"Well, but about this Leicester?" Mr. Rogers objected.

"What about him? Let him go. Isabel was right in begging him off— though you did it, my dear, for other reasons than mine: but when the heart's right, God bless you, it usually speaks common sense. Let him go. D'ye want to hang him? He's ugly enough, but I don't see how you're to do it, unless first of all you catch Whitmore and then force him to turn cat-in-the-pan, at the risk of his talking too much and with the certainty of dragging Isabel into the exposure. Even so, I doubt you'll get evidence. This man is a deal too shrewd to have done any of the forging himself. If Whitmore had known enough to hang him, Whitmore wouldn't have gone in awe of him. And what Whitmore don't know, Whitmore can't tell."

All this while the prisoner had kept absolute silence; had stood motionless, except that his eyes turned from one speaker to another, and now and then seemed to seek Archibald Plinlimmon's—who, however, refused to return the look. But now he twisted his battered mouth into something like an appreciative grin.

"Bravo, Madam!" said he. "You've the wits of the company, if you'll take my compliments."

"I misdoubt they're interested ones," she answered drily, and so addressed herself again to Mr. Rogers. "Let the man go: you've drawn his sting. If ever he opens his mouth on to-night's work, we've a plum or two to pop into it. If Mr. Plinlimmon chooses to take him at the door and horsewhip him, I say nothing against it. Indeed he's welcome to the loan of my hunting-crop."

"But no," put in Isabel quickly, and knelt again; "my husband will not hurt where I have pardoned!" Rapidly she unloosed the strap about Leicester's ankles and stood up. "Now hold out your hands," she said.

He held them out. She looked him in the face, and a sudden tide of shame forced her to cover her own. In the silence her husband stepped to her side. His eyes were steady upon Leicester now.

"How could you? How could you?" she murmured.

Then, dragging—as it were—her hands down to the task, she unbuckled the strap around his wrist and pointed to the door.

Said Miss Belcher, "So two women have shown you mercy to-night, George Leicester!"

He went, without any swagger. His face was white. Miss Belcher and the Rector drew back as though he carried a disease, and let him pass. At the door he turned and his eyes, with a kind of miserable raillery in them, challenged Archibald Plinlimmon.

"Yes, you are right." The young man took a step towards him. "Between us two there is a word to be said." He turned on us abruptly. "I have been afraid of that man—yes, afraid. To say this out, and before Isabel, costs me more courage than to thrash him. Through fear of him I have been a villain. Worse wrong than I did to my wife—worse in its consequences—I could not do: you know it, all of you; and I must go now and tell it to her father. I did it unknowingly, by this man's contrivance; but not in any fear of him. What I did in fear, and knowingly, was worse in another way—worse in intention. I tell you that but for an accident I might—I might have—" He stammered and came to a halt. "No, I cannot tell it yet," he muttered half defiantly, with a shy look at the Rector. "But this I can tell"—and his voice rose—"that no fear of him stays me. You? I have your secret now. You have none of mine I dare not meet. You may go: you have my wife's pardon, it seems. I do not understand it, but you have mine—with this caution. You are my superior officer. If to-morrow, outside of the ranks, you dare to say a word to me, I promise to strike you on the mouth before the regiment, and afterwards to tell the whole truth of us both, and take what punishment may befall."

So he too pointed towards the door. Leicester bowed and went from us into the night.

"That's all very well," groaned Mr. Rogers, "but I'll have to resign my commission of the peace."

"If it's retiring from active service you mean," said Miss Belcher cheerfully, "that's what I began by advising. But stick to the title, Jack: you adorn it—indeed you do. And for my part," she wound up, "I think you've done mighty well to-night, considering."

"I've let one villain escape, you mean, and t'other go scot free."

"And the nuisance of it is," said she with a broadening smile, "I shan't be able to congratulate you in public."

"Well"—Mr. Rogers regained his cheerfulness as he eyed his knuckles—"we've let a deal of villainy loose on the world: but I got in once with the left, and that must be my consolation. What are we to do with this boy?"

"Hide him."

"Easier said than done."

"Not a bit." Miss Belcher turned to me. "Have you any friends, boy, who will be worrying if we keep you a few days?"

"None, ma'am," said I, and thereby in my haste did much injustice to the excellent Mr. and Mrs. Trapp.

"Eh? You have the world before you? Then maybe you're luckier than you think, my lad. What would you like to be? A sailor, now? I can get you shipped across to Guernsey to-morrow, if you say the word."

"That would do very well, ma'am: but if you ask me to choose—"

"I do."

"Then I'll choose to be a soldier," said I stoutly.

"H'm! You'll have to grow to it."

"I could start as a drummer, ma'am." The drum in Major Brooks's summer-house had put that into my head.

"My father can manage it, I am sure!" cried Isabel. "And meanwhile let him come back to the Cottage. No one will think of searching for him there: and to-night, when I have spoken to my father—"

"You will speak to your father to-night?"

Isabel glanced at her bridegroom, who nodded. "To-night," said he firmly. "We sail to-morrow."

Miss Belcher wagged her head at him. "I had my doubts of you, young man. You've been a fool: but I've a notion you'll do, yet."

"Good-night, then!" Isabel went to her and held up her cheek to be kissed.

"Eh? Not a bit of it! I'm coming with you. Don't stare at me now— I've a word to say, and I think maybe 'twill help."

We left the Rector and Mr. Rogers to their task of overhauling the house while they sat up on the chance of Hodgson's returning with Whitmore or with news of him: and trooped up the lane and down across the park to Minden Cottage.

"Take the child to bed," said Miss Belcher, as we reached the door: and so to my room Isabel conducted me, the others waiting below.

She lit my candles and kissed me. "You won't forget your prayers to-night, Harry? And say a prayer for me: I shall need it, though I have more call to thank God for sending you."

A minute later I heard her tap on her father's door. He was awake and dressed, apparently—for it seemed at any rate but a moment later that her voice was guiding his blind footsteps by whispers down the stairs. Had I guessed more of the ordeal before her, my eyes had closed less easily than they did. As it was, I tumbled into bed and slept almost as soon as my head touched the pillow.

I had forgotten to blow out the candles, and they were but half burnt, yet extinguished, when I awoke from a dream that Isabel was kneeling beside me in their dim light to find her standing at the bed's foot in a fresh print gown and the room filled again with sunshine. Her eyes were red. Poor soul! she had but an hour before said good-bye to Archibald; and Spain and its battlefields lay before him, and between their latest kiss and their next—if another there might be. Yet she smiled bravely, telling me that all was well, and that her father would be ready for me in the summer-house.

Major Brooks, when I found him there, made no allusion to the events of the night. His face was mild and grave as at our first meeting. At the sound of my footsteps he picked up his Virgil and motioned me to be seated.

"Let me see," he began: "liquidi fontes, was it not?"—and forthwith began to dictate at his accustomed pace.

"But seek a green-moss'd pool, with well-spring nigh, And through the grass a streamlet fleeting by. The porch with palm or oleaster shade— That when the regents from the hive parade Its gilded youth, in Spring—their Spring!—to prank, To woo their holiday heat a neighbouring bank May lean with branches hospitably cool. And midway, be your water stream or pool, Cross willow-twigs, and massy boulders fling— A line of stations for the halting wing To dry in summer sunshine, has it shipped A cupful aft, or deep in Neptune dipped. Plant cassias green around, thyme redolent, Full-flowering succory with heavy scent, And violet-beds to drink the channel'd stream. And let your hives (sewn concave, seam to seam, Of cork; or of the supple osier twined) Have narrow entrances; for frosts will bind Honey as hard as dog-days run it thin: —In bees' abhorrence each extreme's akin. Not purposeless they vie with wax to paste Their narrow cells, and choke the crannies fast With pollen, or that gum specific which Out-binds or birdlime or Idxan pitch—"

—And so on, and so on, until midday arrived, and Isabel with the claret and biscuits. She lingered while he ate: and when he had done he shut his Virgil, saying (in a tone which, though studiously kind, told me that she was not wholly forgiven):

"Take the drum, Isabel, and give the lad his first lesson. It will not disturb me."

