Dulcie Carlyon: A novel. Volume 3 (of 3)

CHAPTER V.

THE LOADED DICE.

Shafto was located in a quiet hotel in St. Andrew Square, Edinburgh, whither he had come in hope to raise money to meet the difficulties in which he had become involved. When away from the splendid thraldom of Craigengowan—for thraldom he deemed it now—he was daily and nightly in the habit of imbibing more than he would have ventured to do there; thus he was becoming slow of speech, with the fishy eye and the fevered breath of the habitual tippler, even at his years, while in dress he adopted a style that was a curious combination of the dandy and the groom.

The many confiding tailors, jewellers, horse-copers, wine-merchants, and others whom he had honoured by his patronage were now getting beyond all bounds with their importunity and—as he thought—impertinent desire to have their bills settled; while, disgusted with him, Lord Fettercairn had been heard more than once to say, even to old Mr. Kippilaw:

'If Finella had been a boy I should not have cared so much about there being no other grandson of my own to ensure the succession and carry on the title.'

But the peer did not yet know the worst.

Occasional visits to Edinburgh, and still more those to London, were always involving Shafto in one or other disgraceful scrape; for, notwithstanding a most liberal allowance, he was often at his wits' end for money, and was over head and ears in gambling debts. Thus he was a bitter pill to the patriotic peer, his 'grandfather,' and he was on the verge, he feared, of dire disgrace, as a whole lot of post-obits might soon come to light—on the fortune he reckoned would come to him on Lord Fettercairn's death or his marriage with Finella; for with two such prospects the Jew money-lenders and other scoundrels who trade as such, in Pall Mall and elsewhere, under double names, had seen things in a 'rosy' light, and let him thus have 'no end of money.'

And now, as a means of recruiting his exchequer for a time, he bethought him of young Kippilaw, who had been left £30,000 unexpectedly by an uncle in Glasgow, and his first thought was to flatter and fleece the fellow if he could, though the spruce little W.S. was on the eve of his marriage with one of the many daughters of Lord Macowkay, the eminent senator of the College of Justice; so he invited that gentleman to a quiet little dinner at his hotel, 'Just to pick a bone—sharp eight.'

Little Kippilaw, who was always flattered by the society of a prospective peer, as something to talk about in the Parliament House, accepted with a radiant countenance; and, as he had rather a showy-looking friend who was passing through Edinburgh on his way to Drumshoddy Lodge, he asked permission to bring him.

'Certainly, of course,' said Shafto.

'Major Garallan is a client of the firm.'

'What! the old woman Drumshoddy's nephew?'

'The same.'

'All right; let us have him.'

So the Major came in due course. He was the beau-ideal of a cavalry man—tall, handsome, well set up and put together, dark-complexioned and regular-featured, with his ears and neck scorched by the Indian sun to a hue in which red and bistre were blended; but an awkward accession he proved to Shafto eventually.

The dinner, with its soup, fish, and many entrées, was all that could be desired, from the curaçoa to the coffee, and put Shafto's two guests in excellent humour with themselves and the world generally; the cloth was drawn, the wine and dessert put on, and, seated at the head of the table, Shafto almost forgot his troubles, as he took bumper after bumper of sparkling Pommery-greno, while from the tall windows could be seen the space of the stately square, with its tall central column crowned by the colossal statue, of Melville, and all its many-pillared and palatial banks and public offices whitened by the silver light of the summer moon.

The Zulu War was, of course, spoken of, the mishaps at Isandhlwana and Intombe discussed, though the subject was shirked by Shafto, who cared nothing about it, save in so far as the danger that then menaced Florian; but little Kippilaw, who was a full-blown captain in the Queen's Edinburgh Rifle Brigade, talked a vast amount of 'shop' to the amused Major Garallan, whom he ventured to instruct in the 'new method of attack,' and thereby drew out the latter insensibly to talk a little of his Indian experiences, for he had served in the expedition to Perak, against the Malays, and the Jowaki expedition on the frontier of Peshawur, and been wounded at the storming of Jummoo; affairs that, though small in themselves, went rather beyond a sham fight in the Queen's Park, including the storming of St. Anthony's Chapel and forming a rallying square in the Hunter's Bog.

And now the conversation began to flag, though Shafto had circulated the wine freely, and he thought the time had come to propose 'a little mild play.' One circumstance surprised him—that though they were supposed to be connected by marriage, the somewhat haughty Major never made the slightest reference to the subject.

'A quiet rubber of whist, with a dummy,' suggested Kippilaw.

'With a dummy, no,' said Major Garallan. 'I like poker, but——'

'Poker be hanged!' interrupted Shafto.

At this abrupt speech the Major, a well-bred man, pushed back his chair a little way, while Shafto paused and felt in his waistcoat-pocket a little white square ivory object—of which more anon.

It was arranged that Shafto and Kippilaw should have a mild game of écarté, while Major Garallan smoked, idled, and looked on, a course that the first-named gentleman by no means approved of, as, for cogent reasons, he had an intense dislike of having his play overlooked.

Kippilaw, inflamed by the wine he had taken inconsiderately—while Shafto, cautious to a degree, had not, to use a phrase of his own, 'a hair of his coat turned'—allowed himself to be lured into doubling the stakes again and again; and Shafto, who had his own ultimate end in view, while playing to all appearance with intense care, allowed himself to lose eventually the sum of £500, for which, as he had not the most remote intention of paying it, he with great liberality gave an 'IOU' to Kippilaw, who, not being an habitual gamester, but by nature and profession cautious and gentlemanly in spirit, was rather scared in accepting the document.

Then a pause ensued in the game, during which more wine—Pommery-greno—was circulated, fresh cards produced, and Shafto invited the Major to play, but he declined somewhat curtly, as Shafto thought.

He then urged Kippilaw to let him have his 'revenge,' and the latter was willing enough to let him have back the IOU if he won it, or any portion thereof, as he disliked to possess such a document signed by the son of a client of the firm, and thought secretly that he would not play a shilling beyond that sum; but he had partaken of too much champagne, which, when the Major's back was turned, Shafto contrived to dash with brandy, and soon the demon of play, rivalry and acquisitiveness overruled the reason of Kippilaw; but the nefarious action of Shafto had not been unnoticed by the Major, who had affected to be twirling his moustache by the aid of a mirror above the high black marble mantelpiece.

Shafto produced a dice-box; he lost, and Kippilaw won, as it was intended he should, and a silly laugh of exultation escaped him.

'Another IOU—you're in luck's way to-night, Kippilaw!' exclaimed Shafto.

'How much have I won?'

'A hundred and fifty.'

