry, or a Calderwood
wadna be in the middle o't?" was the angry response.

Poor Annora knew not what to think, for there were no
newspapers in those days, and rumours of events in distant
lands came vaguely by chance travellers, and at long intervals.
Lothian and Fife were almost farther apart in those days than
Scotland and France are now, in the matters of news and
travel.

She felt like Juliet in the feud between the families—

   |  "Tis but thy *name* that is my enemy;—
   |  Though art thyself though, not a Montague.
   |  What's Montague?  It is not hand or foot,
   |  Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
   |  Belonging to a man.  O, be some other name!
   |  What's in a name?  That which we call a rose
   |  By any other name would smell as sweet.
   |  ——Doff thy name;
   |  And for that name, which is no part of thee,
   |  Take all myself.
   |

Even as water dropping on a granite rock will wear that
rock away in course of time, so, by the systematic tyranny of
her parents, and by their reiterated assurances, and even
forged proofs, that Willie Calderwood had fallen, sword in
hand, at the battle of the Barricades, was Annora worn and
wearied into a state of acquiescence, in which she accepted
Mr. Elijah Howler as her husband.

This was the climax of years of a gloomy, sabbatical life,
during which the Judaical rigidity of religious observance made
Sunday a periodical horror, and Seafield Tower a daily hell.

So they were married, and he removed her from the tower
to the adjacent manse, from the more cheerful and ungrated
windows of which she could see in the distance the roofless
turrets and open walls of Piteadie, where the crows clustered
and flapped their black wings, for the ruin had become
a veritable rookery.

The king was dead; he had perished on the scaffold, and
Scotland, under Cromwell and the false Argyle, was quiet, as
we are told in that poetical romance by Macaulay, entitled
"The History of England."

On a Sunday in summer, in the year of Glencairn's rising
in the north for King Charles II., Annora sat in the Kirk of
Calderwood about the beginning of sermon.  The reverend
Elijah, with straight, lank hair, and upturned eyes, Geneva
bands and gown, after a glance at the dark oak pew where his
young bride and victim sat, like the spectre of her former self,
so pale, so crushed and heartbroken, twice repeated, in a
dreary and quavering tone, the text upon which he was
about to preach, with special reference to the rising in the
north, inviting all sons of the Kirk to arm against the loyal
Highlanders—

"*He saith among the trumpets, Ha! ha! and he smelleth
the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains and the shouting!
He is not affrighted, neither turneth he back from the sword;
he goeth forth to meet the armed men.*"—Job xxxix.

Having given this warlike text, he adjusted his cloak, and
turned the sand-glass, which, according to the fashion of those
days, stood on the reading-desk.  The rustle of Bible leaves,
as of those that lie strewn in autumn, when gently stirred by
the wind, passed through all the church; but from Annora's
trembling and wan fingers, her Bible fell heavily to the ground.

At that moment a gaily-dressed young man, with the white
rose in his plumed hat and on his laced mantle, with slashed
doublet and boots, as he passed slowly up the aisle—the
observed of all observers—as such cavalier fripperies were
supposed to have passed away with Montrose and the king,
stooped, and presented her with the fallen book.

Their haggard eyes met.  He was pale even as death.  A
great wound, a sword-cut that traversed his face like a livid
streak, in healing, had distorted the features; but like a
glance of lightning that flashed into her soul, she recognized
Willie Calderwood!

She would have shrieked, but lacked the power; a little
sigh could only escape her, and so she swooned away.

There was a great commotion in the village kirk.  She was
borne forth into the air, and laid for a time upon a throchstane,
or altar tomb, and was then conveyed to the manse, where
she remained long as one on the verge of madness or the
grave.  The face of Willie, so sweet, so sad and earnest, but,
alas! so sorely distorted, seemed ever before her, together
with his gallant air and courtly bearing, all of which were so
different from those of the sour-featured Whigs by whom she
was surrounded.

But she was informed by her younger brother, Philip, that
she should never see that face or bearing more, as her lover
had come home, sorely wounded and broken in health, not to
seek vengeance on her or hers, but only to die among his
kinsmen, the Calderwoods of the Glen; and that he had died
there, three days after their meeting in the kirk; and was
buried at Eglise Marie, in the tomb of the lairds of Piteadie.

It was in one of the last evenings of autumn, when after
hearing this sorrowful narrative, and with it the knowledge
that the only heart that ever truly loved her was cold in the
grave, that Annora—in the craving for solitude and to be alone,
left the old ivy-covered manse, and passing through the
garden, issued into the glebe—a spacious park, surrounded
by venerable trees—and seating herself upon a moss-grown
stile, strove to think calmly, if possible, and pray.

Resplendent in gold and purple, the sky threw out in strong
contour the summits of the Lomonds, from which the last
rays of sunset had faded; and where she sat alone.  The
darkness had almost set in, the woods were so leafy and
dense; yet in some places the twilight was liquid and clear.
The trees were already yellowing fast, and the sear and russet
leaves that had fallen before the strong gales that swept
through the Howe, or great midland valley of Fife, were
whirling about the place where she sat, as if to remind her
that the year was dying.

Often in happier times had she wandered here with Willie,
and the bark of more than one tree there bore their names and
initials cut by his knife or dagger.  The woodcock was seeking
his nest in the hedges, and the snipe and the wild coot were
among the reeds and rushes of the loch and burn; and
Annora, as she gazed around her, thought sadly that it was
the autumn of a year of married misery, and the winter of her
aching heart.

Suddenly some mysterious impulse—for there was no sound
but the sense of something being nigh, made her look round,
and then a start, a shudder, convulsed her, rooting her to the
spot; for there by the stile whereon she sat was Willie
Calderwood, looking just as she had seen him last, in his
cavalier dress, with plumed beaver and white cockade, long
rapier and short velvet mantle: but his features, when viewed
by the calm, clear twilight, seemed paler, his eyes sadder, and
the sword wound on his cheek more livid and dark.

He was not dead—he lived yet, and her brother Philip had
deceived her!

She made a start forward, and then drew back, withheld by
an impulse of terror, and holding up her poor thin hands
deprecatingly, faltered out—

"Oh! come not nigh me, Willie.  I am a wedded wife."

"And false to me, Annora.  Is it not so?" he asked, with a
voice that thrilled through her.

She wept, and laid her hands upon her crushed heart, while
Willie's sad eyes, that had a glare in them, caused doubtless
by his wound, seemed to pierce her soul; they seemed so
bright, so earnest, and beseeching in the autumn twilight.

"They told you I was false to you, or slain in France, and
you believed them?"

"I did, Willie," she sobbed, as she covered her face.

"I have lain on many a field, lassie, where the rain of heaven
and the wind of night swept over me—fields where the living
could scarce be kenned frae the dead, yet I was never slain."

"But, oh," she urged, "Willie, never, never will ye ken——"

"I ken a'!  They told you that I was dead, too, and graved
in yonder kirk."

"They did, Willie dear—they did."

"Yet I am here before you.  I came home to wed you,
lassie, and to join my Lord Glencairn in the north, and to fight
against this accursed Cromwell and his Puritans, but it
maunna be," he added, sadly, in a hollow tone.

"Oh, leave me, Willie, leave me.  If you should be seen
wi' me——"

"Seen!" he exclaimed, with a bitter laugh.

"Oh, leave me; for what seek ye here?"

"But a lock o' your bonnie hair, lassie—a lock to lay beside
my heart."

Her scissors were at the chatelaine that dangled from her
girdle; she glanced fearfully at the windows of the manse,
where lights were beginning to glimmer; but undoing her hair,
she cut a long and ripply tress, and handed it to Willie.  As
she drew near, the expression of his eyes again froze her
blood, they seemed so sadly earnest and glazed; and as his
fingers closed upon the coveted tress, and touched hers, they
felt icy cold and clammy, like those of a corpse.

Then a shriek of terror burst from her, and falling on the
grass, she became senseless, and oblivious of everything.

For days after this she raved of her meeting with Willie
Calderwood, and of the lock of hair she had given him.  Some
thought her mind wandered; but others pointed significantly
to the facts that her scissors had been found by her side, and
to where a large tress had been certainly cut from her left
temple.

The young laird of Piteadie was assuredly dead, and buried
among his kindred in St. Mary's Chapel; but the age was one
of superstition, of wraiths, and omens; and people whispered,
and shook their heads, and knew not what to think, save that
she must have seen a spectre.

Ere a week elapsed, Annora died quietly in her mother's
arms, forgiving and blessing her; but adhering to the story
of the gift to her dead lover.  So strong at last grew the
excitement in the neighbourhood that some began to aver that
he was not dead at all, but was leading a troop of horse, under
Glencairn, in the north.

Even those who had seen the funeral cortège issue from
the House of the Glen were so sceptical on the subject, that
the tomb was opened by order of the next heir, and there,
sure enough, was the body of Willie Calderwood; but the
leaden cerements were rent from top to bottom, the
grave-clothes were all in disorder, and in the right hand was
clenched a long and silky tress of Annora's hair![*]


[*] The plough has recently uprooted the last stone of this old chapel;
but its name, corrupted into "Legsmalie," is borne by the field where
it stood.


How it came there none could say, though many averred it
had been buried with him at his own request, and was the
gift of other years; but the next heir, his nephew, William
Calderwood, whose initials we may see above the eastern gate
of the old fortalice, when he repaired it in 1686, in lieu of the
palm branch of his name, placed above the helmet an arm and
clenched hand, which holds a lock of hair—the same crest
we all saw this morning.

From that time the Moultrays of Seafield never prospered.
The last of the family was killed during the insurrection of
1715.  Their line passed away.  It was long represented by
the Moultrays of Rescobie, also now extinct, and their tower
is a crumbling ruin by the sea-shore.

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Such was Cora's strange story, to which we all, myself
included, listened with attention, though, sooth to say, I had
heard it frequently before.  Berkeley declared it to be "doocid
good, but doocid queer."

In another land I was yet to hear a story still more gloomy
and improbable than this—a story to be related in its place,
and in some points not unlike the legend of the clenched
hand.

While Cora had been rehearsing her gloomy story of the
two ruined towers, my eyes had scarcely ever wandered from
Louisa Loftus, who, with Miss Wilford and I, was seated in
the same flirting, or tête-à-tête chair, and who, on this night,
was in all the pride of her calm, pale, aristocratic beauty.

She was in the zenith of her charms; her figure, finely
rounded, was full—almost voluptuous; her features were
remarkably expressive to be so regular; and her eyes and
glorious hair were wondrously dark when contrasted with the pure
whiteness of her skin.

Seated under the brilliant crystal gaselier, the fine contour
of her head, and the exquisite proportions of her bare shoulders
and neck, on which a circlet of brilliants sparkled, were seen
to perfection, and I felt bewildered while I watched her.  Thus,
I fear, Miss Wilford, in whose blue eyes a mischievous
expression was twinkling, did not find me very entertaining
company.

Down that fair neck a long black ringlet wandered, as if to
allure, and at times it almost touched, my hand.  Intoxicated
by her beauty and close vicinity, I determined to do something
to express my passion, even if I should do it—miserable
timidity and subterfuge—under cover of a jest—a mockery.

Tremulously, between my fingers, unnoticed by others, I
took the stray ringlet, and whispered in her ears—

"A strange story, that of my cousin's, Lady Louisa."

"And the lock of hair! such a terrible idea!" said she,
shuddering, while her white shoulders and brilliants shone in
the light together.

"Does it terrify you?"

"More than it gratifies me."

"As the chances are that I may be killed and buried in the
East, will—will you give me *this* to lie in the trenches with
me?" said I, curling the soft ringlet round my finger, with
mock gallantry, while my heart beat wildly with hope and
expectation.

She turned her dark, full eyes to mine, with an expression
of mingled surprise and sweetness.

"Take it *now*, Mr. Norcliff, for heaven's sake, rather than
come for it, as William Calderwood came," said the sprightly
Miss Wilford, taking a pair of scissors from a gueridon table
that stood close by; and ere Lady Loftus could speak, the
dark ringlet was cut off, and consigned to my pocket-book,
while my lips trembled as I whispered my thanks, and
laughingly said—

"What says Pope?

   |  'The meeting points the sacred hair dissever,
   |  From the fair head for ever, and for ever.'"
   |

"This is all very well, Mr. Norcliff," said she, laughing
behind her fan; "but I cannot submit to be shorn in jest, and
shall insist on having that lock of hair from you to-morrow."

She had a lovely smile in her dark eyes, and a half-pout on
her beautiful lip; but Cora—I know not why—looked on me
sadly, and shook her pretty head with an air of warning, that
seemed as much as to say I had erred in my gallantry, if not
in my generalship.

That night my heart beat happily; I went to sleep with that
jetty tress beneath my pillow; thus, for me, Cousin Cora had
not in vain told her quaint old legend of "The Clenched
Hand."





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.. _`CHAPTER X.`:

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   CHAPTER X.

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..

   |  I loved—yes.  Ah, let me tell
   |  The fatal charms by which I fell!
   |  Her form the tam'risk's waving shoot,
   |  Her breast the cocoa's youngling fruit.

   |  Her eyes were jetty, jet her hair,
   |  O'ershadowing face like lotus fair;
   |  Her lips were rubies, guarding flowers
   |  Of jasmine, dimned with vernal showers.
   |                                  STONE TALK.

.. vspace:: 2

The next day was to see a crisis in my fate which I could not
have anticipated, combined with the narrow escape from
mutilation or death of more than one of our pleasant party
assembled at the Glen.

With all the intensity of my soul, I wished to learn my
chances of success with the brilliant Lady Louisa, yet
trembled to make the essay.

Why, or how was this?

Timid and irresolute, fearing to know the best or the worst
from the lips of a mere girl, I asked myself was it I—I, who,
at the bombardment of Rangoon, at the storm of the Dagon
Pagoda, and in the night attack on Frome, had feared neither
the bullets nor poisoned arrows of the two-sworded barbarians
whom it was our ill-luck to encounter in those tropical regions;
I, who, without fear or flinching, was now ready to meet the
Russians in Turkey, or anywhere else; was it I that could not
muster hardihood to reveal the emotions, the honourable love,
of an honest heart?  It was; and, at times, I felt inclined to
utter a malison on that which General Napier so truly and
happily termed, "the cold shade of aristocracy;" for that it
was which chilled and baffled me.

In the drawing-room the first who met me was my Cousin
Cora, looking pale, but bright-eyed, with her pure complexion,
and in all her morning prettiness.

"Lady Loftus, I presume, has not appeared yet?" said I.

"It is always Lady Loftus with you, Cousin Newton," said
she, pettishly, "though you came here to see papa and me.
What have you done with that celebrated lock of hair?  Put
it in the fire, eh?"

"In the fire, Cora!  It is here, in my pocket-book."

"Doubtless you are very proud of it?"

"I cannot but be, Cora," said I, taking her hands in mine,
and drawing her into the recess of an oriel window; "and
she is herself so proud and reserved.  I am sure that she
knows what you have seen, Cora; at least, what my uncle
says you have detected,—that—that——"

"What, Newton?  How rambling and mysterious you are!"

"That I love her."

"You are sure she knows this?" asked Cora.

"Yes, my dear cousin; it is impossible that the regard
with which she has inspired me could fail to be known, seen,
or felt by her—I mean that it must have been apparent to her,
by a thousand mute indications, since we first met in England.
It is so to you, is it not?"

"Ye—yes," replied Cora, with her face averted, for no doubt
she was smiling at my earnest simplicity.

"Do you think she would tolerate attentions that were
valueless, or would trifle with me?"

"I cannot say."

"But you are her particular friend.  Oh, Cora, be mine too!"

"What on earth do you mean?" asked Cora, showing me
still only her pretty profile; "you cannot wish *me* to propose
to her for you?"

"No; but you hide your sweet face, Cora.  You are laughing
at me!"

"Oh, no, I am not laughing," replied Cora, in a rich, low
tremulous voice.  "Heaven knows, Newton, how far my
thoughts are removed from laughter."

"And—what is this, Cora dear?  Your eyes are full of
tears!"

"Are they?" she exclaimed angrily, as she withdrew her
hands from mine.

"Yes—ah, I see it all," said I, bitterly; "you know Lady
Louisa's heart better than I do, and deem my love for her a
hopeless one."

"It is not so," replied Cora, while her cheek flushed, and,
though her long lashes drooped, an air of hauteur stole over
her usually gentle and lovable bearing.  "I know nothing of
the matter.  Search her heart for yourself; assist you I
cannot; and what is more, Newton Norcliff," she added haughtily,
"I will not!"

"Cora!" I exclaimed, with surprise; "but be it so.  Myself
then must be my own advocate, and if my love for Lady
Louisa——"

What I was about to add, or how I meant to finish the
sentence, I know not, for at that moment she approached,
with her calm, somewhat conventional, but beautiful smile,
to kiss Cora, and present her hand to me.  The rest of our
party rapidly assembled.

Had she heard the *last* words of my interrupted speech?
I almost feared, or rather hoped, that she had.

"This, I find, is to be the day of another expedition,
Mr. Norcliff," she observed.

"So it appears.  We are to see the Fifeshire hounds
throw off at Largo House; and afterwards we are to drive
home by a circuit, through half the country, to let Lady
Chillingham see the scenery."

"In a January day!" drawled Berkeley.  "Do we—aw—start
before tiffin?"

"If by that you mean luncheon, I say after it, decidedly,"
said Lady Chillingham, in her cool, determined manner,
which few—the earl, her husband, especially—could gainsay.
"I have to write to my Lord Slubber and others."

"Pardon me, my dear Lady Chillingham, but this arrangement
is impossible," said my uncle; "we must leave this in
time to see the hounds throw off."

"And the hour, Sir Nigel?"

"Sharp twelve.  Binns will take luncheon for us in the
boot of the drag.  Berkeley, you, I believe, are to don the
pink, and ride with me.  I shall cross the country to-night,
but not in my official capacity, as I have not yet assumed all
the duties appertaining to the honourable office of the master
of the Fifeshire hounds.  And now to breakfast.  Lady
Chillingham, permit me—your hand, and we shall lead the way."

"When I do take the hunting of the country into my own
care," resumed my uncle, "I shall show you as noble a pack
as ever drew cover; ay, dogs as smart as ever had their tails
running after them, even before cub-hunting begins next
season; and so compactly shall they go, that a tablecloth
might cover them all when in full cry."

"By that time, uncle, I shall be testing the mettle of the
Russian cavalry; but my heart will be with you all here in
Calderwood Glen."

Lady Louisa's eyes were upon me as I said this; their
expression was unfathomable, so I was fain to construe it into
something sympathetic or of interest in my fate.

The day was clear and beautiful; the air serene, though
cold, and the swelling outlines of the green and verdant hills
were sharply defined against the blue of the sky, where a few
fleecy clouds were floating on the west wind.

Our party lost no time in preparing for the expedition of
the day, and, ere long, the vehicles, the horses, and even the
ladies, were all in marching order.  I had too much tact to
attempt to engross Lady Loftus at the beginning of the day;
but resolved, as she was to be with "mamma" in the drag,
to become one of its occupants when returning home, if I
could achieve nothing better.

My man Pitblado, and other grooms, brought forth the
saddled horses, and my uncle appeared in a red hunting-coat,
boots and tops, with whip and cap complete, his cheek
glowing with health and pleasure, and his eyes sparkling as
if he were again sixteen.

"By the way, Newton," said he, slapping his boot-tops,
"that lancer fellow of yours——"

"Willie Pitblado, my servant?"

"Yes, well, he has tumbled Lady Chillingham's French
soubrette about, as if he had known her from infancy; and
what suits the meridian of Maidstone barracks won't do at
Calderwood Glen, so tell him.  And now, Mr. Berkeley, here
are Dunearn, Saline, and Splinter-bar.  You can have your
choice of cavalry; but shorten your stirrups.  I always take
the leathers up two holes for hunting."

"Aw—haw, thanks," drawled this Dundreary (whose
fashionable hunting suit, in cut and brilliancy of colour,
quite eclipsed the well-worn costume of the jolly old baronet),
as he proceeded leisurely to examine the bridle and girths,
observing the while to me—

"Louisa looks well this morning."

"Louisa!" I repeated, with astonishment: "is it the mare—her
name is Saline, so called from some hills in Fife—or
whom on earth do you mean?"

"Why, Lady Loftus, to be sure."

"And you speak of her thus freely or familiarly?"

"Ya—haw—yes."

"By Jove, you surprise me!"

"By what, eh?"

"Your perfect assurance, to be plain with you, my friend."

"Don't deem it such, my dear fellaw, though it is doocid
dangerous when one comes to speak of so charming a girl
by her Christian name; it shows how a fellaw thinks or *feels*,
and all that sort of thing; do you understand?"

"Not very clearly; but consider, Berkeley, what you are
about, and don't make a deucid fool of yourself," said I, with
undisguised anger.

"No danger of that; but—haw—surely you are not
spooney in that quarter yourself?  Eh—haw—if I thought
so, curse me if I wouldn't draw stakes, and hedge.  You
know that I like you, Newton; and your old uncle, Sir Nigel,
is a doocid good kind of fellaw—a trump, in fact," he added,
while lightly vaulting into his saddle, and gathering up his
reins, but eying me like a lynx, through his glass, as if to read
my most secret thoughts.

Disdaining to reply, I drew haughtily back.

"So-oh," said my uncle, who was now mounted.  "I know
that grey mare, Saline, well; so, Mr. Berkeley, by gently
feeling her mouth, and grinding her up to the requisite pitch
of speed, she'll soon leave the whole field behind her."

Our party was numerous; including my uncle's guests,
some thirty ladies and gentlemen were about to start from
the Glen.  We were well off in conveyances.  There was
the great old family carriage, cosily stuffed, easily hung,
pannelled and escutcheoned, with rumble and hammercloth;
there was a stately drag of a dark chocolate colour, with red
wheels, and a glorious team of greys; a dashing waggonette
and tandem, with two brilliant bays, that, in the shafts, were
well worth three hundred pounds each; and there was a
dainty little phaeton, in which the general was to drive Cora
and Miss Wilford, drawn by two of the sleekest, roundest,
and sauciest little ponies that ever came out of Ultima Thule.

I was to drive the drag to the meet; and, after the hunt,
Berkeley was to meet us at a certain point on the Cupar
Road, and drive the vehicle home, if I felt disposed to yield
the ribbons to him, which I had quite resolved to do.

