splendour for the suitor of an earl's daughter, and the rival of a
rich viscount. Ah, you sly dog, you devilish sly dog!" he added, as he
seated himself on the edge of the table, winked portentously, and
poked me under the small ribs with the shank of his hunting-whip, "I
suspected that something of this kind would follow that aquatic
excursion of yours; and Winifred says she always knew of it."

"Winifred--Miss Lloyd!" said I, nervously.

"Why didn't you speak to _me_, and consult with me, about the matter
when at Craigaderyn? I am certain that I should have made all square
with the Countess. Egad, Harry, I will back you to any amount, for the
sake of those that are dead and gone," he added, shaking my hand
warmly, while his eyes glistened under the shaggy dark brows that in
hue contrasted so strongly with the whiteness of his silky hair.

"You got my letter, Sir Madoc?"

"Yes, and I am here in consequence. It cut short my shooting, though."

"I am so sorry--"

"Tush; no apologies. The season opened gloriously; but I missed you
sorely, Harry, when tramping alone over turnip fields, through miles
of beans and yellow stubble, though I had some jolly days of it down
in South Wales. Lady Naseby--

"She knows nothing of the secret engagement?" said I, hurriedly and
anxiously.

"Nothing as yet."

"As yet! Must she be told?"

"Of course; but I shall make all that right, by-and-by. She believes
now in the real character of her attaché, Mr. Guilfoyle, who intruded
himself among us, and who has disappeared. Your perfect innocence has
been proved alike to her and her daughter, and now you may win at a
canter. The photo of you in the locket was abstracted from Winifred's
album, and has _her_ name written on the back of it. You are to ride
over with me to Walcot Park, where I have left Winifred, as she
refused flatly to come to Winchester--why, I know not. She will afford
you an opportunity of slipping the ring again on your fair one's
finger, and doing anything else that may suggest itself at such a
time--you comprehend, eh? Winny bluntly asked Lady Naseby's permission
to invite you, as you were so soon to leave England."

"The dear girl! God bless her!"

"So say I. Lady Naseby said at first that though you had been
maligned, there had also been a _contretemps_ of which even her French
maid was cognisant; that she hated all _contretemps_ and so forth; but
Winny--you know how sweet the girl is, and how irresistible--carried
her point, so you spend this evening there. Tell Evans to have your
nag ready within the hour. That fellow is not forgetting his
mother-tongue among the Sassenachs. He comes from our namesake's
place, _Dolwrheiddiog_, 'the meadow of the salmon.' I know it well."

"If I could but meet Guilfoyle--" I was beginning.

"Forget him. I cannot comprehend how he found such favour in the sight
of Lady Naseby; but when I called him a thoroughbred rascal, she
quietly fanned herself, and fondling her beastly little cur said, 'My
dear Sir Madoc, this teaches us how careful we ought to be in choosing
our acquaintance, and how little we really know as to the true
character, the inner life and habits of our nearest friends. But our
mutual legal adviser Mr. Sharpus always spoke of Mr. Guilfoyle as a
man of the greatest probity, and of excellent means.' 'Probably,' said
I; 'but I never liked that fellow Sharpus; he always looked like a man
who has done something of which he is ashamed, and that is not the
usual expression of a legal face.'"

So poor Winifred Lloyd had been my chief good angel; yet _she_ was the
last whom I should have chosen as ambassadress in a love affair of
mine. She was a volunteer in the matter, and a most friendly one to
boot. Were this a novel, and not "an owre true tale," I think I should
have loved Winny; for "how comes it," asks a writer, "that the heroes
of novels seem to have in general a bad taste by their choice of
wives? The unsuccessful lady is the one we should have preferred.
Rebecca is infinitely more calculated to interest than Rowena."

My heart was brimming with joy, and with gratitude to Sir Madoc and
his elder daughter; the cloud that overhung me had been exhaled in
sunshine, and all again was happiness. I was about to pour forth my
thanks to my good old friend, whose beaming and rubicund face was as
bright as it could be with pleasure, when there came a sharp single
knock on the door of my room.

"Come in!" said I, mechanically.

My visitor was the sergeant-major of the dépôt battalion, a tall thin
old fellow who had burned powder at Burmah and Cabul, and who
instantly raised his hand to his forage-cap, saying,

"Beg pardon, sir; the adjutant's compliments--the route has just come
for your draft of the Royal Welsh, and all the others, for the East."

"Is this certain!" asked Sir Madoc, hurriedly.

"Quite, sir; it will be in orders this evening. They all embark
to-morrow at midday."

"Where?" asked I.

"At Southampton, as usual. The first bugle will sound after _réveil_
to-morrow."

The door closed on my formal visitor, who left me a little bewildered
by this sudden sequel to the visit of Sir Madoc, who wrung my hand
warmly and said,

"Heaven bless and protect you, Harry! I feel for you like a son of my
own going forth in this most useless war. And so we are actually to
lose you, and so soon, too!"

"But only for a little time, I hope, Sir Madoc," said I, cheerfully,
thinking more of my early meeting with Estelle than the long
separation the morrow must inevitably bring about. I ordered Evans to
pack up and prepare everything, to leave my P.P.C. cards with a few
persons I named; and avoiding Price, Clavell, Mostyn, and others, rode
with Sir Madoc towards Walcot Park, as my mind somehow foreboded, amid
all my joy and excitement, for what I feared would be the _last_ time.

CHAPTER XXVI.--WITHOUT PURCHASE.

Close to, and yet quietly secluded from, the mighty tide of busy
humanity that daily surges to and fro between the Bank and the Mansion
House, all up Cheapside and Cornhill, in a small dark court off the
latter, was the office of Messrs. Sharpus and Juggles, solicitors. The
brick edifice towered to the height of many stories; a score of names
appeared on each side of the doorway in large letters; and many long
dark passages and intricate stairs led to the two dingy rooms where
those human spiders sat and spun the webs and meshes of the law. Their
dens had a damp and mouldy odour; no ray from heaven ever fell into
them, but a cold gray reflected light came from the white encaustic
tiles, with which the opposite wall of the court was faced for that
purpose; and of that borrowed light even the lower room, where their
half-starved clerks worked into the still hours of the night--a
veritable cave of Trophonius, if one might judge by their sad, seedy,
and dejected appearance--was deprived from its situation; and in all
these courts and chambers gas was burned daily in those terrible
seasons when the London fogs assume somewhat the solidity and hue of
pea-soup. Mr. Sharpus sat in his private room, surrounded by boxes of
wood or japanned tin and ticketed dockets of papers, that were mouldy
and dirty--as their contents too probably were--while fly-blown
prospectuses, plans, and advertisements of lands, houses, and
messuages for sale, and so forth, covered the discoloured walls.

Juggles, his partner, was a suave, slimy, and meekly-mannered man,
"with the eye of a serpent and the voice of a dove;" but our present
business is with the former, who was a thin round-shouldered
individual, with a cold keen face, an impending forehead, sunken dark
gray eyes, the expression of which varied between cunning and
solemnity, pride, vulgar assurance, and occasionally restlessness.
Shrewd of head and stony of heart, he was not quite the kind of man at
whose mercy one would wish to be. He had a hard-worked and sometimes
worried aspect; but now an abject white fear, with an unmistakably
hunted expression, came over his face, when one of the clerks from the
lower den ushered in, without much ceremony, Mr. Guilfoyle, who had in
his hand a sporting paper, which he was reading as he entered.

"_You_ here again?" exclaimed Sharpus, laying down his pen, and
carefully closing the door.

"Yes, by Jove, again!" replied Guilfoyle, with barely a nod, and
seating himself with his hat on.

"So soon!" groaned Sharpus; and reseating himself, he eyed, with an
expression of haggard hate, Guilfoyle, who continued to read from the
paper hurriedly, excitedly, and half aloud, some report of a
steeplechase.

"The Devil--threw his rider--remounted; at the next fence Raglan took
the lead, followed by Fairy and Beauty, and Beau, the Devil lying
next; last fence but one taken by the quintette almost simultaneously,
when Raglan, Beauty, and Beau came away together, the first-named
winning a very fine race by half a length--Beauty being third, and
close upon Beau, but Fairy was nowhere. D--nation! there is a pot of
money gone, or not won, which amounts to the same thing in the end!"
and crushing up the paper, he threw it on the writing-table of
Sharpus.

"Wanting more money?" said the latter, in a hollow voice.

"Precisely so; out at the elbows--in low water--phrase it as you will.
I have sold even my horse at last," replied the other, folding his
arms, and regarding the lawyer mockingly.

"And the ring given you by--by the King of Bavaria?" said Sharpus,
with a sickly smile.

"I retain but a paste imitation of that remarkable brilliant; and that
I may present you as a mark of my regard and esteem."

"I thought you had made something by a mercantile transaction, as you
phrased it, when last on the Continent?"

"So I did; 'the mercantile transaction' being nothing less than
breaking the bank at Homburg, by steadily and successfully backing the
red, and sending home all those who came for wool most decidedly
_shorn_."

"You should have saved some of those ill-gotten gains for future
contingencies," said Sharpus.

"How much easier it is to advise and to speculate than to act with
care and decision!" sneered Guilfoyle.

"I pity your poor wife," said the lawyer, sincerely enough.

"She has no documentary proof that she is such," replied Guilfoyle,
angrily. "Pshaw! what is pity? an emotion that is often at war with
reason and with sense, too; for a handsome face or a well-turned ankle
may make us pity the most undeserving object."

The lawyer sighed, and at that moment sincerely pitied himself; for it
had chanced that, in earlier years, an intimacy with Guilfoyle led to
the latter discovering that which gave him such absolute power as to
reduce him--Sharpus--to be his very slave. This was nothing less than
the _forgery_ of a bill in the name of Guilfoyle; who, before
relinquishing the privilege of prosecution, on retiring the document,
had obtained a complete holograph confession of the act, which he now
retained as a wrench for money, and held over the head of Sharpus,
thereby compelling him to act as he pleased. After a minute's silence,
during which the two men had been surveying each other, the one with
hate and fear, the other with malignant triumph, Guilfoyle said, "I
did Lady Naseby, as you know, a service at Berlin, when at very low
water; being seen with her won me credit, which I failed not to turn
to advantage. I followed her and her daughter through all Germany--at
Ems, Gerolstein, Baden, and then to Wales, where I was in clover at
Craigaderyn. I was a fool to fly my hawks at game so high as the
peerage; and I feel sure it was that beast of a fellow Hardinge, of
the Royal Welsh, who blew the gaff upon me, and prevented me from
entering stakes, as I intended to do, for one of the daughters of that
horse-and-cow-breeding old Welsh baronet; and they are, bar one, the
handsomest girls in England."

"And that one?"

"Is Lady Estelle Cressingham."

Even the ghastly lawyer smiled at his profound assurance.

"Have you no remorse when you think of Miss Franklin?"

"No more than you have, when you have sucked a client dry, and leave
him to die in the streets," replied Guilfoyle, with his strange dry
mocking laugh; "remorse is the word for a fool--the unpunished crime,
I have read somewhere, is never regretted. Men mourn the consequences,
but never the sin or a crime itself. As for Hardinge, d--n him!" he
added, grinding his teeth; "I thought to put a spoke in his wheel, by
passing off Georgette as his wife, but Taffy came to his aid, and the
true story was told; and yet, do you know, there were times when I
played my cards exceedingly well with the Cressinghams. Besides, you
always represented me to be a man of fortune."

"I have invariably done so," groaned Sharpus.

"And have stumped out pretty well to maintain the story, while hinting
of--"

"Coal-mines in Labuan, shares in others in Mexico, and all manner of
things, to account for the sums wrung from me--from my wife and
children. But, God help me, I can do no more!"

"Bah! what do they or you want with that villa at Hampstead? But you
are a good fellow, Sharpus; and, thanks to your assistance, I worked
the oracle pretty well at Walcot Park for Mr. Henry Hardinge."

"Against him, you mean?"

"Of course; but, unluckily, our story wouldn't stand testing."

"Could you expect it to do so?"

"But I put a hitch in his gallop there, anyhow. By Jove, I was a great
fool not to make love to the old woman, instead of her daughter."

"Meaning Lady Naseby?" said Sharpus, with surprise.

"So Burke and Debrett name her. She is just at that age--twice her
daughter's--when the soft sex become remarkably soft indeed, and apt
to make fools of themselves."

"She would indeed have been one had she listened to you."

"Thanks, old tape-and-parchment; I did not come here for a character,
but to show you the state of my cash-book."

Again the lawyer groaned, and Guilfoyle laughed louder than ever.
Delight to have a lawyer under his heel rendered him merciless; but
even a worm will turn, so Sharpus said sternly, "How have you lived
since the last remittance--extortion?"

"Call it as you will," replied the other, putting his glass in his
eye, and smilingly switching his leg with his cane; "I have lived as
most men do who live by their wits, and the follies, or it may be the
_crimes_--O, you wince!--of others; meeting debts and emergencies as
they come, content with the peace or action of the present, and never
regretting the past, or fearing the future! With the help of an ace,
king, and queen, when my betting-book or a stroke of billiards failed
me, and with your great kindness, my dear old Sharpus, I have, till
now, always kept my funds far above zero."

"Your life is a great sham--a very labyrinth of deceit!" exclaimed the
lawyer, furiously.

"And yours, friend Sharpus?"

"Is spent in slaving for my family, and endeavouring to atone for, or
to buy the concealment of, one great error--the error that made
you--ay, men such as you--my master!"

Guilfoyle laughed heartily, and said,

"I require 600_l_. instantly!"

"Not a penny--not another penny!"

"We shall see. Sharpus, though a bad lot, I know that you are not the
utter rogue that most of your profession are--"

"Leave my office, scoundrel, or I shall kill you!" said Sharpus, in a
low voice of concentrated passion, as he became deadly pale, and a
dangerous white gleam came into his stealthy restless eyes, which
seemed to search in vain for a weapon.

