CHAPTER VII.

FEARS AND SUSPICIONS.

'Well, Dulcie,' said Shafto, who, full of his own fears, contrived to confront her alone before the dinner, which was always a late one at Craigengowan, 'won't you even smile—now that we are for a little time apart—for old acquaintance sake?'

'How can I smile, feeling as I do—and knowing what I do?'

'What do you know?' he asked huskily, and changing colour at this new and stinging remark.

'That poor Florian is facing such perils in South Africa,' she replied in a low voice.

'Pooh! is that all?' said Shafto, greatly relieved; 'he'll get on, as well as he can expect, no doubt.'

'Amid all the wealth that surrounds you, could you not have done something for him?' asked the girl, wistfully and reproachfully.

'Poor relations are a deuced bother, and here they dislike his name somehow.'

As his fears passed away Shafto's aspect became menacing, and knowing her helplessness and her dependent position in the house to which he was the heir, for a moment or two the girl's spirit failed her.

'Well, what do you mean to say now?' he asked abruptly.

'About whom?' she asked softly and wonderingly.

'Me!'

'I shall say nothing, Shafto—nothing to injure you at least—with reference to old times.'

'What the devil could you say that would injure me in the eyes of my own family?'

Dulcie thought of the locket stolen from her so roughly, of his subsequent villainy therewith, and of his tampering with her long and passionate letter to Florian, but remained judiciously silent, while striving to look at him with defiant haughtiness.

'I am speaking to you, Dulcie; will you have the politeness to attend to me?'

'To what end and purpose?'

She eyed him with chilling steadiness now, though her heart was full of fear; but his shifty grey eyes quailed under the cold gaze he challenged, and thought how closely her bearing and her words resembled those of Finella.

'You don't like me, Dulcie,' said he with a bitter smile, 'that is pretty evident.'

'No, I simply hate you!' said she, losing all control over herself.

'You are charmingly frank, Miss Carlyon, but hate is a game that two can play at; so beware, I say, beware! I must hold the winning cards.'

'Oh, how brave and generous you are to threaten and torture a poor, weak girl whom you call an old friend, and under your own roof!'

'And the dear dove of Florian—Florian the private soldier!' he sneered fiercely.

'How horrible, how cruel!' she wailed, and covered her eyes with her hands.

'Never mind,' he resumed banteringly, 'you have got back your locket again.'

'I wonder how you dare to refer to it!' she exclaimed, and for a moment the angry gleam of her eyes was replaced by a soft, dreamy smile, as she recalled the time and place when Florian clasped the locket round her neck, when the bells of Revelstoke Church were heard on the same breeze that wafted around them the perfumes of the sweetbriar and wild apple blossoms in the old quarry near the sea, which was their trysting-place. How happy they were then, and how bright the future even in its utter vacuity, when seen through the rosy medium of young love!

Shafto divined her thoughts, for he said with jealous anger—

'You used the term dare with reference to your precious locket?'

'Yes; the locket of which you, Shafto Gyle, deprived me with coarse violence, like—like——'

'Well, what?'

'The garotters who are whipped in prison!'

His face grew very dark; then he said—

'We may as well have a truce to this sort of thing. A quarrel between you and me, Dulcie Carlyon, would only do me no harm, but you very much. The grandmater wouldn't keep you in the house an hour.'

'How chivalrous, how gentlemanly, you are!'

'Hush!' said he, with alarm, for at that instant the dinner-bell was clanging, and Finella with others came into the drawing-room, Lady Fettercairn luckily the last, though Shafto had warily withdrawn abruptly from Dulcie's vicinity at the first sound of it. Her first dinner in the stately dining-room of Craigengowan, with its lofty arched recess, where stood the massive sideboard arrayed with ancient plate, its hangings and full-length pictures, was a new experience—a kind of dream to Dulcie. The lively hum of many well-bred voices in easy conversation; the great epergne with its pyramid of fruit, flowers, ferns, and feathery grasses; the servants in livery, who were gliding noiselessly about, and seemed to be perpetually presenting silver dishes at her left elbow; old Mr. Grapeston, the solemn butler, presiding over the entire arrangements—all seemed part of a dream, from which she would waken to find herself in her old room at home, and see the waves rolling round the bleak promontory of Revelstoke Church and in the estuary of the Yealm; and, sooth to say, though used to all this luxury now, and though far from imaginative, Shafto had not been without some fears at first that he too might waken from a dream, to find himself once more perched on a tall stool in Lawyer Carlyon's gloomy office, and hard at work over an ink-spotted desk, the memory of which he loathed with a disgust indescribable.

Seeing that Dulcie looked sad and abstracted, Finella, who kindly offered a seat beside her, said softly and sweetly:

'I hope you won't feel strange among us; but I see you are full of thought. Did you leave many dear friends behind you—at home, I mean?'

'Many; oh yes—all the village, in fact,' said Dulcie, recalling the sad day of her departure; 'but, perhaps, I was selfish enough to regret one most—my pet.'

'What was it?'

'A dear little canary—only a bird.'

'And why didn't you bring it?'

'People said that a great lady like Lady Fettercairn would not permit one like me to have pets, and so—and so I gave him to our curate, dear old Mr. Pentreath. Oh, how the bird sang as I was leaving him!'

'Poor Miss Carlyon?' said Finella, touched by the girl's sweet and childlike simplicity.

For a moment—but a moment only—Dulcie was struck by the painful contrast between her own fate and position in life, and those of the brilliant Finella Melfort, and with it came a keen sense of inequality and injustice; but Finella, fortunately for herself, was an heiress of money, and not—as Lord Fettercairn often reminded her—an unlucky landed proprietor, in these days of starving crofters, failing tenants, Irish assassinations, and agricultural collapses, with defiant notices of impossibility to pay rent, and clamours for reduction thereof. She was heiress to nothing of that sort, but solid gold shaken from the Rupee Tree.

When the ladies withdrew to the drawing-room, Dulcie gladly accompanied them, instead of retiring (as perhaps Lady Fettercairn expected) to her own apartment; we say gladly, as she was as much afraid of the society of Shafto as he was of hers—and she had a great dread she scarcely knew of what.

How, if this cold, stately, and aristocratic lady, to whom she now owed her bread, and whose paid dependant she was, should discover that Shafto, the recovered 'grandson,' had ever made love to her once upon a time in her Devonshire home?

Dulcie, as it was her first experience of Craigengowan, did not sink into her position there, by withdrawing first, and, more than all, silently. She effusively shook hands with everyone in a kindly country fashion, but withdrew her slender fingers from Shafto's eager clasp with a haughty movement that Lady Fettercairn detected, and with some surprise and some anger, too; but to which she did not give immediate vent.