Of the noise and excitement, the spurring, yelping, and
hallooing, sounding of horns, and cracking of whips; the
greetings of rough and boisterous country friends; the
criticisms that ensued on dogs, horses, and harness; of how
the cover was drawn, and the fox broke away; how huntsmen
and hounds followed "owre bank, bush, and scaur," as
if the devil had got loose, and life depended on his instant
re-capture, and of all the incidents of the hunt, I need give
no relation here.

The afternoon was well-nigh spent before we saw the last
of my uncle's companions; and to the luncheon provided by
Mr. Binns we had done full justice, the roof of the drag being
covered by a white cloth, and improvised as a dining-table,
whereon was spread a *déjeûner* service of splendid
Wedgwood ware, the champagne sparkling in the sun, and the
long glasses of potash and Beaujolais foaming up for the
thirsty; and Largo Law, a green and conical hill, verdant to
its summit a thousand feet above the waters of the bay, was
throwing its shadow to the eastward, when we made arrangements
for our return; and, thanks to dear Cora's tact and
management, rather than my own—for timidity and doubt
embarrassed me—I contrived to get Lady Louisa into the
tandem.  After which, by giving a hint to Willie Pitblado, he
managed to set the horses kicking and plunging in such an
alarming fashion that it was necessary to give them their
heads for a little way, as if to soothe their ruffled tempers,
just as he adroitly had got into the back seat.

Lady Chillingham, the M.P., the Misses Spittal, and
Rammerscales were all bundled into the drag; others were on the
roof, great-coated or well-shawled, for a cool drive home, and
the whole party set out for the Glen, *viâ* Clatto and Collessie,
a twenty-five miles' drive.

It was past the hour of three before all was packed up and
we were all ready to leave Largo.  The grave old butler,
Binns, looked at his watch, and said—

"Mr. Newton, you know the route we go by."

"Yes; round by Dunnikier Law."

"That is the road Sir Nigel wished us to drive; but you'll
require to use your whip if we are to be home before dark."

"Never fear for that, Binns," said I, while leading the way
in the tandem with Lady Louisa beside me, and no attendant
or other companion, save Willie Pitblado, who had or had
not ears and eyes just as occasion required, Mamma Chillingham
believing the while that she was with other ladies in
the close carriage.

"Keep a tight hand on the leader, sir," whispered Pitblado;
"she's a blood mare, rather fresh from the stall, and
overcorned a bit."

"She is hard-mouthed," said I, "and pulls like the devil."

"As for the wheeler, I think the splinter-bar is too low,
and she kicks and shies at it; but the breeching is as short as
we could make it.  Keep a sharp look out on both, sir," said
he, warningly, and then relapsed into apparent immobility.

For the *first* time since our introduction had I been alone
with Lady Louisa—I say alone, for I did not count on my
servant, who seemed wholly intent on looking anywhere but
at us, and chiefly behind, as if to see how soon we could
distance the four-in-hand drag and the rest of our party.

The vehicle we occupied was a hybrid affair, which my
uncle frequently used, half gig and half dog-cart, four-wheeled,
with Collinge's patent axles, lever drag, and silver
lamps, smart, strong, light, and decidedly "bang up."

We went along at a spanking pace.  My fair companion was
chatty and delightfully gay; her dark eyes were unusually
bright, for the whole events of the day, and the lunch *al
fresco*, had all tended to exhilaration of spirits.

She forgot what her rigid, aristocratic, and match-making
mamma might think of her being alone thus with a young
subaltern of lancers; but though her white ermine boa was
not paler than her complexion usually was, she had now a
tinge, almost a flush, on her soft, rounded cheek that made
her radiantly beautiful, and I felt that now or never was the
time to address her in the language of love.

I knew that the crisis had come; but how was I to
approach it?





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.. _`CHAPTER XI.`:

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   CHAPTER XI.

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   |  The rocky guardians of the clime
   |  Frown on me, as they menaced death;
   |  While echoing still in measured time
   |  The gallop of my courser's hoof,
   |  They hoarsely bid me stand aloof.
   |  Where goest thou, madman?  Where no shade
   |  Of tree or tent shall screen thy head.
   |  Still on—still on; I turn my eyes—
   |  The cliffs no longer mock the skies:
   |  The peaks shrink back, and hide their brow,
   |  Each other's lofty peaks below.
   |                    FROM THE POETRY OF MICKIEWICZ.

.. vspace:: 2

As if inspired by fortune, or my good genius, Lady Louisa
began thus, in a low voice—

"By the way, Mr. Norcliff, you were to have shown me the
house in which Alexander Selkirk—or Robinson Crusoe—was
born in 1676, I think you said?"

"Oh; it is only a cottage, consisting of one storey and a
garret; but the next time we come to Largo, I shall show
you his flip-can, musket, and a lock of his hair."

"Ah, that reminds me, Mr. Norcliff, that you must return
to me the lock of hair which you obtained when inspired with
romance by Miss Calderwood's legend last night."

"Lady Louisa, I implore your permission to retain it," said
I, in a low voice.

"To what end, or for what reason?" she asked, with a furtive smile.

"I am going far, far away, and it will serve as a memento
of many happy days, and of one whom I shall never cease to
remember, but with——"

"Why, you don't mean to say that—that you are serious?"
she asked, in a voice that betrayed emotion, while my heart
rose to my trembling lips, and I turned to gaze upon her with
an unmistakable expression of love and tenderness, which
made her colour come and go visibly.

Reassuring herself, she began to smile.

"Perhaps your creed is a soldier's one?" said she, with a
little convulsive laugh, as she tied her veil under her chin.

"A soldier's!  I hope so; but in what sense do you mean?"

"'To love all that is lovely, and all that you can,' as the
song has it."

I laid a hand lightly on her soft arm, and was about to say
something there could be no misconstruing, while a film
seemed to pass over my eyes, and my soul rose to my lips;
but Pitblado, who, whether he was listening or not, had a
sharp eye on the cattle, now said—

"Beg your pardon, sir, but I don't like the look of that leader."

"The blood mare with the white star on her forehead,"
said I, touching her lightly on the flank with the whip, and
making her curvet; "she is usually very quiet."

"Perhaps so, sir; but she's always clapping her ears close
down—throwing her eyes backward, and showing the whites.
She's up to mischief, I'm certain."

"Jump down, then," said I, "shorten the curb, and lengthen
the traces by a hole or two."

This was done in a trice; Willie sprang into his seat like
a harlequin, and away we went from the Kirktoun of Largo
at a rasping pace.

"She's a lovely animal, with pasterns like a girl's ankles;
but she's clapping her tail a little too close in for my taste,
sir, and she's up to some devilry," persisted Pitblado, and ere
long his surmises proved correct.

"We've left the drag behind; distanced it clean already,"
said I.

"It's a heavier drag than the regimental one at head-quarters,
sir," said Willie, taking the hint to look back now; but
the sound of hoofs or wheels could no longer be detected in
the still evening air behind.

Full of blood and ill-natured, over-corned, and anxious to
get back to their stables, the speed of the animals increased
to a pace that soon became alarming, and the light vehicle to
which they were harnessed, as I have said, a tandem, swept
along like a toy at their heels, while we flew eastward by
Halhill; and, ere we reached the woods of Balcarris, where the
road turns due north, and round by the base of Dunnikier
Law, it was evident that they were fairly and undoubtedly off!

The leader had got the bit between her teeth, and, when
descending a hill-side, the splinter-bar goaded the wheeler to
madness.  All my strength, together with Pitblado's, failed
to arrest their mad career, and, while imploring Lady Louisa,
who clung to me, "to hold fast, to sit still," and so forth, I
bent all my energies rather to guide them along, and avoid
collisions, than to attempt to stop them; and, to add to our
troubles, the patent drag gave way.

Luckily, the road was smooth, and free from all obstruction.

"To the left, sir—to the left," shouted Pitblado, as we came
to a place where two roads branched off; "that is Drumhead.
Our way lies due west."

Pitblado might as well have shouted to the wind; the
infuriated brutes took their own way, and tore at an awful pace
due north.  Horses pasturing by the wayside trotted to the
rear, and sheep browsing in the fields fled at our approach;
cattle kicked up their heels, and scampered away in herds.
House-dogs barked, terriers yelled, and pursued us
open-mouthed; children, ducks, cocks, and hens fled from the
village gutters; peasants, at their cottage doors, held up their
hands, with shouts of fear, while broad fields and lines of
leafless trees, turf dykes, and hedges, drains, and thatched
dwellings seemed all to fly past with railway speed, or to be
revolving in a circle round us.

A shriek of commiseration burst from my affrighted
companion, when, just as we swept past the base of Drumcarra
Craig, in the cold, bleak, and elevated district of Cameron,
poor Willie Pitblado, who had risen to give me the assistance
of his hands in bearing on the reins, or for the last time to
try and let down the faulty drag, fell out behind, and vanished
in a moment.  And now before us spread Magus Muir, where
the graves of Archbishop Sharpe's murderers lie in a field
that has never been ploughed even unto this day.

Twilight had come on, and a brilliant aurora, forming great
pillars of variegated light, that shot upward and downward
from the horizon to the dome of heaven, filled all the northern
quarter of the sky with singular but many masses of streamers.
Thus, the brilliance of the atmosphere cast forward in strong
and black outline the range of hills that bound the Howe of
Fife, and terminate the valley through which the Ceres flows
to join the Eden; and all this, I think, conduced to add to
the terror of the horses.

Pitblado's fate greatly alarmed and concerned me, for he
was a brave, handsome, and faithful fellow, and an old
acquaintance; but I had another—a nearer, dearer—and more
intense source of anxiety.  If she who sat beside me, clinging
to me, and embracing my left arm with all her energy—she
whom I loved so deeply, and whom I had lured into the
tandem, when she might have been safely in the drag or carriage,
should lose her life that night, of what value would my future
existence be, embittered with such a terrible reflection?

"If a linchpin comes loose, or a trace gives way," thought
I, "all will be over with us both."

"Oh, Mr. Norcliff, Mr. Norcliff!" she exclaimed, while the
tears, which she had no means of wiping away, streamed over
her pale and beautiful face, and while her head half-reclined on
my shoulder.  "Heaven help us, this is terrible—most terrible!
We shall certainly be killed!"

"Then I hope it shall be *together*," I exclaimed.  "Lady
Loftus—dear Lady Loftus—dearest Louisa (here was a jump)
trust to me, and me only! (what stuff men will talk; who else
could she trust to?) and if it is in the power of humanity to
save you, you shall be saved, or I shall die with you.  Louisa,
oh, Louisa, hear me.  I would not—I could not survive you;
but—but sit still, sit close, grasp me and hold on for Heaven's
sake.  (D—n that leader!)  Oh, Louisa, I love you, love you
dearly and devotedly.  You must believe me when I say it at
a time like this; when death, perhaps, is staring us face to face.
Speak to me, dearest!"

I felt that the day, the hour, the moment of destiny had
come; that time of joy or sorrow forever, and casting all upon
it, committing the reins to my right hand, I threw my left arm
round her, and pressing her to my breast, told her again and
again how fondly I loved her, while still our mad steeds tore on.

"I know that you love me, Mr. Norcliff," she said, in a low
and agitated voice, as her constitutional self-possession
returned.  "I have long seen it—felt it."

"My adorable Louisa!"

"And I will not—will not——"

She paused, painfully.

"What?  Oh, speak."

"Deny that I love you in return."

"Heaven bless you, my darling, for saying so; for lifting a
load of anxiety from my heart, and for making me so happy,"
I whispered, making an effectual effort to kiss her forehead.

"But then, Mr. Norcliff——"

"Alas! yes; but what?"

"There is mamma; you know, perhaps, her views concerning
me—ambitious views; but we must take another time, if
Heaven spares, to talk of that matter."

"What time so good as this?" I exclaimed impetuously,
as we tore along, and Magus Muir, the Bishop's Wood, and
Gullane's gravestone were left behind.  "Poor me, a
lieutenant of the lancers; and the earl, your father."

"Oh, dear papa—good, easy man—I don't think he troubles
his head much in the affair; but if mamma knew all this, such
a violation of her standing orders, heaven help us!"

She could almost have laughed but for the peril on which
we were rushing, and a shrill little cry escaped her, as the
leader suddenly quitted the hard highway, and, followed by the
wheeler, passed throughan open field gate, and continued at the
same frightful speed across a large space of pasture land that
sloped steeply down to where my forebodings told me the
Eden lay, and there, sure enough, in less than a minute, we
could see the river rolling among the copsewood, with its
waters swollen by the snows that had recently melted among
the Lomond hills.

Though a placid stream usually, and having a pretty level
course, in that quarter the banks were rugged, and the bed full
of fallen larches and large boulder stones.  If the vehicle
overturned, what might be the fate of her who had just
acknowledged that she loved me?

A prayer—almost a solemn invocation—rose to my lips,
when, with the rapidity of light, the thought occurred to me of
heading the leader towards a little stone bridge that spanned
the stream.  It was a mere narrow footway for shepherds,
sheep, and cattle, and not of sufficient breadth to permit the
passage of a four-wheeled gig; but I knew that if the latter
could be successfully jammed between the walls, the course
of the runaways would be arrested.

There was no alternative between attempting this and risking
death from drowning or mutilation in the rugged bed of
the swollen stream.

Down the steep grassy slope our foam-covered cattle rushed
straight for the narrow bridge; I grasped the rail of the seat
with one hand and arm; the other was round Louisa, lest the
coming shock might throw us off.  In an instant we felt it,
and she clung to me, half-fainting, as there was a terrible
crash, a ripping and splitting sound, as wood was smashed
and harness rent.  Our course was arrested—the wheels and
axle of the fore-carriage wedged between the stone walls of
the narrow bridge, the wheeler kicking furiously at the
splinter-bar and splash-board, and the leader, the blood mare, the
source of all the mischief, hanging over the parapet in the
stream, snorting, half-swimming, and for ought I cared, wholly
hanging.

My first thought was my companion.  We both trembled in
every limb as I lifted her gently to the ground, and placed the
seat-cushions on a stone, where she might sit and compose
herself till I considered what we should do next, and where
we were.

She was greatly agitated, but passively permitted me to
encircle her with my arms, to assure her that she was safe, to
press her hands, and to wipe away her tears caressingly.  I
forgot all about poor Pitblado, "spilt" on the road, all about
my uncle's best blood mare hanging in the traces, and all
about the half-ruined gig.

In short, I felt only the most exquisite joy that I had gained,
as it were, life and Louisa together.  It was that moment of
intense rapture, when, combined with the natural revulsion of
feeling consequent to escape from a deadly peril, I enjoyed
that emotion which a man feels once, and once only, in a
lifetime, when the first woman he loves confesses to a mutual
regard; and, half-kneeling, I stooped over her, kissing her again
and again, assuring her—of I know not what.

From one of her fingers I transferred to mine a ring of small
value—a pearl set in blue enamel, leaving in its place a rose
diamond.  It was a beautiful stone, of the purest water, which
I had found when our troops sacked the great pagoda at
Rangoon, and I had it set at Calcutta by a jeweller, who assured
me that it was worth nine hundred rupees, or ninety pounds,
and I only regretted now that it was not worth ten times as
much, to be truly worthy of the slender finger on which I
placed it.

She regarded me with a loving smile on her pale face, and
in the quiet depths of her soft dark eyes, as she reclined in
my arms.  I gazed on her with emotions of the purest rapture.
She was now humbled, gentle and loving—this brilliant beauty,
this proud earl's daughter—mine, indeed—all that a man could
dream of as perfection in a woman or as a wife; at least, I
thought so then; and I was not a little proud of the idea of
what our mess would say—the colonel, Studhome, Scriven,
Wilford, Berkeley, and the rest—of a marriage that would
certainly be creditable to the regiment, though we had titles
and honourables enough in the lancers; and already, in fancy,
I saw myself "tooling" into Maidstone barrack-square in a
dashing phaeton, with a pair of cream-coloured ponies, with
Norcliff and Loftus quartered on the panels, and silver
harness, and Louisa by my side, in one of the most perfect of
morning toilettes and of marriage bonnets that London
millinery could produce.

Poor devil! with only two hundred per annum besides my
pay, and the war before me, I was thus acquiring castles in
Airshire, and estates in the Isle of Sky.

Oblivious of time, while the woods and hills of Dairsie were
darkening against the sky, while the murmuring Eden flowed
past towards the Tay, and the ever-changing spears and
streamers of the northern aurora were growing brighter and
more bright, I remained by the side of Louisa, wholly
entranced, and only half-conscious that something should be
done to enable us to return home; for night was coming on—the
early night of the last days of January, when the sober sun
must set at half-past four—and I knew not how far we were
from Calderwood Glen.

Suddenly a shout startled us; the hoofs of horses were heard
coming rapidly along the highway, and then three mounted
men wheeled into the field and rode straight towards us.  To
my great satisfaction, one proved to be my faithful fellow,
Willie Pitblado, who, not a wit the worse for his capsize on
the road, had procured horses and assistance at the place
called Drumhead, and tracked us to where we lay, wrecked
by the old bridge of the Eden.

"Poor Willie," said Louisa, "I thought you were killed."

"No, my lady," said he, touching his hat; "it's lang or the
de'il dees by the dykeside."

Of this answer she could make nothing.

The gig was now released and run back, and though
scratched, splintered, and started in many places by the shock
to which it had been subjected, it was still quite serviceable.
The wheeler was traced to it again, the leader, her ardour
completely cooled now, was fished out of the stream, and harnessed
again, and in less than half an hour, so able had been the
assistance rendered us, we were bowling along the highway
towards my uncle's house.

An hour's rapid driving soon brought us in sight of the long
avenue, the lighted windows, and quaint façade of the old
mansion, at the door of which I drew up; and as I threw the whip
and reins to Willie Pitblado, and, fearless now even of Mamma
Chillingham, handed my companion down, tenderly and
caressingly, I found myself an engaged man, and the *fiancé*
of one of the fairest women in Britain—the brilliant Louisa
Loftus!





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   CHAPTER XII.

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   |  It passed—and never marble looked more pale
   |  Than Lucy, while she listened to his tale.
   |  He marked her not; his eye was cold and clear,
   |  Fixed on a bed of withering roses there;
   |  He marked her not, for different thoughts possessed
   |  His anxious mind, and laboured in his breast.
   |                                          ELLIS.

.. vspace:: 2

Notwithstanding all that had passed, and that we had
been carried so far in the wrong direction, we were not long
behind the rest of our party in reaching Calderwood, where
the history of our disaster fully eclipsed for the evening all the
exciting details of the fox-hunters, though many gentlemen in
scarlet, with spattered tops and tights, whom Sir Nigel had
brought, made the drawing-room look unusually gay.

Lady Louisa remained long in her own apartment; the time
seemed an age to me; yet I was happy—supremely happy.
I had a vague idea of the new emotions that served, perhaps,
to detain her there; but an air of cold reserve and unmistakable
displeasure hovered on the forehead of her haughty
mother.

When Louisa joined us, she had perfectly recovered her
usual equanimity and presence of mind—her calm, pale, and
placid aspect.  She was somewhat silent and reserved; this
passed for her natural terror of the late accident, and though
we remained some distance apart, her fine dark eyes sought
mine, ever and anon, and were full of intelligent glances, that
made my heart leap with joy.

Cora, who shrewdly suspected that there had been more in
the affair than what Berkeley called "a doocid spill," regarded
us with interest, and with a tearful earnestness that surprised
us, after our return, and during the explanation which we were
pleased to make.  But whatever tales my face told, Louisa's
was unfathomable, so from its expression suspicious little Cora
could gather nothing; though, had she carried her scrutiny a
little further, she might have detected my famous Rangoon
diamond sparkling on the engaged finger of her friend's left hand.

Cora was on this night, to me, an enigma!

What had gone wrong with her?  When she smiled, it
seemed to several—to me especially—that the kind little heart
from whence these smiles were wrung was sick.  Why was
this, and what or who was the source of her taciturnity and
secret sorrow?—not Berkeley, surely—they had come home in
the drag together—she could never love such an ass as Berkeley;
and if the fellow dared to trifle with her—but I thrust
the thought aside, and resolved to trust the affair to her friend
and gossip, the Lady Loftus.

A few more days glided swiftly and joyously past at Calderwood
Glen; we had no more riding and driving; but, as the
weather was singularly open and balmy for the season, we
actually had more than one picnic in the leafless woods, and I
betook me to the study of botany and arboriculture with the ladies.

I enjoyed all the delicious charm of a successful first love!
The last thought on going to repose; the first on waking in
the morning; and the source of many a soft and happy dream
between.

The peculiarity, or partial disparity, of our positions in life
caused secrecy.  Denied, by the presence of others, the pleasure
of openly conversing of our love, at times we had recourse
to furtive glances, or a secret and thrilling pressure of
the hand or arm was all we could achieve.

   |  Then there were sighs the deeper for suppression,
   |    And stolen glances sweeter for the theft;
   |  And burning blushes, though for no transgression,
   |    Tremblings when met, and restlessness when left.

Small and trivial though these may seem, they proved the sum
of our existence, and even of mighty interest, lighting up the
eye and causing the pulses of the heart to quicken.

We became full of petty and lover-like stratagems, and
of enigmatical phrases, all the result of the difficulties that
surrounded our intercourse when others were present—especially
Lady Chillingham, who was by nature cold, haughty,
and suspicious, with, I think, a natural born antipathy to
subalterns of cavalry in particular.  Cora saw through our little
artifices, and Berkeley, that Anglo-Scotch snob of the
nineteenth century, had ever his eyes remarkably wide open to all
that was going on around him, and thus the perils of discovery
and instant separation were great, while our happy love was
in the flush.

This danger gave us a common sympathy, a united object,
a delicious union of thought and impulse.  Nor was romance
wanting to add zest to the secrecy of our passion.  Ah, were
I to live a thousand years, never should I forget the days of
happiness I spent in Calderwood Glen with Louisa Loftus.