"If I leave your office it will be for the purpose of laying before
the nearest police-magistrate a certain document you may remember to
have written; and I am so loth to kill the goose that lays my golden
eggs," continued the other, in his quiet mocking tone. "But remember,
Mr. Sharpus," he added, in a lofty and bullying manner, as he grasped
the shoulder of the listener, "that the forgery of a document is not
deemed an error in legal practice here, as in Spain or Scotland,
but a _crime_ meriting penal servitude; and shall I tell you what that
means--you, who have now wealth, ease, position, a handsome wife, and
several children? You will be torn from all these for ever, as a
felon!"

Drops of perspiration poured over the poor wretch's temples as his
tormentor continued: "Think of being in Millbank, beside the muggy
Thames, and the years that would find you there, a bondsman and a
slave, who for the least misconduct would be lashed like a faulty
hound, and ironed in a blackhole. Hard work, aggravated by the
consciousness of infamy; clad in the gray livery of disgrace; your
name effaced from the Law List, and for it substituted the letter or
number on your prison garb!"

"For God's sake, hush!" implored the wretched lawyer, in terror, lest
the speaker's voice might reach the room of Juggles, or the ears of
the clerks below; "hush, and I shall do all you wish."

"Come--that is acting like a reasonable being."

"Will 200_l_. do you--this time?"

"Two hundred devils! I want 600_l_. at least."

"I shall be ruined with my partner; he must know ere long where all
these moneys have gone."

"That is nothing to me; tell him if you dare."

Sharpus burst into tears, and said, piteously,

"At present I can give but 200_l_.--the rest shall follow."

"Well, you can do something else for me, and I may trouble you no
more."

"How?" asked Sharpus, eagerly and incredulously, with a dreary and
bewildered air.

"Get me some employment, where there is little to do; I hate
brain-work."

"Employment!--where? with whom?"

"Civil or military, I care not which."

"Military! impossible--too old. Stay, I have it!" exclaimed the
lawyer; "you have been in the Militia, I know."

"Three months in the Royal Diddlesex."

"What say you to an appointment in Lord Aberdeen's new Land Transport
Corps? It will be easily got--a handsome uniform and great _éclat_,
though the officers are nearly all taken from the ranks. The duties
are simple enough--conveyance of baggage, and carrying off the wounded
_after_ an action."

"Not to bury the dead?--ugly work that."

"No, no."

"By Jove, I'll go!" he exclaimed, as Sharpus filled up the cheque.

Sharpus strove in vain to conceal his delight.

"I have of course done a few things which would hardly bear the 'light
of the world's bull's-eye' turned upon them, but the Horse Guards know
nothing of them. You have noble and powerful clients, and can do this
easily for me. Bravo!" And they actually shook hands over the matter,
as if over a bargain.

Sharpus lost no time in using the necessary influence, and--though not
exactly a cadet after Mr. Cardwell's heart--this commission was
decidedly one without purchase; and on the strength of having been
once in the boasted constitutional force, "Henry Hawkesby Guilfoyle,
gent., _late_ Lieutenant, Diddlesex Militia," appeared in the
_Gazette_ ere long, as one of twenty-four comets of the long-since
disbanded Land Transport Corps, for service in the Crimea.

CHAPTER XXVII.--RECONCILIATION.

As Sir Madoc and I proceeded along the to me well-known Whitchurch
road, I asked myself mentally, could it really be that I was again
looking with farewell eyes on all this fair English scenery, and
perhaps for the last time; for our departure to the seat of war, where
we were to be face to face and foot to foot with an enemy, was very
different from other voyages to a peaceful British colony? Now, varied
by autumnal tints, brown, golden, or orange, I saw the long and shady
lane where Estelle had last seen me, and near it the low churchyard
wall, where our evil genius had rent away the locket from his wife.
Sir Madoc's eyes were turned chiefly to the tawny stubble-fields, and
he sighed with regret, as he saw the brown coveys of partridges
whirring up, that he had not his patent breech-loader in lieu of a
hunting-whip.

"Estelle--Estelle!" thought I. "How many temptations in mighty
London, and in the country, too--in Brighton, that other London by the
sea, and wherever she may go--will beset one so noble and so
beautiful--allurements that may teach her to forget and banish from
her memory the poor Fusileer subaltern, to whom she seems as the
centre of the universe!"

The evening was a lovely one, and the scenery was beautiful. Chestnuts
and oaks were, at every turn of the way we rode, forming natural
arches and avenues, beyond which were pleasant glimpses of quaint
cottages, whose walls and roofs were nearly hidden by masses of roses
and honeysuckle; short square village spires and ivy-covered
parsonages; widespreading pastures, where the sleepy cattle browsed
amid purple clover and golden cowslips, with the glory of the ruddy
sunset falling aslant upon them, while the ambient air was full of
earthy and leafy fragrance; for many fallen leaves, the earliest spoil
of autumn, lay with bursting cones in cool and sunless dells, or by
the wayside, where the fern and foxglove mingled under the old thick
hedgerows. And so I was looking, as I have said, on all this peaceful
scene, perhaps for the _last_ time; yet there was no sadness in my
heart, for the revulsion or change of feeling, from the gloom and
tumultuous anxiety of many, many days past, and even of that morning,
was great indeed to me, especially when we cantered through the
handsome iron gates of Walcot Park, the once suspicious keeper of
which gave me an unmistakable glance of recognition. I felt like one
in a dream as I threw my reins to a servant, and was led upstairs by
Sir Madoc.

"Where is Lady Estelle?" he asked of another valet, to whom I gave my
sword in the hall.

"In the front drawing-room."

"Alone?"

"I think so, sir."

"All right, Harry!"

But he suddenly affected to remember that he had something to say to
his own groom, and as he turned back, I was ushered into the long and
stately apartment. I had a dreamy sense of being amid many buhl tables
and glass shades, much drapery, and several mirrors that reproduced
everything, amid which I saw Estelle advancing cordially to meet me.
She had a bright smile in her face, and held out both her hands; but I
could scarcely speak.

"Estelle," I whispered, "joy--joy! It is indeed joy, to see you once
again!"

"Then you quite forgive me, dearest Harry?"

"Forgive you? O Estelle!" I exclaimed, in a low and passionate voice,
as she turned up her adorable face to meet mine half-way.

I knew from past experience that caresses from her meant much more
than they did from most women; for Estelle, though proud and reticent,
and apparently cold and calm, was reluctant to give and to accept
them; so now I felt all the truth and sincerity of this reunion. "A
lovers' quarrel is but love renewed;" we, however, had not quarrelled,
but been cruelly wrenched asunder by the art and cunning of another.

"Are you on duty, Mr. Hardinge?" said a voice; and from a window where
she had been sitting, quite unseen and unnoticed by me, Winny Lloyd
came forth, looking, as I thought, a little paler and sadder than when
I had seen her last at Craigaderyn Court.

"What makes you think I am on duty, dear Miss Lloyd?--or rather let me
say, my dear, dear good friend and guardian angel Winifred, to whose
intercession I owe all the happiness of a time like this," said I,
pressing her hand caressingly between both of mine.

"Because you are in undress uniform, of course," said she, almost
petulantly.

"I can wear no other costume now; we bid good-bye to mufti, the sable
livery of civilisation, to-morrow."

"How?"

"We march at daybreak."

"For the East?"

"Yes; for the East, at last."

"So soon?" exclaimed both girls at once.

"The order came within an hour or little more, when Sir Madoc was with
me."

The eyes of the girls were full of sudden tears, and they gazed on me
with an honest emotion of tenderness and real interest, that,
considering the rare beauty and high position of both, were alike
flattering and bewildering; and I felt that this was one of those
moments when, to be a soldier or a sailor on the eve of departure to
the seat of war, was indeed worth something.

And Winifred, the impulsive Welsh fairy, so fresh-hearted, so simple
in her motives, and sweet in her disposition, uttered something very
like a little sob in her slender white throat, adding apologetically
to Estelle, "We have been such old friends, Harry Hardinge and I."

"You never wrote to me, Estelle," said I, softly, yet reproachfully.

"I dared not; you remember our arrangement," she replied, with
hesitation.

"Nor was I invited here, like Mostyn, Clavell, and others; thus I had
no opportunity of--"

"I had no control, darling Harry, over mamma's dinner-list: I could
but suggest to mamma; and then there was that terrible story. But here
comes mamma!"

And turning, I found myself face to face with the tall, handsome,
and stately Countess of Naseby, whom--nathless her chilling manner
and lofty presence--I hoped yet to hail as a very creditable
mother-in-law.

I was on the eve of departure, to go where glory waited me. I might
cross her exclusive path no more; so my Lady Naseby seemed quite
disposed to bury the hatchet, and received me with that which was--for
her--unusual kindness, and an _enmpressement_ which made the eyes of
her daughter to sparkle with pleasure. A late dinner made a sad hole
in the time I had hoped to spend with Estelle; yet I had the pleasure
of sitting beside her--a pleasure that was clouded by the conviction
that my presence would soon be imperatively requisite at the barracks,
where so much was to be done ere morning, and that I should be
compelled to abridge even this, my farewell visit, to pleasant Walcot
Park, and all who were there. Fortunately, Lady Naseby went quietly to
sleep in her boudoir after dinner, with Tiny on her lap; Sir Madoc
obligingly went into the library to write; and Winifred suggested a
turn in the conservatory, where for a little time she adroitly left
Estelle and me together.

There is no utility in dwelling on how we sealed our reconciliation
and renewed our troth, when once more I placed my ring upon her
finger; or in rehearsing the soft and tender words--perhaps (O
heaven!) the "twaddle"--we spoke for an indescribable few minutes, and
how each said to the other that our apparent separation had been as a
living death. But now all that misery was over; we loved each other
more than ever, and the grave alone could part us finally; words, the
prompting of the heart, came readily, till our emotions became too
deep, and she agreed that I should write to her boldly, "as ere long
mamma, through good Sir Madoc, must know all." And so we leaned
against a great flower-stand, almost hidden by gorgeous azaleas, our
hands tightly clasped in each other, eyes looking fondly into eyes,
and feeling that the depth of our tenderness formed for us one of
those few-and-far-between portions of existence when time seems to
stand still, when silence is made eloquent by the beatings of the
heart, when we almost forget we are mortal, and feel as if earth had
become heaven. From this species of happy trance we were roughly
roused by the crash of a great majolica vase containing a giant
cactus, and a voice exclaiming querulously,

"God bless my soul!--Pardon me; I did not know any one was here."

"The devil you didn't!" was my blunt rejoinder.

And there, with gold glasses on his long aristocratic nose, and in his
richly-tasselled _robe de chamber_ and embroidered slippers, stood my
Lord Pottersleigh, whom I knew not to be at Walcot Park, as he had
been nursing his gout upstairs; and now I wished his lordship in a
hotter climate than the quarters of the 2nd West India for his
unwelcome interruption. Of what he had seen or what he thought I cared
not a rush, so far as _he_ was concerned; and a few minutes later saw
me, after a hurried farewell to all, with the pleasure of remembered
kisses on my lips, and my heart full of mingled joy and sadness,
triumph and prayerful hope for the perilous future, flying at full
gallop back to Winchester.

CHAPTER XXVIII.--ON BOARD THE URGENT.

"Weather bit your chain, and cast loose the topsails!" cried a hoarse
voice, rousing me from a reverie into which I had fallen--one of those
waking-dreams in which I am so apt to indulge.

By this time the quarter-boats had been hoisted in, and the anchor got
up "reluctant from its oozy cave"--no slight matter in the great
troopship Urgent--when there was a stiff breeze even under the lee of
the Isle of Wight; and as her head pitched into the sea, the water
rushed through the hawse-holes, and the chain cables surged in such a
fashion as almost to start the windlass-barrel when it revolved
beneath the strength of many sturdy arms, and tough, though bending,
handspikes. Leaning over the taffrail, and looking at the dim outline
of the coast of Hampshire from St. Helen's Roads, to which two tugs
had brought us from the great tidal dock at Southampton to a temporary
anchorage, and seeing Portsmouth, with its spires and shipping steeped
in a golden evening haze, I recalled the events of the past bustling
day--could it be that only _a day_ had passed?--since "the first bugle
sounded after _réveil_," and all our detachments, five in number,
destined for the army of the East had paraded amid the gray light of
dawn, in the barrack-square at Winchester, in heavy marching order,
with packs, blankets, and kettles, and marched thence, their caps and
muskets decked with laurel-leaves, the drums and fifes playing many a
patriotic air, accompanied by the cheers of our comrades, and the
tears of the girls who were left behind us--the girls "who doat upon
the military."

Yet so had we marched--the drafts of the Scots Royals and Kentish
Buffs, the two oldest regiments in the world, leading the way; then
came those of the 7th Fusileers, my own of the Royal Welsh, the 46th,
and the wild boys of the 88th bringing up the rear--to the railway
station, when they were packed in carriages, eight file to each
compartment--packed like sheep for the slaughter, yet all were singing
merrily, their spirits high though their purses were empty, the last
of their "clearings" having gone in the grog-shop and canteen over
night; and there by that railway platform many saw the last they were
to see, in this life, at least, of those they loved best on earth--the
wife of her husband, the parent of the child--separated all, with the
sound of the fatal drum in their ears, and the sadness of remembered
kisses on their lips, or tear-wetted cheeks, till, with a shriek and a
snort, the iron horse swept them away on his rapid journey. I caught
the enthusiasm of the brave fellows around me. It was impossible not
to do so; and yet, amid it all, there was the recollection of a
woman's face, so pale and beautiful, as I had seen it last (when
bidding a brief and formal farewell at the drawing-room door of Walcot
Park), with her mouth half open, her sorrowful eyes full of
earnestness, and the tender under lip clenched by the teeth above it,
as if to restrain emotion and repress tears--the face of Estelle
Cressingham.