She choked down a sob, passed the drum to me, and put the drumsticks into my hands. And so by signs rather than by words, she began to teach me; scarcely letting me tap the vellum, but instructing me rather how to hold the sticks and move my wrists. So quiet were we that the old man by and by dropped asleep: and then, as she taught, her tears flowed.

This was the first of many lessons; for I spent a full fortnight at Minden Cottage, free of its ample walled garden, but never showing my face in the high road or at the windows looking upon it. I learned from Isabel that Whitmore had not been found, and that Archibald and his regiment had sailed for Lisbon. Sometimes Miss Belcher or Mr. Rogers paid us a visit, and once the two together: and always they held long talks with the Major in his summer-house. But they never invited me to be present at these interviews.

So the days slipped away and I almost forgot my fears, nor speculated how or when the end would come. My elders were planning this for me, and meanwhile life, if a trifle dull, was pleasant enough. What vexed me was the old man's obdurate politeness towards Isabel, and her evident distress. It angered me the more that, when she was not by he gave never a sign that he brooded on what had befallen, but went on placidly polishing his petty and (to me) quite uninteresting verses.

But there came an evening when we finished the Fourth Georgic together.

"Of tillage, timber, herds, and hives, thus far My trivial lay—while Caesar thunders war To deep Euphrates, conquers, pacifies, Twice wins the world and now attempts the skies. Pardon thy Virgil that Parthenope Sufficed a poor tame scholar, who on thee Whilom his boyish pastoral pipe essayed, —Thee, Tityrus, beneath the beechen shade."

He closed the book.

"Lord Wellington is not a Caesar," he said and paused, musing: then, in a low voice, "Parthenope—Parthenope—and to-morrow 'Arms and the man.' Boy," said he sharply, "we do not translate the Aeneid."

"No, sir?"

"Mr. Rogers calls for you to-night. A draft of the 52nd Regiment sails from Plymouth to-morrow. You will find, when you join it in Spain, that—that my son-in-law"—he hesitated and spoke the word with a certain prim deliberateness—"has been gazetted to an ensigncy in that gallant regiment. I may tell you that he owes this to no intervention of mine, but solely to the generosity of Miss Belcher. Before departing—I will do him so much justice—he spoke to me very frankly of his past, and for my daughter's sake and his father's I trust that, as under Providence you were an instrument in averting its consequences, so you may sound him yet to some action which, whether he lives or falls, may redeem it. Mr. Rogers will sup with us to-night. If I mistake not, I hear his wheels on the road." He drew himself up to his full height and bowed. "You have done a service, boy, to the honour of two families. I thank you for it, and shall not omit to remember you daily when I thank God. Shall we go in?"

I had, as I said just now, almost forgotten my fears of the Law: but that the Law had not relaxed its interest in me was evident from my friends' precautions. Night had fallen before Mr. Rogers rose from table and gave the word for departure, and after exchanging some formal farewells with Major Brooks, and some very tender ones with Isabel, I was packed in the tilbury and driven off into darkness in which the world seemed uncomfortably large and vague and my prospects disconcertingly ill lit.

"D'ye know what that is?" asked Mr. Rogers at the end of five minutes, pulling up his mare and jerking his whip towards a splash of white beside the road.

"No, sir."

He pulled a rein, and brought the light of the offside lamp to bear on a milestone with a bill pasted upon it.

"A full, particular, and none too flattering description of you, my lad, with an offer of twenty pounds. And I'm a Justice of the Peace! Cl'k, lass!"

On went the mare; and I, who had been feeling like a needle in a bundle of hay, now shrank down within my wraps as though the night had a thousand eyes.

We reached the village of Anthony: and here, instead of holding on for Torpoint and the ferry, Mr. Rogers struck aside into a lane on our right, so steep and narrow that he alighted and led the mare down, holding one of the lamps to guide her as she picked her steps.

The lane ended beside a sheet of water, pitch-black under the shadow of a wooded shore, and glimmering beyond it with the reflections of a few stars. Mr. Rogers gave a whistle; and a soft whistle answered him. I heard a boat's nose grate on the shingle and take ground.

"All right, Sergeant?"

"Right, sir. Got the boy?"

"Climb down, Harry," whispered Mr. Rogers. "Shake hands and good luck to you!"

I was given a hand over the bows by a man whose face I could not see. The boat was full of men, and one dark figure handed me to another till I reached the stern-sheets.

"Give way, lads!" called a voice beside me, as the bow-man pushed us off. We were travelling fast when at a bend of the creek a line of lights shot into view—innumerable small sparks clustered low on the water ahead and shining steadily across it. I knew them at once. They were the lights of Plymouth Dock.

"Where are you taking me?" I cried.

"That's no question for a soldier," said a voice which I recognised as the sergeant's. And one or two of the crew laughed.



CHAPTER XXI.

I GO CAMPAIGNING WITH LORD WELLINGTON.

The vessel to which they rowed me was the Bute transport, bound for Portugal with one hundred and fifty officers and men of the 52nd Regiment, one hundred and twenty of the third battalion 95th Rifles, and a young cornet and three farriers of the 7th Light Dragoons in charge of fifty remounts for that regiment.

We weighed anchor at daybreak (the date, I may mention, was July 28th), and cleared the Sound. At ten o'clock or thereabouts the wind fell, and for two days and nights we drifted aimlessly about the Channel at the will of the tides, while the sergeant—a veteran named Henderson, who had started twenty-five years before by blowing a bugle in the 52nd, and therefore served me as index and example of what by patience I might attain to—filled the most of my time between sleep and meals with lessons upon that instrument. From a hencoop abaft the mainmast (the Bute was a brig, by the way) I blew back inarticulate farewells to the shores receding from us imperceptibly, if at all; and so illustrated a profound remark of the war's great historian, that the English are a bellicose rather than a martial race, and by consequence sometimes find themselves committed to military enterprises without having counted the cost or made complete preparation.

On the third day the wind freshened and blew dead foul, decimating the horses with sea-sickness, prostrating three-fourths of the men, and shaking the two regiments down into a sociability which outlasted their sufferings. To be sure my comrades of the 52nd (as, with a fearful joy, I named them to myself in secret), being veterans for the most part, recovered or recovering from wounds taken in the land to which they were returning with common memories of Sir John Moore, of Benevente, Calcabellos and Corunna, treated the riflemen with that affable condescension which was all that could be claimed by third battalion youngsters with their soldiering before them. But the 52nd knew the 95th of old. And, veterans and youths, were they not bound to be enrolled together in that noble Light Division, the glory of which was already lifting above the horizon, soon to blaze across heaven?

Sergeant Henderson did not suffer from seasickness. For no reward— unless it be the fierce delight of tackling a difficulty for its own sake—he had sworn to make a bugler of me, given moderately bad weather: and when the evening of September 2nd brought us off the coast of Portugal, he allowed me to shake hands over his success. Early next morning we began to disembark at a place called Figueira, by the mouth of the Mondego river. I stepped ashore with a swelling heart.

But I carried also a portentously swollen under-lip, with a crack in it which showed signs of festering. Now there was a base hospital at Figueira, to the surgeon in charge of which fell the duty of inspecting the men as they landed and detaining those who were sick or physically unfit. I need not say that his eye was arrested at once by my unfortunate lip. He examined it.

"Blood-poisoning," he announced. "Nasty, if not attended to. Detained for a week."