Our interviews had all the mystery of a conspiracy, though,
save Cora, none as yet suspected our love; and there was a
part of the garden, between two old yew hedges—so old that
they had seen the Calderwoods of past ages cooing and billing,
in powdered wigs and coats of mail, with dames in Scottish
farthingales and red-heeled shoes—where, at certain hours, by
a tacit understanding, we were sure of meeting; but with all
the appearance of chance, though occasionally for a time so
brief, that we could but exchange a pressure of the hand, or
snatch a caress, perhaps a kiss, and then separate in opposite
directions.

Those were blessed and joyous interviews; memories to
treasure and brood over with delight when alone.  In the
society of our friends, my heart throbbed wildly, when by a
glance, a smile, a stolen touch of the hand, Louisa reminded
me of what none else could perceive, the secret understanding
that existed between us.

And yet all this happiness was clouded by a sense of its
brevity, and by our fears for the future; the obstacles that
rank and great fortune on her side, the lack of both on mine,
raised between us; and then there was the certain prospect of a
long and dangerous—alas! it might prove, a final separation.

"They who love," writes an anonymous author, "must ever
drink deeply of the cup of trembling; but, at times, there will
arise in their hearts a nameless terror, a sickening anxiety for
the future, whose brightness all depends upon this one
cherished treasure, which often proves a foreboding of some
real anguish looming in the distant hours."

"Where is all this to end?" I asked of myself, as the
conviction that something must be done forced itself upon me,
for the happy days were passing, and my short leave of
absence was drawing to a close.

One day, by the absence of some of our friends, and by the
occupation of others, we found ourselves alone, and permitted
to have a longer interview than usual, in our yew-hedge walk,
and we were conversing of the future.

"I have two hundred a year besides my pay, Louisa."  (She
smiled sadly at this, and the smile went doubly to my
heart.)  "The money has been lodged for my troop with Cox
and Co., and my good uncle means well concerning me; yet,
I feel all these as being so small, that were I to address the
Earl of Chillingham on the subject of our engagement, it
would seem that I had little to offer, and little to urge, save
that which is, perhaps, valueless in his aristocratic eyes——"

"And that is?"

"My love for you."

"Don't think of addressing him," said she, weeping on my
shoulder; "he has already views for me in another quarter."

"Views, Louisa!"

"Yes; pardon me for paining you, dearest, by saying so;
but it is nevertheless true."

"And these views?" I asked, impetuously.

"Are an offer made for my hand by Lord Slubber de Gullion."

My heart died within me on hearing this name, which, as I
once before stated, comes as near the original as possible.

"Hence you see, dearest Newton," she resumed, in a
mournful and sweetly-modulated voice, "were you to address
my father, it would only rouse mamma, and have the effect of
interrupting our correspondence for ever."

"Good heavens! what then are we to do?'

"Wait in hope."

"How long?"

"Alas!  I know not; but for the present at least our
engagement, like our meetings and our letters, if we can
correspond, must be secret—secret all.  Were the earl, my father,
to know that I loved you, Newton (how sweetly those words
sounded), he and mamma would urge on Lord Slubber's suit,
and, on finding that I refused, there would be no bounds to
mamma's wrath.  You remember Cora's story of the 'Clenched
Hand;' you remember the 'Bride of Lammermoor,' and must
see what a determined mother and long domestic tyranny
may do."

I clasped my hands, for my heart was wrung; but she
regarded me kindly and lovingly.

"On your return home, as colonel of your regiment, perhaps,
we shall then, at all hazards, bring the matter before
him, and treat Slubber's offer with contempt, as the senile
folly of an old man in his dotage.  You, at least, shall
propose for me in form——"

"And if Lord Chillingham refuse?"

"Though we English people can't make Scotch marriages
now, I shall be yours, dearest Newton, as I am now, only
that it shall be irrevocably and for ever."

A close and mute embrace followed, and then I left her in
a paroxysm of grief, while my head whirled with the
combined effects of love and joy, and of sorrow, not unmixed
with anger.

"I wonder what the subjects are that lovers talk of in their
tête-à-têtes," says my brother of the pen and sword, W. H. Maxwell,
and the same surmise frequently occurred to myself,
before I met or knew Louisa Loftus.

We never lacked a subject now.  The peculiarities of our
relative positions, our caution for the present, and our natural
anxieties for the future, afforded us full topics for
conversation or surmise; but the few remaining days of my leave
"between returns" glided away at Calderwood Glen; the
time for my departure drew nigh; already had Pitblado
divided a sixpence with my lady's soubrette, and packed up
all my superfluous traps, and within six and thirty hours
Berkeley and I would have to report ourselves in uniform at
head-quarters, or be returned absent without leave.

It was in the evening, when I had gone as usual to meet
Louisa at the seat where the close-clipped yew hedges formed
a pleasant screen, that, to my surprise, and by the merest
chance, I found it occupied by my cousin Cora.

The January sunset was beautiful; the purple flush of evening
covered all the western sky, and bathed in warm tints the
slopes of the Lomond hills.  The air was still, and we heard
only the cawing of the venerable rooks that perched among
the woods of the old manor, or swung to and fro on its many
gilt vanes.

Cora was somewhat silent, and I, being thoroughly disappointed
by finding her there in lieu of Louisa Loftus, was
somewhat taciturn, if not almost sulky.

Somehow—but how, I know not—Cora led me to talk insensibly
of our early days, and as we did so, I could perceive
that she regarded me earnestly from time to time, after I
simply remarked that ere long I should be far, far away from
her, and among other scenes.  Her dovelike, dark eye
became suffused, and the tinge on her rounded cheek died
away when I laughingly referred to the days when we had
been little lovers, and when Fred Wilford and I—he was now
a captain of ours—used to punch each other's heads in pure
spite and jealousy about her; but this youthful jealousy once
took a more dangerous turn.

Among the rocks in the glen an adder of vast size took up
its residence, and had bitten several persons.  It had been
seen by some to leap more than seven yards high, and was a
source of such terror to the whole parish, that my uncle, and
even the provost of Dunfermline, had offered rewards for its
destruction.

On this I boldly dared my boy-rival to face it; but Fred
Wilford, who was on a visit to us from Rugby, had more prudence,
or less love for little Cora, and so declined the attempt.

Flushed with boyish pride and recklessness, I climbed the
steep face of the rock, stirred up the adder with a long stick,
flung it to the ground, and killed it by repeated blows of an
axe, a feat of which my uncle never grew tired of telling,
and the reptile was now in the library, sealed up in a glass
case, being deemed a family trophy, and, as Binns said,
always kept in the best of spirits.

I sat with Cora's white and slender hand in mine, gazing
at her soft and piquant features, her pouting lips and dimpled
chin, and the dark hair so smoothly braided under her little
hat, and over each pretty and delicate ear.  Cora was very
gentle and very charming; she had ever been to me a kind
little playmate, a loving sister, and she sighed deeply when I
spoke of my approaching departure.

"You go by sea?" she asked.

"If we go to Turkey—of course."

"Embarking at Southampton?"

"Embarking at Southampton—exactly, and sailing directly
for the East, I suppose," said I, while leisurely lighting a
cigar; "I shall soon learn all the details and probabilities at
head-quarters; but the route may not come for two months
yet, as red-tape goes."

"You will think of us sometimes, Newton, in those strange
and dangerous lands?  Of your poor uncle, who loves you so
well, and—and of me?"

"Of course, and of Louisa Loftus.  Don't you think her
very handsome?"

"I think her lovely."

"My cigar annoys you?"

"Not at all, Newton."

"But it makes you turn your face away."

"You met often, I believe, before you came here?"

"Oh, very often.  I used to see her at the cathedral every
Sunday in Canterbury; at the balls at Rochester and
Maidstone——"

"And in London?"

"Repeatedly!  I saw her at her first presentation at Court,
when the colonel presented me, on obtaining my lieutenancy,
and returning from foreign service.  She created quite a
sensation!"

I spoke in such glowing terms of my admiration for Louisa
Loftus, that some time elapsed before I detected the extreme
pallor of Cora's cheek, and a peculiar quivering of her under lip.

"Good heavens, my dear girl, you are ill!  It is this
confounded cigar—one of a box that Willie got me in Dunfermline,"
I exclaimed, throwing it away.  "Your hand is trembling, too."

"Is it?  Oh, no!  Stay!  I am only a little faint," she murmured.

"Faint!  Why the deuce should you be faint, Cora?"

"This bower of yew hedges is close; the atmosphere is
still, or chill, or something," she said, in a low voice, while
pressing a lovely little hand on her bosom; "and it seems to
me that I felt a pang here."

"A pang, Cora?"

"Yes, I feel it sometimes."

"You, one of the best waltzers in the county!  You have
no affection of the heart, or any of that sort of thing?"

She smiled sadly, even bitterly, and rose, saying—

"Here comes Lady Louisa.  Say nothing of this."

Her dark eyes were swimming; but not a tear fell from their
long, black, silky lashes, that lent such softness to her sweet
and feminine face.  She abruptly withdrew her tremulous hands
from mine, and just as Louisa approached, hurriedly left me.

What did all this emotion mean?  What did it display or
conceal?  I was thoroughly bewildered.

A sudden light began to break upon me.

"What is this?" thought I.  "Can Cora be in love with me
herself?  Oh, nonsense! she has known me from boyhood.
The idea is absurd!  Yet her manner——.  This will never
do.  I must avoid her, and to-morrow I leave for England!"

Louisa sat beside me, and, save her, Cora and all the world
were alike forgotten.





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   CHAPTER XIII.

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   |  Forget thee?  If to dream by night, and muse on thee by day;
   |  If all the worship, deep and wild, a poet's heart can pay;
   |  If prayers in absence, breathed for thee to Heaven's protecting power;
   |  If winged thoughts that flit to thee, a thousand in an hour;
   |  If busy Fancy, blending thee with all my future lot;
   |  If this thou call'st forgetting, thou, indeed, shall be forgot.
   |                                                        MOULTRIE.

.. vspace:: 2

I had but one, only one, meeting more with Lady Louisa,
and it was, indeed, a sad one.  We could but hope to meet
again—near Canterbury, perhaps—at some vague period
before my regiment marched; and prior to that I was to write
to her, on some polite pretence, under cover to Cora.

This was certainly somewhat undefined and unsatisfactory
for two engaged lovers, especially for two so ardent as we
were, and in the first flush of a grand passion; but we had
no other arrangement to make; and never shall I forget our
last, long, mute embrace on the last evening, when, scared by
footsteps on the garden walk, we literally tore ourselves away,
and separated to meet at the dinner-table, and act as those
who were almost strangers to each other, and to perform the
mere formalities, the politenesses, and cold ceremonies of
well-bred life.

I could not help telling my good uncle of my success; but
under a solemn promise of secrecy, for a time at least.

"All right, boy," said he, clapping me on the shoulder.
"Keep her well in hand, and I'll back you against the field
to any amount that is possible; but that gouty old peer, my
Lord Slubber, is richer than I am; and then Lady Chillingham
has the pride of Lucifer.  Draw on me whenever you
want money, Newton.  Since Archie died at college, and
poor Nigel at the battle of Goojerat, I have no boy to look
after but you."

The last hour came inexorably.  We shook hands with all.
When that solemn snob, my brother officer, Mr. de Warr
Berkeley, and I entered the carriage which was to take us to
the nearest railway station, there were symptoms of considerable
emotion in the faces of the kind circle we were leaving,
for the clouds of war had darkened fast in the East during
the month we had spent so pleasantly; and the ladies—the
poor girls especially—half viewed us as foredoomed men.

Louisa was as pale as death; she trembled with suppressed
emotion, and her eyes were full of tears.  Even
her cold and stately mother kissed me lightly on the cheek;
and at that moment, for Louisa's sake, I felt my heart swell
with sudden emotion of regard for her.

My uncle's hard but manly, hand gave mine a hearty pressure,
and he kindly shook the hand of Willie Pitblado, who
was bidding adieu to his father, the old keeper, and slipped a
couple of sovereigns into it.

Sir Nigel's voice was quite broken; but there was no tear
in the hot, dry eyes of poor Cora.  Her charming face was
very pale, and she bit her pouting nether lip, to conceal, or
to prevent, its nervous quivering.

"An odd girl," thought I, as I kissed her twice, whispering,
"Give the last one to Louisa."

But, ah! how little could I read the secret of the dear
little heart of Cora, which was beating wildly and convulsively
beneath that apparently calm and unmoved exterior!
But a time came when I was to learn it all.

"Good-bye to Calderwood Glen," cried I, leaping into the
carriage.  "A good-bye to all, and hey for pipeclay again!"

"Pipeclay and gunpowder too, lad," said my uncle.  "Every
ten years or so the atmosphere of Europe requires to be
fumigated with it somewhere.  Adieu, Mr. Berkeley.  God bless
you, Newton!"

"Crack went the whip, round went the wheels;" the group
of pale and tearful faces, the ivy-clad porch, and the turreted
façade of the old house vanished, and then the trees of the
avenue appeared to be careering past the carriage windows
in the twilight, as we sped along at a rapid trot.

For mental worry or depression there is no more certain
and rapid cure than quick travelling and transition from place
to place; and assuredly that luxury is fully afforded by the
locomotive appliances of the present age.

Within an hour after leaving Calderwood, we occupied a
first-class carriage, and were flying by the night express, *en
route* for London, muffled to the eyes in warm railway-rugs
and border plaids, and each puffing a cigar in silence, gazing
listlessly out of the windows, or doing his best to court sleep,
to wile the dreary hours away.

Pitblado was fraternising with the guard in the luggage-van,
doubtless enjoying a quiet "weed" the while.

Berkeley soon slept; but I prayed for the celebrated "forty
winks" in vain; and thus, wakeful and full of exciting
thoughts, I pictured in reverie all that had occurred during
the past month.

Gradually the unwilling, but startling, conviction forced
itself upon my mind that my cousin.  Cora loved me!  This
dear and affectionate girl, from whom I had parted with such
a frigid salute as that which Sir Charles Grandison gave Miss
Byron at the end of their dreary seven years' courtship, loved
me; and yet, blinded by my absorbing passion for the brilliant
Louisa Loftus, I had neither known, seen, or felt it.

Her frequent coldnesses to me, and her ill-concealed irritation
at the cool insolence of Berkeley's languid bearing, on
more than one occasion, were all explained to me now.

Dear, affectionate, and single-hearted Cora!  A hundred
instances of her self-denial now crowded on my memory.  I
remembered now, at the meet of the Fifeshire fox-hounds at
Largo, that it was she who, by a little delicate tact and
foresight, contrived to give me that which she knew I so greatly
coveted—the drive home in the tandem with Lady Louisa.

What must that act of self-sacrifice have cost her heart, if
indeed she loved me?  I could not write to her on such a
subject, or even approach an idea that might, after all, be
based on supposition, if not on vanity.  More than this—I
felt that the suspicion of having excited this secret passion
must preclude my writing to Louisa under cover to Cora.
Common delicacy and kindness suggested that I should not, by
doing so, further lacerate a good little heart that loved me well.

But the next thought was how to communicate with Louisa,
Cora being our only medium.  Nor could I forget that when
I was up the Rangoon river, and when my dear mother died
at Calderwood, that it was Cora's kiss that was last upon her
cold forehead, and Cora's little hand that closed her eyes for
me.

Swiftly sped the express train while these thoughts passed
through my mind, and agitated me greatly.  To sleep was
impossible, and ere midnight I heard the bells of
Berwick-upon-Tweed announce that we had left the stout old kingdom
of Scotland far behind us, and were flying at the rate of fifty
miles an hour by Bedford, Alnwick, and Morpeth, towards
the Tyne, and the land of coal and fire.

Every instant bore me farther from Louisa; and I had but
one comfort, that ere long she would be pursuing the same
route—perhaps seated in the same carriage—as she sped to
her home in the south of England.

I dearly loved this proud and beautiful girl; and if human
language has a meaning, and if the human eye has an expression,
she loved me truly in return; but though the conviction
of this made my heart brim with happiness, it was a happiness
not untinged with fears—fears that her love was, perhaps,
the fancy of the hour, developed by propinquity and the
social circle of a quiet country house; fears that my joy and
success were too bright to last; and that, after a time, she
might see her engagement with a nameless subaltern of
cavalry in the light of a mésalliance, and be dazzled by some
more brilliant offer, for the heiress and only child of the Earl
of Chillingham could command many.

War and separation were before us; and if I survived to
return, would she love me still, and still indeed be mine?

Her father's consent was yet to be obtained.  In my
impatience to know the best or the worst, I frequently resolved
to break the matter by letter to his lordship; but, remembering
the tears and entreaties of Louisa, I shrank from the
grave responsibility of tampering with our mutual happiness.

At other times I thought of confiding the management of
the affair entirely to my uncle; but abandoned the idea
almost as soon as I conceived it: knowing that the fox-hunting
old baronet was more hot-headed, proud, and abrupt than
politic.  In conclusion, I thought it might be better done by
a letter from the East, when the earl might politely half
entertain an engagement which a bullet might dissolve; or,
should I leave the affair over till I returned?

Oh! might I ever return—and if so, how mutilated?  And
if I died before the enemy, in imagination I saw, in the long,
long years that were to follow, myself perhaps forgotten, and
Louisa, my affianced bride, the wife of—*another*.





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   CHAPTER XIV.

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   |  And why not death, rather than live in torment?
   |  To die is to be banished from myself;
   |  And Sylvia is myself: banished from her
   |  Is self from self; a deadly banishment!
   |  What light is light, if Sylvia be not seen?
   |  What joy is joy, if Sylvia be not by?
   |  Unless it be to think that she is by,
   |  And feed upon the shadow of perfection.
   |                                    SHAKSPEARE.

.. vspace:: 2

While yet half-slept, and wholly unrefreshed, after our long
and rapid journey by train, we donned our uniforms, with
sword-belt and sabretashe, duly reported ourselves to the
colonel, who welcomed us back, and within an hour I found
myself established in my old quarters, and once more falling
into the every-day routine of barrack-life, just as if I had
never left Maidstone, and as if my visit to Calderwood and
my engagement with Louisa were all a dream.  But I had her
pearl ring, and the lock of jetty hair, which I had cut from
her beautiful head in jest—a gift in solemn earnest now—and
I lost no time in procuring a locket suitable for it, and which
I might wear at my neck.

Again I had parades to attend, troop, guard, and stable
duties to perform; but amid these, and all the bustle of
Maidstone, the most tiresome and bustling cavalry barrack in the
British empire, my heart and thoughts were ever with Louisa
Loftus, amid the old woods of Calderwood Glen.

"War is not yet declared against Russia," said the colonel,
the first evening parade after we joined; "but I have it in
confidence from head-quarters that it will be ere long, and
that we shall form part of the army of the East."

"Ah, and are there—haw—any infantry to accompany us?"
asked Berkeley.

"I should think so," replied the colonel, laughing at so odd
a question, which, as Berkeley asked it elsewhere, caused
some amusement at Maidstone, as showing either his ideas of
war, or of the strange individualism of the two branches of
the service.

"The guards are already under orders, and embark at
Southampton in a few weeks," resumed the colonel; "and we
shall have tough work in getting ready for departure by the
time our turn comes—though I am glad to say the lancers are
in high order and discipline, and fit for anything."

Our colonel spoke with pride and confidence; and under
his orders, I felt that, with equal confidence, I could really go
anywhere or face anything.  I had served under him in India,
and he had ever been in my eyes the model of a British
cavalry officer, and of an English gentleman.

"There is no example of human beauty more perfectly
picturesque than a very handsome man of middle age; not even
the same man in his youth," writes one of the most graceful
female pens of the present day.  Most soothing this to all
good-looking fellows, who approach that grand climacteric;
and the idea that she is correct always occurred to me
when I saw Colonel Beverley, for a handsomer man, though
his moustache was becomingly grizzled, never drew a sword,
and all the regiment admired and esteemed him.

In addition to sword and pistols, our corps was armed with
the lance, which the famous Count de Montecuculi of old
declared to be "la Reine des armes pour la cavalerie," and the
adoption of which was vainly urged by the great Marechal
Saxe in his "Reveries;" but it was introduced into the British
army after the peace of 1815.  The only regiment armed in
this fashion which previously existed in our service was the
British Uhlans, composed of French emigrants, formed out
of the remains of the lancers of the French Royalist army.
They were all destroyed in the ill-fated expedition to Quiberon,
in 1796.

When charging cavalry the bannerofes attached to our
lances are extremely useful in scaring the horses—after which
the rider becomes an easy prey; and the extreme length of
the weapon renders it more effective than the sword when
charging a square of infantry; while, in addition to this, it is
a weapon of great show, as all must admit who have seen a
lancer corps, some six hundred strong, riding with all their
red and white swallow-tailed banneroles fluttering in the wind.

We had in our ranks more G. C.[\*] men, perhaps, than any
other corps in the service; and, with the exception of one
or two of those wealthy parvenus, like Berkeley, who are to
be found in many regiments, but more especially in the
cavalry, and whom I shall simply describe as yaw-yawing,
cold, but fashionable, solemn and unimpressionable military
snobs, the officers of the lancers were unquestionably gentlemen
by birth, breeding, and education, and formed altogether,
at mess, on parade, in the ball-room, or on duty, a class of
society far superior in tone and bearing to any I have ever
had the fortune to be among; and unless it be those of
whom I have hinted, every face and name come pleasantly
back to memory now, when I think of my fine regiment as it
prepared for the army of the East.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*]Good Conduct Ring.  We have four regiments of lancers—the 9th,
12th, 16th, and 17th.

.. vspace:: 2

We practised daily with our pistols and six-barrelled
revolvers; the sword-blades and lance-heads were pointed and
edged anew.  Some of our mess actually tried bivouacking
in the fields at night, to test their hardihood; but, as they
were invariably taken for gipsies or housebreakers by the
rural police, laughter on the one hand, and useless discomfort
on the other, cured them of these pranks.

To be ready for anything and everything, and to make his
lancers more active horsemen, Colonel Beverley had us all
drilled to dismounting on the off-side, a practice which
increases the skill of the men, and the steadiness of the horses,
and which is simply done by reversing all the motions of
dismounting, after the rider has well secured the lance, the reins,
and mane in the right hand, while the left grasps the sword,
and lays it across the front of the saddle, with the point to
the right.  He then dismounts on the off-side, with his lance
at the carry in the right hand.