My heart and thoughts were with her, while mechanically I had, as in
duty bound, to see to the most prosaic wants of my detachment,
consisting of one officer (Hugh Price), two sergeants, and forty rank
and file of the Royal Welsh. To the latter were issued their coarse
canvas fatigue-frocks. I had to see their muskets racked, their berths
allotted, the messes and watches formed, the ammunition secured, and
fifty other things required by her Majesty's regulations. All baggage
not required for the voyage was sent below; and we heartily quizzed
poor Price, whose bullock trunks were alleged to contain only cambric
handkerchiefs, odd tiny kids, variously-tinted locks of hair, and
faded ribbons. But strict orders were issued concerning smoking, as we
had gunpowder in the lower hold; and a number of four-wheeled
hospital-waggons for the Land Transport Corps, grimly suggestive, as
each vehicle was divided into four compartments, fitted to receive
four killed or wounded men, on commodious stretchers, with
under-carriages, canopies, and medicine-chests.

Some of my brother officers were glad enough, glory apart, to be
leaving Jews and lawyers, "shent. per shent." and legal roguery,
behind them. One of the former tribe, having followed Raymond Mostyn
concerning a bill discounted at only sixty per cent., came alongside,
insisting that the balance should be taken half in cash, and half in a
"warranted Correggio," with some villainous wine for the voyage, and
some jewelry "for the girls at Malta;" but he was swamped in his boat
under the counter, when the first mate unceremoniously cast loose the
painter, and sent old Moses--"Mammon incarnate"--to leeward, shrieking
and cursing in rage and terror. So my short reverie was completely
broken now, as the great ship, with her deck crowded by soldiers in
forage-caps and gray greatcoats, swayed round, and our skipper, an old
man-o'-war lieutenant, from the poop continued his orders with that
promptitude and tone of authority which are best learned under the
long pennant.

"Make sail on her, my lads, with a will!" he cried. And the watch
rushed to the coils at the belaying-pins, aided by the soldiers told
off for deck duty. "Cast loose the topsails! hoist away, and sheet
home!"

"Bear a hand, forecastle, there! cat and fish the anchor!" added the
first mate; and in a few minutes, with a heavy head sea--the same sea
where, by that shore now lessening in the distance, Danish Canute
taught his servile Saxon courtiers the lesson of humility--we bore
past Sandown Bay, with its old square fort of bluff King Harry's day
upon its level beach: and Portsmouth's spires and Selsey Point sunk
fast upon our lee, while our bugles were announcing sunset. And then
something of sadness and silence seemed to steal over the once noisy
groups, as they gathered by the starboard side, when we cleared the
Isle of Wight. When the yards were squared, more sail was made on the
Urgent; and before the north wind we stood down the Channel, and ere
the same bugles sounded again, for all save the deck-watches to
turn-in below, we were standing well over to the coast of France. The
white cliffs had melted into the world of waters, and we had bidden a
long good-night to dear old England. The twinkling light on St.
Catharine's Point lingered long at the horizon, and was watched by
many an eye, as Mostyn, Clavell, and I, with others, cigar in mouth,
walked to and fro on the poop, surmising what awaited us in the land
for which we were bound.

As yet the land forces of the Allies had not come to blows with the
Russians; but the imperial fort and mole at Odessa (works constructed
at vast cost and care by Catharine and Alexander) had been destroyed,
and all their ships of war lying there had been burnt or sunk by the
Anglo-French fleet. The Russians had taken and burned our war-steamer
the Tiger, and cruelly bombarded Sinope. The Turks had driven them
across the Danube, and defeated them at Giurgevo, but had lost a
subsequent battle in Armenia. Napier had bombarded and destroyed the
forts upon the Aland Isles in the Baltic; and we on board the Urgent,
with many other successive drafts departing eastward, from every
British port south of Aberdeen, were full of ardour and of hope to be
in time to share in the landing that was to be made at _last_ upon the
coast of the enemy, though no one knew _where_.

CHAPTER XXIX.--"ICH DIEN."

And now, while the stately troopship Urgent is passing under the guns
of old Gib, and ploughing the waters of the Mediterranean, I may
explain that which may have been a puzzle to the non-military
reader--the meaning of "the Red Dragon." In the breasts of all who
serve or have served in the army there exists an _esprit de corps_, a
filial attachment, to all that belongs to their regiment, to its past
history, its conduct in peace and war, its badges won in battle--those
honours which are the heraldry of the service, and connected with the
glory of the empire--in its officers and soldiers of all ranks. This
sentiment is more peculiar to some regiments, perhaps, than others,
especially those which, like the Scottish and Irish, have distinct
nationalities to represent and uphold; but to none is it more
applicable than the old Fusileers, whose motto is at the head of this
chapter. By _esprit de corps_ the good and brave are excited to fresh
feats of valour, and the evil-disposed are frequently deterred from
risking disgrace by a secret consciousness of the duty it inculcates,
and what is required of them by their comrades; for, like a Highland
clan, a regiment has its own peculiar annals and traditions. It is a
community, a family, a brotherhood, and should be the soldier's happy
though movable home, while a regiment great in history "bears so far a
resemblance to the immortal gods as to be old in power and glory, yet
to have always the freshness of youth."

So it is and has been with mine, which was first embodied at Ludlow,
in Shropshire, in 1689, from thirteen companies of soldiers, raised
specially in Wales, under Lord Herbert, of Cherbury, whose cousin,
Colonel Charles Herbert, M.P. for Montgomery, was killed, at the head
of the Fusileers, in his buff coat and cuirass, at the battle of
Aughrim, after having led them through a bog up to the waist belt,
under a terrible fire from the Irish. His successor, the valiant Toby
Purcell, who had been major of the regiment, greatly distinguished
himself at the battle of the Boyne, and the huge spurs, worn by him on
that memorable occasion, are _still_ preserved in the corps, being
always in possession of the senior major for the time being.

To attempt a memoir of the regiment would be to compile a history of
all the wars of Britain since the Revolution. Suffice it to say, that
on every field, in the wars of the Spanish Succession, those of
Flanders (where "our army swore so terribly"), at Minden, in America,
Egypt, and the ever-glorious Peninsula, the Welsh Fusileers have been
in the van of honour, and, like their Scottish comrades, might well
term themselves "second to none."

Among the last shots fired _after_ Waterloo were those discharged by
the Fusileers, when, on the 24th of June, six days subsequent to the
battle, they entered Cambrai by the old breach near the Port du Paris.
As it is common for corps from mountainous districts to have some pet
animal--as the Highlanders often have a stag--as a fond symbol to
remind them of home and country, the regiment has the privilege of
passing in review preceded by a goat with gilded horns, adorned with
ringlets of flowers, and a plate inscribed with its badge.

No record is preserved of the actual loss of the regiment at Bunker's
Hill, though the assertion of Cooper, the American novelist, that on
that bloody day "the Welsh Fusileers had not a man left to saddle
their goat," which went into action with them, would seem to be
corroborated by the fact that only _five_ grenadiers escaped; while
Mrs. Adams, in a letter to her husband, the future President of the
United States, says of that battle, "our enemies were cut down like
grass; _and but one officer of all the Welsh Fusileers remains to tell
his story_." When old Billy, the favourite goat of the 23rd, departed
this life in peace in the Caribbean Isles, whence he had accompanied
the regiment from Canada in 1844, her Majesty the Queen, on learning
that he was greatly lamented by the soldiers, sent to them, from
Windsor Park, a magnificent pair of the pure Cashmerian breed, which
had been presented to her by the Shah of Persia. On every 1st of
March, on the anniversary of their tutelary patron--St. David--the
officers give a splendid entertainment; and when the cloth is removed,
and the leek duly eaten, the first toast is a bumper to the health of
the Prince of Wales; the memory of old Toby Purcell is not forgotten,
and, as the order has it, the band plays "'The noble Race of Shenkin,'
while a drum-boy mounted on the goat, which is richly caparisoned for
the occasion, is led thrice round the table by the drum-major."

At Boston, in 1775, a goat somewhat resented this exhibition, by
breaking away from the mess-room, and rushing into the barracks with
all his trappings on. There are few battlefields honourable to Britain
where the Welsh Fusileers have not left their bones. The colours which
wave over their ranks show a goodly list of hard-won honours--"bloody
and hard-won honours," says a writer. "Arthur himself, Cadwallader,
Glendower, and many an ancient Cambrian chief, might in ghostly
form--if ghosts can grudge--envy their bold descendants the fame of
these modern exploits, and confess that the lance and the corselet,
the falchion and the mace, have done no greater deeds than those of
the firelock and the buff-belt, the bayonet and sixty rounds of
ball-cartridge." On their colours are the two badges of Edward the
Black Prince--the Rising Sun and the Red Dragon; "a dragon addorsed
gules, passant, on a mountain vert," as the heralds have it. This was
the ancient symbol of the Cambrian Principality, with the significant
motto, _Ich dien_, "I serve." And now, at the very time the Urgent was
entering the Mediterranean, the regiment was on its way, with others,
to win fresh laurels by the shores of the Black Sea; and with his
horns gaily gilded, and a handsome, regimental, silver plate clasped
on his forehead, Cameydd Llewellyn, whilom the caressed pet of the
gentle Winny Lloyd, was landing with them at Kalamita Bay, and the
hordes of Menschikoff were pouring forward from Sebastopol.[2]

CHAPTER XXX.--NEWS OF BATTLE.

We came in sight of Malta at daybreak on the 28th of September, and
about noon dropped our anchor in the Marsamuscetta, or quarantine
harbour, where all ships under the rank of a frigate must go. This
celebrated isle, the master-key of the Mediterranean, the link that
connects us with Egypt and India, was a new scene to me. Mostyn and
some others on board the Urgent had been quartered there before, and
while I was surveying the vast strength of its batteries of white
sandstone, with those apparently countless cannon, that peer through
the deep embrasures, or frown _en barbette_ over the sea; the quaint
appearance of those streets of stairs, which Byron anathematised; the
singular architecture of the houses, so Moorish in style and aspect,
with heavy, overhanging balconies and flat roofs all connected, so
that the dwellers therein can make a common promenade of them; the
groups of picturesque, half-nude, and tawny Maltese; the monks and
clerical students in rusty black cloaks and triangular hats; the Greek
sailors, in short jackets and baggy blue breeches; the numbers of
scarlet uniforms, and those of the Chasseurs de Vincennes (for two
French three-deckers full of the latter had just come in); the naked
boys who dived for halfpence in the harbour, and jabbered a dialect
that was more Arabic than Italian--while surveying all this from the
poop, through my field-glass, Mostyn was pointing out to me the great
cathedral of St. John, some of the auberges of the knights, and
anticipating the pleasure of a fruit lunch in the Strada Reale, a
drive to Monte Benjemma, a dinner at Morell's, in the Strada Forni, a
cigar on the ramparts, and then dropping into the opera-house, which
was built by the Grand-master Manoel Vilhena, and where the best
singers from La Scala may be heard in the season; and Price of ours
was already soft and poetical in the ideas of faldettas of lace, black
eyes, short skirts, and taper ankles, and anticipating or suggesting
various soft things. While the soldiers clustered in the waist, as
thick as bees, the officers were all busy with their lorgnettes on the
poop, or in preparation for a run ashore, when the bells of Valetta
began to ring a merry peal, the ships in the harbour to show all their
colours, and a gun flashed redly from the massive granite ramparts of
St. Elmo, a place of enormous strength, having in its lower bastions a
sunk barrack, capable of holding two thousand infantry.

"Another gun!" exclaimed little Tom Clavell, as a second cannon sent
its peal over the flat roofs, and another; "a salute, by Jove! What is
up--is this an anniversary?"

It was _no_ anniversary, however, and on the troopship coming to
anchor in the crowded and busy harbour, and the quarantine boat coming
on board, we soon learned what was "up;" the news spread like
lightning through the vessel, from lip to lip and ear to ear; the hum
grew into a roar, and ended in the soldiers and sailors giving three
hearty cheers, to which many responded from other ships, and from the
shore; while the bands of the Chasseurs de Vincennes, on board the
three-deckers, struck up the "Marseillaise."

News had just come in that four days ago a battle had been fought by
Lord Raglan and Marshal St. Arnaud at a place called the Alma in Crim
Tartary; that the allied troops after terrible slaughter were
victorious, and the Russians were in full retreat. That evening a few
of us dined at the mess of the Buffs, a battalion of which was
quartered in the castle of St. Elmo. The officers occupied one of the
knights' palaces--the Auberge de Bavière--near that bastion where the
Scottish hero of Alexandria is lying in the grave that so becomes his
fate and character. This auberge is a handsome building overlooking
the blue sea, which almost washes its walls; and there we heard the
first hasty details of that glorious battle, the story of which filled
our hearts with regret and envy that we had not borne a share in it,
and which formed a source of terrible anxiety to the poor wives of
many officers who had left them behind at Malta, and who could only
see the fatal lists after their transmission to London. We heard the
brief story of that tremendous uphill charge made by the Light
Division--the Welsh Fusileers, the 19th, 33rd, 88th, and other
regiments--supported by the Guards and Highlanders; that the 33rd
alone had _nineteen_ reliefs shot under their two colours, which were
perforated by sixty-five bullet-holes. We heard how Colonel Chesters
of ours, and eight of his officers, fell dead at the same moment, and
that Charley Gwynne, Phil Caradoc, and many more were wounded.

"On, on, my gallant 23rd!" were the last words of Chesters, as he fell
from his horse.

We heard how two of our boy ensigns, Buller and little Anstruther of
Balcaskie, were shot dead with the colours in their hands; how
Connelly, Wynne, young Radcliffe, and many more, all fell sword in
hand; how the regiment had fought like tigers, and that Sir George
Brown, after his horse was shot under him, led them on foot, with his
hat in his hand, crying, "Hurrah for the Royal Welsh! Come on, my
boys!"