The play went on—the dice-box rattled again and again, while the Major, with his back against the mantelpiece, looked silently and curiously, but darkly on. Shafto won back—what he had lost as a lure—his £500, with wonderful celerity, and then another sum of £100, for which Kippilaw gave him a cheque, signed by a very unsteady hand.

'Double or quits,' said Shafto, staking the cheque, with his hand on the dice-box.

'Thanks—but I don't think I'll play any more,' said Kippilaw.

'Oh—indeed—please yourself,' said Shafto scornfully, while biting his lips with anger and disappointment—'but after gaining £500 from me—the devil—are you afraid?'

'No.'

'What then?'

'I have played enough—more deeply than I ever did before.'

'Enough!' repeated Shafto contemptuously.

'Yes.'

'Too much, indeed,' said Major Garallan suddenly; 'and, by Jove, you do right to stop, Kippilaw.'

'What the devil do you mean?' asked Shafto, becoming pale with sheer fury.

'What I say,' replied the officer coolly.

'Who the —— gave you a right to interfere?' demanded Shafto in a bullying tone.

'I have watched your play, sir, for some time past,' replied the Major quietly, 'and know right well how and why the tide of fortune turned so suddenly in your favour.'

An oath escaped Shafto, and snatching up the cards, he hurled the pack to a remote corner of the room.

'What does all this mean?' asked Kippilaw, staring half tipsily and with a scared air at the speakers.

'It means, you goose, that you have been playing with a fellow who is no better than a blackleg,' said the Major, with quiet scorn. 'No, you don't,' he added, grasping, as if with a smith's vice, the wrist of Shafto, who, uttering a cry like a jackal, seized a cut-glass decanter, with the fell intention of hurling it at the speaker's head, but the latter cowed him by one steady glance.

'You shall repent this insolence,' said Shafto, starting to his feet. 'I will teach you to question a man of honour with impunity.'

'Honour!' laughed Garallan.

'You shall hear from me, sir.'

'In what fashion—an action at law?'

'No; one perhaps you may shrink from.'

'Very probably. You don't mean a duel?'

'I do.'

'Where?'

'On the sands at Boulogne.'

'Fool! People don't fight duels nowadays, and if they did, I am not required to fight with a—swindler! That is the word, so let us hear no more high falutin. A man of honour, indeed!'

Garallan burst into a fit of scornful laughter, and Shafto, mad with rage and disappointment, was rushing to grasp the poker, when the former, in a moment, and before the apparently helpless Kippilaw could interfere, if able to do so, in any way, had struck his would-be opponent down, and wrenched from his left hand, which he tore open by main force, something that Shafto had attempted to put in his mouth, and which, on examination, proved to be—a loaded die.

CHAPTER VI.

SHAFTO'S HORIZON BECOMES CLOUDY.

The Major had gone to the 'little dinner' at the desire of Kippilaw, but unwillingly; he had evidently heard something about Shafto—knew him by reputation, and during the meal had treated him perhaps rather cavalierly, which Shafto was too self-assertive or too 'thick-skinned' to perceive, though Kippilaw did.

The little W.S., who had never been in a 'scrimmage' since he left the High School, was desperately scared by the whole affair, and especially by the mauling given to Shafto, the son of a client of the firm, the heir of Lord Fettercairn, by the Major, who made very light of the matter, and called him 'a d——d cad, and worse than a cad.'

When Shafto gathered himself up they were gone, and he heard their footsteps echoing in the now silent square (where the tall column stood up snowy white in the light of the waning moon) as they turned westward along George Street, and a feeling closely akin to that of murder gathered in his heart as he poured the most horrible maledictions on the Major, and drank a deep draught of foaming Pommery-greno, well laced with brandy.

That fellow had spoiled his game, and his nefarious plans against young Kippilaw, whom he regarded as a wealthy pigeon to pluck. No good ever came of a quiet third party watching one's play. He would be even with the Major yet, he muttered, as he ground his teeth; but how? The Major had carried off the loaded dice, and after splitting it open, as doubtless he would, exposure everywhere was sure to follow.

He was wrong in one supposition, however, as the Major quitted Edinburgh next morning for Drumshoddy Lodge, and, of course, would be very unlikely to expose in public one whom he deemed a connection of his own.

Intending to attribute the whole affair of the loaded dice—alleged to be loaded, he would insist—to a tipsy brawl on the Major's part, to a mistake or confusion, and carry it off somehow, Shafto, driven to desperation by want of money on one hand, even to settle his hotel bill in St. Andrew Square, and by some days of terrible doubt and depression on the other, after writing a private note to Mr. Kenneth Kippilaw about his affairs, and fixing an hour for a visit 'thereanent,' ventured to present himself at that gentleman's chambers, where a shock awaited him.

As he passed through the hall, he saw Madelon—Madelon Galbraith—seated in a waiting-room.

'Madelon here—for what purpose?' thought he, with growing anxiety, as he was ushered into the presence of Mr. Kippilaw, who received him with intense frigidity—even more than frigidity—as he barely accorded him a bow, and neither offered his hand nor rose from his writing-table, but silently pointed to a chair with his pen.

Despite this cold welcome, Shafto's constitutional insolence of thought and bearing came to him with a sense of the necessity for action, for his grim reception by the usually suave and pleasant old lawyer roused all his wrath and spite to fever-heat.

'So—so, sir,' began the latter, 'so you, the heir to the estates and title of Fettercairn, actually tried to rob my simple son by means of a loaded dice till exposed by Major Garallan, to whom my warmest gratitude is due; the split fragments are now in my possession; but I presume it was not on that matter you came to consult me. And, not content with such vile conduct, you sought to taunt, bully, and inveigle the Major into a duel, in which perhaps your superior skill or cunning might achieve his murder. Duels, however, are out of date; but penal servitude is not, so beware, Mr. Shafto—beware, I say—there is a rod in pickle for you, I suspect.'

And as he spoke the keen, glittering eyes of the old lawyer glared at Shafto above the rims of his pince-nez.

'But you come to confer with me about your private debts, Mr. Shafto,' he added, lowering his tone.

'Yes.'

'You know the total amount, I presume?'

'Scarcely.'

'How so?'

'Well, when letters come to me I open the white envelopes and chuck all the d——d blue ones into the fire uninspected.'

'A sensible proceeding—very! How long can it go on?'

'I don't know—perhaps you do,' was the dogged reply.

As if it was useless to ask further questions, Mr. Kippilaw looked over some papers which Shafto had sent for his consideration, and his countenance lowered and his white bushy eyebrows became closely knitted as he did so, while Shafto watched him with an aspect of languid interest which he was far from feeling, and sucked the ivory head of his crutch-stick the while.