'Her hair is unpleasantly red,' said she to Finella after a time.

'Nay, grandmamma,' replied the latter; 'I should call it golden—and what a lovely skin she has!'

'Red I say her hair is; and she looks ill.'

'Well, even if it is, she couldn't help her hair, unless she dyed it; besides, she is in mourning for her father, poor thing, and has had a long, long journey. No one looks well after that—and she travelled third-class she told me, poor girl.'

'How shocking! Don't speak of it.'

Dulcie had indeed done so. Her exchequer was a limited one; and farewell gifts to some of her dear old people had reduced it to a minimum.

'She seems rather a Devonshire hoyden,' said Lady Fettercairn, slowly fanning herself; 'but I hope she will be able to make herself useful to me.'

'Grandmamma, I quite adore her!' exclaimed the impulsive Finella; 'we shall be capital friends, I am sure.'

'But you must never forget who she is.'

'An orphan—or a lawyer's daughter, do you mean?'

'What then?'

'My paid companion,' said Lady Fettercairn icily; but Finella was not to be repressed, and exclaimed:

'I am sure that she is, by nature, a very jolly girl.'

'Don't use such a phrase, Finella; it is positive slang.'

'It expresses a great deal anyway, grand-mamma,' said Finella, who was somewhat of an enthusiast; and added, 'There is something very pathetic at times in her dark blue eyes—something that seems almost to look beyond this world.'

'What an absurd idea!'

'She has evidently undergone great sorrow, poor thing.'

'All these folks who go out as companions and governesses, and so forth, have undergone all that sort of thing, if you believe them; but they must forget their sorrows, be lively, and make themselves useful. What else are they paid for?'

Lady Fettercairn had been quite aware at one time that Shafto had been in the employment of a Mr. Carlyon in Devonshire, and Dulcie wondered that no questions were asked her on the subject; but doubtless the distasteful idea had passed from the aristocratic mind of the matron, and Shafto (save to Dulcie in private) had no desire to revive Devonshire memories, so he never referred to it either.

Dulcie, her grief partially over and her fear of Shafto nearly so, revelled at first in the freedom and beauty of her surroundings. Craigengowan House (or Castle, as it was sometimes called, from its turrets and whilom moat) was situated, she saw, among some of the most beautiful mountain scenery of the Mearns; and, as she had spent all her life (save when at school) in Devonshire, the lovely and fertile surface of which can only be described as being billowy to a Scottish eye, she took in the sense of a complete change with wonder, and regarded the vast shadowy mountains with a little awe.

In the first few weeks after her arrival at Craigengowan she had plenty of occupation, but of a kind that only pleased her to a certain extent.

She had Lady Fettercairn's correspondence to attend to; her numerous invitations to issue and respond to; her lap-dog to wash with scented soaps—but Dulcie always doted dearly on pets; and she had to play and sing to order, and comprehensively to make herself 'useful;' yet she had the delight of Finella's companionship, friendship, and—she was certain—regard. But she was imaginative and excitable; and when night came, and she found herself alone in one of the panelled rooms near the old Scoto-French turrets, with their vanes creaking overhead, and she had to listen to the boisterous Scottish gales that swept through the bleak and leafless woods and howled about the old house, as a warning that winter had not yet departed, poor little English Dulcie felt eerie, and sobbed on her pillow for the dead and the absent; for the days that would return no more; for her parents lying at Revelstoke, and Florian—who was she knew not where!

CHAPTER VIII.

BY THE BUFFALO RIVER.

The morning of a new day was well in when Florian, lying among the tall, wavy reeds and feathery grass by the river-bank, awoke from a sleep that had been deep and heavy, induced by long exhaustion, toil, and over-tension of the nerves. Ere he started up, and as he was drifting back to consciousness, his thoughts had been, not of the awful slaughter from which he had escaped, but, strange to say, of Dulcie Carlyon, the object of his constant and most painful solicitude.

His returning thoughts had been of the past and her. In fancy he saw her again, with her laughing dark blue eyes and her winning smile; he felt the pressure of her little hand, and heard the tones of her voice, so soft and winning, and saw her, not as he saw her last, in deep mourning, but in her favourite blue serge trimmed with white, and a smart sailor's hat girt with a blue yachting ribbon above her ruddy golden hair; then there came an ominous flapping of heavy wings, and he started up to find two enormous Kaffir vultures wheeling overhead in circles round him!

On every side reigned profound silence, broken only by the lap-lapping of the Buffalo as it washed against rocks and boulders on its downward passage to the Indian Ocean. A few miles distant rose the rocky crest of fatal Isandhlwana, reddened to the colour of blood by the rising sun, and standing up clearly defined in outline against a sky of the deepest blue; and a shudder came over him as he looked at it, and thought of all that had happened, and of those who were lying unburied there.

His sodden uniform was almost dried now by the heat of the sun, but he felt stiff and sore in every joint, and on rising from the earth he knew not which way to turn. He knew that two companies of the first battalion of his regiment were at Helpmakaar, with the regimental colour, and that one of the second battalion was posted at Rorke's Drift, under Lieutenant Bromhead, but of where these places lay he had not the least idea. He was defenceless too, for though he had his sword-bayonet he had lost his rifle when his horse was shot in the stream.

He passed a hand across his brow as if to clear away his painful and anxious thoughts, and was making up his mind to follow the course of the river upward as being the most likely mode of reaching Rorke's Drift when a yell pierced his ears, and he found himself surrounded by some twenty black-skinned Zulus, with gleaming eyes and glistening teeth, all adorned with cow-tails, feathers, and armlets, and armed in their usual fashion—Zulus who had been resting close by him among the long reeds, weary, as it proved; after their night's conflict at Rorke's Drift and their repulse at that place.

Florian's blood ran cold!

Already he seemed to feel their keen assegais piercing his body and quivering in his flesh. However, to his astonishment, these savages, acting under the orders of their leader, did nothing worse then than strip him of his belts and tunic, and, strange enough, examined him to see if he was wounded anywhere.

He then understood their leader to say—for he had picked up a few words of their not unmusical language—that they would give him as a present to Cetewayo.

Their leader proved to be one of the sons of Sirayo—one of the original causes of the war, and has been described as a model Zulu warrior, lithe, muscular, and without an ounce of superfluous flesh on his handsome limbs; one who could launch an assegai with unerring aim, and spring like a tiger to close quarters with knife or knobkerie—the same warrior who lay long a prisoner in the gaol of Pietermaritzburg after the war was over.