And on they went, till Private Evans planted the Red Dragon on the
great redoubt, where nine hundred men were lying dead. The heights
were taken by a rush, and the first gun captured from the Russians was
by Major Bell of ours, who brought it out of the field. A passionate
glow of triumph and exultation filled my heart; I felt proud of our
army, but of my regiment in particular, for the brave fellows of the
Buffs were loud in their commendations of the 23rd; proud that I wore
the same uniform and the same badges in which so many had perished
with honour. None but a soldier, perhaps, can feel or understand all
this, or that _esprit de corps_ already referred to, and which sums up
love of country, kindred, pride of self and profession, in one. But
anon came the chilling and mortifying thought that I enjoyed only
reflected honours. Why was I now seated amid the splendour and luxury
of a mess in the Auberge de Bavière? Why was I not yonder, where so
many had won glory or a grave? How provoking was the chance, the mere
chain of military contingencies, by which I had lost all participation
in that great battle, the first fought in Europe since Waterloo--this
Alma, that was now in all men's mouths, and in the heart of many a
wife and mother, fought and won while we had been sailing on the sea,
and while the unconscious folks at home throughout the British Isles
were going about their peaceful avocations; when thousands of men and
women, parents and wives, whose tenderest thoughts were with our
gallant little host, were ignorant that those they loved best on earth
perhaps were already cold, mutilated, and buried in hasty graves
beneath its surface, in a place before unheard of, or by them unknown.

So great was the slaughter in my own regiment, that though I was only
a lieutenant, there seemed to be every prospect of my winning ere long
the huge spurs won by Toby Purcell at the Boyne Water; but my turn of
sharp service was coming; for, though I could not foresee it all then,
Inkermann was yet to be fought, the Quarries to be contested, the
Mamelon and Redan to be stormed, and Sebastopol itself had yet to
fall. Had I shared in that battle by the Alma, I might have perished,
and been lost to Estelle for ever; leaving her, perhaps, to be wooed
and won by another, when I was dead and forgotten like the last year's
snow. This reflection cooled my ardour a little; for love made me
selfish, or disposed to be more economical of my person, after my
enthusiasm and the fumes of the Buffs' champagne passed away; and now
from Malta I wrote the first letter I had ever addressed to her, full
of what the reader may imagine, and sent with it a suite of those
delicate and beautiful gold filigree ornaments, for the manufacture of
which the Maltese jewellers are so famed; and when I sealed my packet
at the Clarendon in the Strada San Paola, I sighed while reflecting
that I could receive no answer to it, with assurances of her love and
sorrow, until after I had been face to face with those same Muscovites
whom my comrades had hurled from the heights of the Alma.

Three days after this intelligence arrived we quitted Malta, and had a
fair and rapid run for the Dardanelles. The first morning found us,
with many a consort full of troops, skirting, under easy sail, the
barren-looking isle of Cerigo--of old, the fabled abode of the goddess
of love, now the Botany Bay of the Ionians; its picturesque old town
and fort encircled by a chain of bare, brown, and rugged mountains,
whose peaks the rising sun was tipping with fire. As if to remind us
that we were near the land of Minerva, and of the curious Ascalaphus,

                    "Begat in Stygian shades
          On Orphnè, famed among Avernal maids,"

many little dusky owls perched on the yards and booms, where they
permitted themselves to be caught. Ere long the Isthmus of Corinth
came in sight--that long tract of rock connecting the bleak-looking
Morea with the Grecian continent, and uniting two chains of lofty
mountains, the classical names of which recalled the days of our
school-boy tasks; thence on to Candia, the hills of which rose so pale
and white from the deep indigo blue of the sea, that they seemed as if
sheeted with the snow of an early winter; but when we drew nearer the
shore, the land-wind wafted towards us the aromatic odour that arises
from the rank luxuriance of the vast quantity of flowers and shrubs
which there grow wild, and form food for the wild goats and hares.

Every hour produced some new, or rather ancient, object of interest as
we ploughed the classic waters of the Ægean Sea, and no man among us,
who had read and knew the past glories, traditions, and poetry of the
shores we looked on, could hear uttered without deep interest the
names of those isles and bays--that on yonder plain, as we skirted the
mainland of Asia, stood the Troy of Priam; that yonder hill towering
in the background, a purple cone against a golden sky, was Mount Ida
capped with snow, Scamander flowing at its foot; Ida, where Paris, the
princely shepherd, adjudged the prize of beauty to Venus, and whence
the assembled gods beheld the Trojan strife; for every rock and peak
we looked on was full of the memories of ancient days, and of that
"bright land of battle and of song," which Byron loved with all a
poet's enthusiasm. Dusk was closing as we entered the Hellespont; the
castles of Europe and Asia were, however, distinctly visible, and we
could see the red lights that shone in the Turkish fort, and the
windmills whirling on the Sigean promontory, as we glided, with
squared yards, before a fair and steady breeze, into those famous
straits which Mohammed IV. fortified to secure his city and fleets
against the fiery energy of the Venetians; and now, as I do not mean
"to talk guide-book," our next chapter will find us in the land of
strife and toil, of battle and the pest; in that Crim Tartary which,
to so many among us, was to prove the land of death and doom.

CHAPTER XXXI.-UNDER CANVAS.

The 4th of October found me with my regiment (my detachment "handed
over," and responsibility, so far as it was concerned, past) before
Sebastopol, which our army had now environed, on _one_ side at least.
And now I was face to face with the Russians at last, and war had
become a terrible reality. Tents had been landed, and all the troops
were fairly under canvas. Our camp was strengthened by a chain of
intrenchments dug all round it, and connected with those of the
French, which extended to the sea on their left, while our right lay
towards the valley of Inkermann, at the entrance of which, on a chalky
cliff, 190 feet high at its greatest elevation, rose the city of
Sebastopol, with all its lofty white mansions, that ran in parallel
streets up the steep acclivity. In memory I can see it now, as I used
to see it then, from the trenches, the advanced rifle-pits, or through
the triangular door of my tent, with all its green-domed churches, its
great round frowning batteries, forts Alexander and Constantine and
others, perforated for cannon, tier above tier; and far inland
apparently, for a distance after even the suburbs had ceased, were
seen the tall slender masts of the numerous shipping that had taken
shelter in the far recesses of the harbour, nearly to the mouth of the
Tchernaya, from our fleets (which now commanded all the Black Sea).
And a pretty sight they formed in a sunny day, when all their white
canvas was hanging idly on the yards to dry.

Nearer the mouth of the great harbour were the enormous dark hulls of
the line-of-battle ships--the Three Godheads of 120 guns, the
Silistria of 84, the Paris and Constantine, 120 each, and other
vessels of that splendid fleet which was soon after sunk to bar our
entrance. Daily the Russians threw shot and shell at us, while we
worked hard to get under cover. The sound of those missiles was
strange and exciting at first to the ears of the uninitiated; but
after a time the terrible novelty of it passed away, or was heard with
indifference; and with indifference, too, even those who had not been
at Alma learned to look on the killed and wounded, who were daily and
nightly borne from the trenches to the rear, the latter to be under
the care of the toil-worn surgeons, and the former to lie for a time
in the dead-tents. The siege-train was long in arriving. "War tries
the strength of the military framework," says Napier. "It is in peace
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_." Yet with us such was the state of the
"framework," by the results of a beggarly system of political economy,
that when war was declared--a war after forty years of peace--our
arsenals had not a sufficient quantity of shells for the first
battering-train, and the fuses issued had been in store rotting and
decaying since the days of Toulouse and Waterloo. This was but one
among the many instances of gross mismanagement which characterised
many arrangements of the expedition. And taking advantage of the
delays, nightly the Russians, with marvellous rapidity, were throwing
up additional batteries of enormous strength, mounted with cannon
taken from the six line-of-battle ships which, by a desperate
resolve of Prince Menschikoff's, were ultimately sunk across the
harbour-mouth, where we could see the sea-birds, scared by the adverse
cannonade, perching at times on their masts and royal-yards, which
long remained visible above the water. Occasionally our war-steamers
came near, and then their crews amused themselves by throwing shells
into the town. Far up the inlet lay a Russian man-of-war, with a
cannon ingeniously slung in her rigging. The shot from this, as they
could slue it in any direction, greatly annoyed our sappers, and
killed many of them, before one well-directed ball silenced it for
ever.

Two thousand seamen with their officers, forming the Naval Brigade of
gallant memory, were landed from our fleet, bringing with them a
magnificent battering-train of ship-guns of the largest calibre; and
these hardy and active fellows lent most efficient aid in dragging
their ordnance and the stores over the rough and hilly ground that
lies between Balaclava and the city. They were all in exuberant
spirits at the prospect of a protracted "spree" ashore; for as such
they viewed the circumstance of their forming a part of the combined
forces destined to take Sebastopol, and they amused and astonished the
redcoats by their freaks and pranks under fire, and their ready
alacrity, jollity, and muscular strength. Guns of enormous weight and
long range were fast being brought into position; the trenches were
"pushed" with vigour; and now the work of a regular siege--the
consecutive history of which forms no part of my narrative--was begun
in stern earnest when the batteries opened on the 16th October. Our
armies were placed in a semicircle, commanding the southern side of
this great fortified city and arsenal of the Black Sea. They were in
full possession of the heights which overlook it, and were most
favourably posted for the usual operations of a siege, which would
never have been necessary had it been entered after Alma was won. A
deep and beautiful ravine, intersecting the elevated ground, extended
from the harbour of the doomed city to Balaclava, dividing the area of
the allied camp into two portions. The French, I have said, were on
the left, and we held the right.

On the very day our batteries opened, I received the notification of
my appointment to a company. This rapid promotion was consequent to
the sad casualties of the Alma; and two days after, when the
trench-guards were relieved, and I came off duty before daybreak, I
crept back to my tent cold, miserable, and weary, to find my man
Evans--brother of the gallant private of the same name who planted the
Red Dragon on the great redoubt--busy preparing a breakfast for
_three_, with the information that Caradoc and Gwynne, who had been on
board the Hydaspes, an hospital ship for officers, had rejoined the
night before, and had added their repast to mine for the sake of
society. But food and other condiments were already scarce in the
camp, and tidings that they had come from Balaclava with their
haversacks _full_, caused more than one hungry fellow to visit my
humble abode, the canvas walls of which flapped drearily in the wind,
that came sweeping up the valley of Inkermann. Without undressing, as
the morning was almost in, I threw myself upon my camp-bed, which
served me in lieu of a sofa, and strove, with the aid of a plaid, a
railway-rug, and blanket, to get some warmth into my limbs, after the
chill of a night spent in the damp trenches; while Evans, poor fellow,
was doing his best to boil our green and ill-ground coffee in a
camp-kettle on a fire made of half-dried drift-wood, outside my tent,
which was pitched in a line with thousands of others, on the slope of
the hill that overlooked the valley where the Tchernaya flows. Though
the season was considerably advanced now, the days were hot, but the
nights were correspondingly chill; and at times a white dense fog came
rolling up from the Euxine, rendering still greater the discomfort of
a bell-tent, as it penetrated every crevice, and rendered everything
therein--one's bedding and wearing apparel, even that which was packed
in overlands and bullock-trunks--damp, while sugar, salt, and bread
became quite moist. Luckily, somehow it did not seem to affect our
ammunition. Then there came high winds, which blew every night,
whistling over the hill-tops, singing amongst the tent-ropes, and
bellowing down the valley of Inkermann.

These blasts sometimes cast the tent-ropes loose by uprooting the
pegs, causing fears lest the pole--whereon hung the revolvers, swords,
pans, and kettles of the occupants--might snap, and compel them, when
hoping to enjoy a comfortable night's rest off duty, to come forth
shivering from bed to grope for the loosened pegs amid the muddy soil
or wet grass, and by the aid of a stone or a stray shot--if the mallet
was not forthcoming--to secure them once more. This might be varied by
a shower of rain, which sputtered in your face as you lay abed, till
the canvas became thoroughly wetted, and so tightened. Anon it might
shrink; then the ropes would strain, and unless you were in time to
relax them, down might come the whole domicile in a wet mass on those
who were within it. Now and then a random shot fired from Sebastopol,
or the whistling shell, with a sound like t'wit-t'wit-t'wit,
describing a fiery arc as it soared athwart the midnight sky on its
errand of destruction, varied the silence and darkness of the hour.
The clink of shovels and pickaxes came ever and anon from the
trenches, where the miners and working-parties were pushing their sap
towards the city. The sentinels walked their weary round, or stood
still, each on his post shivering, it might be, in the passing blast,
but looking fixedly and steadily towards the enemy. The rest slept
soundly after their day of toil and danger, watching, starvation, and
misery; forgetful of the Russian watchfires that burned in the
distance, heedless of the perils of the coming day, and of _where_ the
coming night might find them. And so the night would pass, till the
morning bugle sounded; then the stir and bustle began, and there was
no longer rest for any, from the general of the day down to the goat
of the Welsh Fusileers; the cooking, and cleaning of arms, parade of
reliefs for outpost and the trenches, proceeded; but these without
sound of trumpet or drum, as men detailed for such duties do
everything silently; neither do their sentries take any complimentary
notice of officers passing near their posts. Ere long a thousand white
puffs, spirting up from the broken ground between us and the city,
would indicate the rifle-pits, where the skirmishers lay _en perdue_,
taking quiet pot-shots at each other from behind stones, caper-bushes,
sand-bags, and sap-rollers; and shimmering through haze and smoke--the
blue smoke of the "villainous saltpetre"--rose the city itself, with
its green spires and domes, white mansions, and bristling batteries.

And so I saw it through the tent-door as the morning drew on, and the
golden sunshine began to stream down the long valley of Inkermann,
"the city of caverns;" while our foragers were on the alert, and
Turkish horses laden with hay, and strings of low four-wheeled arabas,
driven by Tartars in fur skull-caps, brown jackets, and loose white
trousers, would vary the many costumes of the camp. And the morning
sunshine fell on other things which were less lively,--the long mounds
of fresh earth where the dead lay, many of them covered with white
lime dust to insure speedy decay. And then began that daily cannonade
against the city--the cannonade that was to last till we _alone_
expended more than one hundred thousand barrels of gunpowder, and
heaven alone knows how many tons of shot and shell.

Often I lay in that tent, with the roar of the guns in my ears,
pondering over the comfort of stone walls, of English sea-coal fires,
and oftener still of her who was so far away, she so nobly born and
rich, surrounded, as I knew she must always be, by all that wealth and
luxury, rank and station could confer; and I thought longingly, "O for
aunt Margaret's mirror, or Surrey's magic glass, or for the far-seeing
telescope of the nursery tale, that I might see her once again!"
Estelle's promises of writing to me had not been fulfilled as yet, or
her answers to my loving and earnest letters from Malta and the Crimea
had miscarried.