He saw my eyes fill with tears at this blow, the more cruel because quite unexpected; and added not unkindly:

"Eh? What? In a hurry? Never mind, my lad—you'll go up with the next draft I dare say. Jericho won't fall between this and then."

I was young, and never doubted that even so slight a promise must be remembered.

Still, that my merit might leave him no excuse for forgetting, I determined that it should not escape attention: and finding myself confined to hospital with a trifling hurt which in no way interfered with my activity, and being at once pounced upon by an over-worked and red-eyed orderly and pressed into service as emergency-man, nurse, and general bottle-washer for three over-crowded tents, I flung into my new duties a zeal which ended by undoing me. Drummers might be wanted at the front, but meanwhile the hospital-camp was undoubtedly short-handed. And my hopes faded as, with the approach of Christmas, wagon after wagon laden with sick soldiers crawled back to us from the low-lying country over which Lord Wellington had spread his forces between the Agueda and the upper Mondego—men shuddering with ague or bent double with rheumatism, and all bringing down the same tales of short food, sodden quarters, and arrears of pay. For three days, they told me, the army had gone without bread, and the commissariat crawled over unthreatened roads at the pace of five to nine miles a day. They cursed the war, the Government at home, above all the Portuguese and everything in Portugal; and yet their hardships seemed heaven to me in comparison with the hospital in which, though its duties were frequently disgusting, I had plenty to eat and nothing to complain of but over-work.

It was not until Christmas that I won my release, and by a singular accident.

It happened that after nightfall on the 23rd of December an ambulance train arrived of six wagons, all full of sick demanding instant attention; and, close upon these, four other wagons laden with cavalrymen, wounded more or less severely in a foraging excursion beyond the Agueda, which had brought them into conflict with a casual party of Marmont's dragoons. The weather was bitterly cold; the men, apart from this, were unfit for so long a journey and should have been attended to promptly at their own headquarters. To make matters worse, one of the wagons had been overturned six miles back on the frozen road, and the assistant-surgeon who, owing to the seriousness of the business, had been sent down in attendance, lost his balance completely. Three of the poor fellows had succumbed as they lay, of cold, wounds and exhaustion, and a dozen others were in desperate case.

Our surgeons went to work at once, and until midnight I attended on them, preparing the lint, washing the blood-stained instruments, changing the water in the pails, and performing other necessary but more gruesome tasks which I need not particularise. At midnight the young cavalry surgeon, who had been freely dosed with brandy, professed himself ready to take over the minor casualties. The two hospital surgeons, by this time worn out, accepted the offer and withdrew. No one thought of me.

I understand that about an hour later as I sat waiting for orders on the edge of an unoccupied bed (from which a dead man had been carried out a little before midnight) I must have dropped across it in a sleep of utter exhaustion. It appears too that the young doctor, finding me there a short while after, carried me out and laid me on the ground with my head against the hut. He never admitted this: for I had been attending upon him, off and on, since his arrival, and that he failed to recognise me might have been awkwardly accounted for. But I cannot believe (as certainly I do not remember) that of my own motion I crawled outside the hut and stretched myself on the frozen ground, or that, exhausted as I was, I could have walked ten yards in my sleep.

At all events, the chill of the bitter dawn awoke me there; and with a yawn I stretched out both arms. My right hand encountered—what?— the body of a man stretched beside me! Still dazed and numb, I rolled over to my elbow, raised myself a little and peered into his face.

It was pinched and cold. Its eyes stared straight up at the dawn. From it my gaze travelled slowly over the faces of three other men laid out accurately alongside of him, feet to feet, head to head.

I sank back, not yet comprehending, gazed up at the grey sky for a while, then slowly raised myself on my left elbow.

On that side lay a score of sleepers, all flat on their backs, and all equally still. Then I understood and leapt up with a scream. It was a line of corpses, and I had been laid out beside them for burial at dawn.

A sleepy orderly—a friend of mine—poked his head out of the doorway of the next hut. I pointed to the spot where I had been lying.

"They must ha' done it in the dark," he said, slowly regarding the bodies.

I suppose that my story, spreading about the camp, at length penetrated to headquarters: for on Christmas Day, a transport arriving and landing some light guns and a detachment of artillery, I was sent forward with them towards Villa del Ciervo on the left bank of the Agueda, where, by all accounts, the 52nd were posted.

Our battery was but six light six-pounders; yet even with these we moved over the frozen and slippery roads at a snail's pace, the men tearing their boots to ribbons as they hung on to the drag-ropes—for the artillery captain was a martinet and refused to lock the wheels, declaring that it would damage the carriages. Of damage to his men he never seemed to think: and I, being fool enough to volunteer— though my weight on the rope could have counted for next to nothing— found myself on the second day without heels to my shoes, and on the third without shoes at all. Nor is it likely that I had ever reached the Agueda in time for the fighting had we not been met at Coimbra by an order to leave our guns in the magazine there and hurry forward to Ciudad Rodrigo, where my comrades were required to work the 24-pounders which composed the bulk of Lord Wellington's siege-train.

Having been supplied with new boots from the stores in Coimbra, we pushed on eastward through torrents of rain which converted every valley bottom into a quag, so that our march was scarcely less toilsome than before, and the men grumbled worse than they had when dragging the guns over the frozen hill-roads. They had been forced to leave their wagons behind at Coimbra, and marched like infantry soldiers, each man carrying a haversack with four days' provisions, as well as an extra pair of boots. But what seemed to vex and deject them most was a rumour that Quartermaster-General Murray had been sent down from the front on leave of absence for England. They argued positively that, with Murray absent, the Commander-in-Chief could not be intending any action of importance: they doubted that he had twenty siege-guns at his call even if he stripped Almeida and left that fortress defenceless. Moreover, who would open a siege in such a country, in the depth of such a winter as this?

Nevertheless we had no sooner passed the bridge of the Coa than we discovered our mistake; the roads below Almeida being choked with a continuous train of mule transports, tumbrils, light carts, and wagons heaped with fascines, gabions, long balks of timber, sheaves of spades and siege implements—all crawling southwards. Our artillerymen were now halted to await and take charge of three brass guns said to be on their way down from Pinhel under an escort of Portuguese militia; and, taking leave of them, I was handed over to a company of the 23rd Regiment—hurrying in from one of the outlying hamlets near Celorico—with whom I reached on the 7th of January the squalid village of Boden, in and around which the 52nd lay in face of the doomed fortress across the river.

"Here then is war at last," thought I that night, as I curled myself to sleep in a loft where Sergeant Henderson considerately found a corner for me under some pathetically empty fowl-roosts. Sergeant Henderson in his captain's absence had claimed me from a distracted adjutant who wanted to know where the devil I had come from, and why, and if I would kindly make myself scarce and leave him in peace—a display of temper pardonable in a man who had just come in wet to his middle from fording the river amid cannoning blocks of ice.

Here was war at last, and I was not long in making acquaintance with it. I awoke to find, by the light of the lantern swung from the roost overhead, the dozen men in the loft awake and pulling on their boots. They had lain in their sodden clothes all night: but of their boots, I found, they were as careful as dandies, and to grease them would hoard up a lump of fat even while their stomachs craved for it. Sergeant Henderson motioned me to pull on mine. From my precious bugle I had never parted, even to unsling it, since leaving Figueira. And so I stood ready.

We bundled on our great-coats, climbed down the ladder, and filed out into the street. It was dark yet, though I could not guess the hour; and bitter cold, with an east wind which seemed to set the very stars shivering. The men stamped their feet on the frozen road as we hurried to the alarm-post, and there I walked into a crowd of dark figures which closed around me at once. For a moment I supposed the whole army to be massed there in the darkness, and wondered foolishly if we were to assault Ciudad Rodrigo at once. A terrible murmur filled the night—the more terrible because, while the few words spoken near me were idle and jocular, it ran down the jostling crowd into endless darkness, gathering menace as it went.