'Why, Mr. Shafto,' said Mr. Kippilaw, 'this is rank dishonesty.'

'What is?'

'This mess I am contemplating.'

'Don't talk thus to me; the greatest robbers in the world, after one's own family lawyers——'

'Sir!' interrupted Mr. Kippilaw, smiting the table with his hand, and looking dangerous.

'To business, then,' said Shafto sulkily.

'There's this bill of Reuben Levi, the London money-lender, of which I have a note, drawn originally for £500, at three months, bearing interest at sixty per cent., and renewed three times!'

'Well?'

'The money value to the drawer is not likely to be much at the close of the precious transaction.'

'D—n, I think not.'

'Lord Fettercairn will have to take up these.'

'A few more too, I suspect,' groaned Shafto.

'This is quite as disgraceful as your affair of the cards at that Club in Princes Street.'

'Which?'

'When you were found playing baccarat with ever so many cards too much in the pack. I am sick of you and your affairs, as you call them. The man who can act as you do, in these and other matters, is not likely to discharge the duties that devolve on the proprietor of Craigengowan and the title of Fettercairn, alike teeming with temptations; therefore I think his lordship will put it out of your power to make ducks and drakes of the inheritance, if he takes my advice.'

'Your advice!' thundered Shafto.

'Precisely so,' said Mr. Kippilaw quietly, as he thrust all Shafto's papers into a drawer and locked it. 'Lord Fettercairn has lost all patience with you, sir. People should not incur debts they are unable to pay. I know of no action more mean or contemptible than to make some man—a poor one, perhaps—lose for another's amusements and enjoyments. You ought to consider this.'

'Thank you, Mr. Kippilaw. You are, I believe, a leading elder in your kirk, whatever that may mean; but I'll not have you preach to me.'

'A man should do anything rather than defraud his neighbour.'

'D—n you, you old cur! do you speak of "defrauding" to me—you, a lawyer?' said Shafto, grasping his cane.

'I do,' replied Mr. Kippilaw firmly. Shafto quailed under his gaze, and turned to leave the room. 'Mr. Gyle!' said the lawyer, ere he could do so.

Shafto turned and faced him.

'Ha!—you answer to your name, I see!'

'What do you mean?'

'Simply that I begin to think you are an impostor!'

Shafto glared at him, white with rage and dismay, while a minute's silence ensued.

Perhaps the astute lawyer had read that remarkable essay by Lord Bacon on cunning, wherein he tells us that an unexpected question or assertion may startle a man and lay him open. 'Like to him,' he continues, 'that having changed his name, and was walking in St. Paul's, another came behind him, and called him suddenly by his true one, whereat straightways he looked back.'

'An impostor, dare you say?' exclaimed Shafto, taking one pace to his front.

'Considering your conduct, I begin to think so.'

Shafto felt for a moment or so relieved, and said:

'What the devil do you mean? You had a properly attested certificate of my birth?'

'Attested—yes.'

'Was that not all-sufficient, even for your legal mind?'

'Not—now.'

'Why not now?'

'Because I remember that it is mutilated.'

Shafto winced.

'It is there, however,' said Mr. Kippilaw, pointing with his pen to a green charter box labelled 'Fettercairn,' and Shafto thought that if he did not adopt a high tone he might fail in the matter.

'You scoundrel,' he exclaimed, as he smashed his cane on the writing-table, scattering letters and documents in every direction; 'doubt of my identity is an insult now!'

Mr. Kippilaw did not lose his temper; he puckered up his eyebrows, actually smiled, and looked cunningly at Shafto as he pulled or twitched his nether lip with a finger and thumb. He was evidently reconsidering the situation in his own mind, and coming to the conclusion that there was a mistake somewhere.

Shafto was sharp enough to read this at a glance; he thought of Madelon, and his heart became filled with black fury.

'I think our interview is ended,' said Mr. Kippilaw quietly, as he dipped a pen in the ink-bottle and laid his left hand on a bell. 'You will be good enough to leave my chambers, sir, or I shall have you shown out by the hall-porter.'

There was nothing left for him but to withdraw, and as he did so, Madelon Galbraith, who had been evidently waiting an interview, entered Mr. Kippilaw's room, and as she passed she gave Shafto a terrible glance with her black, sparkling eyes—a glance of hatred and triumph—as she had not forgotten, but remembered with true Highland bitterness, the day of her rough expulsion from Craigengowan, when he had actually hounded a dog upon her.

Shafto shivered; he felt as if an iron network was closing round him, and that a fierce legal light might yet be cast on his secret villainy.

Guilt does not always look to the future. It is as well perhaps, under any circumstances, that we never can see that mystic but certain period.

Smarting under Shafto's unbridled insolence to himself, and acting very probably on some information accorded to him by Madelon Galbraith, whom he desired to remain at his house in Edinburgh, Mr. Kippilaw took means to achieve more—means which he should have adopted immediately after his first interview with Shafto.

Discomfited, there was nothing left for the latter now but to cast himself on the mercy of Lord and Lady Fettercairn in the matter of his debts and involvements; and this, after a few days of doubt, irresolution, and much hard drinking, he resolved to do, and so set out for Craigengowan.

In these few days the strands of Fate had been twisting slowly but surely into a fatal coil!

CHAPTER VII.

THE SQUARE AT ULUNDI.

In the camp at the Entonjaneni Mountain the troops had two entire days' rest, which enabled Florian to recover completely from the effects of the accident which had befallen him in the pursuit of the Zulus.

In the afternoon of the 28th a telegram came announcing to Lord Chelmsford that Sir Garnet Wolseley had arrived, that he had assumed the entire command, and requesting a plan of the campaign, which, apparently, Lord Chelmsford, having conducted thus far, was resolved to finish for himself, as he did.

With the same messengers came the mails for the troops, and, to Florian's delight, there came a letter from Dulcie—we say delight at first, for that sentiment soon gave place to one of anxiety.

At the sight of her handwriting, his heart went back in a day-dream to the banks of the Yealm and the Erme and to the exquisite Devonshire lanes where they had been wont to wander hand in hand together—lanes bordered by banks of pale green ferns, while the golden apples hung in clusters overhead.

Isolated now amid the different worlds in which each lived, these two were tenderly true to each other, at those years when they who have been boy and girl lovers usually forget, or form new attachments.

Florian was struck by a certain confusion in the letter of Dulcie, which seemed to have been written in haste and under the pressure of some excitement, so that at times it was almost incoherent.