"Welcome, Caradoc! welcome, Gwynne!" cried I, springing off the
camp-bed as my two friends entered the tent, of which I was the sole
occupant, as my lieutenant was on board the Hydaspes ill with fever,
and my ensign, a poor boy fresh from Westminster school, was under one
of the horrid mounds in the shot-strewn valley.

"Harry, old fellow, how are you?--how goes it? Missed the Alma, eh?"
said they cheerfully, as we warmly shook hands.

"All the better, perhaps," said Mostyn, who now joined us, while Price
and Clavell soon after dropped in also; so two had to sit on the
camp-bed, while the rest squatted on chests or buckets, and as for a
table, we never missed it.

"And you were hit, Caradoc?"

"In the calf of the left leg, Harry, prodded by the rusty bayonet of a
fellow who lay wounded on the ground, and who continued to fire
_after_ us when we had left him in the rear, till one of ours gave him
the _coup de grâce_ with the butt-end of his musket. Would you believe
it?--the goat went up hill with us, and I couldn't, even while the
bullets fell like hail about us, resist caressing it, for the sake of
the donor."

"Poor Winny Lloyd!"

"Why poor?" asked Phil.

"Well, pretty, then. I saw her just before I left Southampton."

"This goat seems to be the peculiar care of Caradoc," said Gwynne; "he
rivals its keeper, little Dicky Roll the drummer, in his anxiety to
procure leaves, and buds of spurge, birch, and bird-cherry for it."

Phil Caradoc laughed, and muttered something about being "fond of
animals;" but a soft expression was in his handsome brown eyes, and I
knew he was thinking of sweet Winifred Lloyd, of his bootless suit,
and the pleasant woods of Craigaderyn.

"And you, Charley, were hit, too? Saw your name in the _Gazette_,"
said I.

"A ball right through the left fore-arm, clean as a whistle; but it is
almost well."

"And now to breakfast. Look sharp, Evans, there's a good fellow! A
morning walk from Balaclava to the front gives one an appetite," said
I.

"Yes, that one may not often have, like us, the wherewith to satisfy.
An appetite is the most troublesome thing one can have in the vicinity
of Sebastopol," replied Phil.

A strange-looking group we were when contrasted with our appearance
when last we met.

Probably not one of us had enjoyed the luxury of a complete wash for a
week, and the use of the razor having long been relinquished, our
beards rivalled that of Carneydd Llewellyn in size, if not in hue. The
scarlet uniforms, with lace and wings[3] of gold, in which we had
landed, we had marched and fought and slept in for weeks, were purple,
covered with discolorations, and patched with any stuff that came to
hand. Our trousers had turned from Oxford gray to something of a red
hue, with Crimean mud. Each of us had a revolver in his sash (which we
then wore round the waist), and a canvas haversack or well-worn
courier-bag slung over his shoulder, to contain whatever he might pick
up, beg, borrow, or buy (some were less particular) in the shape of
biscuits, eggs, fowls, or potatoes. Caradoc carried a dead duck by the
legs as he entered, and Charley Gwynne had a loaf of Russian bread
hung by a cord over his left shoulder, like a pilgrim at La Scala
Santa; while Price had actually secured a lump of cheese from the wife
of a Tartar, a fair one, with whom the universal lover had found
favour when foraging in the lovely Baidar Valley. We were already too
miserable to laugh at each other's appearance, and our tatters had
ceased to be a matter of novelty. If such was the condition of our
officers, that of the privates was fully worse; and thanks to our
wretched commissariat and ambulance arrangements, the splendid
_physique_ of our men had begun to disappear; but their pluck was
undying as ever.

On this morning we six were to have a breakfast such as rarely fell to
our lot in the Crimea; for Evans, my Welsh factotum and _fidus
Achates_, was a clever fellow, and speedily had prepared for us, at a
fire improvised under the shelter of a rock, a large kettle of
steaming coffee, which, sans milk, we drank from tin canteens,
tumblers, or anything suitable, and Gwynne's loaf was shared
fraternally among us, together with a brace of fowls found by him in a
Tartar cottage. "Lineal descendants of the cock that crew to Mahomet,
no doubt," said he; "and now, thanks to Evans, there they are, brown,
savoury, appetising, gizzard under one wing, liver under the
other--done to a turn, and on an old ramrod."

And while discussing them, the events of the siege were also
discussed, as coolly as we were wont to do the most ordinary field
man[oe]uvres at home.

"The deuce!" said I, "how the breeze comes under the wall of this
wretched tent!"

"Don't abuse the tent, Harry," said Caradoc; "I am thankful to find
myself in one, after being on board the Hydaspes. It must be a
veritable luxury to be able to sleep, even on a camp-bed and alone,
after being in a hospital, with one sufferer on your right, another on
your left, dead or dying, groaning and in agony. May God kindly keep
us all from the 'bloody hospital of Scutari,' after all I have heard
of it!"

"You were with us last night in the trenches, Mostyn?" said I.

"Yes, putting Gwynne's Hythe theories into practice from a rifle pit.
I am certain that I potted at least three of the Ruskies as coolly as
ever I did grouse in Scotland. All squeamishness has left me now,
though I could not help shuddering when first I saw a man's heels in
the air, after firing at him. You will never guess what happened on
our left. A stout vivandière of the 3rd Zouaves, while in the act of
giving me a _petit verre_ from her little keg, was taken--"

"By the enemy?" exclaimed Price.

"Not at all--with the pains of maternity; and actually while the shot
and shell were flying over our heads."

"And what were the trench casualties?" asked Gwynne.

"About a hundred and twenty of all ranks, killed, wounded, and
missing. A piece more of the fowl--thanks."

"A guardsman was killed last night, I have heard," said Hugh Price.

"Yes; poor Evelyn of the Coldstreams; he was first blinded by dust and
earth blown into his eyes by the ricochetting of a 36-pound shot, and
as he was groping about in an exposed place between the gabions, he
fell close by me."

"Wounded?"

"Mortally--hit in the head; he' was just able to whisper some woman's
name, and then expired. He purchased all his steps up to the majority,
so there's a pot of money gone. I think I could enjoy a quiet weed
now; but, Clavell, there was surely an awful shindy in your quarter
last night?"

"Yes," replied Tom, who, since he had been under fire, seemed to have
grown an inch taller; "a sortie."

"A sortie?" said two or three, laughing.

"Well, something deuced like it," said Tom, testily, as he stroked the
place where his moustache was to be. "I was asleep between the gabions
about twelve at night, when all at once a terrible uproar awoke me.
'Stand to your arms, men, stand to your arms!' cried our adjutant;
'the Russians are scouring the trenches!' I sprang up, and tumbled
against a bulky brute in a spike-helmet and long coat, with a smoking
revolver in his hand, just as a sergeant of ours shot him. It was all
confusion--I can tell you nothing about it; but we will see it all in
the _Times_ by and by. 'Sound for the reserves!' cried one. 'By God,
they have taken the second parallel!' cried another. 'Fire!' 'Don't
fire yet!' But our recruits began to blaze away at random. The
Russians, however, fell back; it might have been only a reconnoitring
party; but, anyhow, they have levanted with the major of the 93rd
Highlanders."

"The deuce they have!" we exclaimed. And this episode of the major's
capture was to have more interest for me than I could then foresee.

"These cigars, five in number," continued Tom, "were given to me by a
poor dying Zouave, who had lost his way and fallen among us. I gave
him a mouthful of brandy from my canteen, after which he said, Take
these, monsieur l'officier; they are all I have in the world now, and,
as you smoke them, think of poor Paul Ferrière of the 3rd Zouaves,
once a jolly student of the Ecole de Médecine, dying now, like a
beggar's dog!' he added, bitterly. 'Nay,' said I, 'like a brave
soldier.' 'Monsieur is right,' said he, with a smile. Our surgeons
could do nothing for him, and so he expired quite easily, while
watching his own blood gradually filling up a hole in the earth near
him!"

"Well, the Crimea, bad as it is," said Caradoc, as he prepared and lit
one of the Frenchman's cigars, "is better than serving in India, I
think; 'that union of well-born paupers,' as some fellow has it, 'a
penal servitude for those convicted of being younger sons.'"

"By Jove, I can't agree with you," said Mostyn, who had served in
India, and was also a younger son; "but glory is a fine thing, no
doubt."

"Glory be hanged!" said Gwynne, testily; "a little bit of it goes a
long way with me."

"See, there go some of the Naval Brigade to have a little ball
practice with a big Lancaster!" cried Tom Clavell, starting to the
tent-door.

"Getting another gun into position apparently," added Raymond Mostyn.

As they spoke, a party of seamen, whiskered and bronzed, armed with
cutlasses and pistols, their officers with swords drawn, swept past
the tent-door at a swinging trot, all singing cheerily a forecastle
song, of which the monotonous burden seemed to be,

    "O that I had her, _O_ that I had her,
       Seated on my knee!
     O that I had her, _O_ that I had her,
       A black girl though she be!"

tallying on the while to the drag-ropes of a great Lancaster gun,
which they trundled up the slope, crushing stones, caper-bushes, and
everything under its enormous grinding wheels, till they got it into
position; and a loud ringing cheer, accompanied by a deep and sullen
boom, ere long announced that they had slued it round and sent one
more globe of iron to add to the hundreds that were daily hurled
against Sebastopol. On this occasion the fire of this especial
Lancaster gun was ordered to be directed against a bastion on the
extreme left of the city, where the officer in command, a man of
remarkable bravery, who had led several sorties against us, seemed to
work his cannon and direct their fire with uncommon skill; and it was
hoped that we should ere long dismount or disable them, and if
possible breach the place.

CHAPTER XXXII.--IN THE TRENCHES.

It was while the infantry and Naval Brigade were still before
Sebastopol, toiling, trenching, and pounding with cannon and mortar at
all its southern side, we had our ardour fired, our enthusiasm
kindled, and our sorrow keenly excited by the tidings of that glorious
but terrible death ride, the charge of the six hundred cavalry at
Balaclava; and of how only one hundred and fifty came alive out of
that mouth of fire, the valley where rained "the red artillery"--the
13th Hussars were said to have brought only twelve men out of the
action, and the 17th Lancers twenty--and how nobly they were avenged
by our "heavies" under the gallant Scarlett; and of the stern stand
made against six thousand Russian horse by the "thin red line" of the
Sutherland Highlanders.

On the day these tidings were circulated in the trenches by many who
had witnessed the events, we seemed to redouble our energies, and shot
and shell were poured with greater fury than ever on the city, while
sharper, nearer, and more deadly were the contests of man and man in
the rifle-pits between it and the trenches. Then followed the sortie
made by Menschikoff, supposing that most of the allied forces had been
drawn towards Balaclava--a movement met by the infantry and artillery
of the second division under Sir De Lacy Evans, and repulsed with a
slaughter which naturally added to the hatred on both sides; and
innumerable were the stories told, and authenticated, of the Russians
murdering our helpless wounded in cold blood. On the night of the 2nd
November I was again in the trenches opposite to the eastern flank of
Sebastopol, the whole regiment being on duty covering the batteries
and working-parties.

The day passed as usual in exciting and desultory firing, the Russians
and our fellows watching each other like lynxes, and never missing an
opportunity for taking a quiet shot at each other. A strong battalion
of the former was in our front, lurking among some mounds and thick
_abattis_, formed of trees felled and pegged to the earth with their
branches towards us; and above the barrier and the broken ground that
lay between it and the advanced trench-ground, strewed with fragments
of rusty iron nails, broken bottles, and the other amiable contents of
exploded bombs, torn, rent, upheaved, or sunk into deep holes by the
explosion of mines and countermines, shells and rockets, we could see
their bearded visages, their flat caps and tall figures, cross-belted
and clad in long gray shapeless coats, as from time to time they
yelled and started up to take aim at some unwary Welsh Fusileer,
heedless that from some _other_ point some comrade's bullet avenged
him, or anticipated his fate. To attempt a description of the trenches
to a non-military reader, in what Byron terms "engineering slang,"
would be useless, perhaps; suffice it to say that we were pretty
secure from round shot, but never from shells, the trenches or zigzags
being dug fairly parallel to the opposing batteries, with a thick bank
of earth towards Sebastopol, a banquette for our men to mount on when
firing became necessary.

Near us was a battery manned by our Royal Artillery--the guns being
run through rude portholes made in the earthen bank, with the addition
of sand-bags, baskets, and stuffed gabions, to protect the gunners.
All was in splendid order there: the breeching-guns ever ready for
action; the sponges, rammers, and handspikes lying beside the wheels;
the shot piled close by as tidily as if in Woolwich-yard; the carbines
of the men placed in racks against the gabions; the officers laughing
over an old _Punch_, or making sketches, varied by caricatures of the
Russians, their men sitting close by in their greatcoats, smoking and
singing while awaiting orders, and listening with perfect indifference
to the casual dropping fire maintained by us against the enemy in the
abbatis or pits along our front, though almost every shot was the
knell of a human existence.

Death and danger were now strangely familiar to us all, and we cared
as little for the _whish_ of a round bullet or the sharp _ping_ of the
Minie, while it cut the air, as for the deep hoarse booming of the
breaching-guns; it was the cry of "bomb!" from the look out men, that
usually made us start, and sprawl on our faces, or scamper away, for
shelter, to crouch with our heads stooped in our favourite or fancied
places of security among the gabions, till a soaring monster, with
death and mutilation in its womb, with its hoarse puffing that rose to
a whistle, concussed all the air by the crash of its explosion.

Our men were all in their greatcoats, with their white belts outside;
and, save when a section or so started angrily to arms, as those
fellows in the abattis became more annoying, they sat quietly on the
ground or against the wall of the trench, smoking, chatting with
perfect equanimity, and occasionally taking a sip of rum or raki from
their canteens; for, after weeks and months of this kind of duty,
especially after the severity of the Crimean war set in, our older
soldiers seemed utterly indifferent as to whether they lived or died.