But the sergeant, gripping my shoulder, ordered me gruffly to keep close beside him, and promised to find me my place. The jostling grew regular, almost methodical, and by and by an officer came down the road carrying a lantern, and spoke with Henderson for a moment. At a word from him the men began to number off. Far up the road, other lanterns were moving and voices calling. Then after a long pause, on the reason of which the company speculated in whispers, the troops ahead began to move and the order came down to us—"Order arms—Fix bayonets—Shoulder arms!"—a pause—"By the right, quick march!"

An hour later, still in darkness, we halted beside the Agueda while company after company marched down into the water. A body of cavalry had been drawn across the upper edge of the ford, four deep—the horses' bodies forming a barrier against the swirling blocks of ice; and under this shelter we crossed, the water rising to my small ribs and touching my heart with a shiver that I recall as I write. But the sergeant's hand was on my collar and steadied me over.

"How much farther?" I made bold to whisper to him as we groped our way up the bank.

"Three miles, maybe: that's as the crow flies. But you mustn't talk."

And not another word did I say. We plodded on—not straight for the fortress, the distant lights of which seemed to be waiting for us, but athwart and, for a mile and more, almost away from it. By and by the road began to climb; and, a little later, we had left it and were crossing the shoulder of a grassy hill behind which the lights of Ciudad Rodrigo disappeared from view.

Here the dawn overtook us; and here at length, along the northern slope of the hill and close under its summit, we were halted.

Sergeant Henderson gave a satisfied grunt. "Good for The Division—the One and Only!" he remarked. "Now, for my part, I'm ready for breakfast."



CHAPTER XXII.

ON THE GREATER TESSON.

I turned for a look behind us and below. At the foot of the slope, where daylight had just begun to touch the dark shadows, stood a line of mules—animals scarcely taller than the loads they carried, which a crowd of Portuguese had already begun to unpack; and already, on the plateau to the left of us half a dozen markers, with a quartermaster, were mapping out a camp for the 52nd. They went to work so deliberately, and took such careful measurements with their long tapes, that even a tyro could no longer mistake this for an ordinary halt.

I looked at Sergeant Henderson. Word had just been given to the ranks to dismiss, and he returned my look with a humorous wink.

"That'll do, eh?" He nodded towards the markers.

"What does it mean?" I asked.

"It means that we've done with cold baths, my son, and may leave 'em to the other divisions. What else it means you'll discover before you sleep, maybe." He glanced up at the ridge, towards which at a dozen different points our sentries were creeping—some of them escorted by knots of officers—and ducking low as they neared the sky-line.

"May I go down and watch?" I asked again, pointing at the plateau; for I was young enough to find all operations of war amusing.

"Ay—if you won't get in the way and trip over the pegs. I'll be down there myself by 'n by with a fatigue party."

I left him and strolled down the hill. The morning air was cold and the turf, on this north side of the hill, frozen hard underfoot. But I felt neither hunger nor weariness. Here was war, and I was in it!

As I drew near the plateau a young officer came walking across it and, halting beside the quartermaster, held him in talk for a minute. He wore the collar of his great-coat turned up high about his ears: but I recognised him at once. It was Archibald Plinlimmon.

Leaving the quartermaster, he strolled towards the edge of the plateau, hard by where I stood; halted again, and gazed down through his field-glasses upon the muleteers unloading beneath us; but by and by closed his glasses with a snap, faced round, and was aware of me.

"Hallo!" said he, as I saluted: but his voice was listless and I thought him looking wretchedly ill. "You're in Number 4 Company, are you not? I heard that you'd joined."

It struck me that at least he might have smiled and seemed glad to welcome me. He did indeed seem inclined to say something more, but hesitated, and fumbled as he slipped back the glasses into their cases.

"Are they looking after you?" he asked.

I told him of the sergeant. "But are you well, sir?" I made bold to ask.

He put the question aside. "Henderson's a good man," he said: "I wish we had him in our company. Ah," he broke off, "they won't be long pitching tents now!"

He swung slowly on his heel and left me, at a pace almost as listless as his voice. I felt hurt, rebuffed. To be sure he was an officer now, and I a small bugler: still, without compromising himself, he might (I felt) have spoken more kindly.

The fatigue party descended, the tents were brought up and distributed, and at a silent signal sprang up and expanded like lines of mushrooms. The camp was formed; and the 52nd, in high good humour, opened their haversacks and fell to their breakfast.

The meal over, the men lit their pipes and stretched themselves within the tents to make up arrears of sleep. It does not take a boy long to learn how to snatch a nap even on half-thawed turf packed with moisture, and to manage it without claiming much room. We were eleven in our tent, not counting the sergeant—who had gone off on some errand which he did not explain, but which interested the men sufficiently to keep them awake for a while discussing it in low voices.

I was at once too shy to ask questions and too sleepy to listen attentively. Here was war, I told myself, and I was in it. To be sure, I had not yet seen a shot fired, nor—save for the infrequent boom of a gun beyond the hill—had I heard one: and yet all my ideas of war were undergoing a change. My uppermost sense— odd as it may seem—was one of infinite protection. It seemed impossible that, with all these cheerful men about me, joking and swearing, I could come to much harm. It surprised me, after my months of yearning and weeks of tramping to reach this army, to discover how little my presence was regarded even in my own regiment. The men took me for granted, asking no questions. I might have strolled in upon them out of nowhere, with my hands in my pockets. And the officers, it appeared, were equally incurious. Captain Lockhart, commanding the company, had scarcely flung me a look. The Colonel I had not seen: the Adjutant had dismissed me to the devil: and Archibald Plinlimmon had treated me as I have told. All this indifference contained much comfort. I began to understand the restfulness of a great army—a characteristic left clean out of account in a boy's imaginings, who thinks of war as a series of combats and brilliant personal efforts at once far more glorious and more terrifying than the reality.

So I dreamed, secure, until awakened by my comrades' voices, lifted all together and all excitedly questioning Sergeant Henderson, whose head and shoulders intruded through the flap-way.

"Light Company and Number 3," he was announcing.

"Blasted favouritism!" swore the man next to me. "Ain't there no other battalion company in the regiment, that Number 3's been picked for special twice now in four days?"

"The Major's sweet on 'em, that's why," snarled another.

"I ain't saying nothing against the Bobs. But what's the matter with us, I'd like to know? Why Number 3 again? Ugh, it makes me sick!"

"Our fun'll come later, lads," said the sergeant cheerfully. "When you reach my years you'll have learnt to wait. Now, if you'd asked me, I'd have chosen the grenadiers: they're every bit as good as a light company for this work."

"Ay—grenadiers and Number 4. Why not? It's cruel hard."

I asked in my ignorance what was happening. My neighbour turned to me with a grin. "Happening? Why, you've a-lost your chance of death or victory, that's all. Here you are, company bugler for twenty-four hours by the grace of Heaven and the sergeant's contrivance, and because everyone's forgot you and because, as it happens, for twenty-four hours there's no bugling wanted. To-morrow you'll be found out and sent back to the band, where there's five supernumeraries waiting for your shoes. And the bandmaster'll cuff your head every day for months before you get such another chance. Whereas, if No. 4 Company had been chosen for to-night, by to-morrow you'd have blown the charge, and half the drummers in the regiment would be blacking your eyes out of envy. See?"

I did not, very clearly. "Is there to be an attack to-night?" I asked. "And shan't we even see it?"

"Oh yes, we'll see it fast enough. I reckon they won't go so far as to grudge us free seats for the show."