They dragged Florian across the river at a kind of ford, and partly took him back the way he had come from Isandhlwana, and awful were the sights he saw upon it—the dead bodies of comrades, all frightfully gashed and mutilated, with here and there a wounded horse, which, after partially recovering from its first agony, was cropping, or had cropped, the grass around in a limited circle, which showed the weakness caused by loss of blood; and Florian, with a prayerful heart, marvelled that his savage captors spared him, as they assegaied these helpless animals in pure wantonness and lust of cruelty.

All day they travelled Florian knew not in what direction, and when they found him sinking with exertion they gave him a kind of cake made of mealies to eat, and a draught of utywala from a gourd. This is Kaffir beer, or some beverage which is like thin gruel, but on which the army of Cetewayo contrived to get intoxicated on the night before the battle of Ulundi.

Early next day he was taken to a military kraal, situated in a solitary and pastoral plain, surrounded by grassy hills, where he was given to understand he would be brought before the king.

Like all other military kraals, it consisted of some hundred beehive-shaped huts, surrounded by a strong wooden palisade, nine feet high and two feet thick. He was thrust into a hut, and for a time left to his own reflections.

The edifice was of wicker-work made of wattles, light and straight, bent over at regular distances till they met at the apex, on the principle of a Gothic groined arch. The walls were plastered, the roof neatly thatched; the floor was hard and smooth. Across it ran a ledge, which served as a cupboard, where all the clay utensils were placed, and among these were squat-shaped jars capable of holding twenty gallons of Kaffir beer.

Ox-hide shields and bundles of assegais were hung on the walls, which were thin enough to suggest the idea of breaking through them to escape; but that idea no sooner occurred to the unfortunate prisoner than he abandoned it. He remembered the massive palisade, and knew that within and without were the Zulu warriors in thousands, for the kraal was the quarters of an Impi or entire column.

After a time he was brought before Cetewayo, who was seated in a kind of chair at the door of a larger hut than the rest, with a number of indunas (or colonels) about him, all naked save at the loins, wearing fillets or circlets on their shaven heads, and armed with rifles; and now, sooth to say, as he eyed this savage potentate wistfully and with dread anxiety, Florian Melfort thought not unnaturally that he was face to face with a death that might be sudden or one of acute and protracted torture.

There is no need for describing the appearance of the sable monarch, with whose face and burly figure the London photographers have made all so familiar; but on this occasion though he was nude, all save a royal mantle over his shoulders—a mantle said to have borne 'a suspicious resemblance to an old tablecloth with fringed edges'—he wore his other 'royal' ensignia, which these artists perhaps never saw—a kind of conical helmet or head-dress, with a sort of floating puggaree behind, and garnished by three feathers, not like the modern badge of the Prince of Wales—but like three old regimental hackles, one on the top and one on each side.

Near him Florian saw a white man, clad like a Boer, whom he supposed to be another unfortunate prisoner like himself, but who proved to be that strange character known as 'Cetewayo's Dutchman,' who was there to act as interpreter.

This personage, whose name was Cornelius Viljoen, had been a Natal trader, and acted as a kind of secretary to the Zulu King throughout the war; but latterly he was treated with suspicion, and remained as a prisoner in his hands, and now he was ordered to ask Florian a series of questions.

'Can you unspike the two pieces of cannon captured by the warriors of Dabulamanza at Isandhlwana?'

These were seven-pounder Royal Artillery guns.

'I cannot,' replied Florian.

'Why?'

'Because I am not a gunner—neither am I a mechanic,' he replied, unwilling to perform this task for the service of the enemy.

'The king desires me to tell you that if you can do this, and teach his young men the way to handle these guns, he will give you a hundred head of oxen, a kraal by the Pongola River, where your people will never find you, and you will ever after be a great man among the Zulus.'

Again Florian protested his inability, assuring them that he knew nothing of artillery.

When questioned as to the strength of the three columns that entered Zululand, the king and all his indunas seemed incredulous as to their extreme weakness when compared to the vast forces they were to encounter, and when told that there were hundreds of thousands of red soldiers who could come from beyond the sea, they laughed aloud with unbelief, and Cetewayo said the more that came the more there would be to kill, and that when he had driven the last of the British and the last of the Boers into the salt sea together, he would divide all their lands among his warriors.

Cetewayo waved his hand, as much as to say the interview was over, and said something in a menacing tone to Cornelius Viljoen.

'You had better consider the king's wish,' said the latter to Florian; 'he tells me that if you do not obey him in the matter of the guns, you will be cut in small pieces with an assegai, joint by joint, beginning with the toes and finger-tips, so that you may be long, long of dying, and pray for death.'

For three successive days he was visited by the Dutchman, who repeated the king's request and threat, and, in pity perhaps for his youth, the speaker besought him to comply; but Florian was resolute.

Each day at noon the latter was escorted by two tall and powerful Zulus, one armed with a musket loaded, and the other with a double-barbed assegai, into the adjacent mealie fields, where, to sustain life, he was permitted with his hands unbound to make a plentiful repast on this hermit-like diet; and it was while thus engaged he began to see and consider that this was his only chance of escape, if he could do so, by preventing the explosion of the musket borne by one of his guards from rousing all the warriors in and about the kraal.

Florian was quite aware now of the reason why Methlagazulu (for so the son of Sirayo was named) had so singularly spared his life, when captured beside the Buffalo River, and he knew now that if he failed to obey the request of Cetewayo in the matter of unspiking the two seven-pounders, or wore out the patience of that sable potentate, he would be put to a cruel death; and he shrewdly suspected, from all he knew of the Zulu character, that even were he weak enough, or traitor enough, to do what he was requested, he would be put to death no doubt all the same, despite the promised kraal and herd of cattle beyond the Pongola River.

He had seen too much of ruthless slaughter of late not to be able to nerve himself—to screw his courage up to the performance of a desperate deed to secure his own deliverance and safety.

His two escorts were quite off their guard, while he affected to be feeding himself with the green mealies, and no more dreamt that he would attack them empty-handed or unarmed than take a flight into the air.

Suddenly snatching the assegai from the Zulu, who, unsuspecting him, held it loosely, he plunged it with all his strength—a strength that was doubled by the desperation of the moment—into the heart of the other, who was armed with the rifle—a Martini-Henry taken at Isandhlwana—and leaving it quivering in his broad, brawny, and naked breast, he seized the firearm as the dying man fell, and wrenched away his cartridge-belt.

The whole thing was done quick as thought, and the other Zulu, finding himself disarmed, fled yelling towards the kraal, about a mile distant, while Florian, his heart beating wildly, his head in a whirl, rushed with all his speed towards a wood—his first impulse—for shelter and concealment.