All of them, even such boys as Tom Clavell, had been front to front
with death, again and again. Among ourselves, even, there was an
incessant scramble for food; hence in the expression of their
faces and eyes there was something hard, set, fierce, and
undefinable--half-wolfish at times, devil-may-care always; for in a
few weeks after the landing at Eupatoria, they had seen more and lived
longer than one can do in years upon years of a life of peace.

"What do you see, Hugh, that you look so earnestly to the front?" I
asked of Price, who was lying on his breast with a rifle close beside
him, and his field-glass, to which his eyes were applied, wedged in a
cranny between two sand-bags.

"A Russian devil has made a bolt out of the abattis into yonder hole
made by a shell."

"And what of that?"

"I am waiting to pot him, as he can't stay there long," replied Price,
usually the best of good-natured fellows, but now looking with a
tiger-like stare through the same lorgnette which he had used on many
a day at the Derby, and many a night at the opera; "there he comes,"
he added. In a moment the Minie rifle, already sighted, was firmly at
the shoulder of Price, who fired; a mass like a gray bundle, with
hands and arms outspread, rolled over and over again on the ground,
and then lay still; at _another_ time it might have seemed most
terribly still!

"Potted, by Jove!" exclaimed Hugh, as he restored the rifle to
Sergeant Rhuddlan, and quietly resumed his cigar.

"A jolly good shot, sir, at four hundred yards," added the
non-commissioned officer, as he proceeded to reload and cap.

At that time the life of a Russian was deemed by us of no more account
than that of a hare or rabbit in the shooting season; but, if reckless
of the lives of others, it must be remembered that we were equally
reckless of our own; and, with all its horrors, war is not without
producing some of the gentler emotions. Thus, even on those weary,
exciting, and perilous days and nights in the trenches, under the
influence of _camaraderie_, of general danger, and the most common
chance of a sudden and terrible death, men grew communicative, and
while interchanging their canteens and tobacco-pouches they were apt
to speak of friends and relations that were far away: the old mother,
whose nightly prayers went up for the absent; the ailing sister, who
had died since war had been declared; the absent wife, left on the
shore at Southampton with a begging-pass to her own parish; the little
baby that had been born since the transport sailed; the old fireside,
where their place remained vacant, their figure but a shadowy
remembrance; the girls they had left behind them; their
disappointments in life; their sorrows and joys and hopes for the
future; the green lanes, the green fields, the pleasant and familiar
places they never more might see: and officers and privates talked of
such things in common; so true it is that

         "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."

On the 3rd of November, Caradoc and I were sitting in a sheltered
corner, between the gabions, chatting on some of the themes I have
enumerated, when a little commotion was observable among our men, and
we saw the adjutant and the major--the worthy holder of Toby Purcell's
spurs, he who had carried off the first gun at Alma, B-- of ours,
and who, since Colonel Chesters was killed, had commanded the
regiment--coming directly towards us.

"What the deuce is up?" said I.

"Their faces look important," added Caradoc.

"Sorry to disturb you; not that there is much pleasure here,
certainly," said the major, smiling; "but the adjutant tells me that
you, Hardinge, are the first officer for duty."

"We are all on duty," replied I, laughing; "if we are not, I don't
know what duty is. Well, major, what is to be done?"

"You are to convey a message from Lord Raglan into Sebastopol."

"To Sebastopol?"

"Yes, to that pleasant city by the sea," said the adjutant.

"To Prince Menschikoff?"

"No," replied the major; "to the officer commanding the nearest post."

"Under a flag of truce?"

"Of course; it would be perilous work otherwise."

"About what is the message?"

"The capture of Major MacG--, of the 93rd, who was carried off by a
kind of sortie the other night, and who is supposed to have been
afterwards killed in cold blood."

The seizure of the major of the Sutherland Highlanders, a brave old
fellow who had on his breast medals for Candahar, Afghanistan, and
Maharajapore, had created much interest in the army at this time, when
we so readily believed the Russians liable to commit atrocities on
wounded and prisoners.

"Lord Raglan wishes distinct information on the subject," added the
adjutant, after a pause.

"All right, I am his man," said I, starting up and looking carefully
to the chambers and capping of my Colt, ere I replaced it in its
pouch; and knocking some dust and mud off my somewhat dilapidated
regimentals, added, "now for a drummer and a flag of truce."

"You are to go to the officer in command of that bastion on the
Russian left," said the major.

"To that wasp of a fellow who is so active, and whose scoundrels have
killed so many of our wounded men, firing even on the burial parties?"

"The same. You must be sharp, wary, and watchful."

"His name?"

"Ah, that you may perhaps learn, not that it matters much; even Lord
Raglan cannot know that; but, doubtless, it will be something like a
sneeze or two, ending in 'off' or 'iski.'"

"Success, Harry!" cried Caradoc.

A few minutes after this saw me issue from the trenches of the right
attack, attended by Dicky Roll, with his drum slung before him; in my
right hand I carried a Cossack lance, to which a white handkerchief of
the largest dimensions was attached to attract attention, as the
Russians were not particular to a shade as to what or whom they fired
on, and the cruel and infamous massacre of an English boat's crew at
Hango was fresh in the minds of us all; consequently I was not without
feeling a certain emotion of anxiety, mingled with ardour and joy at
the prospect of Estelle seeing my name in the despatches, as Dicky and
I now advanced into the broken and open ground that lay between our
parallel and the abattis, amid which I saw head after head appear, as
the white emblem I bore announced that _pro tem_, hostilities in that
quarter must cease, by the rules of war.

Dicky Roll, who, poor little fellow, had been fraternally sharing his
breakfast and blanket with the goat, and did not seem happy in his
mind at our increasing proximity to "them Roosian hogres," as he
called them, beat a vigorous _chamade_ on his drum, and I waved my
impromptu banner. I was glad when a Russian drum responded, as flags
of truce had been more than once fired upon, on the miserable plea
that communications under them were merely designed for the purpose of
gaining intelligence, of reconnoitring Sebastopol and its outposts.
Hence our progress was watched with the deepest interest by the whole
regiment and others, all of whom were now lining the banquette of the
parallels, or clustering at the embrasures and fascines of the
breaching batteries.

CHAPTER XXXIII.-THE FLAG OF TRUCE.

In the rifle-pits many of our men lay dead or dying, and a few paces
beyond them brought me among Russians in the same pitiable condition.
One, who had been shot through the chest, lay on his back, half in and
half out of his lurking hole; his eyes were glazing, bubbles of blood
and froth were oozing through his thick black moustaches, which were
matted by the cartridges he had bitten. Another was shot through the
lungs, and his breath seemed to come with a wheezing sound through the
orifice.

There, too, lay the luckless Russian "potted" by Hugh Price. He was
one of the imperial 26th, for that number was on his shoulder-straps.
On his breast were several copper medals. Others who were able, taking
advantage of the cessation of hostilities, were crawling away on their
hands or knees towards the town or trenches, in search of water, of
succour, and of some kind friend to bind their wounds; and encouraged
by the lull in the firing, the little birds were twittering about
those ghastly pits in search of biscuit-crumbs or other food.

The ground was studded thickly with rusty fragments of exploded
shells, nails, bottles, grape and canister shot; other places were
furrowed up, or almost paved with half-buried cannon-balls of every
calibre; and here and there, in the crater made by a mine, lay a
forgotten corpse in sodden uniform, gray faced with red; and yet
singularly enough, amid these horrors, there were springing through
the fertile earth many aromatic shrubs, and a vast number of the
_colchicum autumnale_, a beautiful blue crocus-like flower, with which
the Crimea abounds.

The Russian drum, hoarse, wooden, and ill-braced, again sounded, and
mine replied; then we saw an officer coming towards us from the
entanglements of the abattis, with his sword sheathed and waving a
white handkerchief. He was a tall grim-looking man, of what rank I
could not determine, as all the enemy's officers in the field, from
the general down to the last-joined praperchick, or ensign, wore long,
ungraceful greatcoats of brownish gray cloth, having simply facings
and shoulder-straps. He carried a wooden canteen and an old battered
telescope, worn crosswise by two leather straps, and had several
silver medals, won doubtless in battle against Schamyl in Circassia.

It is a common belief in England that every Russian gentleman speaks
French; but though he may do so better than another foreigner--for he
who can pronounce Muscovite "words of ten or twelve consonants apiece"
may well speak anything--it is chiefly the language of the court and
of diplomacy; and in this instance, when, after saluting each other
profoundly, and eyeing each other with stern scrutiny, I addressed the
officer in the language of our allies, he replied in German, which I
knew very imperfectly.

I made him understand, however, that my message was for the officer in
command of the left bastion.

He replied, that to be taken into Sebastopol, or even to be led
nearer, required that the eyes of myself and the drummer should be
blindfolded, to which I assented; and he proceeded carefully to muffle
Dicky Roll and me in such a manner as to place us in utter darkness.
He then gave me his arm, I took the drummer by the hand, and in this
grotesque fashion, which excited some laughter in the trenches, the
trio proceeded, stumbling and awkwardly, towards the city.

I heard the increasing buzz of many voices around us, the unbarring of
a heavy wicket, the clatter of musket-butts on the pavement, and
occasionally a hoarse order or word of command issued in what seemed
the language of necromancy. Caissons, and wagons heavily laden,
rattled along the streets; I felt that I was _inside_ Sebastopol; but
dared not without permission unbind my eyes, save at the risk of being
run through the body by this fellow in the long coat, or made a
prisoner of war, and despatched towards Perecop with my hands tied to
the mane of a Cossack pony.

The sensation and the conviction were most tantalising; but I was
compelled to submit, and knew that we were proceeding through the
thoroughfares of that place towards which I had daily turned my
field-glass with the most intense curiosity, and which we knew to be
one vast garrison rather than a town, with whole streets of barracks,
arsenals, and government houses.

A change of sounds and of atmosphere warned me that we were within
doors. My guide withdrew the bandages, and then Dicky and I looked
around us, dazzled with light, after being in darkness for nearly half
an hour. I was in a large whitewashed room, plainly furnished,
uncarpeted, heated by a stove of stone in one corner, with an _eikon_
in another. On the table of polished deal lay some books, a copy or
two of the _Invalide Russe_, the _Moskauer Zeitung_, Panaeff's
_Russian Snobs_, the vernacular for that familiar word being
_khlishch_. On the walls hung maps and documents--orders of the day,
perhaps--in Russian.

Through the two large windows, which we were warned not to approach, I
obtained a glimpse of the hill on which the residence of Prince
Menschikoff was situated. On one side I saw that the streets ran in
parallel lines down to the water edge; on the other to where the new
naval arsenals lay, in the old Tartar town which was known by the name
of Achtiare in the days of Thomas Mackenzie, the Scoto-Russian admiral
who first created Sebastopol, and whose _khutor_, farm or forest for
producing masts, excited so much speculation among our Highland
Brigade. Everywhere I saw great cannon bristling, all painted
pea-green, with a white cross on the breech.

The jingle of spurs caused me to turn, and Dicky to lift his hand to
his cap in salute. We saw a tall and handsome Russian officer, of
imposing appearance, enter the room. His eyes were dark, yet sharp and
keen in expression; he had black strongly-marked eyebrows and an
aquiline nose, with a complexion as clear as a woman's, a pretty ample
beard, and close-shorn hair. He, too, wore the inevitable greatcoat;
but it was open in this instance, and I could see the richly-laced
green uniform and curious flat silver epaulettes of the Vladimir
Regiment, with the usual number of medals and crosses, for all the
armies of Nicholas were well decorated. He bowed with great courtesy,
and said in French,

"You have, I understand, a message for me from my Lord Raglan?"

I bowed.

"Before I listen to it you must have some refreshment; your drummer
can wait outside."

I bowed again. A soldier-servant placed on the table decanters of
Crimskoi wine, with a silver salver of biscuits and pastilla, or
little cakes made of fruit and honey; and of these I was not loath to
partake, while the soldier in attendance led away Dicky Roll, who eyed
me wistfully, and said, as he went out,

"For God's sake don't forget me, Captain Hardinge; I don't like the
look of them long-coated beggars at all."

I was somewhat of Dicky's opinion; and being anxious enough to get
back to the trenches, stated briefly my message.

"You have, I fear, come on a bootless errand," replied the Russian,
"as no officer of your army was, to my knowledge, either killed or
taken by us on the night in question; though certainly a man may
easily be hit in the dark, and crawl away to some nook or corner, and
there die and lie unseen. But the Pulkovnick Ochterlony, who keeps the
list of prisoners, will be the best person to afford you information
on the matter. Remain with me, and assist yourself to the Crimskoi,
while I despatch a message to him."

He drew a glazed card from an embossed case, and pencilling a
memorandum thereon, sent his orderly with it, while we seated
ourselves, entered into conversation, and pushed the decanter
fraternally to and fro.

"I have just come from hearing the Bishop of Sebastopol preach in the
great church to all the garrison off duty," said he, laughing; "and he
has been promising us great things--honour in this world, and glory in
the next--if we succeed in driving you all into the Euxine."

"There are plenty of opportunities afforded here of going to heaven."

"A good many, too, of going the other way; however, I must not tell
you all, or even a part, of what the bishop said. He did all that
eloquence could do to fire the religious enthusiasm--superstition, if
you will--of our soldiers and his language was burning."

"Then you are on the eve of another sortie," said I, unwarily.

"I have not said so," he replied, abruptly, while his eyes gleamed,
and handing me his silver cigar-case, on which was engraved a coronet,
we lapsed into silence.

The sermon he referred to was that most remarkable one preached on the
evening of Saturday, the 4th of November, before one of the most
memorable events of the war. In that discourse, this Russian-Greek
bishop, with his coronal mitre on his head, glittering with precious
gems, a crozier whilom borne by St. Sergius in his hand, his silver
beard floating to his girdle over magnificent vestments, stood on the
altar-steps of the great church, and assured the masses of armed men
who thronged it to the portal that the blessing of God was upon their
forthcoming enterprise and the defence of the city; that crowns of
eternal glory awaited all those martyrs who fell in battle against the
heretical French and the island curs who had dared to levy war on holy
Russia and their father the Emperor.