Sure enough, at eight o'clock, we formed up by companies and were marched over the dark crest of the hill and a short way down it in face of the lights of Ciudad Rodrigo. Right below us, on our left, shone a detached light. We ourselves showed none. The word for silence in the ranks had been given at starting, and the captains spoke in the lowest of voices as they drew their companies together in battalion. The light company having been withdrawn, we found ourselves on the extreme left flank, parted by a few yards only from another dark mass of men—the 43rd, as a tallish young bugler whispered close beside me.

"But how the hell do you come here?" he went on, mistaking me in the darkness, I suppose, for one of the youngsters in the band.

"Shut your head, bugler," commanded a corporal close on my right.

The men grounded arms and waited, their breath rising like a fog on the frozen air. Their two tall ranks made a wall before us, shutting out all view of the lights in the valley. The short or supernumerary line of non-commissioned officers on our right stood motionless as a row of statues.

Suddenly a rocket shot up from below, arched its trail of light, and exploded: and on the instant the whole valley answered and exploded below us. Between the detonations a cheer rang up the hillside and was drowned in the noise of musketry, as under a crackle of laughter. Forgetting discipline, I crawled forward three paces and tried to peer between the legs of the rank in front, but was hauled back by the ear and soundly cursed. The musketry crackled on without intermission. Away in Ciudad Rodrigo the walls seemed to open and vomit fireworks, shell after shell curving up and dropping into the valley.

"Glory be!" cried someone. "The old man's done it! The Johnnies wouldn't be shelling their own works."

"Ah, be quiet with ye!" answered an Irish voice; "and the fun not ten minutes old!"

"He's done it, I say! Whist now, see yonder—there's Elder going down with his Greasers! Heh? What did I tell you?"

"Silence in the ranks!" commanded an officer, but his own voice shook with excitement, and we read that he believed the news to be true.

"Arrah now, sir," a man in the front rank wheedled softly, "it's against flesh and blood you're ordering us."

"Wait a moment, then. They've done it, I believe—but no cheering, mind!"

What had been done was this. From the summit of the hill where we stood we looked into Ciudad Rodrigo over a lesser hill, and between these two (called the Great and the Lesser Tesson) the French had fortified and palisaded a convent and built a lunette before it, protecting that side of the town where the ground was least rocky and could be worked by the sappers. Upon the lunette before this Convent of San Francisco, Colborne (our Colonel of the 52nd) had now flung himself, with two companies from each of the Light Division regiments, and carried it with a rush: and this feat, made possible by our night march across the Agueda and the negligence of the French sentries, in its turn gave the signal for the siege to open. The place was scarcely carried before Elder had his Portuguese at work spading a trench to the right of it and under what cover its walls afforded from the artillery of the town, which ceased not all night to pound away at the lost redoubt.

The cacadores—seven hundred in all—toiled with a will under shot and shell; and when day broke a trench three feet deep and four wide had been opened and pushed for no less than six hundred yards towards the town! Next night the Portuguese were replaced by the First Division, which had been marched over the Agueda. While the Light Division cooked its food and enjoyed itself on Mount Tesson, the others had to cross and recross the river between their work and their quarters; and I fear that we took their misfortunes philosophically, feeling that our luck was deserved. To be sure I had been taken from my company and relegated to the band: but during the twelve days the siege lasted there was always a call for boys to watch the explosions from the town and warn the workmen when a shell was coming: and, on the whole, since Ciudad Rodrigo contained plenty of ammunition and did not spare it, I enjoyed myself amazingly.

On the night of the 9th, while the First Division dug at the trenches, our men helped with the building of three counter-batteries a little ahead of the convent; and, because the French guns began to make our hill uncomfortable, we shifted camp and laid a shallow trench from it, along which we could steal to work under fair cover. On the 10th the Fourth Division took over the siege trenches, and on the 11th the Third Division relieved: on the 12th came our turn.

The day breaking with a thick fog, Lord Wellington determined to profit by it and hurry on the digging, which the bitter frost was now miserably impeding. To him, or to someone, it occurred that by scooping pits in front of the trenches our riflemen (the 95th) might give ease to the diggers by picking off the enemy's gunners. And with this object we were hurried down in force to take up the work as the Third Division dropped it.

Now I knew the North Wilts to belong to this Division, and it had occurred to me on the way down that as likely as not I might run across Leicester. And keeping a sharp look-out as his regiment filed forth from the trench, I spied him before he caught sight of me. He recognised me at once; but instead of passing with a scowl (as I had expected) he treated me to a grin as nearly humorous as his sallow face allowed, and came to a halt.

"D'ye know who's in there?" he asked, jerking his thumb back towards Ciudad Rodrigo.

"No, sir," I answered, scarcely grasping the question, but quaking as this man always made me quake.

"Thought you mightn't. Well then, our friend is in there."

"Our friend?" I echoed. "Who?"

"Whitmore." His grin became ferocious now. "We have him, now—have him sure enough, this time—eh?"

But how on earth could Mr. Whitmore have come in Ciudad Rodrigo? Leicester read the question in my eyes, and answered it, pushing his face close to mine in the fog.

"He's a deserter. If the river don't come down in flood, we'll have him sure enough. And it won't, you mark my words! Two or three days of flood would let up Marmont upon us and spoil everything. But this weather's going to hold, and—it's a bad death for deserters," he wound up, with a snarling laugh.

"Mr. Whitmore a deserter? But how?"

"Ah, you've come to the right man to ask. I bear you no grudge, boy; and as for Plinlimmon—how's he doing, by the way?"

"I've scarcely seen him since I joined. He passed you just now, didn't he?"

"Ay, I saw him. For a man in luck's way he carries a queer sort of face. What's wrong with him?"

"Nothing wrong that I know of. The men reckon him a good officer, too."

"Well, I'll be even with Master Archibald yet. You hear? But about Whitmore now—I caught up with him in Lisbon. You see, he'd got this money off the Jew and he counted on another pocketful from that Belcher woman. He always was a devil to get around women, 'specially the old ones. I don't know if you guessed it, that night, but he'd persuaded the old fool to run off and marry him. Yes, and meantime he'd taken his passage in one of the Falmouth packets, meaning to give her the slip—and give me the slip too—as soon as he'd laid hands on her purse. Well, you headed him off that little plan; and to save his skin, as you know, he rounded on me. Now what puzzles me is, how you let him slip?"

I did not answer this.

"The Belcher woman had a hand in it, I'll lay odds. Never mind— don't you answer if you'd rather not. But when I caught up with him, he didn't escape me: that's to say, he won't: and it'll be a sight worse for him than if he hadn't tried."

He paused again, and laughed to himself silently—a laugh unhealthy to watch.

"I came on him in Lisbon streets," he went on; "came on him from behind and put a hand on his shoulder. He's an almighty coward— that's his secret—and the way he jumped did me good. 'Recruit for the North Wilts,' said I. He turned and his knees caved under him. 'Wha—what do you mean by that?' says he"—and here Leicester burlesqued the poor cold stammering knave to the life—"'Oh, for the Lord's sake, Leicester, have mercy on me!' 'You'll see the kind of mercy you're going to get,' says I; 'but meantime you've a choice between hanging and coming along to join the North Wilts.' 'But why should I join the North Wilts?' he asked. 'Well, to begin with,' I said, 'you're a dreadful coward, and there you'll have some chance to feel what it's really like. And what's more,' I said, 'I'll take care you're in my company, and I'm going to live beside you and give you hell. I'm going to eat beside you, sleep beside you, march beside you: and when things grow hot, and your lilywhite soul begins to shiver, I'll be close to you still—but behind you, my daisy!' So I promised him, and, being a coward, he chose it. I tell you I kept my word too: it's lucky for you, boy, that I'm a connoisseur in my grudges. But Whitmore—he'd betrayed me, you see. Often and often I had him alone and crying! and I promised myself to be behind him on just such a job as we're in for—a night assault: oh, he'd have enjoyed that! But he couldn't stand it. At Celorico he gave me the slip and deserted: and now he's in Ciudad Rodrigo, yonder, and the trap's closing, and—what's he feeling like, think you? Eh? I know him: it'll get worse and worse for him till the end, and—it's a bad death for deserters."