In the lives of most people there are some episodes they care not to recall or to remember, but this, though a desperate one, was not one of these to Florian.

He had the start of a mile in case of pursuit, which was certain; but he knew that a mile was but little advantage when his pursuers were fleet and hard-footed Zulus.

Whatever the reason, the pursuit of him was not so immediate as he anticipated; but he had barely gained the shelter of the thicket, which, with a great undergrowth or jungle, was chiefly composed of yellow wood and assegai trees, when, on giving a backward glance, he saw the black-skinned Zulus issuing in hundreds from the gates in the palisading, and spreading all over the intervening veldt.

Would he, or could he, escape so many?

A few shots that were fired at him by some of the leading pursuers showed that he was not unseen; but, as the Zulus knew not how to sight their rifles or judge of distance, their bullets either flew high in the air or entered the ground some sixty yards or so from their feet; and Florian, knowing that they would be sure to enter the wood at the point where he disappeared in it, turned off at an angle, and creeping for some distance among the underwood to conceal, if possible, his trail, which they would be sure to follow, he reached a tree, the foliage of which was dense. He slung his rifle over his back, and climbed up for concealment, and then for the first time he became aware that his hands, limbs, and even his face, were lacerated, torn, and bleeding from the leaves and thorns of the sharp, spiky plants among which he had been creeping.[*]

[*] The escape of Florian from the kraal is an incident similar, in some instances, to that of Private Grandier, of Weatherly's Horse, after the affair at Inhlobane.

He had scarcely attained a perch where he hoped to remain unseen till nightfall, or the Zulus withdrew, and where he sat, scarcely daring to breathe, when the wood resounded with their yells.

CHAPTER IX.

ON THE KARROO.

Heedless of the spikes and brambles of the star-shaped carrion-flower and other Euphorbia, prickly cacti, and so forth, as if their bare legs were clothed in mail, the Zulus rushed hither and thither about the wood in their fierce and active search, and, as they never doubted they would find the fugitive, they became somewhat perplexed when he was nowhere to be seen; and after traversing it again and again, they dispersed in pursuit over the open country, and then Florian began to breathe more freely.

He had lost his white helmet in the Buffalo, and been since deprived of his scarlet tunic; thus, fortunately for himself, his attire consisted chiefly of a pair of tattered regimental trousers and a blue flannel shirt, and these favoured his concealment among the dense foliage of the tree.

Night came on, but he dared not yet quit the wood, lest the searchers might be about; and he dared not sleep lest he might fall to the ground, break a limb, perhaps, and lie there to perish miserably.

When all was perfectly still, and the bright stars were shining out, he thought of quitting his place of concealment; but a strange sound that he heard, as of some heavy body being dragged through the underwood, and another that seemed like mastication or chewing, made him pause in alarm and great irresolution.

Florian thought that night would never pass; its hours seemed interminable. At last dawn began to redden the east, and he knew that his every hope must lie in the opposite direction; and, stiff and sore, he dropped a fresh cartridge into the breech-block of his recently acquired rifle, and then slid to the ground and looked cautiously about him.

Then the mysterious sounds he had heard in the night were fearfully accounted for, and his heart seemed to stand still when, not twenty paces from him, he saw a lion of considerable size, and he knew that more than one horse of the Kind's Dragoon Guards. had been devoured by such animals in that country.

Florian had never seen one before, even in a menagerie; and, expecting immediate death, he regarded it with a species of horrible fascination, while his right hand trembled on the lock of his rifle, for as a serpent fascinates a bird, so did the glare of that lion's eye paralyze Florian for a time.

The African lion is much larger than the Asiatic, and is more powerful, its limbs being a complete congeries of sinews. This terrible animal manifested no signs of hostility, but regarded Florian lazily, as he lay among the bushes near a half-devoured quagga, on which his hunger had been satiated. His jaws, half open, showed his terrific fangs. Florian knew that if he fired he might only wound, not slay the animal, and, with considerable presence of mind he passed quickly and silently out of the wood into the open, at that supreme crisis forgetting even all about the Zulus, but giving many a backward nervous glance.

It has been remarked in the Cape Colony that a change has come over the habits of the lion on the borders of civilization. In the interior, where he roams free and unmolested, his loud roar is heard at nightfall and in the early dawn reverberating among the hills; but where guns are in use and traders' waggon-wheels are heard—perhaps the distant shriek of a railway engine—he seems to have learned the lesson that his own safety, and even his chances of food, lie in silence.

Over a grassy country, tufted here and there by mimosa-trees and prickly Euphorbia bushes, Florian, without other food than the green mealies of which he had had a repast on the previous day, marched manfully on westward, in the hope of somewhere striking on the Buffalo River, and getting on the border of Natal, for there alone would he be in safety. But he had barely proceeded four miles or so, when he came suddenly upon three Zulus driving some cattle along a grassy hollow, and a united shout escaped them as they perceived him. Two were armed with rifles, and one carried a sheaf of assegais.

The two former began to handle their rifles, which were muzzle-loaders; but, quick as lightning, Florian dropped on his right knee, planting on the left his left elbow, and sighting his rifle at seven hundred yards, in good Hythe fashion, knocked over the first, and then the second ere he could reload; for both had fired at him, but as they were no doubt ignorant of the use of the back-sight, their shot had gone he knew not where.

One was killed outright; the other was rolling about in agony, beating the earth with his hands, and tearing up tufts of grass in his futile efforts to stand upright.

The third, with the assegais, instead of possessing himself of the fallen men's arms and ammunition to continue the combat, terrified perhaps to see both shot down so rapidly, and at such a great distance, fled with the speed of a hare in the direction of that hornets' nest, the military kraal.

To permit him to escape and reach that place in safety would only, Florian knew, too probably destroy his chances of reaching the frontier, so he took from his knee a quiet pot-shot at the savage, who fell prone on his face, and with a quickened pace Florian continued his progress westward.

Compunction he had none. He only thought of his own desperate and lonely condition, of those who had perished at Isandhlwana, of poor Bob Edgehill and his song—

'Merrily, lads, so ho!'

the chorus of which he had led when the 'trooper' came steaming out of Plymouth harbour.

He had now to traverse miles of a genuine South African karroo, a dreary, listless, and uniform plain, broken here and there by straggling kopjies, or small hills of schistus or slate, the colour of which was a dull ferruginous brown. No trace of animal nature was there—not even the Kaffir vulture; and the withered remains of the fig-marigold and other succulent plants scattered over the solitary waste crackled under his feet as he trod wearily on.