'I am not superstitious, as you know, dearest Florian, but I dislike the brilliant month of June more than any month in the year,' she wrote. 'Papa died in June, leaving me alone in the world and so poor—hence I have always strange forebodings of unseen evils to come—evils that I may be powerless to avert; thus June is ever associated in my mind with sorrow, death, and mystery. It is then I have restless nights and broken dreams of trouble haunting me—even of hideous forms seen dimly, and I leave my pillow in the morning more weary than when I laid my head upon it at night. It is June again, and I am in trouble now.'

She proceeded then to describe her persecution by Shafto, who was again returning after an absence; that his presence, conjoined to the taunts, suspicions, and tone of Lady Fettercairn, made life at Craigengowan a burden to her, and that she had determined on flight from the house—from Scotland indeed—but where she was to go, or what she was to do, she knew not. She had resolved not even to consult her only friend Finella, so that, by the time her letter reached him, she would be out once again on the bosom of the cold world!

So ended this distressing and partly incoherent letter, which was the last Florian received from Dulcie Carlyon, and by the tenor of it there seemed a futility in sending any reply to Craigengowan, as too probably she must have left it some weeks ago.

'If killed to-day or to-morrow—anyway, before Cetewayo is caught—I'll never know, probably, how my darling gets over her trouble,' thought Florian simply but sadly.

There came by the same post no letter for the absent Hammersley, so Florian concluded that Finella Melfort must have seen through the medium of the public prints that he had sailed for Europe on sick leave.

It was vain for him to imagine where and amid what surroundings Dulcie was now, and doubtless with very limited means; it was a source of absolute agony to him at such a time, when he was so helpless, so totally unable to assist or advise her, and he seemed as in a dream to see the camp, with its streets of white tents and soldiers in thousands loitering about, or stretched on the grass, laughing, chatting, and smoking in the sunshine.

In the immediate foreground, on the branch of a tree, hung the skinned carcase of an eland, from which a powerfully built Hottentot of the Natal Contingent, all nude save a pair of breeches, was cutting large slices with a huge knife, and dropping them into Madras cowrie baskets prior to cooking them in small coppers half full of mealies.

A rich plain stretched away to the north; beyond it were mountains covered with grass and dotted by clumps of trees, and in some that grew close by the camp, numbers of beautiful squirrels were hopping from branch to branch in the sunshine.

Ulundi was now only sixteen miles distant from our outposts, and from thence came the last messengers of Cetewayo, bringing with them as a peace-offering the sword of the Prince Imperial—the sword worn by his father, too probably at Sedan, with a secret message—written by Cornelius Vign, the Dutch trader—to Lord Chelmsford, telling him that if he advanced on Ulundi to do it with strength, as the forces of Cetewayo were many, many thousands strong.

On the 1st July the division marched again.

Florian had been scouting with his squadron all the preceding day and far into the night, and lay in his tent weary and fagged on a ground sheet only, without taking off either accoutrements or regimentals. There, though worn, he had dreams, not of Dulcie, but of his dead comrade, jovial Bob Edgehill, and the little song the latter was wont to sing came to his dreaming ears:

'Merrily lads, so ho!
Some talk of a life at sea;
    But a life on the land,
    With sword in hand,
Is the life, my lads, for me.'

Then he started up as he heard trumpet and drum announcing the 'turn out'—the latter with the long and continued roll there is no mistaking. A hasty breakfast was taken—scalding coffee drunk standing beside the camp fires—the tents were struck, the waggon teams were inspanned, the Mounted Infantry went cantering to the front, and the march was begun.

Beautiful though the district looked when viewed from Entonjaneni, the country to be traversed proved a rugged one, covered with tall reed-like grass of giant height, that swayed slowly in the wind, interspersed with mimosa scrub and enormous cacti, with leaves like sabre-blades; but by half-past one a.m. the White Umvolosi was reached.

More scouting in a dark and moonless night fell to the lot of Buller's Horse and Florian's Mounted Infantry. They could hear the war-song of the vast Zulu army—unseen in the darkness, but chiefly posted at fords on the river, loading the still, dewy air, rising and falling with wild, weird, and impressive effect, now apparently near, now distant; but so mighty ever and anon was the volume of sound that it seemed to corroborate the alarming message of Cornelius Vign. Among other sounds were the awful shrieks of a dying prisoner, whom they had impaled on the bank of the stream.

Much scouting, scampering about, and skirmishing by 'bank, bush, and scaur' followed for three days, and the 4th of July saw the division on its way to fight the great and final battle of the war, before Wolseley could come on the ground—Ulundi.

The sun was well up in the sky, when the column crossed the river at a point where sweet-scented bushes, graceful acacias, gigantic convolvuli, and wild guava fringed its banks, where the bees were humming, and the Kaffir vultures hovering over the slain of a recent skirmish; and splendid was its aspect in the brilliant morning light—the 17th Lancers with their striking uniform and 'pennoned spears, a stately grove'—the infantry, not clad in hideous 'mud-suits,' but in their glorious scarlet, their polished bayonets and barrels shining in the sun, while in the hollows under the shadows of the great mountains, shadows into which the light of day had scarcely penetrated as yet, the impis or columns of the Zulus were gathering in their sombre and savage thousands.

'The troops will form in hollow square!' was now the General's order, and, with other aides-de camp, Villiers, cigar in mouth, and with flushed cheek and brightening eye, went cantering along the marching column, with the details of that formation for the advance—the first instance of such a movement in modern war, since William Wallace of Elderslie, the uncrowned King of Scotland, instituted such a system at the battle of Falkirk, and consequently he, as Green tells us in his 'History of the English People,' was actually the first founder of 'that unconquerable British Infantry,' before which the chivalry of Europe went down.

As formed by Lord Chelmsford on that eventful 4th of July, the infantry on the four sides of his oblong square marched in sections of fours, with all cavalry and other mounted men scouring the front and flanks, Shepstone's Basutos covering the rear, with the cannon in the acute angles of three faces of the square; all waggons and carts, with stores and ammunition, in the centre.

This was about eight in the morning, and with colours flying and bands playing merrily in the sunshine, this huge human rectangle marched in a north-easterly direction, past two great empty kraals and a vast green tumulus that marks the grave of King Panda, the father of Cetewayo, who is seated therein, buried in a partly upright position, according to Zulu custom.

To the right of the marching square were hills covered with thorn trees overlooking the White Umvolosi; to its left were other hills covered with enormous loose stones, and in its rear was a rugged country tufted with mimosa trees, and others that stood up with feather-like foliage against the blue-green sky. And in the centre of a species of a natural amphitheatre stood three military kraals of vast extent, the principal being named Ulundi.