I remember, too, that he was careful in having the men
cautioned against giving way to the weight of the lance when
mounted, as this occasions bad consequences on long marches;
hence it is very requisite to measure the stirrup leathers
frequently, and let the men ride with the lance slung on the left
arm.  These items may seem trivial; but a day came when
his instructions and precautions proved of inestimable value,
and that was when we—*the Six Hundred*—made our
ever-memorable charge into the Valley of Death!

A cheque for a handsome sum came from my good old
uncle, Sir Nigel, and it proved most seasonable, as we were
beset by London Jews and army contractors, and I had, as
the phrase goes, "no end" of unexpected things to
provide—a few to wit:—

A brace of revolving six-chambered pistols, with spring
ramrods, as the papers said, "the most complete and effective
ever offered to the British public."  A full Crimean
outfit, comprising a waterproof cape and hood, camp-boots,
ground-sheet, folding bedstead, mattress, and pair of blankets,
a canteen for self and a friend, sponging-bath, bucket, and
basin, brush-case, lantern, and havresack, all dog-cheap at
thirty guineas, with a pair of bullock-trunks and slings at
eight guineas more.  Then there was a portable patent tent,
weighing only ten pounds; an india-rubber boat, and heaven
only knows how much more rubbish, all of which made a
terrible hole in my cheque, and all of which were left behind
at Varna, where, doubtless, some enterprising follower of the
Prophet would make them his lawful spoil.

Amid those prosy preparations the month of February
slipped away, and the twenty-eight days of that month seemed
like so many years to me, as I never heard of Louisa Loftus;
but, on the first of March, Pitblado handed me a little packet
which had come by the mail from London.

It contained a morocco case with a coloured photograph—a
photograph of Louisa!

It was done in the best style of a good London artist, and
my heart bounded with joy as I gazed on it, studying every
feature.  The reader would deem me mad, perhaps, maudlin
certainly, if I related all the extravagances of which I was
guilty on receipt of this souvenir, this minor work of art,
with which I was forced to content me, until a miniature—one
of Thorburn's best—which I was resolved to procure,
should follow.

Was she in London, or had she merely written to the artist
(whose name was on the case) to send me a copy of her
miniature, which she knew well I would prize, even as I
prized life or health?

On the same day that this dear memorial came I was
gazetted to my troop in the regiment, by purchase, Captain
B——, whose ill health rendered him totally unfit for foreign
service, retiring by the sale of his commission; and though
my heart was full of gratitude to my uncle, I verily believe that
I thought more of Louisa's miniature than of my promotion.
Both, however, seemed ominous of a happy future.  They
made a fortunate coincidence.  The same mail had brought
them from London, and I seemed to tread on air, and
committed so many extravagances, and played so many pranks
that night at mess, that my old friends, Jack Studhome and
Fred Wilford, had to take what they termed "the strong
hand" with me, and march me off to my quarters.

In answer to my letter of thanks, I received a long and
rambling one from Sir Nigel, whose literary efforts were
frequently a curious medley.

The hunt, the county pack, the next meets were, of course,
referred to first, and then came his private troubles.  The
black-faced sheep had been leaping the fences and eating in
the stackyard of the home-farm; the Highland goats had
been eating the yews in the avenue, and poisoning themselves;
the deer had been overthrowing the beescaps on the
lawn, and the patent powder to fatten the pheasants had
been mislaid by old Pitblado, and was eaten by the rooks
instead.  Lieutenant James's famous horse-blister had been
applied without effect to his favourite hunter, Dunearn, and
my old friend Splinterbar had gone dead lame—£300 gone
to the dogs!

He had just had a notice of "augmentation, modification,
and locality of stipend (whatever the deuce it might all mean)
before the Tiend Court," served on him by a —— Edinburgh
writer to the signet, at the instance of the parish minister,
whom he disliked as a sour Sabbatarian, and whom he had
advised in his next sermon to expound and explain how
"Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked."

Not a word about Louisa!  I read on with growing impatience:—

"I have just procured a lot of that stuff the English call
mangel-wurzel, consisting of white globes and long yellows, to
plant in belts about the thickets where the deer are; they are
better for feeding at this time than the best of Swedish turnips,
and for drawing the deer from the cover, for a quiet shot.

"Cora is working all kinds of comforters, cuffs, and muffetees
for you to wear in the Crimea.  I asked her to write for
me; but she excused herself, so I have to act as my own
secretary.  I don't know what has come over the girl of late.

"General Rammerscales, the gouty old tiger-hunter, has
gone to his place at the Bridge-of-Allan; and our friend the
M.P., like a true Scottish one, is shieing at his Parliamentary
duties, when he can't get upon a committee that pays, and
takes especial good care never to be in the House when
Scottish interests are on the tapis, unless whipped in when the
Lord Advocate has some party or private end in view.

"Old Binns and Pitblado send you their remembrance.
Why did your man Willie give the two sovereigns I gave him
to his father?  The old fellow is well enough off in his cottage,
and lives like the son of an Irish king.  He shot a magnificent
silver pheasant before the Chillingham party left (they are gone
then!) and Lady Louisa got the wings for her pork-pie hat.

"Cora seems pining to join the Chillinghams, who, as you,
of course, know, have been for a month past at their place
near Canterbury.  She is in low spirits, poor girl, and goes
south in a week, when I shall, perhaps, accompany her.  Lady
Louisa has written to her thrice since they left.  She says
that Mr. Berkeley has been frequently visiting them; but
never mentions you.  What is the meaning of that?"

I paused on reading this, for it embodied a vast deal for
reflection!  That the Loftuses should be at Chillingham Park
unknown to me was not strange; neither was it strange that,
situated as we were, poor Louisa should not mention me in her
letters to Cora; but that Berkeley should be their frequent visitor,
and omit to mention, or conceal that circumstance from me,
was certainly startling!

Berkeley!  So this accounted for what the mess had
remarked—his frequent absences from that agreeable board,
from parades, and the used-up condition of his private horses.
Was there any sly game afoot?  So far as he was concerned,
could I doubt it?  His reserve to me declared that there was;
and this game had been played for a month, with or without
success, how was I to learn?  Ha! thought I, if they knew
about Miss Auriol, his unfortunate mistress!  But noble
morality is frequently very opaque—and my pay and expectations
were but moonshine, when opposed to his solid thousands
per annum.

I was sorry to hear that Cora was coming so far south as
Canterbury; for much as I loved and esteemed my cousin, I
felt that I should rather avoid her now.  I resume the letter.

"How does your affair with la belle Louisa progress—eh?
Well, I hope; though I think, with Thackeray, that 'every
man ought to be in love a few times in his life, and have a
smart attack of the fever.  You are the better after it is over.'

"So we are to have hostilities at last!  I was in Edinburgh
yesterday, anent the programme of the spring meeting at
Musselburgh, and heard war declared by Britain against Russia.
It was proclaimed at the market cross by the Rothesay,
Albany, and Islay heralds, attended by the Kintyre, Unicorn,
and Ormond pursuivants, all in their tabards, and a strong
guard of Highlanders, with bayonets fixed, and colours flying.
It was a quaint and picturesque sight, that did your old uncle's
heart good, and set him thinking; for the same trumpets had
many a time in the same place proclaimed war against England
in the days of old."

So ended my uncle's rambling letter, which certainly had the
effect of setting me to think too, and with a heart full of
sudden trouble, anxiety, and irritation.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XV.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XV.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  In aught that tries the heart, how few withstand the proof.
   |   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*
   |  What is the worst of woes that wait on age?
   |    What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow?
   |  To view each loved one blotted from life's page,
   |    And be alone on earth as I am now?
   |                                        BYRON.

.. vspace:: 2

If Lady Louisa had not mentioned me in her letter to Cora,
there was doubtless a secret and very good reason for the
omission; but I thought it cold, and certainly uncourteous,
that the countess, fresh from a long visit at Calderwood, should
omit to invite me to her house; and that the earl should not
have left his card for me at the barracks.

So Cora was going to Chillingham Park!  Well, at all
events, I would visit my cousin Cora, were it but to evince my
regard for Sir Nigel.  But to know that Louisa was now, and
had been for a month past, within a few miles of me, and that
I had neither seen nor heard from her, while Berkeley was a
frequent visitor at her father's house, filled me with such
mortification that I could barely control my emotion when in his
presence.  His silence on the subject, too, added to my
suspicions, and inflamed my smothered wrath; yet it was a
matter on which I had no right to question him.

Wounded vanity and self-esteem also sealed my tongue;
and I actually despised myself when discovering that I could
not help remarking his absence or his presence in quarters,
and his going from the barracks to and fro.

In the old duelling days—ay, had we been so circumstanced
only some ten years before, and ere so decided a change
came over public opinion—I should have made short work of
it with my esteemed brother officer, and unmasked his
duplicity.  He might be a suitor to whose suit no response was
made, even though Lady Chillingham seconded his intentions;
but then she had, I knew, views regarding Lord Slubber.
Louisa, however, could not have changed; or, if so, why send
me the pretty miniature?

Vainly I strove to busy myself with the interior economy of
my troop, its management and discipline.  Vainly I sought to
kill time by attending closely to the men's messes and
equipment, their pay-books, accoutrements, and horses, counting
the days as they passed; but no letters came.  I frequently
absented myself from the barracks between the parades, with
that strange superstition and hope which many persons have,
that if they go away for a little time they will find the
longed-for answer when they return.  But save tradesmen's
bills—missives which became more urgent as the rumoured day of
departure drew nearer—no enclosures ever came to me.

At last, finding suspense intolerable, one evening—I
remember that it was the last of March—Beverley gave me
leave from parades for two days.  I mounted, and took the
way by Sittingbourne—a quaint old Kentish town, which
consists of one wide street bordering the highway, and by the
village of Ospringe, to Canterbury, where I put up at the Royal
Hotel; and, after having my horse corned, trotted him along
the Margate Road, till I came to the well-known gate of
Chillingham Park.

The lodge—a mimic castle in the Tudor style—was pretty,
and already covered with green climbers; through the bars
of the iron gate, which was surmounted by a gilded earl's
coronet, I could see the carefully-gravelled avenue winding
away with great sweeps between the stately old trees, and
bordered by the smooth, velvet-like lawn of emerald green,
towards the house, a small glimpse of the Grecian peristyle
and the white walls of which were just visible.  There she
dwelt; and I gazed wistfully at the white patch that shone in
the sunshine between the gnarled stems of her old ancestral
trees.  On hearing a horse reined up without, the lodge-keeper
came forth, key in hand, and politely touched his hat, as if
waiting my pleasure; but I waved my hand, and with a flushing
cheek and an anxious heart, let the reins of my nag drop
on his neck, and rode slowly and heedlessly on.

Unvisited and uninvited, I felt that to have left a card at
Chillingham Park would have been an intrusion unwarranted
by the rules of good society—rules which I warmly bequeathed
to the infernal gods.  I had come to Canterbury; but
to what end?—unless I met Louisa on the road, or in the city,
and such wished-for chances seldom fall to the lot of lovers.

There was the cathedral, where, doubtless, she and her
family would be on a Sunday, in their luxuriously-cushioned
pew, attended by a tall "Jeames" in plush, carrying a great
Bible, a nosegay, and gold-headed cane; but to thrust myself
upon her there was too humble a proceeding for my then
mood of mind.

I longed with all my soul to see her, were it but for a
moment; and yet I also longed for the route to the East, as a
relief from my present torture; and come it soon would now.
There was some consolation in that conviction.

War had already been declared against Russia by the
Western Powers of Europe.  On the 23rd of the last month
the brigade of guards had departed from London, after taking
farewell of the Queen at Buckingham Palace; the Baltic fleet
had sailed from Spithead; many of our troops were already
embarked; and the French fleet for the North Sea had sailed
from Brest.  All betokened earnest and rapid preparations
for a protracted contest; so I felt assured that our days in
Maidstone were numbered now.

How long, or how far I wandered on that evening, full of
vague and most dispiriting thoughts, I know not—near to
Margate certainly; and the sun was setting as I returned,
keeping near the sea-shore, and in sight of the countless white
sails and smoky funnels of the craft that were standing
outward or inward about the mouths of the Thames and Medway.

The sun sunk beyond the horizon; but the twilight was
strong and clear.  The place was lonely and still; and, save
the chafing of the sea on the rocks at the Reculvers, not a
sound came on the calm atmosphere of the soft spring
evening.  I was there alone, with my own thoughts for company,
and found it difficult to realise the idea that the roar of
London, with all its mingled myriads of the human race, was but
sixty miles distant from where my horse nibbled the grass
that grew by the sequestered wayside.

The whole scenery was intensely English.  Against the
rosy flush of the sunset sky, that old landmark for mariners,
the Sisters, as the two spires of the ancient church are named,
stood up sharply and darkly defined about a mile distant;
near me spread an English park, studded with fine old timber,
a model of beauty and fertility, the sward of the most brilliant
green, and closely mown, as if shaved with a huge razor.  The
smoke of the quaint old Saxon village curled upwards far into
the still air, and all seemed peaceful and quiet as the shades
of evening deepened—quiet as the dead of ages in the graves
that lie about the basement of the old church that marks the
spot where St. Augustine—sent by Pope Gregory on the
errand of conversion—first put his foot upon the Saxon shore;
and as if further to remind me that I was in England, and not
in my native country, the curfew bell now rang out upon the
stilly air, tolling "the knell of parting day," for, as the Norman
power stopped on the banks of the Tweed, the curfew is, of
course, unknown in Scotland.

I had been lost in reverie for some time—how long I know
not, while my horse shook his bridle and ears ever and anon
at the evening flies, and cropped the herbage that grew under
a thick old hedge, which bordered the flinty and chalky
way—when the sound of voices roused me; and close by a rustic
wooden stile, that afforded a passage through the hedge in
question, I suddenly beheld a man and woman in parley—conversation
it could not be termed, as the former was evidently
confronting, and rudely barring, the progress of the latter.

On the summit of the stile her figure was distinctly seen in
dark outline against the twilight sky.

She seemed young and handsome, with a smart little black-velvet
hat and feather.  Her small hands were well-gloved;
one firmly grasped her folded parasol and handkerchief, and
the other held up her skirt prettily as she sought to descend
the stile, showing more than no doubt was generally revealed
of a well-rounded leg, a taper ankle, and tiny foot, encased in
a fashionable kid boot.

Young and perfectly ladylike, her whole toilette was in
keeping with her lithe and graceful figure; but her face was
turned from me.

He who confronted her was a burly, surly, beetle-browed,
and rough-visaged fellow, like a costermonger, with a slouched,
broken hat, which he touched, half ironically, from time to
time; a black beard of a week's growth bristled on his chin;
a patch covered one of his discoloured eyes; he had a great
cudgel under his arm, and an ugly bull-terrier, with a huge
head and close-shorn ears, was close to his heels.  His hand
was held forth for charity, and he was fully prepared to
enforce that good quality.

Alarmed by the appearance of the fellow, who might very
well have passed for a twin brother of Bill Sykes, the young
lady hovered with irresolution on the upper step of the stile,
and said, timidly—

"Permit me to pass, if you please, sir."

"Not without giving me summut, marm; and I tell yer I
ain't neither sir nor mister, but just Bill Potkins," growled the
fellow.  "I've a darned good mind to set this ere dog at your
ankles!"

"But I repeat to you that I have left my purse at home,"
she urged.

"You have left it at whoam have yer; that is all gammon,
for I knows yer, for all yer dainty airs, and the captain too,
for the matter o' that.  Shall I tell his name?" he asked with
a scowl, while he surveyed her all over, as if looking for
something to snatch ar wrench away; but she seemed destitute of
ornaments.

"Yes, I have indeed left it; but for pity sake allow me to
pass," she said, faintly, and then, gathering strength, added,
"Moreover, fellow, you must."

"Criky; that's a good 'un—must I really now?"

"Yes, please," returned the young girl, in tears.

"Well, I sha'n't then—not till I've overhauled your pockets,
and rummaged yer a bit, and that's all about it."

In a moment his ruffianly hands were upon her; the girl
uttered a shrill scream and he a ferocious oath.  I spurred
forward my horse, reined him in with dragoon-like precision,
and with the butt-end of my riding-whip dealt the would-be
thief a blow which tumbled him in a heap at the foot of the stile.

With a terrible malediction, while the blood poured over
his face, he staggered up, stooped his head, and thrusting his
hat well over his eyes, was rushing on with uplifted
cudgel, when I dexterously dealt him cut "one" full on the
face, and made my horse rear for the purpose of riding him
down.  On this he uttered a yell, forced his way through the
hedge, and taking to flight, disappeared, with his bull terrier
barking furiously at his heels.

The young lady whom I had saved by such timely succour
was still standing, pale and trembling, on the summit of the
stile, irresolute which way to turn, when I dismounted, and
throwing the reins over my arm, lifted my hat, and expressing
the great satisfaction it afforded me to have been of such
timely service, I offered my hand and assisted her to descend.

She thanked me in an agitated voice, and with a hurried
manner, in language which was well chosen, but seemed
perfectly natural to her.

I now perceived that she was older than her slender figure
at first suggested.  She seemed to be about five-and-twenty
years of age, with a softly feminine and purely English face,
long, tremulous eyelashes, and a perfect nose and chin.  She
was almost beautiful; but with an air of sadness in her
charming little features, which, when her alarm subsided, was too
apparent to fail to interest me.

"If you will not deem me intrusive," said I, lifting my hat
again, and drawing back respectfully one pace, "I shall be
most happy to escort you home."

"I thank you, sir."

"It is almost dark now, and your friends may be anxious
about you."

"Friends?" she repeated, inquiringly, in a strange voice,
while a cough of a most consumptive sound seemed to rack
her slender form.

"Or permit me to escort you to where you were going.  It
was in this direction luckily, or I could only have taken my
horse over the stile by a flying leap."

"But, sir——" she began, and paused.

"Consider, that fellow may be within ear-shot, and he may
return again."

"True, sir.  I do thank you very much.  There was a time
when I was not wont to be so unprotected; but I am so loth—"

"To incommode me; is it not so?"

"Yes, sir."

"Oh, do not say so.  I am from the barracks at Maidstone,
though in mufti, as you see, and trust you will permit me to be
your escort.  My time at present is completely at your disposal."

"I live about half-a-mile on this side of the village; and if
you will be so very kind——"

"I shall have much pleasure," I replied, with a respectful
bow; and leading my horse by the bridle, I walked onward
by her side.

She conversed with me easily and gracefully on many
subjects—of the oddness of her being abroad at such an hour
alone; but in the country folks thought nothing of it.  She
had been visiting a sick fisherman's wife, or child, or
something, at Herne Bay, and been detained; the roads were
not unsafe thereabouts in general; but she must be careful
for the future.

Then we remarked, of course, the beauty of the evening, the
romance of the scenery along the coast, and its associations,
by Herne Bay, the Reculvers, and Birchington; and my fair
companion seemed well read, for she knew all about the old
kings of Kent, and, pointing seaward, showed me that, where
now the ocean rolled, there stood in other times a goodly
Saxon town, with something about a king named Ethelbert,
whose palace was close by the Reculvers; and so, chatting
away pleasantly in a tone of voice that was very alluring, for
there was a musical chord in it, we proceeded along the
highway, until she suddenly paused at the iron gate of a pretty
little rustic cottage that stood within a garden plot, back some
fifty paces or so from the highway.

"Here, sir," said she, "is the gate of my home; at least,
that which is now so; and, with my best thanks, I must bid
you adieu."

The girl's voice, air, and manner were certainly charming,
and there was a plaintive sadness about her that was decidedly
interesting; but my mind was too full of a pure passion, an
exalted love for Louisa Loftus, to have much enthusiasm about
pretty girls then, or to have any taste for running after them,
as in the days when I first donned my lancer trappings.
Thus, quite careless of cultivating her acquaintance, I was
about to withdraw with a polite bow, when she added—

"After the great service you have rendered, and so bravely
too, I hope you do not deem me uncourteous in not inviting
you to rest for a few minutes; but—but——"

"Papa might frown, and mamma have some fears of a
light dragoon," said I, laughing.  "Is it not so?"

"My papa!" she replied in a voice that was extremely
touching.  "Sir, of course you cannot know; but he is dead,
and my dear mamma has lain by his side these seven years."

"Pardon me," said I, "if by a heedless speech I have
probed a hidden wound—a sorrow so deep.  But your friends,
perhaps, might wish to discover the sturdy beggar from whom
I saved you, and if I can be of any service, by sending a note
to Maidstone barracks, addressed——"

At that moment the door of the cottage opened, and a
comely old woman, dressed in good matronly taste, appeared
with a lighted candle in her hand, and with an expression of
alarm in her good-humoured face, as she exclaimed—

"La, miss! how late you are!  I was quite alarmed for fear
you had returned, as you often do, by the sea-shore, and met
with an accident among the rocks."

"No, my dear friend, I am here in safety, thanks to this
kind gentleman; but for whose fortunate intervention I might
have had a very different thing to say."

And in a few words she related all that had taken place,
caressing my horse the while kindly and gracefully with her
pretty hands, and even without fear, kissing his nose, for
although sad-eyed, the girl seemed naturally playful.

The woman she addressed had all the appearance of a
matronly servant or elderly nurse; she took the young lady
in her arms kindly, kissed her, and thanked me very earnestly
for my service.  She then proposed that I should enter the
cottage, and have at least a glass of cowslip or elder-flower wine,
or some such distillation; but the girl looked rather alarmed.
She did not second the invitation, and, finding that I was
becoming *de trop*, I put my foot in the stirrup, and mounted.

"Do not deem us lacking either in courtesy or gratitude,
sir," said she, presenting her hand, and looking up with her
sad, earnest eyes, which were now full of tears; "but you do
not know the—the peculiarity of my position here."

I bowed; but of course remained silent.

"She is, perhaps, a governess—some useful young person,
some victim of a stepmother," thought I.

"I perceived that you were an officer, though out of
uniform, and—and——"

"You don't take every officer for a sad rake, I hope?" said
I, laughing.

"Nay, nay, sir; the scarlet coat is very dear to me!"

"Your father, perhaps, was in the army?"

"My poor father was a man of peace, and a man after
God's own heart, sir.  No, no; you mistake me," she replied,
with an air of annoyance and wounded pride; "but you
belong, I presume, to the cavalry?"

"Yes," said I, as her manner puzzled me more and more.

"The lancers?" she asked, impetuously.

"Yes, the lancers."