Night was closing again, when, weary and footsore, he began to feel a necessity for rest and sleep, and on reaching a little donga, through which flowed a stream where some indigo and cotton bushes were growing wild, he was thankful to find among them some melons and beans. Of these he ate sparingly; then, laying his loaded rifle beside him, he crept into a place where the shrubs grew thickest, and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Laden with moisture, the mild air of the African night seemed to kiss his now hollow cheeks and lull his senses into soft repose.

Next day betimes he set out again, unseen by any human eye, and after traversing the karroo (far across which his shadow was thrown before him by the rising sun) for a few more miles, a cry of joy escaped him when he came suddenly upon a bend of the Buffalo River and knew that the opposite bank was British territory.

Slinging his rifle, he boldly swam across, and had not proceeded three miles when he struck upon a kind of beaten path that ran north and south; but, as a writer says, 'the worst by-way leading to a Cornish mine, the steepest ascent in the Cumberland hills which draught horses would never be faced at, is a right-royal Queen's highway compared with a Natal road.'

Great was his new joy when, after a time spent in some indecision, he saw a strange-looking vehicle approaching at a slow pace, though drawn by six Cape horses. This proved to be Her Majesty's post-cart proceeding from Greytown to Dundee, viâ Helpmakaar, the very point for which the escaped prisoner was making his way.

It overtook him after a time, and he got a seat in it among four or five men like Boers, who, however, proved to be Englishmen. It was a wretched conveyance, without springs, and covered with strips of old canvas, patched in fifty places, and fastened down by nails. No luggage is allowed for passengers in these post-carts, which carry the mail-bags alone.

A naked Kaffir running on foot, armed with a whip, cut away indefatigably at the two leaders; another on the box plied a long jambok or team-whip of raw ox-thong, urging the animals on the while in his own guttural language, and only used English when compelled to have recourse to abuse, and after ten miles' progress along a road—if it could be called so—encumbered by boulders in some places, deep with mud in others, Florian found himself in the village of Helpmakaar, and among the tents of the few survivors of the two battalions of the 24th Regiment.

Then he heard for the first time of the valiant defence of Rorke's Drift by Bromhead and Chard, with only one hundred and thirty men of all ranks against four thousand Zulus, all flushed with the slaughter at Isandhlwana.

He was told how the gallant few in that sequestered post beside the Buffalo River—merely a loop-holed store-house, a parapet of biscuit-boxes, and a thatched hospital, wherein thirty-five sick men lay—fought with steady valour for hours throughout that terrible night, resisting every attempt made by the wild thousands to storm it, and without other light than the red flashes of the musketry that streaked the gloom; how the hospital roof took fire, and how six noble privates defended like heroes the doorway with their bayonets (till most of the sick were brought forth), each winning the Victoria Cross; how no less than six times the Zulus, over piles of their own dead, got inside the wretched barricades, and six times were hurled back by our soldiers with the queen of weapons, which none can wield like them—the bayonet.

'Thank God that some of the dear old 24th are left, after all!' was the exclamation of Florian, when among their tents he heard this heroic story, and related his own desperate adventures to a circle of bronzed and eager listeners.

For the first time after several days he saw his face in a mirror, and was startled by the wild and haggard aspect of it and the glare in his dark eyes.

'Surely,' thought he, 'I am not the same fellow of the dear old days at Revelstoke—not the lad whom Dulcie remembers—this stern, wild-eyed man, who looks actually old for his years;' but he had gone through and faced much, hourly, of danger, suffering, and probable death. Could he be the same lad whom she loved and still loves, and with whom she fished and boated on the Erme and Yealm, and gathered berries in the Plymstock woods and the old quarries by the sea?

How often of late had he lived a lifetime in a minute!

There were sweet and sad past memories, future hopes, strange doubts, retrospections, and present sufferings all condensed again and again into that brief space, with strange recollections of his youth—his dead parents, the old home, the cottage near Revelstoke, Dulcie, Shafto, and old nurse Madelon—a host of confused thoughts, and ever and always 'the strong vitality of youth rebelling against possible death'—for death is always close in war.

But it was not death that Florian feared, but—like the duellists in 'The Tramp Abroad'—mutilation.

CHAPTER X.

FLORIAN JOINS THE MOUNTED INFANTRY.

Vincent Hammersley, we have said, achieved, with a few others, his escape to the Natal side of the Buffalo River, and reached the village of Helpmakaar, situated about five miles therefrom, where two companies of the first battalion of his unfortunate regiment were posted, under the command of a field-officer, and where for a few days he found himself in comparative comfort, though he and his brother-officers had a crushing sense of sorrow and mortification for what had befallen their corps at Isandhlwana; for regiments were not then what they have become now, mere scratch battalions, without much cohesion in peace or war, but were happy, movable homes—one family, indeed—full of cameraderie, grand traditions, and old esprit de corps; and often at Helpmakaar was the surmise, which is ever in the minds of our soldiers at the scene of war, put in words, 'What will they think of this at home? What are folks in Britain saying about this?'

Hearing of Florian's arrival, kindly he sent for him to congratulate him on his escape, and the interview took place in what was termed the 'mess-tent' (an old tarpaulin stretched on poles), where, seeing his worn and wasted aspect, he insisted on his taking some refreshment before relating what he and several officers were anxious to hear—details of the gallant but fatal episode of Melville and Coghill, when they perished on the left bank of the Buffalo. They then heard his subsequent adventures and the story of his narrow escape.

'I should like to have seen you potting those three fellows on the open karroo,' said an officer.

'It was a mercy to me that they knew not how to sight their rifles, sir, or I should not have been here to-clay probably,' replied Florian modestly.

'By Jove!' said Hammersley, 'I can't think enough of your act in the mealie-field, polishing off the Zulu who had the rifle with the assegai of his companion, and so becoming master of the situation. There were courage and decision in the act—two valuable impulses, for indecision and weakness of character are at the bottom of half the failures of life. You can't go about thus, in your shirt-sleeves,' added Hammersley. 'I have an old guard-tunic in my baggage; it will be good enough to fight in, and is at your service.'

'Thanks, sir,' replied Florian, colouring; 'but how can I appear in an officer's tunic?'

'One may wear anything here,' said Hammersley, laughing. 'By Jove! you are sure to be an officer some day soon; but meantime you may rip off the badges.'

Florian was glad of the gift, as all the stores of every description had been captured at Isandhlwana.

Hammersley had seriously begun the apparently hopeless task of rooting Finella's image out of his heart.

'Flirts and coquettes,' he would think, 'I have met by dozens in society; but I could little have thought that the childlike, apparently straightforward and impulsive Finella would form such a deuced combination of both characters! And, not content by bestowing an engagement ring, I actually gave her—ass that I was!—a wedding one. Yet I am not sure that I would not do all the same folly over again. "Unstable as water—thou shalt not excel." So we have it in Genesis.'