At the extremity of this amphitheatre there was visible a long line of oval-shaped shields, above which black heads and bright points appeared—the Zulu impis marching forward in double column with a cloud of skirmishers on their front and flanks, precisely according to European tactics.

The square was halted now, the ranks closed up, all facing outwards; the rifles and cannon were loaded, the ammunition boxes opened, and two of the kraals were set in flames by the Irregular Horse; but one was extinguished, lest the dense smoke from it rolling across the plain might offer a cover for the Zulu advance.

To lure them on, Florian was sent with twenty Mounted Infantry, and, on seeing so petty a force riding towards them, the enemy wheeled back a portion of their front as a trap.

'Come on, lads,' cried Florian, brandishing his sword, 'come on!—though not a man of us may return!' he thought.

But the twenty men only poured in a rifle fire, wheeled about by fours, and, galloping back, won the shelter of the square, the four faces of which were fringed by steel and garlanded with jets of fire and smoke, while the roar of artillery shook the air, and high overhead was heard the fierce rush of the red rockets as they were shot into the royal kraal of Ulundi and fired it in many places.

With the rest of the mounted men, Florian stood in the centre of the square, holding his horse by the bridle and looking quietly about him, and, like the rest, his heart beat high, every pulse was quickened, and the excitement became intense, as the long, long horns of the Zulu army in its thousands closed round the square, and as the circle contracted and came within closer range it was a splendid and thrilling but terrible sight to see the masses mowed down like swathes of crass beneath a mighty scythe.

The British troops were formed in ranks four deep, two kneeling as if to receive cavalry, the rifle-butt placed against the right knee, and two erect, firing steadily, all with bayonets fixed; and in this dense formation, sad indeed would have been our casualties had the Zulu fire been well delivered.

Closing upon their skirmishers rather than permitting the latter to fall back upon their lines, their attack embraced the four faces of the vast hollow square, now shrouded with white whirling smoke, and edged by glittering fire and flashing steel. Out of the dark masses that were pouring on came bullets of every calibre, from the sharp pinging cone of the Martini-Henry to the heavy whirring charge of the long elephant-gun, and many a man and many a horse was wounded and done to death thereby. The old Zulu tactics were pursued; the attack was ever augmented by fresh bodies of infuriated savages, with the same dire results to them; while all their devotion and desperation could rarely carry them past the verge of the cloud of smoke enveloping the square; and thus, of the thousands who came on, only hundreds remained to waver or prolong the attack.

Whole crowds of naked and sombre forms seemed to lie as if suddenly struck dead, each man where he stood; and it was so. Some, however, succeeded in flinging their bare breasts upon the bayonet points, and, with dying grasp on the rifle muzzles, went down almost at the feet of the front rank men, fierce, stern, fearless to the last, their white teeth set, their eyeballs gleaming like those of exasperated fiends, and their yells rending the air.

'Steady, men, steady,' the officers were heard to cry again and again; 'fire low—low, and not so fast!'

Drury Lowe was unhorsed by a spent bullet, but vaulted into his saddle again. Eight companies of the Perthshire Light Infantry, flanked by seven and nine pounder guns in one face of the square, fought well and valiantly, though young soldiers, and in physique unlike those of whom Sir Francis Head wrote when at Paris in 1815, when he stated 'that a body of Scottish Highlanders, or Lowlanders, standing shoulder to shoulder, stretched over more ground than a similar number of inhabitants, soldier or civilian, of any other nation in Europe.'

The coolness of the men amid this close strife, while the dead and dying fell about them fast, was wonderful, the doctors attending the latter; and in several instances the former, ere they were cold, were buried to save time, while the chaplain stood by to read the burial service amid a tempest of bullets.

'Have a cigar,' said an officer of the Perthshire Light Infantry, seeing that Florian was somewhat 'blown' after his scamper from the front to the shelter of the now environed square.

'Thanks,' said he, selecting one from the speaker's silver case; but ere the latter could give Florian a light, a ponderous knobkerie, flung with superhuman force at random—the last force, perhaps, of some dying savage—smashed his head to pulp in his tropical helmet as completely as a half-spent cannon ball would have done, and covered Florian with a sickening mess of blood and brains together.

In imitation of the British formation, a skilful Zulu Induna formed his men in a hollow square and hurled them like a mighty wave, with piercing war-cries and unearthly yells, upon that angle of the great square where six companies were posted under a Crimean veteran of the Scots Fusiliers, with two nine-pounder guns. The fight here became hand to hand, bayonet against assegai, and many a shield, by main strength of arm, was dashed against the breasts and faces of our men; but speedily the Zulu square was broken, rolled up, and the survivors of it fled, stumbling as they ran over their own fallen and the blood-soaked ground on which the latter writhed and weltered.

Under the sweeping fire of the Gatlings they went down as forest leaves do before the last blasts of autumn, and in thirty minutes from the first opening of our infantry fire they were falling back in disorganized masses, which speedily, under the storm of shells, took the form of one vast mob in wild and helpless flight, while the cavalry were ordered in pursuit, and with a loud cheer the 17th unslung their lances, and by fours led the way through an opening made for them in the rear face of the square. The Dragoon Guards, Buller's Horse, and Florian's Mounted Infantry followed in quick succession.

'Front, form troop!' was the first cavalry order.

'Form squadron—form line—gallop—charge!' rang out the trumpets, as, sweeping round on their left pivots, the Horse took the formations indicated, and then, with the united force of some dread and terrible engine, fell swooping down upon the foe, hewing through the shrinking walls of brave human flesh, after the lances were relegated to the sling and swords were drawn.

It was a terrible sight to see how, on right and left, these now red sword-blades were plied, every man rising in his stirrups to give deadlier impetus to his stroke, even when the shrapnel shells, fired with time-fuses, were exploding amid the foe. From the latter there came no cry for mercy nor for quarter; they looked for none, as they would have given none; and all who escaped the slaughter of the pursuit did so by winning the crests of some hills, where horses could not follow them, and from which they opened a lively fire of musketry.

Florian went on in this work like one in a wild, bad dream; and it was only when the halt was sounded, followed by the order, 'Fours about—retire,' that he became quite aware of all he had escaped, had undergone and done, and how mechanically he had hewed about him—when he found the blade of his sword, even his fingers, stained with blood, and the sleeves of his tunic all ripped and burst under the shoulders by the exertions he had used.

Tom Tyrrell came out of the strife with his helmet gone, his head bandaged by a bloody handkerchief, and his horse's flanks bleeding from three assegais that stuck in them; but this was the case with several others.

It is remarkable that after the battle of Ulundi not one wounded Zulu was found on the field. Of all the hundreds upon hundreds who lay there helpless, every man of them had been despatched in cold blood by our native allies.