I could see, even in the twilight, that her colour deepened,
while a painful sigh escaped her.

"Do you know any one in my corps?"

"Yes—no; that is, I never saw it; but I did know a—a——"

Who, or what she knew, I was not destined to learn, for,
just at that moment, the postman passed with a lantern
glimmering in his hand, a bag slung over his back.

"A letter.  You have one for me, have you not?" she asked,
in a clear and piercing voice, while holding forth her hands.

"No, miss, I am sorry to say," stammered the man, touching
his cap, and passing abruptly on; "better luck in the
morning, I hope."

"No letter, Nurse Goldsworthy, no letter yet," she muttered.
"How cruel, how very cruel! or, nursie dear, is this but the
way of the world—the world that he has lived in?  Oh, it
is cold—cold and selfish!" and, pressing her hands upon her
breast, she tottered against the iron gate, and then a violent
fit of coughing ensued.

"My good woman," said I, "the chill evening air is unsuited
to such a cough as your young lady seems afflicted with."

"Yes, sir, yes, I know it," replied the nurse, while supporting
the girl with one hand, she closed and locked the iron gate
with the other; and, kissing her forehead the while, said,
"Patience, my poor suffering angel, thou wilt get a letter in
the morning I tell thee."

"Pray tell me if I can assist you.  I am Captain Norcliff, of
the —th Lancers; do please say if I can be of service?" I urged.

"Oh, no, sir, you cannot serve me in that which afflicts me
most," replied the girl, weeping; "but a thousand thanks to
you; and now, good evening."

"Good evening," I replied, and rode away, feeling strangely
puzzled and interested in this girl, by her beauty, grace, and
singular manner.

At the village inn, the signboard of which, I may mention
by the way, actually bears the head of King Ethelbert, whose
spirit seems somehow to hover still about his Anglo-Saxon
*ham* of the Reculvers, I drew up on pretence of obtaining a
light for my cigar, but in reality to make some inquiry
concerning the pretty enigma who dwelt in the cottage on the
Margate-road.

Just as I reined in, a man on horseback passed me at full
speed, and from his figure, seat, and dress, I could have
sworn that he was—Berkeley!  And he was riding in the
direction of Chillingham Park, too.

From two to three Kentish yokels, in hobnailed shoes and
canvas frocks, I endeavoured, after the distribution of a few
shillings for beer, to extract some information, and it was
yielded cunningly and grudgingly, and after much leering,
grinning, and scratching of uncombed heads.

One informed me that she was "thowt to be, somehow, the
wife o' vun o' them calavary chaps at Maidstone;" another
"thowt as she was the vidder of a sea hossifer;" and a third,
who thrust his tongue into his fat cheek, remarked "that as I
had paid my money I might take my choice," on which I gave
him a cut over the head with my whip, and rode away,
followed by a shout of derisive laughter from these Anglo-Saxon
chawbacons, who, as far as civilization was concerned,
were pretty much as if his Majesty King Ethelbert were still
upon his throne.

It seemed to me also that I heard among their voices that
of the fellow Potkins, whom I had so recently thrashed
at the stile.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XVI.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVI.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  Still as a moonlight ruin is thy power,
   |  Or meekness of carved marble, that hath prayed
   |  For ages on a tomb; serenely laid
   |  As some fair vessel that hath braved the storm,
   |  And passed into her haven, when the noise
   |  That cheered her home hath all to silence died,
   |  Her crew have shoreward parted, and no voice
   |  Troubles her sleeping image in the tide.
   |                                            ALFORD.

.. vspace:: 2

My mind was a prey to great inquietude—shall I term it
undefined jealousy?—as I galloped back to my hotel.  I had
left directions with Pitblado that, if any letters came for me
during the two days I was to be absent from barracks, he was
to mount my spare horse, and bring them on the spur direct
to Canterbury; but none had come, for he had not appeared.

I lingered over my wine alone, in my solitary room at the
Royal, reflecting on the evening's adventures.

Was the horseman who had passed me really Berkeley?

If so, he was riding to Chillingham Park, and would just
be in time for dinner—a fact that, if he was uninvited, argued
considerable familiarity with that proud and exclusive family.

Then there was the girl whom I had rescued at the stile.
What a puzzle she was!  I reviewed all her conversation
with me, and her strange bearing.  Her literary information
and education seemed to be of a very superior kind, and her
manner was unexceptionable.  She seemed gentle, too, and
to have been on an errand of charity or mercy.  Why was
she so agitated when our corps was mentioned!  Her love
for a red coat might be natural enough; but who was "the
captain" to whom the ruffian referred when threatening her?
Then there was undisguised anxiety for a letter.  That was
natural also; and it was an emotion in which I could fully share.

Those yokels in frocks and hobnailed shoes had called her
wife, and even widow; but the servant, or nurse, only named
her as "miss."

What if she and her nurse, the old spider-brusher, were
but a delusion and a snare?  What if her modesty and
trepidation, and the old woman's love and anxiety, were but a
specious piece of acting!

Prudence suggested that such things were not uncommon
in this good land of Britain.

Next morning I was up and breakfasted betimes, and the
sunny hours of the forenoon saw me mounted, and, after
passing the gate of Chillingham Park at a quick canter, I
know not why, unless to soothe my mental irritation, slowly
walking my horse in the neighbourhood of the Reculvers,
and inhaling the pleasant breeze that came from the sea,
whilom, as my companion of last night said, ploughed by the
galleys of Cæsar, and along the same shore where the Kentish
barbarians gathered, in their war paint, to oppose him.

The sunshine fell redly on the quaint spires of the old
church and picturesque cottages of the secluded village.  I
passed the sign of King Ethelbert, and hovered for a moment
at the gate of the cottage ornée, where I had been overnight.
Its blinds were closely drawn; but a bird was singing gayly
in a gilt wire cage that hung in the porch, which was
covered with climbing trailers, already in full flower.

I passed on, and soon reached the rustic stile—the scene
of last night's encounter with that interesting individual who
had solicited alms with the aid of a black beard and a cudgel.
It led to a narrow pathway through the fields and coppice to
the sea.  The birds were chirping, and some of the trees
were already budding.  The yellow blaze of noon streamed
between their stems upon the green grass, and I could see
the blue waves of the sea glittering in the glory of the
sunshine far away.

On the summit of the moss-grown stile fancy conjured up
the figure of the young girl; and I had a vague, undefined
longing to meet her again, and learn something of her history,
if she had one.

What was this girl to me, or I to her?  Yet I had the
desire to see her once more, and, as luck or fate would have it,
something glittering among the grass caught my eye, and, on
dismounting, I found it to be a little gold locket, containing a
lock of brown hair, attached to a black velvet ribbon.  It
bore the initials "J.D.B." and the date, "1st June."

It had, no doubt, fallen, or been torn from the young lady's
neck in the struggle of the night before.  I resolved at once
to restore it, and turned my horse's head towards the cottage,
not without the unpleasant reflection that this was the 1st of
April—All Fools' Day—and I might simply be courting a
scrape of some kind.

Leaving my horse at the gate, I rang the bell, and the door
was promptly opened by the old woman (whose face
expressed such evident disappointment that I saw some one
else had been expected), and whom I may as well introduce
by name as Mrs. Goldsworthy.

She curtseyed very low, and eyed me doubtfully, as if the
words of the mess-room song occurred to her—

   |  The scarlet coats! the scarlet coats!
   |    They are a graceless set,
   |  From shoulder-strap of worsted lace
   |    To bullion epaulette.

   |  The deuce is in those soldiers' tongues;
   |    What specious fibs they tell!
   |  And what is worse, 'tis so perverse,
   |    The women list as well.
   |

If such were her speculations, I remembered that the lancers
wore blue, and the alleged seductions of the scarlet were
inapplicable to one who was in mufti.

"My dear madam," said I, in my most insinuating tone,
"passing by the stile this morning, where, last night, I had
the pleasure of rescuing your young lady, I found this trinket,
which, perhaps, belongs to her?"

"It do, indeed, sir, it do.  Lawkamercy! she has well nigh
cried her poor eyes out about it, the dear soul!  Ah, me,
don't you hear her a coughing now?" said the worthy woman,
sinking her voice.  "'Ow 'appy she will be to get it back
again! ay, main 'appy!  For whether it was lost by the
seashore, or in the fields, or whether the thief had taken it, she
never could ha' guessed by no means.  Oh, sir, 'ow she would
be a thankin' you!"

"I hope she has not suffered from her alarm last night?"

"No, sir," said the woman, eyeing me earnestly through a
great pair of spectacles, which she carefully wiped with her
apron, and put on for that purpose; "but she do have such a
terrible cough, poor thing!  Please, sir, just to wait a minute."

She hurried away, and returning almost immediately,
invited me to enter, saying—

"My young missus will see you, Mr. Hossifer."

I was ushered into a prettily-papered and airy little parlour,
the open windows of which looked seaward over the green
fields.  Another bird in a gilt wire cage hung chirping at the
open sash, where the spotless white muslin blinds swayed to
and fro in the soft breeze of the April morning.

Everything was scrupulously neat and clean, though plain.
There were a number of books, chiefly novels, on the
side-table; a few landscapes in water-colour, in gilt frames,
evinced the taste of the proprietor; an open workbox of
elegant design stood on the centre table; and very tiny kid
gloves with a few shreds of ribbon, showed that a worker had
recently been busy there.

On the wall a garland of artificial flowers encircled the
miniature of a lovely little golden-haired boy, whose face,
somehow, seemed familiar to me.

On a small pianette, which was open, lay a pile of music.
The two upper pieces were "La Forza del Destine," and
"La Pluie de Perles," which were inscribed "To Agnes.
From her dear Papa."

Everything bespoke the presence of a neat, brisk, and tidy
female resident of elegant tastes; but in one corner I
detected a cavalry forage cap, pretty well worn, and on the end
of the mantelpiece, where it had evidently eluded
Mrs. Goldsworthy's duster, the fag-end of a cigar.

I had just made this alarming discovery, when my friend
of the last evening entered, and frankly presented me with
her hand, half-smiling, and thanking me for the locket, which
she at once proceeded to suspend at her neck, saying, as she
kissed and hid it in her bosom, that for worlds she would not
have lost it!

Ungloved now, I could perceive the delicate beauty of her
small hands, and, moreover, that on the third finger of the
left there was no marriage ring.  Her face was very pale,
but singularly beautiful, and her tightly-fitting dress revealed
the full symmetry of her arms, waist, and bosom.  Her eyes
expressed extreme gentleness and sadness, and consorted
well with the delicacy of her pure complexion.  The extreme
redness of her lips seemed rather unnatural, or at least
unhealthy; but she coughed frequently, and the consumption,
under which I greatly feared she was labouring, made her
delicate loveliness still more alluring, and the earnest and
searching gaze of her dark blue eyes more interesting and touching.

The common phrases incident to first introductions and
everyday conversations were rapidly despatched, and, while
I lingered, hat and whip in hand, I repeated that, but for the
purpose of returning her locket, I, as a total stranger, would
not have ventured to intrude upon a lady.  I begged her to
be assured of that.

"Be certain, sir," said she, nervously smoothing the braids
of her rich, thick hair, and adjusting the neat white collar
that encircled her delicate throat, and edged the neck of her
plain grey dress; "be certain that it is no intrusion, but a
great kindness, though I do live here almost alone,
and—and——"

She paused, and coloured deeply.

"You were anxious about letters last night.  I hope this
morning has relieved your mind?"

"Alas, no, sir," said she, shaking her pretty head sadly.
"The postman has always letters for every one but me.  I
have been forgotten by those who should have remembered me."

"I can fully share your feelings," said I, with a made-up
smile.  "I, too, am most anxious for letters that seem never
likely to come."

"I am sorry to hear this; but I thought that you gay young
men of the world had no sorrows—no troubles, save your
debts, and your occasional headaches in the morning; the
first to be cured by post-obits, and the second by brandy and
seltzer-water."

"Is such your idea?" said I, smiling.

"Yes."

"Well, I have other and more heartfelt sorrows than
these."

"How often have I wished that I were a man—a strong
one, to fight with the world in all its wiles and strength; to
wrestle and grapple with it, and to feel that I was powerful,
great—greater than even destiny—instead of being the poor
and feeble thing I am!  Then could I show mankind——"

What she was about to say I know not.  Her eyes were
sparkling, and her cheek flushing, as she spoke; but a violent
fit of coughing came on.  She put her handkerchief to her
lips, and when she took it away it was stained with blood.

"Permit me," said I, with kindness, and handed her to a
chair.

This access of coughing so promptly brought Mrs. Goldsworthy
in that I think she must have been listening outside
the door.  Her caresses and care soothed the young lady,
though she lapsed into a flood of nervous tears, and, for a
minute or so, withdrew.

"Your mistress seems extremely delicate?" I observed.

"Yes, poor thing!  She will never again be the girl she was."

"Are you, may I ask, her mother?"

"Her mother?  Lawkamercy, no!  I ain't worthy to be
more than what I am."

"And what is that, my friend?"

"Her servant, poor angel!  Her mother is, I am sure, in
Heaven."

"Pardon me.  I remember that she told me last night that
she was an orphan."

"Ay, poor child, a orphan indeed—a orphan of the 'eart,"
she added, shaking her head, as she became unintentionally
poetic.

"I fear my visit excites you," said I, moving towards the
door, as the young girl reappeared, and seemed to have quite
recovered her composure.  "Your cough requires the greatest
care, and those open windows——"

"Oh, I should die without air," she exclaimed, while her
eyes sparkled; "for there are times when even my own
thoughts seem to stifle me."

"La, miss!" said her attendant, warningly, and glancing
impatiently at me.

"A strange girl," thought I; "but can she be subject to
flights of fancy—insane?"

"If I can at any time be of service, pray command me,
though we shall not be long in Britain now, as we soon start
for the Crimea."

"Very soon?" she asked, with her eyes and voice full of
earnest inquiry.

"I cannot say exactly when; but soon, certainly."

She pressed her left hand upon her breast, as if to restrain
her cough, and cast down her eyelashes.  At that moment
she seemed remarkably bewitching, soft, modest, and
Madonna-like.

I was again about to go, and yet stayed, for I longed to
learn, at least, her name.

"And you go cheerfully forth to face danger and death?"
she asked, looking up with a mournful smile in her pleading
eyes.

"Not cheerfully, for my path is not without its thorns; but
for all that I don't dread death, I hope."

"Death!" she said, musingly, as if to herself, while looking
at the blood spot on her handkerchief.  "Daily I feel myself
face to face with him, and shall bid him welcome when he
comes nearer, for death has no terrors for me."

"Don't 'ee talk so, darling," said her follower, with a
mixture of sorrow and irritation in her manner; "though he you
weeps for is a bad 'un at 'art, and I knows it."

"Oh, don't break mine by saying so, nurse."

"I trust that you only fancy yourself worse than you really
are," said I, with genuine sympathy in my tone and manner.
"Remember, the long and sweet season of summer is before
us.  You are so young, and life must still be full of hope to
you."

"Hope! oh, no, not of hope!  My destiny has already been
fulfilled!" she replied, with a strong bitterness of manner; "so
hope has done with me."

"Pardon me; but may I ask your name—I told you mine,"
said I, laying my hand on hers.

She coloured deeply, almost painfully.  It was but the
hectic flush of a moment, and when it passed away she became
pale as marble.

"Captain Norcliff, I think you said?"

"Yes; Newton Calderwood Norcliff—and yours?"

"Agnes Auriol."

"Good heavens!" I almost exclaimed, as the whole mystery
of her life and manner burst with a new light upon me.

So my mysterious incognita was that poor girl of whom the
mess had whispered.  Berkeley's mistress—Agnes Auriol—the
girl whose letter—a heart-breaking one, likely—he had
dropped at Calderwood, and which he had burned so carefully
when I restored it to him.  So *his* were the initials that were
on the gold locket at her neck, and *his* were the forage cap
and cigar which had attracted my attention on first entering
the cottage parlour.

It was certainly an awkward situation for me, this
self-introduction and visit.  If discovered there, I knew not how
far it might compromise me with him, and still more with
others whose opinion I valued.

And as thoughts of the Chillinghams and of the mess
flashed upon me, I felt that I would gladly have changed
places with Sinbad on the whale's back, or Daniel in the
lion's den.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XVII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVII.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  Oh, for the wings we used to wear,
   |    When the heart was like a bird,
   |  And floated through the summer air,
   |  And painted all it looked on fair,
   |    And sung to all it heard!
   |  When fancy put the seal of truth
   |  On all the promises of youth!
   |                                HERVEY.

.. vspace:: 2

To have introduced myself abruptly to Mr. De Warr Berkeley's
wedded wife, if he had one, might be explained away
satisfactorily enough; but to present myself to Miss Auriol,
related as she was to him, there could be no palliation
whatever, and in duelling days could have led to but one
result—the pistol!

Something of what passed in my mind, together with an air
of bewilderment, must have been apparent in my face, for the
young lady, after gazing at me earnestly, as if her clear and
bright, but dark blue eyes would read my very soul, looked
suddenly down, and said, while her colour came and went,
and her bosom heaved painfully—

"I can perceive, Captain Norcliff, that my name explains
much to you; but not all—oh no! not all.  There are secrets
in my short but wretched life that you can never learn—secrets
known to God and to myself alone!"

"It really explains nothing to me, Miss Auriol," I replied
with a smile, being willing to relieve her embarrassment, by
affecting ignorance of that which the whole mess knew—her
ambiguous position; "for I am not aware that—that we ever
met before."

"But you have heard, perhaps—you know Mr. Berkeley?"

"Of ours—yes; he was in Scotland with me a few weeks ago."

"That I know too well for my own peace," said the girl,
coughing spasmodically, and applying her handkerchief to her
mouth.

"He is frequently in this quarter, is he not?"

"Yes."

"At this pretty cottage, perhaps?"

"No, sir."

"Where then—the Reculvers?"

"At Chillingham Park.  Since he has begun to visit there
he scarcely ever comes here.  Have you not heard—have you
not heard," she repeated, making a fearful effort at
articulation, "that he is to be married to the only daughter and
heiress of Lord Chillingham?"

I felt that I became nearly as pale as herself, while replying—

"I certainly have not heard of such an alliance; it is
probably the silly humour of a gossiping neighbourhood."

She shook her head sadly, and seated herself with an air of
lassitude.

"Are you sure that Mr. Berkeley was not here after I
escorted you home last night?"

"I am, unfortunately, but too sure.  Why do you ask?" she
inquired, looking up, while her eyes dilated.

"Because I could have sworn that I passed him on horseback
in the dusk."

"Riding in this direction?"

"No, towards Canterbury."

"Ah, towards Chillingham Park, no doubt—there shines his
loadstar now!"

"And mine too," thought I, bitterly.

This girl's intelligence, whether false or true, crushed my
heart more than I can describe.

Aware, however, of the imperative necessity for retiring, I
took up my hat and bade her adieu; but for the purpose of
learning more of Berkeley's movements, I promised, when
riding that way, to call again, and inquire for her health.

"The locket you have just restored was Mr. Berkeley's gift
to me upon a fatal day," said she; "and, believe me, sir,
that—that, whatever you may have heard of me, or whatever you
may think, I have been 'more sinned against that sinning.'"

In another minute I was in the saddle, and on my way back
to Canterbury.

Though she did not know it, nor could she know it, this
unfortunate girl had been planting thorns in my breast.  I
could not believe in the reality of such perfidy on the part of
Louisa—of such facility on the part of the haughty Countess,
her mother—or of such rapid progress on the part of Berkeley
with all his wealth, the hard-won thousands of the late
departed brewer.

How I longed now for the arrival of Cora, who might solve
or explain away some of the doubts that surrounded me!

My heart swelled with rage; and yet I felt that I loved
Louisa with a passion that bade fair to turn my brain!

As Miss Auriol would be certain to know something of
Berkeley's movements and as she and her faithful follower,
old Mrs. Goldsworthy, might prove invaluable in acquainting
me with what passed at Chillingham Park, for they had jealousy
to spur on their espionage, I resolved to visit once or
twice again the cottage at the Reculvers, when I could do so
unseen.  This I did, little knowing how greatly the poor girl
would interest me in her sad fate, and still less foreseeing that
the course I pursued was a perilous one.  But the agony of
my anxiety, the bitterness of my suspicions, and my love for
Louisa, overcame every scruple, and blinded me to everything
else.

She, on the other hand, was naturally anxious to learn the
movements of Berkeley, whom, notwithstanding his cold
desertion, she loved blindly and desperately.  Thus we could be
useful to each other.

My heart recoiled at times from such a mode of working;
but I could have no other recourse till my cousin Cora came.

As I rode up to the door of the hotel, my heart leaped on
seeing Willie Pitblado awaiting me there.

"A letter at last!" I exclaimed, as he came forward.

"From the colonel, sir," said he, touching his cockaded hat.

"The colonel?" I repeated in disappointment and surprise,
as I tore open the note, the contents of which ran briefly thus:—

.. vspace:: 2

"MY DEAR NORCLIFF,—As the barracks here are becoming
uncomfortably crowded, by the Indian depôts and so forth,
your troop is detached to Canterbury for a week or two, to
share the quarters of the hussars.  You will remain there,
probably, till the route comes.  You need not return to
head-quarters, unless you choose; but may report yourself to the
lieutenant-colonel commanding the consolidated cavalry depôt at
Canterbury.  This is a stranger-day at mess.  We are to have
an unusual number of guests, and the band.  Wish you were
with us.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

Believe me, &c., &c.,
LIONEL BEVERLEY, Lieut.-Col.

"P.S.—You will drill the troop once daily to the sword and
lance exercise on horseback."

.. vspace:: 2

"How lucky!" thought I.  "I shall have Canterbury for
the basis of my operations, and the Reculvers for an advanced
post; quartered here, and Chillingham close by!—When does
the troop march in, Willie."

"To-morrow forenoon, sir, under Mr. Jocelyn."

"Good.  You will take my card to the barrack-master, and
my horses to the stables, and receive over my quarters.  I
shall remain at the hotel until the troop comes in."

I did not ride to the Reculvers on that afternoon, though I
scoured every road in the vicinity of the city, by Sturry,
Bramling, and Horton.