A hundred times he asked of himself, how could she lure him into loving her and then deceive him so, and for such a cub as Shafto?—the bright, childlike, outspoken girl. The act seemed to belie her honest, fearless, and beautiful eyes—for honest, fearless, and sweet they were indeed. Oh! it was all like a bad dream, that sudden episode in the garden at Craigengowan. How much of that game had been going on before and since? This thought, when it occurred to him, seemed to turn his heart to stone or steel.

Hammersley was now, by his own request, appointed to the Mounted Infantry. His casual remark about the tunic had fired the sparks of ambition in Florian's heart; thus he might run great risks, face more peril, and thus win more honour.

He volunteered to join the same force, and was placed in Hammersley's troop, which was to form a part of the column to relieve Colonel Pearson's force, then isolated and blockaded by the Zulus at a place called Etschowe, where he had skilfully turned an old Norwegian mission-station into a fort.

Nearly on the summit of the Tyoe Mountains, more than two thousand feet in height, it stood amid a district of wonderful sylvan beauty. An open and hilly country lay on the south, bounded by the vast ranges of the Umkukusi Mountains; on the north the Umtalazi River rolled in blue and silver tints through the green and grassy karroo. On the westward lay the Hintza forest of dark primeval wood, and far away, nearly forty miles to the eastward, could be seen Port Durnford or the shore of the Indian Ocean.

But there the Colonel, whose force consisted chiefly of a battalion of his own regiment, the 3rd Buffs, six companies of the Lanarkshire, a naval brigade, some cavalry and artillery, found himself undergoing all the inconvenience of a blockade, with provisions and stores decreasing fast and of twelve messengers, whom he had sent to Lord Chelmsford asking instructions and succour, eleven had been slain on the way, so there was nothing for it but to fight to the last, and defend the fort till help came, or share the fate of those who fell at Isandhlwana.

Fort Tenedos (so called from her Majesty's ship of that name) was thirty miles distant from Etschowe, and formed the base from which Lord Chelmsford went to succour the latter place at the head of nearly 7,000 men of all arms.

Hammersley's little troop was with the vanguard of the leading division, which was composed of a strong naval brigade, with two Gatlings, or 'barrel-organs,' as the sailors called them, 900 Argyleshire Highlanders, 580 of the Lanarkshire and Buffs, 350 Mounted Infantry, and a local contingent; and another column, similarly constituted, under Colonel Pemberton of the 60th Rifles. 'I am glad to have you on this duty with me,' said Hammersley, as the Mounted Infantry rode off in the dark hours of the morning, 'to feel the way,' en route to the Tugela River.

'I thank you, sir,' replied Florian; 'and am proud to be still under your orders. I only wish that Mr. Sheldrake were with us too.'

'Poor Sheldrake is lying yet unburied with all the rest!'

'With what solicitude,' thought Hammersley, smiling in the dark, 'he used to caress his almost invisible moustache! This Mounted Infantry service is rather desperate work,' he said aloud. 'Why did you volunteer for it?'

'To win honour and rank, if I can. But you, sir?'

'To forget—if possible—to forget!' was the somewhat enigmatical reply of Hammersley. Then, after a long pause, he said somewhat irrelevantly, 'My instinct told me from the first that you are a gentleman, though a sergeant in my company.'

'Yes, I am a gentleman,' replied Florian; 'I have passed through a school of adversity to you unknown, Captain Hammersley.

'Sorry to hear it—poor fellow.'

'And yet, sir, if I may venture to make the remark, from some things I have heard you say, you seem to be at warfare with the world.'

'In one sense, at least, I am embittered against it,' said Hammersley, and urged, he knew not by what emotion, unless that impulse which inspires men at times to make strange confidences, he added, 'I have learned the truth of what an author says, "That a woman can smile in a man's face and breathe vows of fidelity in his ear, each one of which is black as her own heart." This is the reason I volunteered for this rough work. Have you learned that too?'

'No, sir, thank Heaven!'

'As yet you are lucky; some day you may be undeceived.'

The noise made by the convoy, two miles and a half long, descending towards the river, could now be heard in the rear. It consisted of 113 waggons, each drawn by twelve oxen; fifty strongly wheeled Scottish carts; and about fifty mules all laden.

Every man carried in his spare and expansion pouches 200 rounds of ball-cartridge.

As the sun rose, the appearance of the long column, with the convoy, descending towards the river, and leaving the forests behind, was impressive and imposing. Brightness, colour, sound, and action, all were there.

Like a river of shining steel, the keen bayonets seemed to flash and ripple in the sunshine; the red coats and white helmets came out in strong relief against the background of green; the pipes of the Highlanders, and the drums and fifes of the other corps, loaded the calm moist morning air with sounds, in which others blended—the neighing of chargers, the lowing of the team-oxen, the rumble and clatter of many wheels, the yells and other unearthly cries of the Kaffir drivers.

Rain had fallen heavily of late; and the Tugela, at the point at which the column crossed, was six hundred yards in breadth. The mounted infantry were first over, and rode in extended order—scouting—each man with his loaded rifle planted by the butt on his right thigh. Florian was mounted on a horse which he named Tattoo—as it was a grey having many dark spots and curious stripes—a nag he soon learned to love as a great pet indeed. The country around was open; thus with the sharp activity of the scouting force on one hand and the partial absence of wood or scrub on the other, the Zulus had few or no opportunities for surprise or ambush, and the relieving column had achieved half the distance to be traversed before any great difficulties occurred.

Each night, on halting, an entrenched camp or laager was formed, with a shelter built twenty yards distant outside, and the strictest silence was enjoined after the last bugles had sounded. On the march the column was joined by the 57th 'Regiment,' the 'Old Die Hards' of Peninsular fame, whom they received with hearty cheers.

Some Zulus in their simple war array were visible on the 1st of April; and during the night many red signal-fires were seen to flash up on the hills to the north, thus indicating the gathering of a great force, and these continued to blaze, though the rain fell heavily, wetting every man in the laager to the skin, as the column was without tents.

It was a night of anxiety, gloom, and suffering. In fitful gleams, between masses of black and flying cloud, the weird, white moon shone out at times; but no sound reached the alert advanced sentinels, save the melancholy howl of the jackal or the hoarse croak of the Kaffir vulture expectant of its coming feast.