The power of the nation had departed from it now; and as for Cetewayo, he fled from Ulundi the day before the battle; and after the latter event his army began to melt away, as the warriors returned to their distant kraals, hopeless and sick of the war.

That named Ulundi was given to the flames by the Irregulars and Mounted Infantry, and its ten thousand dome-roofed huts all blazing at once presented a striking spectacle; and after that event the Second Division and Flying Column began their rearward march to the camp at the Entonjaneni Mountain, to effect a junction with the First Division under General Crealock.

To Florian, as to many others, after the fever of battle had passed away, there came the usual revulsion of spirit that follows excitement so intense, and the keen thirst after that excitement and exertion so great, with the philosophical and not unnatural emotion of wonder as to 'what it all had been about, and to what end this terrible slaughter and suffering!'

And he thought of the strange interments of some of the dead in that hollow square when under fire—young soldiers, instinct with boyish, hopeful, and glorious life, ardour and valour, struck down in death, and huddled into a ghastly hole, over which the bullets swept, ere their limbs were cold. 'Death is a surprise—a woeful and terrible surprise—whenever it comes, even though we be by the bedside watching for it, dreading it, as each breath leaves the lips we love.' But death seemed thus doubly grim on that day at Ulundi!

The troops found their tents ready pitched awaiting them at the camp beside the mountain, and a welcome shelter they proved, as the rearward march had been performed under drenching torrents of rain.

Stormy and windy was the night of the 6th of July, the second after the battle, and, for some days and nights subsequent the falling rain rendered all operations impossible, and added greatly to the sufferings of the wounded, causing also a serious mortality among the cavalry horses and commissariat oxen.

Mail after mail came into camp as usual bringing letters, some for the poor fellows who lay under the sod at Ulundi, but there were no more letters from Dulcie now for Florian, and none from Hammersley, whom he naturally supposed to be too ill to write by a passing ship outward bound.

The letter he had received shortly before the action at Ulundi was, as stated, the last he ever had from Dulcie, and her sudden and singular silence deepened his distress and anxiety.

What had happened? Was she ill, or well? How was she situated, and where? These thoughts occurred to him in endless iteration amid his military duties, which were not dull routine, but, so far as the pursuit of the fugitive King Cetewayo was concerned, were arduous, full of excitement and perils of various kinds.

His heart grew heavy, and his future, so far as it was connected with Dulcie Carlyon, seemed dark and uncertain, like the episodes of a dream. But it has been said that most life-histories leave hanging threads that may only be completed in the great web woven by eternity, and eternity had often been perilously close to Florian of late.

Dulcie was the only link he had in life—she seemed to him as friend, sister, and sweetheart, all in one.

CHAPTER VIII.

DISAPPEARANCE OF DULCIE.

Since the reader last saw Dulcie Carlyon she had become chilled and changed in manner, under the influence of Lady Fettercairn's bearing and remarks, to all save Finella. All her natural jollity and espièglerie of way were gone, and every hour that it was possible to do so she spent in the seclusion of her own room, one high up in a square turret of the old house, with windows that opened to a far vista of the Howe of the Mearns, terminated by a glimpse of the German Sea.

Here she was sometimes joined by Finella, who could no longer persuade her to ramble as of old in the grounds, and never again to accompany her in the saddle when she took Fern for a spin along the country roads.

'Are you not sick of crewel work, and embroidering sage birds of shapes that never existed upon brown bath-towels?' asked Finella. 'I know you do it by grandmamma's wish; but what tasteless folly it is.'

'I would rather, as I did at home, knit stockings for the poor,' said Dulcie.

'Better buy than knit them,' responded the heiress, 'and so save one's self a world of trouble.'

It became too evident to Dulcie that the time of her dismissal from Craigengowan was drawing nigh; that it was only delayed by the absence of Shafto in Edinburgh, and she resolved, ere he returned, to get the balance of her little salary and quit the place, as it had now become odious to her.

Dulcie had old Welsh blood in her veins, and more than once had she heard her father, Lewellen Carlyon, whose one ewe-lamb she was, descant on how he could count kith and kin into the remotest past, when his forefathers wandered through the forest of Caerlyon—whence his name—had manned Offa's Dyke, and shared the perils of Owain Glendwr. To speak of such things now, even to Finella, seemed to the girl vain folly, but they were keenly in her heart nevertheless.

And so there came an evening, the last she was to spend under the steep slate roof of Craigengowan.

Lady Fettercairn was going for a drive among the summer roads that were all like leafy tunnels or long avenues of foliage, to visit that famous senator, Lord Maccowkay, who was then at his country house of Middyn Grange, and Finella, perceiving how pale Dulcie was looking, said:

'May Miss Carlyon come with us, grandmamma?'

'Certainly not,' replied Lady Fettercairn, with hauteur and asperity, though Dulcie was within hearing, carrying Snap in his satin-lined basket. 'When is this sort of thing to end, Finella?'

There came a time when the Lady of that Ilk recalled this remark, and many others similar, for just then she did not see certainly where the future was to end.

So the two ladies drove away, and Dulcie, for companionship, though then unaware that it would be for the last time, took tea with the kindly old housekeeper, whom she found busy in her pantry and closets preparing for that social meal; and Dulcie helped her to cut and butter the bread, polish the cups and saucers and old silver spoons, to arrange the brown tea-cakes, crisp biscuits, and luscious Scottish preserves of home manufacture, and all the while a sadness oppressed her, for which she could not account.

This, however, seemed explained when, at dinner that evening, Lady Fettercairn said, while returning a letter to her pocket:

'Shafto returns late to-night—or early to-morrow morning.'

'From where?' asked Finella, though, sooth to say, she cared little where from.

'Edinburgh.'

'And not an hour too soon, I am afraid,' said Lord Fettercairn, with his sandy-grey eyebrows deeply knitted.

No one asked 'why,' so a silence ensued, and a little later in the evening Finella said to Dulcie:

'Why are you so silent to-night?'

'Am I so?'

'Yes—even sad—triste.'

'Sad—you don't mean cross?'

'No, Dulcie dear, you never are cross.'

'I am full of very weary thoughts, and wish to retire, if Lady Fettercairn can spare me,' she added, raising her voice.

'Of course—go,' replied the latter; and Dulcie, painfully conscious that her employer had been more than usually cold, hard, and even bitter to her—all, no doubt, apropos of Shafto's return—bowed and murmured 'good-night,' with a soft and lingering glance at Finella.