He told them that the English were monsters of cruelty, who tortured
their prisoners, committing unheard-of barbarities on all who fell
into their hands; that "they were bloodthirsty and abominable
heretics, whose extermination was the solemn duty of all who wished to
win the favour of God and of the Emperor." He farther assured them
that the British camp contained enormous treasures--the spoil of
India, vessels of silver and gold, sacks and casks filled with
precious stones--one-third of which was to become the property of the
victors; and he conjured them, by the memory of Michael and Feodor,
who sealed their belief in Christ with their blood, before the savage
Batu-Khan, by the black flag unfurled by Demetri Donskoi when he
marched against Mamai the Tartar, "by the forty times forty churches
of Moscow the holy," and the memory of the French retreat from it, to
stand firm and fail not; and a hoarse and prayerful murmur of assent
responded to him.

My present host was too well-bred to tell all he had just heard,
whether he believed it or not. After a pause, "If another sortie is
made," said I, "the slaughter will be frightful."

"Bah!" replied he, cynically, while tipping the white ashes from his
cigar, "a few thousands are not missed among the millions of Russia; I
presume we only get rid of those who are unnecessary in the general
scheme of creation."

"Peasants and serfs, I suppose?"

"Well, perhaps so--peasants and serfs, as you islanders suppose all
our people to be."

"Nay, as you Russians deem them."

"We shall not dispute the matter, please," said he, coldly; and now,
as I sat looking at him, a memory of his face and voice came over me.

"Count Volhonski!" I exclaimed, "have you quite forgotten me and the
duel with the Prussian at Altona?"

He started and took his cigar from his mouth.

"The Hospodeen Hardinge!" said he, grasping my hand with honest
warmth; "I must have been blind not to recognise you; but I never
before saw you in your scarlet uniform."

"It is more purple than scarlet now, Count."

"Well, our own finery is not much to boast of, though we are in a
city, and you are under canvas. But how does the atmosphere of Crim
Tartary agree with you?" he asked, laughing.

"A little too much gunpowder in it, perhaps."

"I am sorry, indeed, to find that you and I are enemies, after those
pleasant days spent in Hamburg and Altona; but when we last parted in
Denmark--you remember our mutual flight across the frontier--you were
but a subaltern, a praperchick, a sub-lieutenant, I think."

"I am a captain now."

"Ah--the Alma did that, I presume."

"Exactly."

"You will have plenty of promotion in your army, I expect, ere this
war is ended. You shall all be promoted in heaven, I hope, ere holy
Russia is vanquished."

"Well, Count, and you--"

"I am now Pulkovnick of the Vladimir Infantry."

"Did the Alma do that?"

"No; the Grand-Duchess Olga, to whom the regiment belongs, promoted me
from the Guards, as a reward for restoring her glove, which she
dropped one evening at a masked ball given in the hall of St. Vladimir
by the Emperor; so my rank was easily won."

A knock rang on the door; spurs and a steel scabbard clattered on the
floor, and then entered a stately old officer in the splendid uniform
of the Infantry of the Guard, the gilded plate on his high and
peculiarly-shaped cap bearing the perforation of more than one bullet,
and his breast being scarcely broad enough for all the orders that
covered it. He bowed to Volhonski, and saluted me with his right hand,
in which he carried a bundle of documents like lists. The Count
introduced him as "the Pulkovnick Ochterlony, commanding the
Ochterlony Battalion of the Imperial Guard." He was not at all like a
Russian, having clear gray eyes and a straight nose, and still less
like one did he seem when he addressed me in almost pure English.

"I have," said he, "gone over all the lists of officers of the Allies
now prisoners in Sebastopol, or taken since the siege and sent towards
Yekaterinoslav, and can find among them no such name as that of Major
MacG--, of the 93rd Regiment of Scottish Highlanders. If traces of him
are found, dead or alive, a message to that effect shall at once be
sent to my Lord Raglan."

"I thank you, sir," said I, rising and regarding him curiously; "you
speak very pure English for a Russian!"

"I am a Russian by birth and breeding only; in blood and race I am a
countryman of your own."

"Indeed!" said I, coldly and haughtily, "how comes it to pass that an
Englishman--"

"Excuse me, sir," said he, with a manner quite as haughty as my own,
"I did not say that I was an Englishman; but as we have no time to
make explanations on the subject, let us have together a glass of
Crimskoi, and part, for the time, friends."

His manner was so suave, his bearing so stately, and his tone so
conciliating--moreover his age seemed so great--that I clinked my
glass with his, and withdrew with Volhonski, who, sooth to say, seemed
exceedingly loath to part with me.

"Who the deuce is that officer?" I asked.

"I introduced him to you by name. He is the colonel of the Ochterlony
Battalion of the Guard, which was raised by his father, one of the
many Scottish soldiers of fortune who served the Empress Catharine;
and the man is Russian to the core in all save blood, which he cannot
help; but here is the gate, and you must be again blinded by Tolstoff.
Adieu! May our next meeting be equally pleasant and propitious!"

As we separated, there burst from the soldiery who thronged near the
gates a roar of hatred and execration, excited doubtless by the
bishop's harangue; and poor Dicky Roll shrunk close to my side as we
passed out. The ancient Scoto-Muscovite, I afterwards learned, was
styled Ochterlony of Guynde, the soldiers of whose regiment had
enjoyed from his father's time the peculiar privilege of retaining and
wearing their old cap-plates, so long as a scrap of the brass
remained, if they had once been perforated by a shot in action; and it
is known that this identical old officer--who had some three or four
nephews in the Russian Guards--had been visiting his paternal place of
Guynde, in Forfarshire, but a few months before the war broke out.

In a few minutes more, Dicky Roll and I found ourselves, with our eyes
unbandaged, once more in that pleasant locality midway between the
abattis and the trenches, towards which we made our way in all haste,
that I might report the issue of my mission concerning the Scotch
major, who, as events proved, was found alive and unhurt, luckily; and
the moment my white flag disappeared among the gabions--where all
crowded round me for news, and where I became the hero of an
hour--again the firing was resumed on both sides with all its former
fury, and the old game went on--shot and shell, dust, the crash of
stones and fascines, thirst, hunger, slaughter, and mutilation. That
the Russians had some great essay _in petto_, the words of Volhonski
left us no doubt, nor were we long kept in ignorance of what was
impending over us.

CHAPTER XXXIV.--GUILFOYLE REDIVIVUS.

Quietly and before day dawned the trench-guards were relieved, and
we marched wearily back towards the camp. I had dismissed my company,
and was betaking me to my tent, threading my way along the streets
formed by those of each regiment, when an ambulance wagon,
four-wheeled and covered by a canvas hood, drew near. It was drawn by
four half-starved-looking horses; the drivers were in the saddles; and
an escort rode behind, muffled in their blue cloaks. It was laden, no
doubt, with boots warranted not to fit, and bags of green or unripe
coffee for the troops, who had no means of grinding it or of cooking
it, firewood being our scarcest commodity. An officer of the Land
Transport Corps, in cloak and forage-cap, was riding leisurely in rear
of the whole, and as he passed I heard him singing, for his own
edification, apparently: the refrain of his ditty was,

         "Ach nein! ach nein! ich darf es nich.
          Leb'wohl! Leb'wohl!"

"Heavens!" thought I, pausing in my progress, "can this be my
quondam acquaintance, the _attaché_ at the Court of Catzenelnbogen
here--_here_, in the Crimea!"

"Can you direct me to the commissariat quarter of the Second
Division?" asked the singer, a little pompously.

"By all the devils it is Guilfoyle!" I exclaimed.

"Oho--You are Hardinge of the 23rd--well met, Horatio!" said he,
reining-in his horse, and with an air of perfect coolness.

"How came _you_ to be here, sir?" I asked, sternly.

"I question your right to ask, if I do not your tone," he replied;
"however, if you feel interested in my movements, I may mention that I
was going to the dogs or the devil, and thought I might as well take
Sebastopol on the way."

"It is not taken yet--but you, I hope, may be."

"Thanks for your good wishes," was the unabashed reply; "however, I am
wide enough awake, sir; be assured that I cut my eye-teeth some years
ago."

To find that such a creature as he had crept into her Majesty's
service, even into such an unaristocratic force as the Land Transport
Corps, and actually wore a sword and epaulettes, bewildered me,
excited my indignation and disgust; and I felt degraded that by a
reflected light he was sharing our dangers, our horrors, and the
honours of the war. I had never seen his name in the _Gazette_, as
being appointed a cornet of the Transport Corps, and the surprise I
felt was mingled with profound contempt, and something of amusement,
too, at his _insouciance_ and cool effrontery. This made me partially
forget the rage and hatred he had excited in me by the mischievous
game he had played at Walcot Park, his plot to ruin me with Estelle
Cressingham--a plot from which I had been so victoriously
disentangled. Hence circumstance, change of position and place,
induced me to talk to the fellow in a way that I should not have done
at home or elsewhere.

"How came you to deprive England of the advantages of your society?" I
asked, in a sneering tone, of which he was too well-bred not to be
conscious; so he replied in the same manner,

"A verse of an old song may best explain it:

        "'A plague on ill luck, now the ready's all gone,
            To the wars poor Pilgarlick must trudge;
          But had I the cash to rake on as I've done,
            The devil a foot I would budge!'

"And so Pilgarlick is serving his ungrateful country," he added, with
the mocking laugh that I remembered of old.

"You can actually laugh at your own--"

"Don't say anything unpleasant," said he, shortening his reins; "I do
so, but only as Reynard, who has lost his brush, laughs at the more
clever fox who has kept his from the hounds," he added, with a glance
of malevolence. "So you were not at the Alma? Doubtless it was
pleasanter to break a bone quietly at home than risk all your limbs
here in action."

Disdaining to notice either his sneer or the inference to be
drawn from his remark, I asked, "What has become of that unhappy
creature--your wife?"

"As you call her."

"Georgette Franklin--well?"

"It matters little now, and is no business of yours."

"That I know well--I only pitied her; but why do I waste words or time
with such as you?"

"So you would like to know what has become of her, eh?"

"Very much."

"Well," said he, grinding his teeth with anger or hate, perhaps both,
"there is a den in the Walworth-road, above a rag, bone, and
old-bottle shop, the master of which was not unknown to the police, as
apt to be roaming about intent to commit, as no doubt he often did,
felony; for a few articles of bijouterie, such as a bunch of
skeleton-keys, a crowbar, a brace of knuckle-dusters, and a 'barker,'
with a piece of wax-candle, were found upon his person, after an
investigation thereof, suggestive that his habits were nocturnal, and
that the propensities of his digits were knavish; and the landlord of
this den gave her lodgings--and there she died, this Georgette
Franklin, in whom you are so interested--died not without suspicion of
suicide. Now are _you_ satisfied?" he added, holding a cigar between
the first and second fingers of his right hand, and gazing lazily at
the smoke wreaths as they curled upward in the chill morning air.

There was something sublimely infernal--if I may be permitted the
paradox--in the gusto with which the fellow told all this, and in the
sneering expression of his face; and I could see his green eyes and
his white teeth glisten in the light of a great rocket--some secret
signal--that soared up from Fort Alexander, and broke with a thousand
sparkles, curving downward through the murky morning sky.

"Pass on, sir," said I, sternly; "and the best I can wish you is that
some Russian bullet may avenge her and rid the earth of you."

And with his old mocking laugh, he galloped after his wagon, as he
turned back in his saddle, "Compliments to old Taffy Lloyd, when you
write--may leave him my brilliant in my will if he behaves himself."

CHAPTER XXXV.--THE NIGHT BEFORE INKERMANN.

I told Phil Caradoc of the strange meeting with Mr. Hawkesby
Guilfoyle, and his emotions of astonishment and disgust almost
exceeded mine, though mingled with something of amusement, to think
that such a personage should be with the army before Sebastopol in any
capacity; and he predicted that he must inevitably do something that
would not add to the budding laurels of the Land Transport Corps,
which we scarcely recognised as a fighting force, though armed, of
course, for any sudden emergency. On this morning, the mail had come
in from Constantinople; but there was still no letter for me--no
letter from her with whom I had left my heart, and all its fondest
aspirations--yea, my very soul it seemed--in England, far away.

Many mails had gone missing; and I strove to flatter and to console
myself by the vague hope, that the letters of Estelle were lying
perhaps in the Gulf of Salonica, or in the Greek Archipelago, rather
than adopt the bitter and wounding conviction that none were written
at all. I counted the days and weeks that had elapsed since our
detachments sailed from Southampton; the weeks had now become months;
we were in November; yet, save when once or twice I had seen her name
among the fashionable intelligence in a stray newspaper, I knew and
heard nothing of Estelle, of her whose existence and future I so
fondly thought were for ever woven up with mine. For a time I had been
weak enough to conceal from kind-hearted Phil Caradoc the fact that I
had not been getting answers to my letters; and often over a quiet
cigar and a bottle of Greek wine I have listened nervously to his
congratulations on my success and hopes, blended with his own personal
regrets that Winifred Lloyd could not love him. He had sent to her and
Dora, from Malta and from Constantinople, some of those beautiful
articles of bijouterie, which the shops of the former and the bazaars
of the latter can so exquisitely produce to please the taste of women,
and they had been accepted with "kindest thanks," a commonplace on
which poor Phil seemed to base some hope of future success.

"Winifred Lloyd is very lovely," said I, as we sat in my tent that
night over a bottle of Crimskoi; "sweet and pure, happy in spirit, and
gentle in heart--all that a man could desire his wife and the mother
of his children to be."

"But--"

"But what, Phil?" said I, curtly.

"She cannot love me, and she will never be mine," sighed Caradoc.

"Never despair of that; we have to take Sebastopol yet; and that once
achieved, we shall all go merrily sailing home to England."