He paused, panting with hate and coughing the fog out of his lungs. I shrank away against the wall of the trench.

"When he's done with, I won't say but what I'll turn my attention to you—or to Plinlimmon. You know what Plinlimmon was after—that morning—on the roof? He was there to steal."

He eyed me.

"Yes," said I with sudden courage, "he was there to steal. And you were waiting below, to share profits."

He fell back a pace, still eyeing me.

"I'll have to find another way with you than with Whitmore—that's evident," he said with a short laugh, and was gone.



CHAPTER XXIII.

IN CIUDAD RODRIGO.

Two days later our breaching batteries opened on the town.

It is not for me to describe this wonderful siege, the operations of which, though witnessing them in part, I did not understand in the least. I have read more than one book about it since, and could draw you a map blindfold and tell you where the counter-batteries stood, and where the lunette which Colborne carried, and how far behind it lay the Convent of San Francisco; where the parallels ran, where the French brought down a howitzer, and where by a sortie they came near to cutting up a division. I could trace you the fausse braye and the main walls, and put my finger on the angle where our guns pierced the greater breach, and carry it across to the tower where, by the lesser breach, our own storming-party of the Light Division climbed into the town. During the next five days I saw a many things shattered to lay the foundations of a fame which still is proved the sounder the closer men examine it—I mean Lord Wellington's: and in the end I, Harry Revel, contributed my mite to it in a splintered ankle. I understand now many things which were then a mere confused hurly-burly: and even now—having arrived at an age when men take stock of themselves and, casting up their accounts with life, cross out their vanities—I am proud to remember that along with the great Craufurd, Mackinnon, Vandeleur, Colborne our Colonel, and Napier, I took my unconsidered hurt. To this day you cannot speak the name of Ciudad Rodrigo to me but I hear my own bugle chiming with the rest below the breaches and swelling the notes of the advance, and my heart swells with it. But I tell you strictly what I saw, and I tell it for this reason only—that the story to which you have been listening points through those breaches, and within them has its end.

To me, watching them day by day from the hillside, they appeared but trifling gaps in the fortifications. On the 19th I never dreamed that they were capable of assault; indeed, in the lesser breach to the left my inexpert eyes could detect no gap at all. What chiefly impressed me at this time was our enemy's superiority in ammunition. Their guns fired at least thrice to our once.

Still holding myself strictly to what I saw, I can tell you even less of the assault itself. I can tell, indeed, how, on the evening of the 19th, when we were looking forward to another turn at the trenches with the Third Division, General Craufurd unexpectedly paraded us; and how, at a nod from him, Major Napier addressed us. "Men of the Light Division," he said, "we assault to-night. I have the honour to lead the storming party, and I want a hundred volunteers from each regiment. Those who will go with me, step forward."

Instantly the battalions surged forward—the press of the volunteers carrying us with them as if we would have marched on Ciudad Rodrigo with one united front.

The Major flung up a hand and turned to General Craufurd. Their eyes met, and they both broke out laughing.

This much I saw and heard. And when, at six o'clock, they marched us down under the lee of San Francisco, I saw Lord Wellington ride up, dismount, give over his horse to an orderly and walk past our column into the darkness. He was going to give the last directions to Major Napier and the storming party: but they were drawn up behind an angle of the convent wall; and we, the supporting columns, massed in the darkness two hundred yards in the rear, neither saw the conference nor caught more than the high clear tones of Craufurd addressing his men for the last time.

Then, after many minutes of silence, suddenly the sky over the convent wall opened with a glare and shut again, and we heard the French guns tearing the night. The attack of the Third Division on our right had begun, and the noise of it was taken up by the 95th riflemen, spread wide in three companies to scour the fausse braye between the two breaches, and keep the defenders busy along it. As the sound of the assault spread down to us, interrupted again and again by the explosion of shells, we were marched forward for two or three hundred yards and halted, put into motion and halted again. We could see the city now, opening and shutting upon us in fiery flashes; and, in the intervals, jet after jet of fire streamed from the rifles on our right.

Then someone shouted to us to advance at the double, and I ran blowing upon my bugle, for now the calls were sounding all about me. I had no thought of death in all this roar—the crowd seemed to close around and shut that out—until we came to the edge of the counterscarp facing the fausse braye: and by that time the worst of the danger had passed. The fausse braye itself was dark, and the darker for a blaze of light behind it. Our stormers had carried it and swept the defenders back into the true breach beside the tower. Some stray bullets splashed among us as we toppled down the ditch and mounted the scarp—shots fired from Heaven knows where, but probably from some French retreating along the top of the fausse braye.

While we were mounting the scarp Napier and his men must have carried the inner breach. At the top we thronged to squeeze through the narrow entrance, for all the world like a crowd elbowing its way into a theatre: and as I pressed into the skirts of the throng it seemed to suck me in and choke me. My small ribs caved inwards as we were driven through by the weight of men behind. The pressure eased, and an explosion threw a dozen of us to earth between the fausse braye and the slope of rubble by which the stormers had climbed.

I picked myself up—gripped my bugle—and ran for the slope, still blowing. A man of the 43rd gave me a hand and helped me up, for now we were stumbling among corpses. What had become of the stormers? Some we were trampling under foot: the rest had swept on and into the town.

"Fifty-second to the left," said my friend as we gained the top of the rampart, catching up a cry which now sounded everywhere in the darkness. "Forty-third to the right—fifty-second to the left!" I turned sharply to the left and ran from him.

A rush of men overtook me. "This way!" they shouted, swerving aside from the line of the ramparts and sliding down the steep inner slope towards the town. They were mad for loot, but in my ignorance I supposed them to be obeying orders, and I turned aside and clambered down after them.

We crossed a roadway and plunged into a dark and deserted street at the foot of which shone a solitary lamp. Then I learned what my comrades were after. The first door they came to they broke down with their musket-butts. An old man was crouching behind it; and, dragging him out, they tossed him from one to another, jabbing at him with their bayonets. I ran on, shutting my ears to his screams.

I was alone now; and, as it seemed, in a forsaken town. Here and there a light shone beneath a house-door or through the chinks of a shutter. I felt that behind the windows I passed Ciudad Rodrigo was awake and waiting for its punishment. Behind me, along the ramparts, the uproar still continued. But the town, here and for the moment, I had to myself: and it was waiting, trembling to know what my revenge would be.

I came next to a small open square; and was crossing it, when in the corner on my right a door opened softly, showing a lit passage within, and a moment later was as softly shut. Scarcely heeding, I ran on; my feet sounding sharply on the frozen cobbles. And with that a jet of light leapt from under the door-sill across the narrow pavement, almost between my legs: and I pitched headlong, with a shattered foot.

Doubtless I fainted with the pain: for it could not have been—as it seemed—only a minute later that I opened my eyes to find the square crowded and bright with the glare of two burning houses. A herd of bellowing oxen came charging past the gutter where I lay, pricked on by a score of redcoats yelling in sheer drunkenness as they flourished their bayonets. Two or three of them wore monks' robes flung over their uniforms, and danced idiotically, holding their skirts wide. I supposed it had been raining, for a flood ran through the gutter and over my broken ankle. In the light of the conflagration it showed pitch black, and by and by I knew it for wine flowing down from a whole cellarful of casks which a score of madmen were broaching as they dragged them forth from a house on the upper side of the square. A child—he could not have been more than four years old—ran screaming by me. From a balcony right overhead a soldier shot at him, missed, and laughed uproariously. Then he reloaded and began firing among the bullocks, now jammed and goring one another at the entrance of a narrow alley. And his shots seemed to be a signal for a general salvo of random musketry. I saw a woman cross the roadway with a rifleman close behind her; he swung up his rifle, holding it by the muzzle, and clubbed her between the shoulders with the butt.