The trumpets sounded at dawn on the 2nd of April. The mounted infantry sprang into their saddles and galloped forth to reconnoitre, while the troops unpiled and stood to their arms, though no one knew where the wily and stealthy Zulus were. Captain Percy Barrow, of the 19th Hussars, had reconnoitred on the previous day eight miles to the north-east, as far as Wamoquendo, and could see nothing of them, and on the morning Hammersley with his troop had ridden as far in a westerly direction with the same success, and yet ere the day closed the desperate battle of Ginghilovo was fought.

CHAPTER XI.

DULCIE'S NEW FRIEND.

And how fared it with Dulcie at Craigengowan?

The season was the early days of April; but in the Mearns they are usually more like last days of March, when the Bervie, the Finella River, and their tributaries were hurrying towards the sea in haste, as if they had no time to dally with the pebbles and boulders that impeded them; when the early-yeaned lambs begin to gambol and play, and the cloud and sunshine seem to chase each other over the tender grass; and when violets, as Shakspeare has it, 'sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,' give their fragrance to the passing breeze.

As yet Dulcie knew nothing of what had exactly befallen Florian, like many others who had deep and thrilling interest in the lists of the sergeants, rank and file.

Like Finella, Shafto knew that Hammersley's name had not appeared in the list of casualties, and he remembered him—jealousy apart—with a bitter hatred; for latterly the former, even before the affair of the cards, had been very cold, and many a time, notwithstanding Shafto's position in the house, used to honour him with only a calm and supercilious stare. Now it has been said truly that there are few things more irritating to one's vanity than to be calmly ignored. 'Argument, disagreement, even insolence, are each in their way easier to bear than that species of lofty indifference intended to convey a sensation of inferiority and of belonging to a lower class of beings altogether. It gives the feeling of there being something wrong about you without your exactly knowing what.'

But Shafto felt the falsehood of his position whenever he was with supposed equals and failed to assume perfect confidence or proper dignity.

Though comfortable enough in her new surroundings, Dulcie was somewhat changed from the winsome and impulsive Dulcie whom we first described in the sailor's hat and blue serge suit at Revelstoke. Though her keener grief had subsided, anxiety about Florian, who had not another creature in the world to love him but herself, and a natural doubt about her own future had stolen the roundness from her cheeks, and the roseleaf tints too, while her skin in its delicate whiteness had become waxen in aspect, and the coils of her red golden hair seemed almost too heavy for her shapely head and slender neck. But she was far from idle. She had 'my lady's' lap-dog, a snarling little brute whose teeth filled her with terror, to feed and comb daily; she had much 'lovely china' to dust; a wardrobe to attend to, and rich laces to darn; she had notes innumerable to write; and be always smiling and lively as well as useful when her heart was full of dull pain and despondency concerning the unfortunate Florian, which at night especially put her in a species of fever, and made her turn and toss restlessly on her pillow, and start from sleep with a little cry of terror as she flung out her arms as if to ward off the frightful thoughts of what might be happening, or had happened already, so far, far away. And all this was the harder to bear because she was then without a friend or confidant with whom she could share the burden of her secret sorrow.

She had been some time at Cravengowan before she discovered in its place of honour the portrait of young Lennard Melfort, which had been so long relegated to a lumber-attic, and its resemblance to 'Major MacIan,' even in his elder years, startled and amazed her; moreover, it was still more wonderful that it so closely resembled Florian, whom all at Revelstoke were astounded to hear was only the Major's nephew, and not his son, while Shafto, she saw, bore no likeness to the picture at all.

She was never weary of looking at it, and asking questions of Finella about Lennard, which that young lady was unable to answer, as that which had happened to him occurred long before she was born.

As for Shafto, he never dared to look at this work of art. Though the portrait of a young man, and his last memory of the Major was that of a prematurely old one, the likeness between the two was marvellous; and its deep, thoughtful eyes seemed to follow, to haunt, and to menace him. He loathed it; and though one of the best efforts of Sir Daniel Macnee, the President of the Royal Scottish Academy, he would fain, if he could, have found some plan for its destruction. He avoided, however, as much as possible, the apartment in which it hung.

To his annoyance, one morning, he found Dulcie radiant with joy, and an ugly word hovered on his lips when he discovered the cause thereof.

She had been reading about the march of the relieving column towards Etschowe under Lord Chelmsford, and saw Florian's name mentioned in connection with a brilliant scouting exploit of the Mounted Infantry under Captain Hammersley; and a great happiness thrilled her heart, for now she knew that, up to the date given, he was alive and well, and she thought of writing to him, but would he ever get the letter?—she knew nothing of the camp postal arrangements, and feared it might be futile to do so. Moreover, she had an irrepressible dread of Lady Fettercairn, whose bearing to her was as cold as that of Finella was kind and warm.

'Don't you ever wear flowers in your hair, Miss Carlyon?' said the latter, as she regarded with honest admiration the glories of Dulcie's ruddy hair shot with gold.

'No.'

'Why?'

'So few tints go well with my hair: people call it red,' said Dulcie.

'People who are your enemies.'

'I never had an enemy,' said Dulcie simply.

'That I can well believe. Then it must be those who are envious of your loveliness,' added Finella frankly.

'A pink or crimson rose would never do in my hair, Miss Melfort.'

'But a white one would,' said Finella, selecting a creamy white rose from a conservatory vase, and pinning it in Dulcie's hair, giving it a kindly pat as she did so. 'Look, grandmamma; doesn't she look lovely now?'

And the frank and impulsive girl would have kissed poor Dulcie but for a cold and somewhat discouraging stare she encountered in the eyes of Lady Fettercairn.

'Somehow, Miss Carlyon,' she whispered after a time, 'I don't get on well with grandmamma. It is my fault, of course: I suppose I am a little wretch!'

The friendship of these—though one was a wealthy heiress and the other but a poor companion—grew rapidly apace; both were too warm hearted, too affectionate and impulsive by habit, for it to be otherwise, and it enabled them to pass hours together—though young girls, like older ones, dearly love a little gossip of their own kind—without any sense of embarrassment or weariness; for ere long it came to pass that they shared their mutual confidence; and, as we shall show, Finella came to speak of Vivian Hammersley to Dulcie, and the latter to her of Florian. But there was something in Dulcie's sweet soft face that made people older than Finella confide to her their troubles and difficulties, for she was quick to sympathise with and to understand all kinds of grief and sorrow.

One evening as they walked together on the terrace, and tossed biscuit to a pair of stately long-necked swans, the white plumage of which gleamed like snow in the setting sun as they swam gently to and fro in an ornamental pond (a portion of the old moat) that lay in front of the house, Dulcie said, with tears of gratitude glittering in her blue eyes—

'You have done me a world of good by your great kindness of heart to me, Finella—oh, I beg your pardon—Miss Melfort I mean—the name escaped me,' exclaimed Dulcie, covered with confusion.