Shafto returning! Dulcie was always nervous about his future conduct and her own position, and she could not prepare herself again for dissembling in public and hating in private—for the inevitable meetings at table and elsewhere. Over and above all was the dread that by his intense cunning he might work her mischief—a mischief that to her might prove social ruin.

Dulcie had writhed and winced under all Lady Fettercairn's not always delicately veiled hints as to the social gulf that separated people and people—to wit, Miss Melfort, of Craigengowan, and the paid companion, and of young folks of bad taste and little discretion, who were inclined to step out of their proper sphere; she knew the drift of all this; her heart swelled within her, and now she withdrew with a stern and perhaps rash resolve that took active form on the morrow.

In the corridor before they separated for the night, Finella thought that Dulcie kissed and clasped her with more than usual tenderness and effusion, and became aware that there were tears on the girl's cheek; but this had been too often the case of late to excite remark.

However, she remembered this emotion with some pain at a future time.

In the morning the then small circle of Craigengowan assembled in the charming breakfast-room. Shafto had not come overnight; Lord Fettercairn had not opened his letters, but—though nothing of a politician—was idling over a paper which the butler had cut and aired for him.

Lady Fettercairn glanced at a handsome antique French clock upon the grey marble mantelpiece, and said, with as much irritation as she ever permitted herself to show with reference to Dulcie:

'Not down yet—when she knows that she has to preside at the tea-urn and so forth! Is she giving herself the airs of a lady of—what is the matter?' she exclaimed, as a servant whom she had despatched on an errand of inquiry returned looking somewhat discomposed. 'I hope she is not ill, especially with anything infectious?'

'No, my lady—not ill.'

'Not ill—that is fortunate.'

'No.'

'Where then is she—why not here?'

'She isn't there, my lady.'

'There—where?'

'In her room—nor anywhere in the house.'

Finella remembered the peculiar bearing of Dulcie the previous night, and her tremulous sisterly kiss, with a species of pang, and hurried upstairs to the square turret-room.

'Of course she is interested!' said Lady Fettercairn scoffingly.

'There is always an exuberant vitality—a great flow of animal spirits about Finella,' replied her husband.

'All of which I deem hoydenish and bad form.'

Finella returned, looking pale and scared, to report that Miss Carlyon's bed did not appear to have been slept in last night, that her wardrobe was all tumbled about, leaving evident traces of selections and packing, and that to all appearance she was gone from the house.

'Gone—then I hope it is not with Shafto!' exclaimed Lady Fettercairn, paling at her own idea.

'Scarcely: is he not coming here, as his letter yesterday announces?' said Lord Fettercairn.

'Gone—and in that rude and unceremonious, and certainly most mysterious manner, which through local gossip will find its way in some odious mode into every local paper!' said Lady Fettercairn, while she grimly directed Finella to officiate at the tea-board.

'She is away, poor thing, without a doubt,' said the butler, who was carving at the sideboard; 'and must have left the house by the conservatory door—I found it open this morning.'

'I hope that she has not——' but even Lady Fettercairn, while surmising mentally whether her jewel case was all intact, had not the hardihood to put the cruel suspicion in words.

'It is most annoying,' said the Peer, with his noble mouth full.

'Very—she was so useful too—very—with all her faults,' added Lady Fettercairn, tenderly caressing Snap, who was relegated to a housemaid for his morning bath.

She did not expect an escapade of this sort; the great luxury of the certain dismissal had been denied her; she sank back in her chair for a minute or so, and sniffed languidly at her gold-topped scent-bottle, as if nerving herself to hear something horrible, while the grounds were searched for traces of the fugitive; and she had ideas of having the Swan's Pool and the adjacent stream dragged.

Finella thought she would like to run away too; but with all her wealth it was less easy for an heiress of position to do so than for the poor and nameless companion; and now that Dulcie was gone, Finella felt that the link between herself and Hammersley was cut off.

Apart from that important item in her life, she was deeply sorry, as she had conceived for Dulcie one of those sudden and so-called undying friendships for which, we are told, 'the female heart is specially remarkable.'

Finella felt that the cold and inquiring eyes of Lady Fettercairn were upon her, and knew that, if she would not excite remark and draw reprehension upon herself, breakfast must be partaken of, even though her heart was breaking. So she bathed her eyes, re-smoothed her hair, and took her place at the table with as much composure as she could assume.

'If her flight is not traced—though why we should care to trace it I don't know,' said Lady Fettercairn bitterly, 'and if her body is not found, we may conclude that she has eloped with some low lover. I hope all the grooms, gardeners, gamekeepers, and so forth, are to be seen in their places,' she added; 'and with all her faults, in appearance and style she was a great improvement upon Mrs. Prim, with her iron-grey hair arranged in corkscrew curls on each side of her face.'

Finella thought so too. Lord Fettercairn thought his better half had been latterly too severe upon the poor little companion, but did not venture to say so.

CHAPTER IX.

FLIGHT.

'Go I must,' murmured Dulcie, when in the solitude of her own room she said her nightly prayers on her knees. 'I cannot help it. I may come to want bread by the step I am about to take, but better death than enduring this system of mortification and degradation.'

She had received her slender quarterly allowance some time before that crisis, and as yet luckily none of it had been spent. How small a sum it looked to face the world with!

She packed and prepared all her clothes, intending to write to the housekeeper for them when she found another home. In an ample Gladstone bag she placed carefully all that was requisite for her immediate need, and, weary with rapid exertion and heavy thought, laid her head on the pillow of a sofa, fearing to undress or trust herself in bed, lest a deep sleep might fall upon her.

All was silent in the great house, and no sound broke the stillness of the warm summer night save when some dog bayed at the moon from the quadrangle of the stable-yard.

Midnight struck on a great and sonorous clock in an adjacent corridor; anon a little French clock on her chimney-piece chimed out two on its silver bell, but no sleep came to Dulcie's eyes, nor did she desire to court it.

Her mind was full of rambling fancies. She thought of her parents lying so peacefully side by side in old Revelstoke churchyard, within sound of the sobbing sea, and of what their emotions would have been could they have foreseen all that was before her of doubt and unhappiness; and with the memory of them she tenderly turned over some withered leaves that lay in a little prayer-book Mr. Pentreath had given her, and while doing so recalled the sweet lines that seemed so apropos to them:

'Only a bunch of withered leaves,
    Brought by a stranger's hand,
But they grew on a spot she dearly loved—
    They bloomed in the dear old land.
Father and mother lie there at rest
    Beneath the soft emerald sod,
Under the shelter of the cross,
    And close to the house of God,'

close to the time-worn church of Revelstoke. She thought of Shafto and the thorn he had proved in her path, and felt a satisfaction from the conviction that after this night too probably she would never more look upon his face.