All night these scenes went by me—these and scenes of which I cannot write; unrolled in the blaze of the houses which burnt on, as little regarded as I who lay in my gutter and watched them to the savage unending music of yells, musketry, and the roar of flames.

In the height of it my ear caught the regular footfall of troops, and a squad of infantry came swinging round the corner. I supposed it to be a patrol sent to clear the streets and restore order. A small man in civilian dress—a Portuguese, by his look—walked gingerly beside the sergeant in charge, chatting and gesticulating. And, almost in the same instant, I perceived that the men wore the uniform of the North Wilts and that the sergeant he held in converse was George Leicester.

By the light of the flames he recognised me, shook off his guide and stepped forward.

"Hurt?" he asked. "Here, step out, a couple of you, and take hold of this youngster. He's a friend of mine, and I've something to show him: something that will amuse him, or I'm mistaken."

They hoisted me, not meaning to be rough, but hurting me cruelly nevertheless: and two of them made a "chair" with crossed hands; but they left my wounded foot dangling, and I swooned again with pain.

When I came to, we were in a street—dark but for their lanterns— between a row of houses and a blank wall, and against this wall they were laying me. The houses opposite were superior to any I had yet seen in Ciudad Rodrigo and had iron balconies before their first-floor windows, broad and deep and overhanging the house-doors.

On one of these doors Leicester was hammering with his side-arm, the Portuguese standing by on the step below. No one answering, he called to two of his men, who advanced and, setting the muzzles of their muskets close against the keyhole, blew the door in. Leicester snatched a lantern and sprang inside, the two men after him. The Portuguese waited. The rest of the soldiers waited too, grounding arms—some in the roadway, others by the wall at the foot of which they had laid me.

A minute passed—two minutes—and then with a crash a man sprang through one of the first-floor windows, flung a leg over the balcony rail, and hung a moment in air between the ledge and the street. The window through which he had broken was flung up and Leicester came running after, grabbing at him vainly as he swung clear.

There were two figures now on the balcony. A woman had run after Leicester. She leaned for a moment with both hands on the balcony rail, and turned as if to run back. Leicester caught her around the waist and held her so while she screamed—shrilly, again and again.

The man dangled for a moment, dropped with a horrible thud, and answered with one scream only—but it was worse even than hers to hear. Then the soldiers ran forward and flung themselves upon him.

"Hold the lantern higher, you fools!" shouted Leicester, straining the woman to him, as she struggled and fought to get away. "Over there, by the wall—I want to see his face! Steady now, my beauty!"

The woman sank in his arms as if fainting, and her screams ceased. There was a stool on the balcony and he seated himself upon it, easing her down and seating her on his knee. This brought his evil face level with the balcony rail; and the lanterns, held high, flared up at it.

"Out of the way, youngster!" one of the soldiers commanded grimly. "That wall's wanted."

He dragged me aside as they pulled Whitmore across the roadway. I think his leg had been broken by the fall. It trailed as they carried him, and when they set him against the wall it doubled under him and he fell in a heap.

"Turn up his face, anyway," commanded Leicester from the balcony. "I want to see it! And when you've done, you can leave me with this beauty. Hey, my lass? The show's waiting. Sit up and have a look at him!"

I saw Whitmore's face as they turned it up, and the sight of it made me cover my eyes. I heard the men step out into the roadway, and set back their triggers. Crouching against the wall, I heard the volley.

As the echoes of it beat from side to side of the narrow street I looked again—not towards the wall—but upwards at the balcony, under which the men waved their lanterns as they dispersed, leaving the corpse where it lay. To my surprise Leicester had released the woman. She was stealing back through the open window and I caught but a glimpse of her black head-veil in the wavering lights. But Leicester still leaned forward with his chin on the balcony rail, and grinned upon the street and the wall opposite.

I dragged myself from the spot. How long it took me I do not know; for I crawled on my belly, and there were pauses in my progress of which I remember nothing. But I remember that at some point in it there dawned upon me the certainty that this was the very street down which I had struck on my way from the ramparts. If not the same street, it must have been one close beside and running parallel with it: for at daybreak, with no other guidance than this certainty, I found myself back at the breach, nursing my foot and staring stupidly downward at the bodies on the slope.

Across the foot of it a young officer was picking his way slowly in the dawn. A sergeant followed him with a notebook and pencil, and two men with lanterns. They were numbering the corpses, halting now and again to turn one over and hold a light to his face, then to his badge. Half-way down, between them and me, a stink-pot yet smouldered, and the morning air carried a horrible smell of singed flesh.

As the dawn widened, one of the men opened his lantern and blew out the candle within it. The young officer—it was Archibald Plinlimmon—paused in his search and scanned the sky and the ramparts above. I sent down a feeble hail.

He heard. His eyes searched along the heaped ruins of gabions, fascines, and dead bodies; and, recognising me, he came slowly up the slope.

"Hallo!" said he. "Not badly hurt, I hope? I thought we'd cleared all the wounded. Where on earth have you come from?"

"From the town, sir."

"We'll take you back to it, then. They've rigged up a couple of hospitals, and it's nearer than camp. Besides, I doubt if there's an ambulance left to take you." He knelt and examined my foot. "Hi, there!" he called down. "You—O'Leary—come and help me with this boy! Hurt badly, does it? Never mind—we'll get you to hospital in ten minutes. But what on earth brought you crawling back here?"

"Mr. Archibald!" I gasped, "I saw him!"

"Him?"

"Whitmore!"

He stared at me. "You're off your head a bit, boy. You'll be all right when we get you to hospital."

"But I saw him, sir! They shot him—against the wall. He was a deserter, and they hunted him out."

"Well, and what is that to me, if they did?" He turned his face away. "Isabel, my wife, is dead," he said slowly.

"Dead?"

"She is dead—and the child."

He bowed his face, while I gazed at him incredulous, sick at heart.

"If what you say is true," he said, lifting his eyes till, weary and desperate, they met mine, "she has been avenged to-night."

"You shall see," I promised; and as the two soldiers picked me up and laid me along a plank, I made signs that they were to carry me as I directed. He nodded, and fell into pace beside my litter.

The body of Whitmore lay along the foot of the wall where it had fallen. But when we drew near, it was not at the body that I stared, putting out a hand and gripping Archibald Plinlimmon's arm.

On the balcony opposite, George Leicester still leaned forward and grinned down into the street.

He did not move or glance aside even when Archibald commanded the men to set me down; nor when he passed in at the open door and we waited; nor again when he stepped out on the balcony and called him by name. The corpse stared down still. For it was a corpse, with a woman's bodkin-dagger driven tight home between the shoulder-blades.

And so, by an unknown sister's hand, Isabel's wrongs had earthly vengeance.



CHAPTER XXIV.

I EXCHANGE THE LAUREL FOR THE OLIVE.

Thus, in hospital in Ciudad Rodrigo, ended my first campaign; and here in a few words may end my story. The surgeons, having their hands full, and detecting no opportunities of credit in a small bugler with a splintered ankle, sent me down to Belem, splinters and splints and all, to recover: and at Belem hospital, just as the surgeons were beginning to congratulate themselves that, although never likely to be fit again for active service, I might in time make a fairly active hospital orderly, the splinters began to work through the flesh; and for two months I lay on my back in bed and suffered more pain than has been packed into the rest of my life.

The curious part of it was that, having extracted the final splinter, they promptly invalided me home. From the day I limped on board the Cumberland transport in the Tagus, leaning on two crutches, I began to mend: and within twelve months—as may hereafter be recounted—I was back again, hale and hearty, marching with no perceptible limp, on the soil of Spain.