Next morning I went for a mile or two in the direction of
Ospringe, and soon saw the troop advancing leisurely, with
their horses at a walk, along the dusty Kentish highway, their
keen lance-heads glittering with all their bright appointments
in the sunshine, their scarlet and white banneroles, and the
long plumes in the men's square-topped caps dancing in the
wind, as I trotted up and joined them, though in mufti.

My lieutenant, Frank Jocelyn, and the cornet, Sir Harry
Scarlett, were both pleasant and gentlemanly young men, and
would have been a most welcome addition to my residence in
Canterbury, but for the hopes, the fears, and plans which
occupied me.  They asked me how I liked the cathedral city,
and there was a smile on their faces, which, when taken in
conjunction with my secret thoughts, galled and fretted me.
Yet I could not notice it.

Accompanied by a multitude of the great "unwashed," we proceeded
straight to those spacious barracks which are erected
for cavalry, artillery, and infantry, on the road that leads to
the Isle of Thanet, and there the lancers were rapidly "told
off" to their quarters, the horses stabled, corned, and watered.

We dined that evening with a hussar corps, of whose mess
we were made honorary members while we remained in Canterbury,
and from Jocelyn I learned incidentally that for the
last three days Berkeley had scarcely been in barracks.  The
hope that I had harrassed myself in vain passed away now,
and fear alone remained.

While the first set of decanters were traversing the table,
I slipped away unnoticed, and without changing my uniform,
took the road at a rasping pace direct for the Reculvers.  The
moon was just rising from the sea, and the last notes of the
curfew were dying away, as I drew up at the door of Miss
Auriol's cottage.

She was alone, and sitting at tea, to which she bade me
welcome, in a manner that showed she half doubted the
honesty of my visit, and betrayed such emotions of shame,
confusion, and awkwardness, I felt myself quite an intruder.
But I simply asked if she had heard more of Berkeley.

She admitted that she had, and stated mournfully that for
the last three days he had been constantly at the park, thus
confirming what Frank Jocelyn had told me.

In the course of another visit or two, I gradually learned
piecemeal all the poor girl's unhappy history, and how she
became the victim, first of evil fortune, and afterwards of a
cold-blooded man of the world like De Warr Berkeley.





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.. _`CHAPTER XVIII.`:

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   CHAPTER XVIII.

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   |  Where are the illusions bright and vain
   |    That fancy boded forth?
   |  Sunk to their silent caves again,
   |    Auroræ of the north!

   |  Oh! who would live those visions o'er,
   |    All brilliant though they seem,
   |  Since earth is but a desert shore,
   |    And life a weary dream!
   |                                MOIR.

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She was the orphan daughter of the poor curate of a secluded
village on the borders of Wales.  Her mother, also the
daughter of a curate, had died when Agnes was very young.
She was thus left to be the sole prop and comfort of the old
man's declining years, and he loved her dearly—all the more
dearly that, with a little brother, a beautiful, golden-haired boy
(the same whose miniature I remarked), she alone survived of
all their children, ten in number.

The rest had perished early; for all possessed that terrible
heritage, the seeds of which Agnes was now maturing in her
own bosom—consumption.

One by one the old clergyman had seen them borne forth
from his little thatched parsonage, under the ivy-clad lyke-gate
of the village church, and laid by their mother's side, a row of
little grassy graves, where the purple and golden crocuses
grew in spring, and the white-eyed marguerites in summer, all
as gaily as if the last hopes of a broken heart were not buried
beneath them.

In the fulness of time the shadow of death again fell on the
old parsonage, and the curate's white hairs were laid in the
dust, close by the quiet little Saxon church in which he
had ministered so long; and now the ten graves of the once
loving household lay side by side, without a stone to mark
them.

"In the days before this last calamity befel me, Captain
Norcliff," said Miss Auriol, "when my poor father was wont
to take my face caressingly between his tremulous old hands,
and kissing my forehead, and smoothing my hair, would tell
me that my name, Agnes, signified gentleness—a lamb, in
fact—that it came from the Latin word *Agnus*; and when he
would bless me with a heart as pure as ever offered up a
prayer to God, how little could I foresee the creature I was to
become!  Oh, my father—oh, my mother! what a life mine
has been; and after my father died, what a youth!

"I have often thought of the words of Mademoiselle de
Enclos, when, in the flush of her beauty, she exclaimed to
the Prince of Condé, 'Had any one proposed such a life to
me at one time, I should have died of grief and fright!'

"So my father passed away; the new incumbent came to
take our mansion, with its humble furniture at a valuation.
After paying a few debts, with a small sum, I found myself
with my little brother, who was sickly and ailing, in London,
seeking subsistence by exerting the talents I possessed—music,
chiefly, for I am pretty well accomplished as a musician."

She continued to tell me of all her heart-breaking struggles,
her perils and bitter mortifications, and of the acute sufferings
of that little fair-headed brother, on whom all her love and
hope were centred; and how, daily, in the fetid atmosphere
of a humble lodging, far away from the green fields, the bright
sunshine and the rustling woods of that dear old parsonage
on the slope of the Denbigh hills, the poor child grew worse
and more feeble; and how her crushed heart was wrung as
her little store of money melted away like snow in spring; her
few ornaments went next, and no employment came.

How misery depressed, and horrible forebodings of the
future haunted her; how she remembered all the harrowing
tales she had read—and such as we may daily read—of the
poor in London, and how they perish under the feet of the
vast multitude who rush onward in the race for existence, or
in the pursuit of pleasure; and how thoughts and doubts of
God himself, and of His mercy and justice, at times came
over her, even as they came at times now, when the man she
loved and trusted most on earth had deceived her.

Employed at last as a hired musician, she was out frequently
to play the piano at balls and evening parties, for half a guinea
per night, in London, and thus made a slender subsistence for
the suffering child and for herself.

After receiving her fee from the hand of some sleepy butler
or supercilious upper-servant, as she nightly wrapped her
scanty cloak about her, and, quitting the heated and crowded
rooms, hurried through the dark, wet, and snowy streets, to
an almost squalid lodging, which even her native neatness
failed to brighten, and to the couch where the poor, thin,
wakeful boy, with his great, sad, earnest eyes, awaited her;
ere long she began to find a cold and cough settling upon her
delicate chest; and then the terror seized her that if she
became seriously ill, and failed to obey her patrons at the nearest
music-shop, where would the boy get food?  And if she died—in
a hospital, perhaps—what would be his fate, his end, in
other and less tender hands than hers?

Then, as she wept over him in the silence of the night, and
remembered the prayers her old father had taught her, she
would strive to become more composed, and to sleep like that
child that lay hushed in her bosom; but her dreams, if not
full of terrors for the present, were ever haunted by the sad
memories of the past; for the kind faces and sweet smiles of
the dead came vividly before her, and the familiar sound of
their voices seemed to mingle in the drowsy hum of the
London streets without, or with the murmur of her native Dee,
and the pleasant rustle of the summer leaves in the woods of
the old parsonage she would never see again, or the green
hills of Denbigh that overshadowed it.

Foreseeing and fearing that the child would be taken from
her, she assumed her pencil, in the use of which she was very
skilful and accomplished, and thus produced the likeness that
hung in her little parlour.  In this labour of love I was struck
by the close resemblance it bore to herself.

On one occasion, at some West-end party, she remembered
having seen me.  On beholding me in uniform now the
recollection came fully upon her; and it would seem that, on
the night in question, when all else had forgotten the pale and
weary musician amid the crush and merriment of the supper-room,
I had sent her cake and wine, and the former she had
secretly pocketed for her little brother; but of this casual
rencontre I had no recollection whatever.

On another occasion, it happened that the neglected and
lonely, but useful "young person," past whom youth, beauty,
and merriment whirled in white satin and diamonds, lace and
flowers, attracted the attention of Mr. De Warr Berkeley.
Her soft and wistful glances at her former equals caught his
watchful eye; and the graceful politeness with which she
acceded to their contrary suggestions to play quicker or
slower, together with the great brilliance of her execution,
were all remarked by him.

It was on one of those nights, like some others, when old
companions passed her by in the waltz and galop, and former
friends too, without a smile or glance of recognition; yet, as
she thought of the child at home, with a crushed and swollen
heart she played on and on mechanically.

Some unusual slight had been put upon her, and while she
played, in the bitterness of her soul, her hot tears fell upon
the keys of the piano.  At that moment for Berkeley to
introduce himself was an easy matter.  He did it so quietly, so
respectfully, that the poor girl felt soothed.  She never
mistrusted him, and, as her evil fortune would have it, he met her
three nights, almost consecutively, at three different places.
An intimacy was thus established.

On the third, the rain was pouring through the desolate
streets of a suburban district in torrents.  The soaked
shrubbery and the railings of the garden shone flickering through
the lamp-light, and the dark clouds swept past in gloomy
masses overhead.  It was a wild night, or morning rather,
and not even a policeman, in his oilskin cape, seemed to be
abroad.

Gathering her threadbare shawl tightly round her, Agnes,
terrified and bewildered, was setting forth afoot, timid and
shivering, on her way home, having some miles of London to
traverse, when Berkeley, who had artfully lingered to the last,
respectfully offered her a seat in his cabriolet, and by setting
her down where she mentioned, discovered her residence, and
marked her for his prey.

Berkeley's attentions filled the girl with gratitude instead of
alarm, and he soon inspired her with a passion for him.  "The
more a young girl believes in purity," says a writer, "the more
readily she abandons herself, if not to her lover, at least to her
love; because, being without distrust, she is without strength;
and, to make himself beloved by such a one, is a triumph
which any man of five-and-twenty may secure himself whenever
he pleases.  And this is true, though young girls are
surrounded by extreme vigilance and every possible rampart."

To trace the gradual and downward course she trod, and
how artfully Berkeley gained an ascendancy over her by the
interest he affected to feel in her little ailing brother, and how
lavishly he supplied the means of such comforts as the poor
child had never possessed even in his father's homely parsonage,
can neither be for me to describe, nor my reader to know.

Suffice that the gentle Agnes fell into the snare, as our
common ancestress did before, and became what I now found her
to be.

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From that hour she had never known real peace, and the
memory of her parents, blended with the agonies of remorse,
haunted her day and night.  As a drowning wretch will cling
to straws, so clung she to the desperate hope that Berkeley
would love her while life lasted, and that he would redeem his
promise by marrying her, for she loved him blindly and devotedly,
with all the strength of her young heart, and of a first
and only passion.

The change now, from work all day and music all night,
with trudging to and fro, through rain or sleet, was doubtless
great; but the change brought with it no joy, no peace of
mind.

Had she a thousand caprices, in the first flush of her
amour, her roué lover would have gratified them all; but,
luckily, her tastes were simple, and she shrank from proffered
boxes at the play or opera, from rural parties, and everything
that made her public.

But retribution was coming now; her tears and sorrow
fretted him, and he began to absent himself.  The luxuries
with which he surrounded her brought to her no happiness,
and to her little brother no health, for the child died, passing
peacefully away one night in his sleep, and was buried—not
in the pleasant green village burying-ground where his
kindred lay—but in a horrid fetid London churchyard, amid the
human loam of ages; and when the little silver-mounted
coffin was carried away, Agnes Auriol, as she cast a bouquet
of lily-of-the-valley on it, felt that now she had no real tie on
earth, unless it was her lover, and from him even she shrank
at such a time as this.

She stood alone by the little grave, the only mourner there.
She had thought of asking Berkeley to accompany her;
but, somehow, his presence would seem a species of pollution
by the grave of the pure and sinless little boy, and the face of
her father seemed ever before her.

Her unwelcome repentance fretted him, and without compunction
he saw the agony of her spirit, and how the lustre
faded from her eye, and the roses died in her cheek.
Sedulously she endeavoured to conceal the sorrow that embittered
her existence, as she perceived that it only served to disgust
him.  And as this sorrow grew, so did her strength diminish,
and the hectic flush of consumption and premature decline
spread over her delicate little face.

He was frequently absent from her now for weeks, and those
periods seemed insupportable, for the love of him had become
a habit; and to break that habit seemed as if it would snap
the feeble tenure of her life.

He ceased, too, to supply her with money.  Her former
musical connections were completely broken.  She was
frequently without the means of subsistence save by the sale of
her ornaments; and at last she had parted with all save her
mother's wedding ring, which she wished to be buried with her.

In January last she discovered that Berkeley was at
Calderwood Glen in Scotland.  She wrote to him a most piteous
letter, to which, however, he accorded no reply; and at that
time she must have died, had her nurse, Goldsworthy—an old
and faithful servant of her father's, not discovered and brought
her to this cottage near the Reculvers.

When the lancers were at Maidstone, Berkeley had visited
her from time to time, and pretended still his old views of
marriage to amuse her, but trammelled with secrecy; and latterly
he had derided her letters entirely.  Moreover, she had come
to the bitter and stinging conclusion that he hated her, as she
possessed letters of his which legally compromised him.

He who does another person an injury never forgives him
for what he has endured.  He alike hates and fears him;
and in this spirit did Berkeley fear and hate the poor girl
whom he had wronged.

Such was the plain, unvarnished story of Agnes Auriol,
which she related in the intervals that were unbroken by a
hard, consumptive, and undoubtedly, "churchyard cough."

"I have but one wish now," she added, as she lay back
exhausted; "and that I cannot gratify."

"Is it so difficult to achieve?" I asked, in a low voice.

"There are insuperable difficulties."

"And this desire?"

"Is to leave this place for ever," she said, almost in a
whisper, while the hot tears ran unheeded down her pale
cheeks; "and—and——"

"Go where?"

"To look on poor papa's grave, and on dear mamma's, and
then die."

"No, no, do not speak in this hopeless manner," I urged,
feeling that I, a young officer of cavalry, was a very unfitting
comforter or adviser at such a time; and I rose to retire, for
the evening was now far advanced.

"This craving is so strong in the poor lamb's heart, sir,
that she will be a dyin' as sure as we look on her, unless it be
gratified, and athout a angel comes from heaven; I don't
know how it is to be done," said Mrs. Goldsworthy, weeping
noisily, like all people of her class, as she ushered me to the
door, and to my horse, which was pawing the ground
impatiently, with the dew on his coat and saddle.

"Take her there without loss of time, my good friend," said I.

"She divided her last crown with a poor fisherman yesterday,
to get some comforts for his sick wife."

"Good heavens!  Is she then without means?"

"Quite, sir; and if Mr. Berkeley——"

I struck my spurred heels into the gravel at the sound of
his name, and exclaimed——

"Poor girl, I shall give her the means."

"You, sir?"

"Yes."

"Oh, sir—sir—but she'll never take it from you," said
Mrs. Goldsworthy, sobbing into her apron with great vociferation.

"She must; and let her remember me in her prayers when
I am far away.  At eight to-morrow evening I shall be here
again for the last time, my worthy friend, and will supply her
with what she requires."

Before the nurse could reply I was in my saddle, and had
closed the iron gate; but just as I rode off, I nearly trod down
a man who was muffled in a poncho cloak, and who leant
against the gate pillar—whether listening or asleep, I knew
not; yet, had I looked more closely, I might have detected
the moustached face of my quondam friend, Mr. De Warr
Berkeley.  For this loiterer, or eavesdropper, proved in the
sequel to be no other than he.

To outflank me, and to place himself, his fortune (and his
debts), at the complete disposal of Lady Louisa Loftus, was
now the plan—the game—of my friendly brother officer; and
with what success we shall see ere long.

I was full of thought while riding slowly home to the
barracks on the Thanet Road; I longed for Cora's coming to
unravel the mystery of Louisa's conduct, and yet dreaded to face
my cousin or broach the matter to her.  I was inspired with
sympathy for the poor lost creature I had just quitted, and
full of indulgence for her mode of life, and excuses for her fate
and fall.  Her singular beauty greatly aided emotions such
as these, for the morbid state of her health lent a wondrous
lustre to her dark blue eyes, and marvellous transparency to
her lovely complexion; and I felt extreme satisfaction that it
was in my power to gratify a wish that was, perhaps, her last
one—to pay a pilgrimage to the resting-place of her parents.

The sweet verse of honest Goldsmith occurred to me—

   |  The only art her guilt to cover,
   |    To hide her shame from every eye,
   |  To give repentance to her lover,
   |    And wring his bosom is—to die!
   |

At the same time I thought it very doubtful whether any
such catastrophe would wring the padded bosom of Berkeley.

Had Agnes Auriol been a wrinkled crone, it may be a
matter for consideration whether I—a young officer of
lancers—would have been so exceedingly philanthropic in her cause.
I hope I should.

On arriving at the barracks, my first task was to despatch
Pitblado by the night train to head-quarters, with a note to
M'Goldrick, the paymaster, for at least fifty pounds, saying I
wanted the money, and must have it by noon to-morrow.





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.. _`CHAPTER XIX.`:

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   CHAPTER XIX.

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   |  But the spite on't is, no praise
   |    Is due at all to me;
   |  Love with me hath made mad no staies
   |    Had it any been but she.

   |  Had it any been but she,
   |    And that very face,
   |  There had been at least ere this
   |    Twelve dozen in her place.
   |                              SIR JOHN SUCKLING.

.. vspace:: 2

Promptly, by an early train, Willie Pitblado arrived with
the cash from M'Goldrick, and with that which alike puzzled
and provoked me—a brief note from my friend, Jack
Studhome, the adjutant, advising me that, from rumours he,
Scriven, and Wilford had heard—rumours circulated
insidiously, he knew not how or by whom, in the billiard-rooms we
frequented, and indeed about Maidstone barracks generally—my
visits to a certain romantic cottage near the Reculvers were
well known.  I might mean no wrong, certainly; but was it
judicious or wise to get myself into a scrape with a brother officer?

There was no mistaking the object of this friendly epistle
of Jack's, and it filled me with fresh anger against Berkeley.
Who but he could insidiously spread those reports concerning
what he alone knew or could affect an interest in!  I knew
his subtle and crooked mode of working; and his ultimate
object was undoubtedly that this rumour against me should
ere long reach Chillingham Park.

Yet, removed as I was from head-quarters, I could do nothing
in the matter, and for the present had only "to grin and
bear it."

Morning parade over, in obedience to Colonel Beverley's
order, I was putting the troop through a course of sword and
lance exercise personally, and was so earnestly engaged in
the work of the moment, that I did not perceive a dashing
phaeton, drawn by a pair of spanking grey ponies, attended
by an outrider in livery, on a showy bay horse, that entered
the barrack-yard, and drew up close by, as if its occupants
wished to observe the progress of the drill.

After the lapse of a few minutes, Troop Sergeant-Major
Stapylton trotted his horse forward, and said—

"Beg pardon, Captain Norcliff, but some friends of yours
are waiting for you, sir."

Turning in my saddle, how great was my surprise to see
Lady Louisa and Cora in the phaeton, which was driven by
Berkeley, who was attired in a very accurate suit of forenoon
mufti.  Dismounting, I sheathed my sword, threw my reins
to Stapylton, and saying to my lieutenant, Jocelyn—

"Frank, like a good fellow, finish off this piece of drill for
me, please," advanced at once to greet my fair friends, whose
visit, I felt, was due to Cora.

"How interesting this is!" said Lady Louisa, presenting
her carefully-gloved little hand, with a brilliant smile, as she
proceeded to imitate my last order, "Prepare to dismount! one;
the lance to be raised out of the bucket, by the right
hand sliding down to the extent of the arm; two—ah, I forget
two; you are quite an enthusiast."

Under this banter I detected, or thought so, a deep glance
of anxiety and hidden meaning, more especially as she added,
"You evidently think more of this drill-sergeant's work than
of me."

My heart was so filled with sudden joy that I knew not
what I said; but I kissed Cora's hand to conceal my
confusion.

"And what of good Sir Nigel, Cora?" I asked.

"Papa comes to England to see you go away, and to take
me home," replied my cousin, in a calm voice; "home to
Calderwood, when all is over."

"All is over?"

"I mean when the army departs."

"And you are on leave, I perceive, Berkeley?"

"Aw—haw—yes, for a day or so.  Doocid bore the work
at Maidstone," he drawled out.

I was obliged as yet to dissemble, though there was an
ill-concealed air of smiling triumph about my comrade that gave
me considerable uneasiness.

"And now, sir, what have you to say for yourself?" said
Lady Louisa, tapping me on the epaulette with her parasol,
and speaking with an air of mock severity.  "So the rules of
society are to be inverted to suit your lancer tastes; the
ladies are to wait upon the gentlemen?  Quartered actually
in Canterbury, and yet you never came near us."

"Lady Louisa," I was beginning, yet not knowing what to
say, as I could never imagine that she doubted the reason of
my non-appearance at Chillingham.

"What am I to think of it?" she continued, smiling.

Berkeley laughed.  I believe the fellow thought we were
on the eve of a coolness.

"Remember my constitutional timidity," I urged.

"Timidity in a captain of lancers!" she exclaimed, laughing.

"I ventured to hope that the earl, at least, might have
remembered me."

"You knew that I was at Chillingham Park, it appears?"
she observed, with a pretty air of pique.

"Yes," said I, soothed by her glance of fond reproach;
"Sir Nigel's letter told me so."

"Yet you never came even once to visit us, and I longed
so much to see you, for I had a good deal to gossip about
concerning our residence at Calderwood."

"But the earl omitted to leave a card, and your mamma
never wrote; and then the rules of society!" I urged, still
harping on my grievance.

"The rules of fiddlesticks!  When did lovers ever heed
them?" she asked, in a rapid whisper, while Berkeley
addressed a few words to Jocelyn, and while her dark and
sparkling eyes flashed a glance that made me forget all.
"Well, here are the cards of papa and mamma, with an
express invitation to Chillingham.  You will dine with us this
evening, won't you?"

"With pleasure."

"Papa and mamma are to dine at the Priory, but on
another day you shall see them."

"And the hour?"

"Eight."

"Eight!" I repeated, for that was the very hour of my
appointment with Agnes Auriol, and the park lay in an opposite
direction from the barracks.  Here was a dilemma!  But I
resolved, if possible, to keep faith with both, and said—

"Excuse me, pray; but on reflection I find it impossible to
be present at that hour."

"Indeed!"

"But I shall present myself soon after in the drawing-room."

"What prevents you?" she asked, raising her dark eyebrows.

"Duty, unfortunately."

"In that case I must excuse you.  Allegiance to me should
not precede that which you owe to the Queen.  Till this
evening, then, adieu."