'Call me always Finella,' said the other emphatically.

'Oh, I dare not do so before Lady Fettercairn.'

'Then do so at other times, Dulcie. You talk of doing you good—I do not believe anyone could have the heart to do you harm.'

'Why?'

'You seem so good—so pure, so simple. Oh, I do love you, Dulcie!' she exclaimed, with true girlish effusiveness.

'I thank you very much; and yet we think you Scotch folks are cold and stiff.'

'We—who?'

'The English, I mean.'

'They must be like the Arab who had never seen the world, and thought it must be all his father's tent,' said Finella laughing; 'the insular, untravelled English, I mean.'

'Such kindness is delightful to a lonely creature like me. I have fortunately only myself to work for, however.'

'And no one else to think of?'

'Oh—yes—yes,' said the girl sadly and passionately; 'but he is far, far away, and every day seems to make the void in my heart deeper, the ache keener, the silence more hard to bear.'

'Our emotions seem somehow the same,' said Finella, after a pause. Then thinking that she had perhaps admitted too much, or laid a secret uselessly bare, Dulcie blushed, and thought to change the subject by saying reflectively, 'How many great and pleasant things one might do if one had the chance of doing so; but such chances never come in my way, for every change with me has been for the worse.'

'Not, I hope, in coming to Craigengowan?'

'Oh no; they are painful matters I refer to. First, I lost my dear papa, and was thereby cast on the world penniless. Since then I have lost one who loved me quite as well as papa did.'

'Another?' said Finella inquiringly.

'Yes; but let me not speak of that,' replied Dulcie hastily, and colouring deeply again; so Finella, like a lady, thought to drop the subject, but somehow, with the instinctive curiosity of her sex, unconsciously revived it again, after a time.

Dulcie, however, perhaps forgetting her present position, and remembering chiefly her old acquaintance with Shafto, was mystified. She thought 'the cousins' were free to marry, so why don't they? If engaged, they act strangely to each other—Finella to him especially—thus she said:—

'Is there anything between Mr. Shafto and you, Finella?'

'Yes,' replied the latter, growing pale with anger.

'What is it?'

'Hatred on my part!'

'And on his?'

'Pretended love and—and—avarice. He knows I am rich.'

'But why hatred?' asked Dulcie, without surprise.

'That is my secret, Dulcie.'

'I beg your pardon, I have no right to question you. Surely you are one of those people who always get what they wish for.'

'Why?—for riches do not always give happiness.'

'I mean because you are so good and sweet.'

But Finella shook her pretty head sadly as she thought of Vivian Hammersley, and replied:

'Young says in his "Night Thoughts:"

'"Wishing of all employment is the worst!"

and Young was right, perhaps.'

CHAPTER XII.

GIRLS' CONFIDENCES.

It was a sweet and mild spring morning, and Finella and Dulcie, each with a shawl over her pretty head, were again promenading on the terrace before the mansion. Lady Fettercairn was not yet down, and the breakfast-bell had not yet been rung. The trees were already making a show of greenery, with half-developed foliage; the oak was putting out its red buds; the laburnums were clothed in green and gold, and the voice of the cuckoo could be heard in the woods of Craigengowan.

'The cuckoo—listen!' said Dulcie, pausing in her walk.

'His note is, I believe, a call to love,' said Finella softly.

'The male only uses it; and see, yonder he sits on a bare bough.'

'You can wish: one can do so when they hear the cuckoo.'

'And wish, as I often do, in vain,' said Dulcie, with a tone of sadness unconsciously.

'For what?'

'To hear from one who is far—far away from me; the only friend I have in the world.'

'He of whom you spoke some time ago—a brother.'

'I have no brother, nor a relation on this side of the grave, Miss Melfort.'

'Call me Finella,' said the latter, again struck by Dulcie's desolate tone. 'Who is it—a lover?' she added, becoming, of course, deeply interested.

'A lover—yes,' replied Dulcie, with a fond smile. 'The dearest and sweetest fellow in the world!'

'Yet he left you because your papa died and you became penniless?'

'Oh!—no, no; do not say that. Do not think so hardly of Florian!'

'Florian!—what a funny, delightful name; just like one in a novel!' exclaimed Finella. 'So he is called Florian?'

'He, too, was poor. He could not marry me, and probably never can do so.'

'How sad!' said Finella, with genuine sympathy, though from her own experience she could not quite understand poverty.

'Florian—my poor Florian!' said Dulcie, quite borne away by this new sympathy, as she covered her face with her white and tremulous hands, and tried to force back her tears, while Finella kissed, caressed, and tried most sweetly to console her.

'See!' said Dulcie, after a pause, opening her silver locket.

'Oh, what a handsome young fellow!' exclaimed Finella. 'Are you engaged?'

'Hopelessly so.'

'Hopelessly?'

'I have said we are too poor to marry.'

'I don't understand this,' said Finella, greatly perplexed: 'won't he become rich in time?'

'Never: he is a soldier, fighting in Africa.'

'A soldier!' said Finella, becoming more deeply interested; 'not an officer?'

'His father or uncle was,' replied Dulcie confusedly. 'Poverty drove him into the ranks.'

'Of what regiment?'

'The 24th Warwickshire.'

Finella changed colour, and her breath seemed to be taken from her, when she heard the name of Hammersley's corps; and thus, after a time, a great gush of confidence took possession of both girls.

'I am rich,' said Finella; 'I will buy him back to you—I will, I will. Do not weep, dearest Dulcie. The memory of a past that has been happy is always sweet; is it not?'

'Yes, even if the present be sad.'

'I do believe, Dulcie, that tears agree with you.'

'Why?'

'Because they make those blue eyes of yours positively lovely.'

Dulcie for a moment felt pleasure. Florian had said the same thing once before, and she only half believed him; but to have it endorsed by such a girl as Finella made it valuable indeed to her.

'And Florian—I am quite au fait with his name,' said Finella; 'he is a gentleman?'

'Oh, yes—yes!' exclaimed Dulcie impetuously.

'Poor fellow! Then am I to understand that there is a kind of undefined engagement between you?'

'Something of that kind,' answered Dulcie, simply. 'We knew we might have to wait for each other for years, if, indeed, we ever meet again. We never spoke of marriage quite. How could we, hopeless and poor as we were?'

'But you spoke of love, surely?' said Finella, softly and archly.

'Of love for each other—oh, yes; many, many times.'

'Well, Dulcie, I shall purchase Florian's discharge, as I have said. This kind of thing can't go on,' said Finella decidedly, unaware that neither officer nor soldier can quit the service when face to face with an enemy or at the actual seat of war.