But I must not, after all, conclude in this summary fashion. And why? Because scarcely had I set foot in the Cumberland when a voice from somewhere amidships exclaimed:

"My blessed Parliament!"

I looked up and found myself face to face with—Ben Jope!

"And you've grown!" he added, as we shook hands.

"But Ben, I thought you were married and settled?"

He turned his eyes away uneasily.

"Whoever said so told you a thundering lie."

"Nobody told me," said I; "but when you left me, I understood—"

"My lad," he interrupted hoarsely, "I couldn't do it. I went straight back, same as you saw me start—now don't say a word till you've heard the end o't!—I went straight back, and up to door without once looking back. There was a nice brass knocker to the door (I never denied the woman had some good qualities); so I fixed my eyes hard on it and said to myself, if there's peace to be found in this world—which was a Bible text that came into my head—the heart that is humble, which is the case with me, may look for it here. And with that I shut my eyes and let fly at it, though every knock brought my heart into my mouth. Now guess: who d'ye think answered the door? Why, that ghastly boy of hers! There he stood, all freckles and pimples; and says he, grinning:"

'Mr. Benjamin Jope Moderately well, I hope.'

"I couldn't stand it. I turned tail and ran for my life."

"But was that quite honourable?" I asked.

"Ain't I tellin' you to wait till I've done? You don't suppose as it ended there, do you? No; I passed my word to that sister of mine, and my word I must keep. So I went back to Symonds's—who was that pleased to see me again you'd have thought I'd been half round the world—and I ordered up three-pennorth of rum, and pens and ink to the same amount: and this is what I wrote, and I hope you'll get it by heart before you're in a hurry again to accuse Ben Jope of dishonourable conduct—'Respected Madam,' I wrote, 'this is to enquire if you'll marry me. Better late than never, and please don't trouble to reply. I'll call for an answer when I wants it. Yours to command, B. Jope. N.B.: We might board the boy out.' Symonds found a messenger, and I told him on no account to wait for an answer. Now, I hope you call that acting straight?"

"Well, but what was the answer?" I asked.

He hung his head. "To tell you the truth, I ha'n't called for it yet. You notice I didn't specify no time; and being inclined for a v'yage just then, I tramped it down to Falmouth and shipped aboard the Marlborough, Post Office Packet, for Lisbon."

"And you've been dodging at sea ever since," said I severely.

"If you'd only seen that boy!" protested Mr. Jope.

"I'll call with you and see him as soon as ever we reach Plymouth," I said; "but you passed your word, and your word you must keep."

"You're sure 'twill be safe for you at Plymouth?" he asked, and (as I thought) a trifle mischievously. "How about that Jew?"

"Oh, that's all cleared up!"

He sighed. "Some folks has luck. To be sure, he may be dead," he added, with an attempt at cheerfulness.

"The Jew?"

"No, the boy."

I could hold out no hope of this, and he consoled himself with anticipating the time we would spend together at Symonds's. "For if you're invalided home, they'll discharge you on leave as soon as we reach port."

"Unless they keep me in hospital," said I.

"Then you'll have to make a cure of it on the voyage."

"I feel like that, already. But the mischief is I've no home to go to."

"There's Symonds's."

"I might give that as an address, to be sure."

"Damme!" cried Ben, as a bright thought struck him, "why couldn't I adopt you?"

"The lady might find that an inducement," said I modestly.

"I wasn't exactly seeing it in that light," he confessed. "But, with a boy apiece, she and I might start fair. You could punch his head, brother like."

The Cumberland weighed anchor on the 2nd of May, and dropped it again under Staddon Heights on the 29th of that month. To my delight, the garrison surgeon at Plymouth pronounced me fit to travel: my foot only needed rest, he said; and he asked me where my home lay.

I had anticipated this, and answered that a letter addressed to me under care Miss Amelia Plinlimmon, at the Genevan Foundling Hospital, would certainly find me. And so I was granted two months' leave of absence to recover from my wound.

"But you don't mean to tell me," said Mr. Jope as we strolled down Union Street together, "that you haven't a home or relations in this world?"

"Neither one nor the other," said I; "but I have picked up a few friends."

As he drew westward I noticed that he sensibly retarded his pace: but he had forsworn visiting Symonds's until, as he put it, we knew the worst; and I marched him relentlessly up to the door of doom with its immaculate brass knocker. And when, facing it, he shut his eyes, I put out a hand and knocked for him.

But it was I who shrank back when the door opened: for the person who opened it was—Mr. George!—in pigtail and wooden leg unchanged, but in demeanour (so far as agitation allowed me to remark it) more saturnine than ever.

"Do the Widow Babbage live here?" stammered Mr. Jope.

"She do not," answered Mr. George slowly, and added, "worse luck!"

"Is—is she dead?"

"No, she ain't," answered Mr. George, and pulled himself up.

"Then what's the matter with her?"

"There ain't nothing the matter with her, as I know by," answered Mr. George once more, in a non-committal tone. "But I'm her 'usband."

"You—Mr. George?" I gasped.

Thereupon he recognised me, and his eyes grew round, yet expressed no immoderate surprise.

"A nice dance you've led everybody!" he said slowly: "but I was never hopeful about you, I'm thankful to say."

"Where is Miss Plinlimmon living?" I asked. "Has she left the Hospital too?"

"She didn't leave it," he answered. "It left her. The Hospital's scat."

"Eh?"

"Bust—sold up—come to an end. Scougall's retired on the donations. He feathered his nest. And Miss Plinlimmon's gone down into Cornwall to live with a Major Brooks—a kind of relation of hers, so far as I can make out. They tell me she've come into money."

I had a question on my lips, but Mr. Jope interrupted.

"I haven't the pleasure of your acquaintance, sir," he began politely, addressing Mr. George, "and by the look of 'ee, you must date from before my time. But speakin' as one man to another, how do you get along with that boy?"

The door was slammed in our faces.

Mr. Jope and I regarded one another. "Ben," said I, "it's urgent, or I wouldn't leave you. I must start at once for Minden Cottage."

His face fell. "And I was planning a little kick-up at Symonds's," he said ruefully; "a fiddle or two—to celebrate the occasion; nothing out o' the way. The first time you dropped on us, if you remember, we was not quite ourselves, owing to poor dear Bill: and I'd ha' liked you to form a cheerfuller idea of the place. But if 'tis duty, my lad, England expec's and I'm not gainsaying. Duty, is it?"

"Duty it is," said I. "You walked up to yours nobly, and I must walk on to mine."

So we shook hands, and I turned my face westward for the ferry.

I had over-calculated my strength, and limped sorely the last mile or two before reaching Minden Cottage. Miss Plinlimmon opened the door to me, and I forgot my pain for an instant and ran into her arms. But behind her lay an empty house.

"The Major is in the garden," she said. "You will find him greatly changed, I expect. Even since my coming I have noticed the alteration."

I walked through to the summer-house. The Major was fingering his Virgil, but laid it down and shook hands gravely. I had much to tell him, and he seemed to listen; but I do not think that he heard.

Miss Plinlimmon—dear soul, unknowingly—had prepared for me the very room to which Isabel had led me on the night of my first arrival, and in which she had knelt beside me. Miss Plinlimmon had scarcely known Isabel, and I found her cheerfulness almost distressing when she came to wish me good night.

"And I have composed a stanza upon you," she whispered, "if you care for such things any longer. But you must understand that it has been, so to speak, improvised, and—what with the supper and one thing and another—I have had no time to polish it."

I said sleepily that, unpolished though it were, I wished to hear it thus; and here it is:

"Wounded hero, you were shattered In the ankle—do not start! Much, much more it would have mattered In the immediate neighbourhood of the heart. The bullet sped comparatively wide; And you survive, to be Old England's pride."

THE END