She presented her hand, and bowed with inimitable grace.
I took it in mine, and lingering, would, I am sure, have kissed
it, but for the troop close by, and dozens of idlers who were
lolling at the barrack windows in their shell-jackets or
shirt-sleeves.  There was a glorious smile on her bright face that
contrasted strongly with the sad and wistful glance of Cora's
soft dark eyes; and, as the phaeton swept away from the
barrack-square, I forgot to bid adieu to Berkeley, though I
wished him in very warm quarters indeed.  I forgot even to
address Cora, or rejoin the troop.  I forgot all about
Studhome's letter and its import; and, leaving Jocelyn to finish
the drill as he pleased, walked mechanically to my quarters,
filled by a great revulsion of feeling, and remembering only
that Louisa loved me—loved me still!  Of that day's close
could I have foreseen the end!  I counted the hours that
intervened between the time that I should be at the park.  I
resolved, if possible, to leave nothing undone to gain the
good opinion of the earl and countess; and, on after thought,
I regretted that I had excused my appearance at dinner, and
believed that I might have paid my last visit to the cottage at
the Reculvers an hour or so earlier, and performed my task
of philanthropy, even at the risk of being seen; though,
sooth to say, I rather dreaded that event, circumstanced as I
was with Louisa; and since the clouds that lowered upon my
horizon were dispersed now, the unfortunate victim of
Berkeley could be of no further use to me.

Berkeley had been watching my interview with Louisa narrowly,
and took in our whole situation at a glance, or thought
he did so.

He feared that Lady Louisa's gaiety was a little too
spasmodic to be real, in one who was usually calm and reserved;
and, hence, that it cloaked some deeper emotion than met
the eye.  My sensation at her appearance, and during the
whole interview, must have been apparent even to a less
interested spectator than Berkeley, and his whole soul
became stirred by emotions of jealousy, rivalry, and
revenge!

Having had the full entrée of Chillingham Park for the last
month and more, he had, as he conceived, made a fair lodgment,
to use a military phrase, in the body of the place—that
he had the cards in his own hands, and should lose no
time in discovering how Lady Louisa was affected towards
him.

Cool, vain, insolent, and unimpassioned, this blasé parvenu
thought over his plans while the phaeton rolled along the
Canterbury Road; and the aristocratic aspect of the coroneted
gate and castellated lodge, the far extent of green sward
stretching under the stately elms, closely shorn and carefully
rolled—sward that had never been ploughed since the days,
perhaps, when the Scot and Englishman measured their
swords at Flodden and Pinkey, kindled brighter the fire of
ambition with him, and made him resolve at all hazards to
supplant me.

One fact he had resolved on—that, though the days of
bodily assassination had gone out of English society, or
existed only in the pages of sensational romance, if he failed
to obtain Louisa Loftus, that I should never succeed.





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.. _`CHAPTER XX.`:

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   CHAPTER XX.

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   |  Not thus the shade may pass,
   |    That is upon thy heart,
   |  There is no sun in earthly skies
   |    Can bid its gloom depart;

   |  For falsehood's stain is on it,
   |    And cruelty and guile—
   |  And these are stains that never pass,
   |    And shades that never smile.
   |                                      MISS LANDON.

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The mansion of Chillingham is one of the stateliest in that
part of England.

It consists of a great central block and peristyle, with two
wings coming forward, forming a species of quadrangle.
Detailed in the taste that existed about 1680, and erected by
the second peer of the house, who had been created an earl
at the Restoration, it was built entirely of red brick, save the
eight Corinthian columns of the peristyle, the great flight of
steps that ascended thereto, the elaborate cornices, corners,
balustrades, and vases, which were all of white freestone, and
in the style that is denominated Palladian.

Elaborately carved within the central pediment are the
arms of the Loftus family—a chevron engrailed between
three trefoils, supported by two eagles; the crest a hand
grasping a battle-axe, with the motto, "*Prend mot tel que je
suis*," or "Take me as I am."

It occupies a gentle eminence in the centre of the spacious
park, and every embellishment has been added around to
make the natural beauties of the somewhat flat and peaceful
scene to harmonize.  Though equally aristocratic in tone, it
is very different in aspect from the bold and quaint, gloomy,
embattled, and romantic mansion of Calderwood, with its
turrets and loopholes for bullet or arrow; and is, in fact, a
style of edifice almost entirely peculiar to England and Holland.

Cora and Berkeley were as yet the only guests at the park,
and on handing the ladies from the phaeton, he begged a few
minutes' interview with Lady Louisa, in the library or the
conservatory, whichever she pleased, after luncheon.

She coloured deeply, almost with annoyance, at a request
so odd, and looking at her watch, said—

"We lunch at two.  Papa and mamma are in Canterbury;
I have letters to write, but shall be in the library at six—that
is, two hours before dinner."

"Thanks; after we have tiffed then," said he, lifting his
hat, and passing after her and Cora into the marble vestibule,
with a self-satisfied smile.

"What on earth can the man have to say in such a solemn
fashion, Cora?" whispered Louisa.

"I cannot conceive," replied my cousin, thinking of
something else.

The luncheon, at which those three were present, with a
great whiteheaded and white-waistcoated butler, and three
powdered and liveried servants in attendance, passed over
almost in irksome silence, for all were fully occupied by their
own thoughts or plans.

Berkeley, who gazed at Louisa from time to time with
ill-concealed admiration and gratified vanity, felt that the
absence of the earl and countess at this interesting juncture
boded well for his success, opportunities for a tête-à-tête in
that usually numerous and always aristocratic household being
few and far between.

Lady Louisa, who more than half divined her admirer's
hopes, was full of her brief and hurried interview with me, and,
in anticipation of a scene, felt bored and worried; while poor
Cora's thoughts were all her own; a little—no, it was a great
sorrow, which none could know or sympathize with, filled her
heart in secret, for she was not communicative, and thus,
while she shared all the confidences and gossip of my Lady
Louisa, gave but little of her own in return.

So the progress of tiffin was "dooced slow," as Berkeley
thought it, and he felt somewhat relieved when Lady Louisa
rose, and, with a smile, said to Cora—

"Excuse me, I am now going to write my letters;" adding
to him, "I shall not forget," with another smile that, could he
have read it aright, boded but little success to his cherished
plans.

Punctually to the time, Lady Louisa sailed into the library,
where Berkeley, whose courage had been alternately ebbing
and flowing, was in waiting.  He handed her a seat, and,
after a few deprecatory remarks, by way of preface, took her
right hand between his own, and, as she did not immediately
withdraw it, he assumed fresh courage, and made a formal
declaration of his love and admiration of her, and then, before
she could speak, he rambled on about his finances, his social
habits, his income—some six thousand per annum—his further
expectations, and a great deal more to the same purpose.

Lady Louisa remained perfectly silent, and this silence, as
he had nothing more to say, caused him infinite confusion.

"You do not speak—you do not answer, dear Lady Louisa.
Do you not understand me?  I tell you that I love you with
all the devotion of which the human heart is capable, and I
pray you to pardon the—aw, aw—presumption of one in every
respect so unworthy of you, in venturing to address you in the
language of love; but who can control the—aw—emotions of
the heart!"

Still she did not speak.

"Say that you pity—say that you—aw—understand me!"
he urged.

"I understand, but cannot pity you," replied Louisa, calmly
and without betraying the slightest flutter or embarrassment.
"And I beg to assure you that—that, in this matter, you
must——"

"Address the earl, your father, dearest Lady Louisa—aw,
aw—in writing, or verbally?" was the cool and rapid question.

"Neither verbally nor in writing," said she, rising, and
assuming a dignity of bearing that made Berkeley feel
himself intolerably little.

"Aw, aw—the dooce!  Then how?" he asked, having
recourse to his eyeglass.

"I was about to say that I thank you, Mr. Berkeley—thank
you very much indeed—for the great honour you do me in
addressing me thus, and in making me such an offer; but
you must strive to dismiss all such thoughts from your breast
in future, as I could never, never love you!  Pardon me an
avowal so very painful, and permit me to leave you."

Her coolness, and almost unmoved bearing, piqued Berkeley,
and wounded his self-esteem, which was inordinate.

"Your bridal flowers," said he, with a bitter smile, "must
be blended with the faded strawberry leaves of some
Anglo-Norman line, I presume?"

"Not so, sir.  I have hopes, I admit, but they are not quite
so high," she replied, with a calm and steady glance, though
her short upper lip quivered with suppressed pride and anger.

"In—deed!" sneered Berkeley, as his habitual insolence
came now thoroughly to his aid; "and so you once and for
all actually refuse me, Lady Loftus?"

"I grieve to say, sir, that I do—once and for ever.  Let us
endeavour to forget this very unpleasant scene, and, if
possible, be as before—friends."

"And for whom do you refuse me?" he demanded, as pride
and jealousy rendered him blind to all future consequences.

"For whom, sir, matters not to you."

"I think it matters very much to me."

"Perhaps; but permit me to remind you, Mr. Berkeley,
that I am unused to be questioned thus."

"Oh," said he, bowing low, "doocid good.  I—aw—crave
your pardon; but if you will not tell me your preference,
Lady Louisa, shall I have the honour of telling you?"

"If you please," she replied, turning half away, and shrugging
her shoulders, while her colour deepened, and her dark
eyes gleamed with sudden anger.

"It is for one who is even now, perhaps, with a worthless
creature, whose society he prefers to yours—haw! haw! the
cast-off mistress of a brother officer!"

"It is false, sir!" she exclaimed, in an agitated voice, as
she turned her flashing eyes full upon him, and drew her tall
and glorious figure up like a tragedy queen; "it is false, and
cannot be."

"Oh, no, it is not false, my dear madam; but unfortunately,
is—aw—too true."

There was a pause, during which they regarded each other
steadily.

"Why could he not dine here at eight this evening?" asked
Berkeley.

"Because duty required his attendance elsewhere, if it is
Captain Norcliff to whom you refer, sir; but I shall no longer
bandy words here with you."

"Duty—doocid good!  At that very hour this evening—eight—we
shall find them together, if you choose to accompany me."

"I, sir, accompany you?" she repeated, disdainfully.

"Yes."

"To where he is—with her?"

"Yes."

"Dare you make such a proposition to me?"

"I do dare," he replied, with blind fury; "and I tell you
further, Lady Louisa Loftus, that this fine and moral young
gentleman, Captain Norcliff, has an affair with a girl well
known to all our mess; as the French, happily would term
her, *une femme entretenue*, of a brother officer—one who has
a doocid flaw in her fair fame, and most decided kick in her
gallop," he added, coarsely and maliciously, determined at
all hazards to ruin me with Louisa, and even with my uncle
and cousin, though he could gain nothing thereby.

"And you, his friend, tell me of this!" exclaimed Louisa,
with withering scorn in her manner, as she played nervously
with the rose diamond ring I had given her.

"Will you and Miss Calderwood accompany me this evening
to the cottage near the Reculvers, and I shall have the
pleasure of showing you how our modern Captain Bailey
solaces himself in 'country quarters.'"

At the mention of this cottage Lady Louisa started, and
changed colour visibly, and it was then Berkeley's turn to
smile, for certain odd rumours concerning it and its beautiful
occupant had reached her through the servants at the park,
and more particularly her own attendant; but recollecting her
position, she said, loftily and decidedly, while cresting up her
haughty head—

"'Tis false, sir!  I am indisposed to act the spy, and he will
not be there."

"Oh, yes, he will be there, be true as a turtle-dove—exact
as—haw—the clock at the Horse Guards.  We shall find him
mingling his tears with those of the Traviata; a philanthropic
Howard in a lancer uniform—a very Joseph—haw—haw—'a
man of snow?'"

"Sir!" exclaimed Lady Loftus, stamping her little foot.

"He's been devilish hard up of late—got fifty pounds this
morning from the paymaster—so his man told mine; the
girl's a dancer, and every one knows they are doocid
expensive cattle to keep and shoe."

"Sir, you forget yourself!" exclaimed Lady Louisa, while
her eyes flashed with an expression of rage, which even her
long lashes failed to soften.  "Papa and mamma are to dine
at the Priory—so this evening I am free, and you shall drive
us, that is, Miss Calderwood and me—to that odious cottage,
and with my own eyes I shall prove who is false, you or he!"

"Agreed, I am quite at your disposal," said he, bowing low.

And so ended this singular interview.  So ended Berkeley's
hopes of all but gratified malice, and they separated, each
with anger against the other sparkling in their eyes, and
burning in their hearts.

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Louisa at once sought Cora, and related all that had passed—the
abrupt proposal and its singular sequel—little knowing
that the latter portion of her narrative, like a double-edged
sword, cut two ways at once, and how her words stabbed poor
Cora to the heart; for the good girl would rather have heard
that I was steady and faithful in my regard for her brilliant
rival than that I was the creature Berkeley had striven to make
me appear.

"I have loved your cousin Newton too much to cease doing
so now, unless I find him unworthy, when I shall thrust his
image from my heart as if I had never seen or known him!
and I feel, Cora Calderwood, that I must either love or hate
him!" exclaimed Louisa, with a strange energy that quite
startled the quiet Scottish girl.  "I have a craving to learn
his truth or his falsehood, personally and undoubtedly.  So
you shall come with me, Cora.  'Tis only your cousin you
seek!"

"Louisa Loftus," she exclaimed.  "I cannot, and will not,
believe, in this duplicity or depravity of my cousin Newton."

"We shall go to this vile woman's cottage, dear, in secret,
and learn the truth for ourselves."

"Even at the risk of appearing guilty of espionage?"

"At all risks!" was the impetuous reply.  "That cottage
by the Reculvers!  Aha!  I remember that mamma's *soubrette*
said something about the young person who resides there with
an old woman, her mother, or aunt, or something equally
veritable and creditable; and added that no one was ever
known to visit her, save a gentleman like an officer—mark
that, like an officer—who usually came on horseback, and at
night."

"Oh, Louisa, you do not—you cannot—you shall not believe
all those slanders about dear Newton," said Cora, vehemently,
in a passion of tears, as she threw herself on the heaving bosom
of her more fiery and energetic friend, who, however, wept also.
"Did you not remark how pale, almost haggard, poor Newton
looked when we saw him with his troop to-day?"

"Well, perhaps nocturnal rambles and late rides from the
Reculvers——"

"Now peace, Lady Loftus, if you would not break my
heart," exclaimed Cora, arresting a cutting remark by a kiss
on her rosy and tremulous lips.

About twilight the pony phaeton again set forth from
Chillingham Park with the two young ladies.  There was no
outrider in attendance on this occasion; and their well-cloaked
charioteer was Mr. De Warr Berkeley, who was very silent,
to whom they never spoke, and who, to tell the truth, felt
somewhat ill at ease now, and scarcely knew where the whole
affair would end.

One fact he was certain of.  He knew, from past experience,
and my general character when serving in India, that I was
not to be trifled with.

He would, perhaps, have backed out of the whole matter,
could he have seen how to do so.  Then Louisa was
inflexible, though Cora was almost passive.

The ladies felt that, even were the information true, they
should not the less hate and despise the informant, who gratified
his spite and malice at the expense of a friend on the one
hand, and of their peace on the other.

"We are doing wrong, dearest Louisa," Cora whispered, as
the ponderous park gates clanked heavily behind them, and
they bowled along the darkening road, towards where the
spires of Canterbury were visible against the flush that lingered
in the sky to the westward.

"I know that in one sense we are so," replied Lady Louisa,
through her clenched teeth and closely-drawn veil; "but I
am not the less determined to solve this matter, to probe it to
the utmost, and to convict Captain Norcliff or Mr. Berkeley
of perfidy.  So take courage, and *allons*, my love!"

As they proceeded the April twilight deepened.  Once or
twice Cora spoke of returning; and then it was Berkeley who
urged them to proceed.

"Aw—haw, doocid absurd—don't hang fire now, ladies,
please," said he.  "We shall draw the cover directly."

Yet he was not without unpleasant misgiving as to how he
might figure after "the cover" was drawn, unless he could
convey the ladies away instantly, before explanations took
place, and this was a part of his intended programme.

"After having convincing proof that Captain Norcliff is
here, you will, of course, not remain—aw—to upbraid, and all
that sort of thing, Lady Louisa?" he asked, rather nervously.

"Proceed, sir, but do not question me," was the haughty
response, which made his cheek flush with rage in the shade.
For now Lady Loftus remembered, and felt fully, that in her
anger and confusion she had been completely thrown off her
guard; and that she had revealed and acknowledged our
mutual engagement, and her passion for me, to Cora Calderwood
(who had always suspected it), and, worse than all, to
Berkeley, whom she heartily despised, and who, she feared,
might make a dangerous use of the information he had won.

She had also been lured into committing an act of espionage,
far from proper or becoming.  But, nevertheless, she
resolved to go through it now, and to probe the ugly affair to
the end at all hazards—even to facing the fiery anger of her
mother, the lofty indignation of the earl, and the vacant and
senile astonishment of my Lord Slubber.

"How strange it is, Cora," she whispered, as they sat hand
in hand, "that one impulse leads me still to love Newton,
and yet another impulse lures me to hate him!  Where is
my constitutional, and where are my family pride and womanly
modesty, when I stoop to an act like this, and drag you, poor
child, into it, too?  Oh, I must love him very much
surely—and you, Cora—you——"

"I love him, too," was the calm and breathless response,
under the closely-drawn veil.

"Of course you do—he is your cousin, and your old playmate."

Cora assented only by a little sigh.

They both, it appeared afterwards, hoped desperately that
Berkeley might yet be mistaken in the whole affair, so far as
I was concerned, for they felt bitterly the truth of the maxim,
that "faith once destroyed is destroyed for ever, unless in a
heart which is in itself intrinsically faithless."

In the dusk tears rolled unseen down the gentle face of
Cora; but Louisa suppressed all appearance of emotion by
biting her nether lip, and clenching her little white teeth, like
the heroine of a French melodrama.

"Here we are at last!  Hush! let us approach softly,"
said Berkeley, as they drew near the little cottage where
Miss Auriol resided; and he turned the phaeton into a grassy
lane, and between high hedges close by; threw open a private
wicket, and assisted Cora to alight; but disdaining the
assistance of his proffered arm, Lady Louisa sprang to the
ground alone.

"This way—follow me, and softly, if you please," said
Berkeley, as he drew forth a private latch-key for the back
door—a means of entrance possessed by himself alone—and
they traversed the little flower-garden which lay around the
cottage.

My horse stood at the front door, with his bridle fastened
to the porch; and to this circumstance he took care to draw
their attention.

"It is Norcliff's black nag—his cover hack with the white
star on the counter.  You—aw—recognise it, ladies?" he
whispered.

"A present to him from my poor papa," said Cora,
reproachfully, as her heart beat painfully, and Louisa bit her
lips as the agony of conviction stole upon her.

"Proceed, sir," said she, haughtily; "what next?"

"Voices in the parlour—it is there our birds must be; this
way," said Berkeley, who, after a rapid inspection of the
interior, between the green trailers, scarlet-runners, and white
muslin curtains, had satisfied himself as to who were within,
and felt assured that if he lost Lady Louisa, I, at least, should
never win her, and that if, on one hand, he made me an
enemy, on the other, he got handsomely rid of the unhappy
girl of whose caresses he had long since grown weary, and
whose importunities and reproaches bored and fretted him now.

Between him and me there would be no friendship wasted,
no love lost; so he consoled himself by the dangerous maxim,
"that all is fair in love or war," as he opened the door softly
with his latch-key, and led his now agitated companions into
the interior of the cottage.





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.. _`CHAPTER XXI.`:

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   CHAPTER XXI.

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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.

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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 blasé, 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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXII.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  Your words have took such pains, as if they laboured
   |  To bring manslaughter into form, set quarrelling
   |  Upon the head of valour:—
   |  He's truly valiant that can wisely suffer
   |  The worst that man can breathe, and make his wrongs
   |  His outsides; wear them like his raiment carelessly,
   |  And ne'er prefer his injuries to his heart,
   |  To bring it into danger.
   |  If wrongs be evils, and enforce us kill,
   |  What folly 'tis to hazard life for ill!
   |                                            TIMON OF ATHENS.

.. vspace:: 2

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 depôt.  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."

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] 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.

.. vspace:: 2

"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.'"

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] 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.

.. vspace:: 2

"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 éclât 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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXIII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIII.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  Since there's no help, come let us kisse and part.
   |  Nay, I have done; you get no more of me;
   |  And I am glad—yea, glad with all my heart—
   |  That thus so clearly I myself can free;
   |  Shake hands for ever.  DRAYTON, 1612.

.. vspace:: 2

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.[\*]

.. vspace:: 2

.. class::noindent small

[\*] 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."

.. vspace:: 2

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 roué 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 *à 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 Sèvres 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."

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] 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.

.. vspace:: 2

"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:—

.. vspace:: 2

"MY DEAR NORCLIFF,—The lieutenant-colonel in command
of the consolidated depôts 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!'"

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXIV.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIV.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  Now, brave boys, we're bound for marchin',
   |    Both to Portingale and Spain;
   |  Drums are batin', colours flyin',
   |    And the divil a back we'll come again.
   |          So, love, farewell, we're all for marchin'!

   |  Eighty-eighth and Inniskillin',
   |    Boys that's able, boys that's willin';
   |  Faugh-a-ballagh and County Down,
   |    Stand by the harp, and stand by the crown.
   |          So, love, farewell, we're all for marchin'!

   |  The colonel cries, "Boys, are yee's ready?"
   |    "We're at your back, sir, firm and steady;
   |  Our pouches filled with balls and poulther,
   |    And a firelock sloped on every shoulther."
   |          So, love, farewell, we're all for marchin'!

.. vspace:: 2

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."

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] Order for marching.

.. vspace:: 2

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.[\*]

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] 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.

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXV.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXV.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  A wet sheet and a flowing sea,
   |    A wind that follows fast,
   |  And fills the white and rustling sail,
   |    And bends the gallant mast.
   |  And bends the gallant mast, my boys.
   |    While, like the eagle free,
   |  Away the good ship flies, and leaves
   |    Old England on the lee.

.. vspace:: 2

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 *Pristinæ 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.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] A corps disbanded in 1818; and formerly the 29th Light Dragoons,
were raised in 1795.

.. vspace:: 2

"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!"[\*]

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] 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.