She thought again and again of Florian. Where was he then, and what doing? Too probably sleeping the sleep of the weary and worn, on the bare earth in some tented field, awaiting the coming perils of the morrow, and then with the idea of Finella came fresh tears for parting thus from the only friend she had.

After three had struck she dressed herself quickly in the costume in which she meant to travel, assured herself that her purse was safe, that her hat, gloves, and sunshade were at hand, and sat down by a window to watch for the earliest streak of dawn.

With all this earnestness of preparation and of purpose she had no settled plan for the future—no very defined one at least; her sole desire was to anticipate the final mortification of dismissal, and to get away from the vicinity of Lady Fettercairn, of Shafto, and of Craigengowan.

Save the Rev. Paul Pentreath, far away in her native Devonshire, and the vicar in London through whom he had befriended her, she had no one to whom to look forward, and, save for Florian's sake, she felt at times, as if she cared little what became of her. She would reach London, take a little lodging there, and look about her for some employment while her money lasted; and when it was gone—gone, what then?

Again came the thought of Finella, whom she loved with all the passionate earnestness of an impulsive young heart thrust back upon itself, and yearning for friendship and affection. Even with her regard it was impossible that she could stay longer in the same house with him who was now returning—Shafto—even were dismissal not hanging over her. She could but go away; her presence was necessary to no one's happiness, and none would miss her—perhaps not even Finella after a time, for the latter lived in a world—the world of wealth and rank—a sphere apart from that of poor Dulcie Carlyon.

Amid these thoughts she started: dawn was breaking in the east, but the world around her was still involved in gloom and sleep.

How long, long and chill, the night had seemed; yet it was a short and warm one of July, when there is only a total darkness of four hours, especially in a region so far north as the Howe of the Mearns.

Red light stole along the waters of the distant German Sea; it began to tip the hilltops and crept gradually down into the woods and glens below, where the Bervie, the Finella, and the Cowie brawled on their way to the ocean.

As one in a dream, she sat for a little time watching the dawn till the light of the half-risen sun was streaming over the tree-tops and through the parted curtains of her windows, when she started up with all the resolution she had taken overnight yet full in her mind.

With rapid and trembling fingers she assumed the last details of her travelling costume, smoothed her golden hair, gave a final glance at herself in the mirror, and saw how pale and unslept she looked after her past night's vigil, tied her veil tightly across her face, fitted on her gloves with accuracy, took her travelling bag, and with a prayer on her lips prepared to go out into the world—alone!

The clustering roses and clematis were about the windows of the square turret-room, notwithstanding its great height from the ground; the birds were twittering among them, and diamond dewdrops gemmed every leaf.

Light and shadowy clouds of mist, exhaled upwards by the early morning sun, hung about the summit of Moelmannoch and other hills, and in the sunshine the insect world was all astir: the bees were already abroad, and the blackbirds were hopping about the gravelled terraces. To Dulcie it seemed that they at least were at home.

She leaned for a moment out of the window and drank—for the last time—a deep draught of the pure air that came from the lovely Scottish landscape over which her eyes wandered, as it stretched away down the fertile and peaceful Howe of the Mearns, the corn deepening into gold, the picturesque houses, luxuriant orchards and gardens; and she bade to each and all farewell, with little regret, perhaps, for with all their beauty they were too intimately associated with the idea of Lady Fettercairn and many a humiliation.

Opening her room-door she stole swiftly down the great carpeted staircase, passed through the drawing-rooms into the conservatory, the door of which she knew she could unlock more easily than that of the great door which opened to the porte cochère. There was no one yet astir in all that numerous household, so, hurrying across the dewy lawn, she turned her face resolutely towards the station, where she knew she would reach the early Aberdeen train for the South.

The country highway was deserted; she met no one but a gamekeeper returning from a night's watch, perhaps, with his gun under his arm. She thought he looked at her curiously as she passed him, sorely weighted by her travelling bag, but he did not address her; and so without other adventures she reached the little wayside station of Craigengowan just as the gates were being unclosed, and, quickly securing her ticket, retired to the seclusion of the waiting-room.

Her heart had but one aching thought—the parting with Finella.

In her pride and indignation we must admit that Dulcie, ever a creature of impulse, was not acting judiciously. She had not stopped to ask a letter of recommendation—'a character,' she mentally and bitterly phrased it—from Lady Fettercairn; neither had she risked the opposition and kind advice of Finella, but had thus left her present life of irritation and humiliation to rush into a new and unknown world, that now, even when she had barely crossed the rubicon, was beginning, as she sat in the lonely and empty wayside station, to chill and dismay her.

'In the future that is before me, whom am I to trust in again? How am I to fight the world's battle alone?' she was beginning to think, even while the clanking train for the South came sweeping across the echoing Howe.

Ay, she so pure, so artless, so unsuspecting of evil in others!

At last she was in the train and off. She gave one long farewell glance at the lofty turrets of haunted Craigengowan, because Finella was there, and felt that never again would they ramble together by Queen Mary's Thorn, the Swan's Pool, the old gate through which the fated Lord rode forth to battle, or by the old ruined Castle of Fettercairn with all its legends.

Dulcie experienced a kind of relief in the swiftness of the speed with which the express train flew past station after station, outstripping the wind apparently; villages and thatched farms were seen and gone; trees, bridges, ruined towers, those features so common in the Scottish landscape, fields and hedgerows, swept rearward, telegraph wires seemed to sink and rise and twist themselves in one, the poles apparently pursuing each other in the fury of the pace.

Now it was Arbroath, where the train, paused for a little time—Arbroath with its mills, tall chimneys, and substantial houses, amid which tower the remains of that noble abbey which held the bones of William the Lion, with its huge round window, for seven hundred years a landmark from the sea; anon came Droughty Craig with its ancient tower, under the walls of which have been shed the blood of English, French, and Germans, with Dundee, 'the gift of God,' amid the haze of its manufactories, to the westward.

Here a kindly old railway guard—who whilom as a 1st Royal Scot had shed his blood at Alma and Inkermann—taking pity on the pale and weary girl, brought her a cup of warm tea from the buffet, and, as he said, 'a weel-buttered bap, ye ken,' and most acceptable they were.

A little time and her train was sweeping through Fife, and she saw the woods of Falkland—those lovely woods wherein 'the bonnie Earl of Gowrie' flirted with Anne of Denmark. Soon Cupar was left behind, and the Eden, flowing through its green and fertile valley; and then, worn with the vigil of the past night and her own heavy thoughts, Dulcie fell asleep, without the coveted satisfaction of a dream of Florian or Finella.