"That I doubt much; some of the regiments here will be taken for the
Indian reliefs--our fighting here will count as service in Europe--but
surely the war cannot end with the fall of Sebastopol. A war between
three of the greatest countries in the world to dwindle down to the
somewhat ill-conducted siege of a fortified town would be absurd."

"Ill-conducted, Phil?"

"Of course.. We leave the city open for supplies of all kinds on the
Russian side, and have never, as we should have done, seized the
Isthmus of Perecop, and cut off the whole Crimea from the empire."

"Errors perhaps; but by the way, Phil, have you still Miss Lloyd's
miniature about you?"

"Yes."

"Do let me have a look at it. I am an old friend, you know."

"I gave her my solemn word that while I lived no man should look upon
it, Harry," said Phil, whose colour deepened. "When I am carried to
the dead-tent, if that day comes, or to the burial-trench, as many
better fellows have been, you may keep it or send it to her, which you
will, though I would rather it were buried with me."

His eyes filled with tender enthusiasm, and his voice faltered with
genuine emotion as he spoke.

"Pass the bottle, Phil, and don't be romantic--one more cigar is in
the box, and it is at your service," said I.

But full of his own thoughts, which were all of her, Caradoc made no
immediate reply. He sat with his eyes fixed sadly on the glowing
embers of my little fire; for, thanks to the ingenuity of Evans, I had
actually a _fire_ in my tent. He had made an excavation in the earth,
with a flue constructed out of the fragments of tin ammunition boxes,
and the cases which had held preserved meat. This conveyed the smoke
underneath the low wall of the tent, outside of which he had erected
another flue some three feet high of the same materials, to which were
added a few stones and some mud. The smoke at times was scarcely
endurable, and made one's eyes to water; but I was not yet "old
soldier" enough to heat a cannon-ball to sleep with, so Evans' patent
grate had quite a reputation in the regiment, and added greatly to the
comfort, if such a term can be used, of my somewhat draughty abode.

"Deuced hard lines, this sort of thing, Harry," said Caradoc, after a
pause, as, bearded and patched, unshaven and unkempt, we cowered over
the fire in our cloaks and wrappers; "I mean for men accustomed to
better things, especially to those of expensive tastes and extravagant
habits--your guardsman and man of pleasure, the lounger about town,
whose day was wont to begin about two P.M., and to end at four next
morning. Yet they are plucky for all that; by Jove! there is an amount
of mettle or stamina in our fellows such as those of no other nation
possess, the resolution to die game any way."

I fully agreed with him; for among our officers I knew hundreds of
men, like Raymond Mostyn and others I could name, who were enduring
this miserable gipsy-like life, and who, when at home, had hunters and
harriers in the country, a house in town, a villa at St. John's Wood
or elsewhere, with a tiny brougham and tiger for some "fair one with
the golden locks," a yacht at Cowes, a forest in the Highlands, a box
at the Opera, a French cook, perhaps, and vines and pines and other
rarities from their own forcing-pits and hothouses, and who were now
thankful for a mouthful of rum and hard ship-biscuit and some
half-roasted coffee boiled in a camp-kettle; and for what, or to what
useful end or purpose, was all this being endured? Perhaps the
non-reception of letters from Estelle was making me cynical, and
leading me to deem the great god of war but a rowdy, and the goddess
his sister no better than she should be, glory a delusion and a humbug
after all. But just when Phil, as the night was now far advanced, was
muffling himself prior to facing the cold frosty blast that swept up
the valley of Inkermann, and proceeding to his own tent, which was on
the other flank of the regiment, the visage of Evans, red as a lobster
with cold, while his greatcoat was whitened with hoar-frost, appeared
at the piece of tied canvas, which passed muster as a door.

"Letter for you, sir--an English one."

"For me! how, at this hour?" I exclaimed, starting up.

"It came by the mail this morning, sir; but was in the bag for the
88th. The address is almost obliterated, as you see, so the 88th
officers were tossing-up for it, when Mr. Mostyn--"

"Pshaw! give me the letter," said I, impatiently. "It is from Sir
Madoc--_only_ Sir Madoc!" I added, with unconcealed disappointment;
and in proportion as my countenance lowered, Phil's brightened with
interest.

I tore open what appeared to be a pretty long letter.

"It seems to have a postscript," said Phil, lingering ere he went.

"Kindest regards to Caradoc from Winny and Dora."

"Is that all?"

"All that seems to refer to you, Phil."

Phil sighed, and said,

"Well, a letter is an uncommon luxury here, so I shall not disturb
you. Good night, old fellow."

"Good night; and keep clear of the tent-pegs."

Again the canvas door was tied, and I was alone; so drawing the
lantern, that hung on the tent-pole, close to the empty flour-cask,
which now did duty as a table, I sat down to read the characteristic
epistle of my good old fatherly friend, Sir Madoc Lloyd, which was
dated from Craigaderyn Court. After some rambling remarks about the
war, and the mode in which he thought it should be conducted, and some
smart abuse of the administration in general, and Lord Aberdeen in
particular, over all of which I ran my eyes impatiently, at last they
caught a name that made my heart thrill, for this was the first letter
that had reached me from England.

"Lady Estelle's admirer Pottersleigh has been raised to an
earldom--Heaven only knows why or for what--his own distinguished
services, he says. It was all in last night's _Gazette_--that her
Majesty had been pleased to direct letters patent, &c., granting the
dignity of Earl of the United Kingdom, unto Viscount Pottersleigh,
K.G., and the heirs male of his body (good joke that, Harry: reckoning
his chickens before they are hatched), by the name and title of
Aberconway, in the principality of Wales. For some weeks past he has
been at Walcot Park, with the Cressinghams--seems quite to live there,
in fact. He has been very assiduous in his attentions to a certain
young lady there; he always flatters her quietly, and it seems to
please her; a sure sign it would seem to me that she is not displeased
with the flatterer. People say it is old Lady Naseby whom he affects;
but I don't think so; neither does Winny. You will probably have heard
much of this kind of gossip from Lady Estelle herself. She certainly
got your Malta letter, and one from the camp before Sebastopol--so
Winny, who is in her confidence, told me. You only can know if she
replied--Winny rather thinks not; but I hope she may be faithful to
you as Oriana herself.

"I heard all about poor Caradoc's affair from Dora; but Winny has
refused another offer of marriage--a most eligible one, too--from Sir
Watkins Vaughan; and since then he was nearly done for in another
fashion: for when he and I were cub-hunting last month near Hawkstone,
his horse, a hard-mouthed brute, swerved as we were crossing a fence,
and rolled over him; so between her blunt refusal and his ugly spill,
he is rather to be pitied. I don't understand Winny at all. I should
not like my girls to throw themselves away; but hay should be made
while the sun shines, and baronets are not to be found under every
bush. Beauty fades; it is but a thing of a season; and the most
blooming girl, in time, becomes passé and wrinkled, or it may be fat
and fusby, as her grandmother was before her. And then Sir Watkins
represents one of the best families in Wales, not so old as _us_
certainly, but still he is descended in a direct line from Gryffyth
Vychan, who was Lord of Glyndwyrdwy in Merionethshire, in Stephen's
time."

(Why should Winifred Lloyd refuse and refuse again thus? As certain
little passages between us in days gone by came flashing back to my
memory, I felt my cheek flush by that wretched camp-fire, and then I
thrust the thoughts aside as vanity.)

"Poor Winny has not been very well of late," the letter proceeded.
"When she and Dora were decorating their poor mamma's grave, in the
old Welsh fashion, on Palm Sunday, at Craigaderyn church, I fear she
must have caught cold; it ended in a touch of fever, and I think the
dear girl grew delirious, for she had a strange dream about the ghost
of Jorwerth Du--you remember that absurd old story?--but the ghost was
_you_, and the red-haired daughter of the Gwylliad Cochion, who
spirited you away, was--whom think you?--but Lady Estelle!

"We had a jolly shooting-season at Vaughan's place in South Wales.
With Don and our double-barrelled breech-loader we soon filled a
spring-cart, and brought it back in state, with all the hares and the
long bright tails of the pheasants hanging over it. Vaughan--who will
not relinquish his hope of Winny--and a lot of other fine fellows--old
friends, some of them--are coming to have their annual Christmas
shooting with me, and I have got two kegs of ammunition all ready in
the gun-room. How I wish you were to be with us, Harry!

"Golden plover and teal, too, are appearing here now, and flocks of
white Norwegian pigeons in Scotland; all indications that we shall
have an unusually severe winter; so God help you poor fellows under
canvas in the Crimea! In common with all the girls in England, Winny
and Dora are busy making mufflings, knitted vests and cuffs, and so
forth for the troops; and I have despatched some special hampers of
good things, made up and packed by Owen Gwyllim and Gwenny Davis, the
housekeeper, for our own lads of the 23rd to make merry with at
Christmas, or on St. David's day."

(The warm wrappers arrived for us in summer, and as for the "special
hampers," they were never heard of at all.)

And so, with many warm wishes, almost prayers, for my preservation
from danger, and offers of money if I required it, the letter of my
kind old friend ended; but it gave me food for much thought, and far
into the hours of the chill night I sat and pondered over it. Why did
Winny refuse so excellent an offer as that of Sir Watkins, whom I knew
to be a wealthy and good-looking young baronet? I scarcely dared to
ask myself, and so, as before, dismissed _that_ subject. Why had not
Estelle's answers reached me, if she had actually written then? That
Lady Naseby had surreptitiously intercepted our correspondence, I
could not believe, though she might forbid it. Was my Lord
Pottersleigh, now Earl of Aberconway, at work; or had they, like many
others, perished at sea? Heaven alone new. His flatteries "pleased
her," his, the senile dotard! And he had taken up his residence at
Walcot Park; his earldom, too! I was full of sadness, mortification,
and bitter thoughts; thoughts too deep and fierce for utterance or
description. Could it be that the earldom and wealth on one hand were
proving too strong for love, with the stringent tenor of her father's
will on the other?

At the opera and theatre I had seen Estelle's beautiful eyes fill with
tears, as she sympathised with the maudlin love and mimic sorrow, the
wrongs or mishaps, of some well-rouged gipsy in rags, some peasant in
a steeple-crowned hat and red bandages, some half-naked fisherman,
like Masaniello, and her bosom would heave with emotion and
enthusiasm; and yet with all this natural commiseration and
fellow-feeling, she, who could almost weep with the hero or heroine of
the melodrama, while their situation was enhanced by the effects of
the orchestra, the lime-light, and the stage-carpenter, was perhaps
casting me from her heart and her memory, as coolly as if I were an
old ball-dress! So I strove yet awhile to think and to hope that her
letters were with the lost mails at the bottom of the Ægean or the
Black Sea; but Sir Madoc's letter occasioned me grave and painful
doubts; and memory went sadly back to many a little but
well-remembered episode of tenderness, a word, a glance, a stolen
caress, when we rode or drove by the Elwey or Llyn Aled, in the long
lime avenue, in the Martens' dingle, and in the woods and gardens of
pleasant Craigaderyn. The wretched light in my lantern was beginning
to fail; my little fire had died quite out, and the poor sentry
shivering outside had long since ceased to warm his hands at the flue.
The tent was cold and chill as a tomb, and I was just about to turn
in, when a sound, which a soldier never hears without starting
instinctively to his weapons, struck my ear.

A drum, far on the right, was beating _the long roll!_ Hundreds of
others repeated that inexorable summons all over the camp, while many
a bugle was blown, as the whole army stood to their arms. It was the
morning of the battle of Inkermann!

CHAPTER XXXVI.--THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER.

We had all long since forgotten the discomfort of early rising. In my
case I had never been to bed, so to buckle on my sword and revolver
was the work of one moment; in another I was threading my way among
the streets of tents, from which our men, cold, damp, pale, and
worn-looking, were pouring towards their various muster-places, many
of them arranging their belts as they hurried forward.

"What is the row? what is up?" were the inquiries of all.

But no one knew, and on all hands the mounted officers were riding
about and crying,

"Fall in, 19th Regiment!" "Fall in, 23rd Fusileers!" and so on. "Stand
to your arms; turn out the whole; uncase the colours, gentlemen!"

"It is gunpowder-plot day," cried a laughing aide-de-camp, galloping
past with such speed and recklessness that he nearly rode me down.

It proved to be a sortie from Sebastopol, made chiefly by a new
division of troops brought up by forced marches from Bessarabia and
Wallachia, many of them in wagons, kabitkas, and conveyances of all
kinds; and all these men, to the number of many thousands, left the
beleaguered city inflamed by the sermon I have described, by harangues
of a similar kind, by the money or martyrdom they hoped to win, and
by a plentiful distribution of coarse and ardent raki; while to
Osten-Sacken, Volhonski, and other officers of rank, one of the Grand
Dukes held out threats of degradation and Siberia if we were not
attacked and the siege raised! All our men, without breakfast or other
food, got briskly under arms, by regiments, brigades, and divisions;
they were in their gray greatcoats, hence some terrible mistakes
occurred in the hurry and confusion; many of our officers, however,
went into action in _scarlet_, with their epaulettes on--most fatally
for themselves. All the bells in Sebastopol--and some of these were
magnificent in size and tone--rang a tocsin, while the troops
composing the sortie, at the early hour of three A.M., stole, under
cloud of darkness and a thick mist, into the ravines near the
Tchernaya, to menace the British right, our weakest point; and,
unknown to our out-guards, and generally unheard by them--though more
than one wary old soldier asserted that he heard "something like the
rumble of artillery wheels"--in the gloom and obscurity several large
pieces of cannon were got into position, so as completely to command
the ground occupied by us. Cautiously and noiselessly the masses of
Russian infantry had stolen on, the sound of their footsteps hidden by
the jangle of the bells, till they, to the number of more than 50,000
men, were on the flank as well as in front of our line; and the first
indication we had of their close vicinity was when our outlying
pickets, amid the dense fog of that fatal November morning, found
themselves all but surrounded by this vast force, and fighting
desperately!

Knapsacks were generally thrown aside, and the muskets of the pickets
were in some instances so wet by overnight exposure, that they failed
to explode, so others taken from the dead and wounded were substituted