.. vspace:: 2

"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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXVI.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVI.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  At length one whispered his companion, who
   |    Whispered another, and thus it went round,
   |  And then into a hoarser murmur grew,
   |    An ominous, and wild, and desperate sound;
   |  And when his comrade's thought each sufferer knew,
   |    'Twas but his own, suppressed till now, he found,
   |  And out they spoke of lots for flesh and blood,
   |  And who should die to be his fellows' food.—BYRON.

.. vspace:: 2

"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:—

.. vspace:: 2

"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."

.. vspace:: 2

"'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.[\*]

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] 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.

.. vspace:: 2

"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.'

"'*Très 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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXVII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVII.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  A still small voice spoke unto me,
   |  "Thou art so full of misery,
   |  Were it not better not to be!"

   |  Then to the still small voice I said,
   |  "Let me not cast in endless shade
   |  What is so wonderfully made."  TENNYSON.

.. vspace:: 2

"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.'

"'*Très 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 gré malgré!*—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, *sacré*! 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*."[\*]

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] A character not unlike Urbain Gautier figures
in the account of the
first or second expedition of Sir John Franklin.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXVIII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVIII.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  Pass we the long, unvarying course, the track
   |  Oft trod, that never leaves a trace behind;
   |  Pass we the calm, the gale, the change, the tack,
   |  And each well-known caprice of wave and wind,
   |  Cooped in their winged sea-girt citadel;
   |  The foul, the fair, the contrary, the kind,
   |  As breezes rise and fall, and billows swell,
   |  Till on some jocund morn—lo, land! and all is well.
   |                                              BYRON.

.. vspace:: 2

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:—

.. vspace:: 2

"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."

.. vspace:: 2

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 *viâ* 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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXIX.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIX.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  We pass the scattered isles of Cyclades,
   |  That, scarce distinguished seemed to stud the seas.
   |  The shouts of sailors double near the shores,
   |  They stretch their canvas, and they ply their oars.
   |  Full on the promised land at length we bore,
   |  With joy descending on the Cretan shore.
   |                           DRYDEN.—*Translation of Æn.* iii.

.. vspace:: 2

We were favoured by Æolus.  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 Ægean 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 Palæologus 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, *blasé*, 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 vivandière, 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
vivandière, 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."

"*Très bien*.  Take courage, *mon camarade*."

"Mademoiselle Sophie, you quiz me!"

"A Zouave, and afraid," exclaimed the vivandière; and then
followed a little sound there was no mistaking.

"You are indeed beautiful, Sophie.  There is not a
vivandière 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 Médecin, 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 vivandière
gave me a military salute, and tripped laughingly away,
singing—

   |  Vivandière du régiment,
   |  C'est Catin qu'on me nomme, &c.
   |

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 *caïque*, 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 metopæ, 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:—

   |  "Her hair, I said, was auburn; but her eyes
   |    Were black as death; their lashes the same hue,
   |  Of downcast length, in whose silk shadow lies
   |    Deepest attraction; for when to the view
   |  Forth from its raven fringe the full glance flies,
   |    Ne'er with such force the swiftest arrow flew.
   |   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*
   |  Her brow was white and low; her cheek's pure dye
   |    Like twilight rosy still with the set sun;
   |  Short upper lips—sweet lips! that make us sigh
   |    Ever to have seen such."
   |

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
hanée*, 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.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] "There is but one God, and Mahomet is his Prophet."

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXX.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXX.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  Let me see her once again!
   |  Let her bring her proud dark eyes,
   |  And her petulant quick replies;
   |  Let her wave her slender hand,
   |  With its gesture of command,
   |  And throw back her raven hair
   |  With the old imperial air;
   |    Let her be as she was then—
   |  The loveliest lady in all the land—
   |    Iseult of Ireland.

.. vspace:: 2

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 *à 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—

   |  Vivandière du régiment,
   |    C'est Catin qu'on me nomme,
   |  Je vends, je donne, et bois gaiment,
   |    Mon vin et mon rogomme.
   |  J'ai le pied leste et l'oeil mutin.
   |    Tin-tin, tin, tin, tin, tin, r'lin tin-tin.
   |  J'ai le pied leste et l'oeil mutin.
   |  Soldats, voilà Catin!
   |

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

   |  Soldats, voilà 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."

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] In the *Daily News*.

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXI.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXI.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |            So gaze met gaze,
   |  And heart saw heart, translucid through the rays,
   |  One same harmonious universal law,
   |  Atom to atom, star to star can draw,
   |  And heart to heart.  Swift darts, as from the sun,
   |  The strong attraction, and the charm is done.
   |                                      THE NEW TIMON.

.. vspace:: 2

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.
Viâ 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'Armée 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 *étourdi* 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 Lemartinière, Ambrose Paré, and so
forth, at the Ecole de Médecin, 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.  *Très bon*!  I shall see
pretty Mogador, if your magician has any skill."

"And where does your magician hang out?" asked Studhome.

"Hang—hang—*il mérite la corde*, you mean, monsieur?"
asked the puzzled Frenchman.

"No, no; where is he to be found?"

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

"*Très 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, *très 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 séance," 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!"[\*]

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] Camp phrase for the French linesmen.

.. vspace:: 2

"*Ah, mon capitaine*," said Jules.  "*Peste!* what a *roué* 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
hanée*, 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 séance, or whatever else he was pleased to call
it, he invited us all into an inner apartment which opened off
the *divan hanée*.

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."[\*]

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] Al Koran, chapters iii., xvii., and xxiv.

.. vspace:: 2

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
*retroussé*.  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."

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] The Mahommedan Angel of Death.

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXII.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  Sleep by evil spirits troubled,
   |    Fleeing at the matin bell;
   |  Fears that start to eyes scarce waking,
   |    Sighs that will not quit her cell.

.. vspace:: 2

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'Armée 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.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] Lieutenant-Colonel Cannon.

.. vspace:: 2

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'Armée 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 frère*."

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 frère*, 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 frère*," 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 frère*, 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 frère*.
To-morrow I shall tell you what it means, if you will remind
me; but, for to-night, adieu."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXIII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXIII.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  O fondest memories! come and go,
   |    Shine on sad times which are no more,
   |  As sunbeams gladden waters of snow,
   |    As wavelets kiss a barren shore:
   |  And light with love and tenderness
   |    The happy days which still are ours;
   |  Whose influence, rich in April showers,
   |  Casts round us love and tenderness.

.. vspace:: 2

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.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] Passed (final examination) at the Staff College,

.. vspace:: 2

"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 frère*, 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 charité* 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 château 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 château 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 château now, with its
round turrets, its gilded vanes, and white façade, rising above
the green woodlands, with the blue Saône 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 Château de Chaverondier?

"My mother was dead.  My father—a gentleman of the
*ancien régime*, 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 curé 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 François-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 château.  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 Montallé, 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 curé 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 château among
the mountains of Beaujolais from the absent Claude; but it
was soon too evident that Cecile Montallé 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
château, on learning that Claude was returning, and covered with
honour, too—save, perhaps, the fair-haired Cecile Montallé.
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 Montallé 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 château,
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 Montallé 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 château 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 Saône.  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 Saône, 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
curé*, I quitted the Château 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—

   |  My father cared little for shot or shell,
   |    He laughed at death and dangers;
   |  He'd have stormed the very gates of hell,
   |    At the head of the Connaught Rangers.
   |

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXIV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXIV

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  Then sacred be their last repose who fall
   |  Bravely and greatly at their duty's call,
   |  Mix with their country's cries the parting breath,
   |  And from the vanguard face her foes in death!
   |  I, too, have known the hour when friendship's tear
   |  Has dewed from British eyes a comrade's bier,
   |  When the rough soldier o'er the lowly cell
   |  Of fallen courage breathed a last farewell,
   |  Paid the last mournful honours to the brave,
   |  And left, with heavy heart, the new-closed grave.
   |                                        LORD GRENVILLE.

.. vspace:: 2

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'élite* 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.[\*]

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] 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.

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXV

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  Sword at my left side gleaming!
   |  Why is thy keen glance beaming,
   |    So fondly bent on mine?
   |    Thanks for that smile of thine.  Hurrah!

   |  Borne by a trooper daring,
   |  My looks his fire-glance wearing,
   |    I arm a freeman's hand,
   |    That well delights thy brand!  Hurrah!
   |                                THEODORE KÖRNER.

.. vspace:: 2

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 *recherché entrées*—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.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] 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.

.. vspace:: 2

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 *mêlée* 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.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] Foretold.

.. vspace:: 2

"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.





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.. _`CHAPTER XXXVI.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXVI.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  Let me go!  The day is breaking,
   |    Morning bursts upon mine eye,
   |  Death this mortal frame is shaking;
   |    But the soul can never die!

   |  Let me go!  The day-star beaming,
   |    Gilds the radiant realms above;
   |  Full its glory on me streaming
   |    Lights me to the land of love!
   |                          LAYS OF THE PIOUS MINSTRELS.

.. vspace:: 2

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 charité*, 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
Montallé, 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 frère*,"
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 Iræ' 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 frère*, 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 agoniâ et hodie
morituros.*"[\*]

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] "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!"

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXVII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXVII.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  News of battle!—news of battle!
   |    Hark, 'tis ringing down the street!
   |  And the archways and the pavement
   |    Bear the clang of hurrying feet.
   |  News of battle!—who hath brought it?
   |    News of triumph!  Who should bring
   |  Tidings from our noble army?
   |    Greetings from our gallant king?
   |                        LAYS OF THE SCOTTISH CAVALIERS.

.. vspace:: 2

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—

   |  Great events were on the gale,
   |  And each hour brought a varying tale,

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.

   |  There sat upon the linden tree
   |    A bird, and sang its strain;
   |  So sweet it sang, that, as I heard,
   |    My heart went back again;
   |  It went to one remembered spot,
   |    It saw the rose-trees grow,
   |  And thought again the thoughts of love
   |    There cherished long ago.

   |  A thousand years to me it seems
   |    Since by my love I sate,
   |  Yet thus to have been a stranger long,
   |    Was not my choice, but fate;
   |  Since then I have not seen the flowers,
   |    Nor heard the bird's sweet song,
   |  My joys have all too briefly passed,
   |    My griefs have been too long!
   |

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 *rôle*.

"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?

   |  Calderwood was fair to see,
   |  When it gaid to Cameltrie;
   |  But Calderwood was fairer still,
   |  When it grew owre Crosswood Hill."
   |

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 Scotiæ*, 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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXVIII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXVIII.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  The fight's begun;—in momentary blaze
   |  Bright o'er the hills the volleying lightning plays,
   |  Bursts the loud shell, the death shots hiss around,
   |  And the hoarse cannon adds its heavier sound,
   |  Till wide the gathering clouds that rise between
   |  Clothe in a thicker gloom the maddening scene;
   |  And as the billow's wild and angry crest,
   |  That swells in foam on Ocean's lurid breast,
   |  Through each long line the curling volumes spread,
   |  And hang their white wreaths o'er the column's head.

.. vspace:: 2

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 Kourgané 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 Kourgané 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 Mère de
Dieu*," to help them in their last agony, while the sisters of
charity and the *vivandières* rivalled each other in the rear in
their attention to the wounded and dying.





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.. _`CHAPTER XXXIX.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXIX.

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..

   |  Three hundred cannon threw up their emetic,
   |    And thirty thousand muskets flung their pills
   |  Like hail to make a bloody diuretic.
   |    Mortality! thou hast thy monthly bills;
   |  Thy plagues, thy passions, thy physicians, yet tick,
   |    Like the death-watch, within our ears the ills
   |  Past, present, and to come;—but all may yield
   |  To the true portrait of one battle-field.  BYRON.

.. vspace:: 2

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.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] 41st—so called since 1831.

.. vspace:: 2

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 *mêlée* 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 *échelon* 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 "Eöthen," 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 *échelon*, 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
Kourgané 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."[\*]

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] Kinglake, vol. ii.

.. vspace:: 2

The Heights of the Alma were won!





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.. _`CHAPTER XL.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XL.

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..

   |  Had ye no graves at home,
   |    Across the briny water,
   |  That hither ye must come,
   |    Like bullocks to the slaughter?
   |  If we the work must do,
   |    Why the sooner 'tis begun,
   |  If flint and trigger hold but true,
   |    The quicker 'twill be done,
   |        By the rifle! the good rifle!
   |        In our hands it is no trifle!

.. vspace:: 2

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
Kourgané 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 Kourgané 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 Kourgané 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 *vivandière* 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?"

"*Hélas! 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 *cafés chantants*—well, he, too, and two
hundred of our rank and file, are lying there."

The *vivandière* 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 Kourgané 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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XLI.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XLI.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  Mine own one! years have passed away
   |    Since I have seen your thoughtful face;
   |    Yet could I every feature trace—
   |  Your image haunts me night and day.
   |  A song brings back the time we walked
   |    Above the brown cliff's sloping lawn;
   |    From music I have even drawn
   |  The very words we used to talk.
   |  The crumbling church, the upland lea,
   |    The river wimpling round the bridge,
   |    The brave grey wold—the far-off ridge,
   |  The mournful singing of the sea.

.. vspace:: 2

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."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XLII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XLII.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  Alas! what evils I discern in
   |  Too great an aptitude for learning!
   |  And fain would all the ills unravel
   |  That aye ensue from foreign travel.
   |  Far happier is the man who tarries
   |  Quiet within his household *lares*.
   |  Read and you'll find how virtue vanishes,
   |  How foreign vice all goodness banishes,
   |  And how abroad young heads grow dizzy,
   |  Proved in the under-written Odyssey.
   |                          RELIQUES OF FATHER PROUT.

.. vspace:: 2

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 retroussé, 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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XLIII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XLIII.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   | ALBANY.  O save him! save him!
   |
   | GONERIL.  This is mere practice, Gloster:
   |           By the law of arms, thou wast not bound to answer
   |           An unknown opposite; thou art not vanquished,
   |           But cozened and beguiled.  SHAKSPEARE.

.. vspace:: 2

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 Cæsar'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 château
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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XLIV.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XLIV.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  Yes, thou art gone, sweet friend, my own,
   |    We miss thee every day,
   |  And I, yet more than all, alone,
   |    Can only weep and pray.

   |  Pray to be rendered meet for heaven,
   |    And agonize in prayer,
   |  That if we meet no more below,
   |    Our meeting may be there.

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XLV.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XLV.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  It was at length the same to me,
   |  Fettered or fetterless to be,
   |    I learned to love despair.
   |  And thus when they appeared at last,
   |  And all my bonds aside were cast,
   | Those heavy walls to me had grown
   |  A heritage—and all my own!
   |                            BYRON.

.. vspace:: 2

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 Russiæ*).

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 *à 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 Kourgané Hill with a strange
terror; for being, as the author of "Eöthen" 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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XLVI.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XLVI.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   | BEN. This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves!
   |      Supper is done, and we shall come too late.

   | ROMEO.  I fear too early; for my mind misgives,
   |         Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars,
   |         Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
   |         With this night's revels; and expire the term
   |         Of a despised life, closed in my breast,
   |         By some vile forfeit of untimely death:
   |         But he that hath the steerage of my course
   |         Directs the sail!
   |                                         SHAKSPEARE.

.. vspace:: 2

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 café 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 vivandière 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—

   |  "Vivandière du régiment
   |    C'est Catin qu'on me nomme,
   |  Je vends, je donne, et bois gaiment
   |    Mon vin et mon rogomme.
   |

"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'Armée
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—à *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'Armée Française*,' 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 *pâtés 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 pâté, 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 débris 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.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] Now an armour-clad, of six-inch iron plate.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XLVII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XLVII.

.. vspace:: 2

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

.. vspace:: 2

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

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

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

"That was annoying."

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

"But you were, of course, ill."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Are Sir Nigel's suspicions to be right, after all?"
thought I.

"You forget my Arab horse—my spoil from the enemy."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   |  Right about went horse and foot,
   |    Artillery and all,
   |  And as the devil left the house,
   |    They tumbled through the wall,
   |              When
   |  They saw our light dragoons,
   |  With their long swords, boldly riding,
   |    Whack! fol de rol, &c.
   |

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XLVIII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XLVIII.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  The tattoo beats, the lights are gone,
   |    The camp around in slumber lies;
   |  The night with solemn pace moves on,
   |    The shadows thicken o'er the skies.
   |  But sleep my weary eyes hath flown,
   |    And sad, uneasy thoughts arise.
   |  I think of thee, oh, dearest one,
   |    Whose love my early life hath blest—
   |  God of the gentle, frail, and lone,
   |    Oh, guard the tender sleeper's rest.

.. vspace:: 2

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

"Berkeley?" I inquired.

"Has given you the slip for this time."

"The devil!—how?"

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

"His sick leave——"

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

"He then divined your errand?"

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

"Something—what?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Once I had a narrow escape.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   |  The stately tomb which shrouds the great
   |    Leaves to the grassy sod
   |  The dearer blessing that its dead
   |    Are nearer to their God.
   |

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XLIX.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XLIX.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  To-morrow?  O, that's sudden!  Spare him:
   |  He's not prepared for death!  Even for our kitchens
   |  We kill the fowl of season.  Shall we serve Heaven
   |  With less respect than we do minister
   |  To our gross selves?  Good, good, my lord, bethink you:
   |  Who is it that hath died for this offence?
   |  There's many have committed it.
   |                                    SHAKSPEARE.

.. vspace:: 2

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

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

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

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

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

"Word for word."

"And what did he say?"

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

"Confounded puppy!" I exclaimed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Of course, sir—of course, sir; but, please, don't talk that
way."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   |  And for bonnie Annie Laurie
   |  I'd lay me doon and dee!

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

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] Letter from the camp.

.. vspace:: 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why?" asked Scriven.

"Can't you guess?" asked Berkeley.

"No."

"Because there is—aw—aw—a d——d cock among them."

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

"Qui va là?"

"Friends!" I replied.

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

"'Tis an affair of honour, *monsieur le colonel*, and we
propose to settle it here," said I.  "May we?"

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

"We cannot fight within our own lines, monsieur."

"I comprehend.  You don't permit duelling in your
service, I believe?"

"No."

"Indeed—singular!"

"Public opinion is against it."

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

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

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

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

Let me hasten over what follows.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"*C'est la fortune de guerre, camarades*," said Colonel
Giomar, shrugging his shoulders.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Studhome scanned the letter hurriedly.

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

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

So all her studied silence was accounted for now!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER L.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER L.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  The line divides: the right half, which is
   |  Conspicuous for madder breeches,
   |  Presses, like flock of hunted sheep,
   |  Towards yon tower, so grim and steep.
   |                                      STONE TALK.

.. vspace:: 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Poor Jack!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER LI.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER LI.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  Half a league, half a league,
   |    Half a league, onward,
   |  Into the Valley of Death,
   |    Rode the Six Hundred!
   |                        TENNYSON.

.. vspace:: 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   |  One crowded hour of glorious life
   |  Is worth an age without a name.
   |

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

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

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

"It's all up—threes about—retire!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

.. vspace:: 1

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



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

"Ov coorse it is—barrin' the tip of an ear."

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

"And the captain here!"

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

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

"Are you sure the farrier-sergeant is dead?"

"Quite sure, docthor."

"You saw him get the sleeping draught?"

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

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

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

"Well—well?"

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

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

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

"Use it, and wear it for my sake.  All's over with me!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Eighty-one!—my God!—the poor fellows!"

"Yes, sir—eighty-one," repeated Jones, sadly.

"Where are they?"

"Some are in the trenches—others coming."

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

"God rest them," said I, lifting my cap, as I leaned on the
trumpeter's arm.

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





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.. _`CHAPTER LII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER LII.

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..

   |  Then I thought of one fair spring-time,
   |    When she placed her hand in mine,
   |  And, half-silent, said she loved me,
   |    And, half-blushing, seemed divine.

   |  Then I thought of that same winter,
   |    When the earth was dead and cold;
   |  Fit time, in sooth, to marry one
   |    She worshipped for his gold.

.. vspace:: 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The lieutenant of marines conducted me to a fashionable hotel.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Cora!"

"Newton!"

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

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

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

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

"To-night, papa?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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.. _`CHAPTER LIII.`:

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   CHAPTER LIII.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  Away with my firelock!
   |    Here, take my red coat!
   |  On danger and glory
   |    No longer I'll dote.
   |  A train of soft passions
   |    Now rise in my breast;
   |  The soldier subsides,
   |    And ambition's at rest.
   |  And no more shall the sound
   |    Of the trumpet or drum
   |  Forewarn the poor shepherd
   |    Of evils to come.
   |                          SOLDIER'S SONG.

.. vspace:: 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Dying!" exclaimed the Queen; "poor, poor fellow!"

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

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

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

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

And he pressed the rose to his thin blue lips.

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

"Ye-yes, sir—thank you—very easy,"

"Is there anything you would wish?"

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

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

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

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





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER LIV.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER LIV.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  Banished every thought of sadness
   |  In our home of quiet gladness;
   |  Absence, separation o'er,
   |  Together, and to part no more.
   |  United, lovingly we glide,
   |  Ever going with the tide.

   |  Storm nor tempest fear we now,
   |  Love sits watching at the prow;
   |  Happy, trusting, silently,
   |  Onward to the shoreless sea,
   |  Together let us drift or glide,
   |  Ever going with the tide.
   |                              ST. JAMES'S MAGAZINE.

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

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

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

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

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

Cora repeated her winning question.

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

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

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

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

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

"And I, too, Cora."

"Shall I sing you a verse of an old song?"

"If you please.  Is it the 'Thistle and Rose'?"

"No."

"What then?"

   |  "It's gude to be merry and wise,
   |    It's gude to be honest and true;
   |  It's gude to be off wi' the old love
   |    Before ye are on wi' the new.

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

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

So much for "Time, the avenger!"

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

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

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

With the poet, I may exclaim—

   |  Yea!  I have found a nobler heart
   |    That I may love with nobler love:
   |  True as the trembling stars thou art,
   |    Pure as the trembling stars above.
   |  And shall I live a nobler life,
   |    Come peace or passion, joy or grief?
   |    Remembrance brings a sweet relief,
   |  And points me to this nobler life.

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

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

"To the memory of the brave fellows who died before
Sebastopol!"

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   THE END.

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   BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, SURREY.

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