CHAPTER XI.

THE PURSUIT OF CETEWAYO.

Mail after mail came to head-quarters, brought by post-carts and orderlies, from the rear, but they brought no letters from Dulcie Carlyon. So, whether she had, as she threatened she would do, fled from Craigengowan, or remained there, found friends elsewhere with happiness or grief, Florian could not know, and the doubt was a source of torment to him.

Horseback has been considered a famous place for reflection, but one could scarcely find it so when serving as a Mounted Infantry-man, scouting on the outlook for lurking Zulus, with every energy of ear and eye watching donga, boulder, bush, and tuft of reedy grass.

Sir Garnet Wolseley's orders to the army reached the camp of Lord Chelmsford at Entonjaneni on the 8th July, and the latter prepared at once to resign his command and return home.

Two days afterwards, that retrograde movement which so puzzled and elated the Zulus began, and after four days' marching the Second Division and the Flying Column reached Fort Marshall, on the Upoko River, whence a long train of sick and wounded were sent to the village of Ladysmith, in Kannaland, escorted by two companies of the Scots Fusiliers and Major Bengough's Natives, attired in all their fighting bravery—cowtails, copper anklets and armlets, necklaces of monkeys' teeth, and plumes of feathers.

'Great changes are on the tapis,' said Villiers, as he lay on the grass in Florian's tent, smoking, and sharing with him some hard biscuits with 'square-face' and water. 'The 17th Lancers start for India; Newdigate's column is to be broken up, and chiefly to garrison that chain of forts which Chelmsford has so skilfully constructed along the whole Zulu frontier from the Blood River to the Indian Ocean; but Cetewayo is yet to be captured. Sir Evelyn Wood and the heroic Buller are going home, and so is your humble servant.'

'You—why?' asked Florian.

'Sir Garnet has brought out his entire staff, and I have not the good luck to be one of the Wolseley ring,' replied Villiers, with a haughty smile, as he twirled up his moustache and applied himself for consolation to the 'square-face.'

When, on an evening in July, Sir Garnet, with his new staff, amid a storm of wind and rain, rode into the camp of the First Division under General Crealock, the appearance of his party, with their smoothly shaven chins, brilliant new uniforms, and spotless white helmets, formed a strong contrast to the war and weather worn soldiers of Crealock, in their patched and stained attire, with their unkempt beards; for the use of the razor had long been eschewed in South Africa, where, however, the officers and men of each column trimmed their hirsute appendages after the fashion adopted by their leaders; thus, as General Newdigate affected the style of Henry VIII., so did his troops; Sir Evelyn Wood trimmed his beard in a peak, pointed like Philip II. of Spain, and so, we are told, did all the Flying Column.

Sir Garnet Wolseley now arranged his future plans for the final conquest of Zululand, and stationed troops to hold certain lines and rivers, while the rest were formed in two great columns, under Colonels Clarke of the 57th and Baker Russell of the 13th Hussars, two officers of experience, the former having served in Central India and the Maori War, and the latter in the war of the Mutiny, when he covered himself with honours at Kurnaul and elsewhere.

With Clarke's column were five companies of Mounted Infantry, led by Major Barrow, and one of them was led by Florian, who had now earned a high reputation as an active scouting officer.

Clarke's orders were to march northwards and occupy Ulundi, or all that was left of it.

Without the capture of the now luckless Cetewayo, the permanent settlement of the country was deemed impossible; thus a kind of circle was formed round the district in which he was known to be lurking, to preclude his escape.

The traitor Uhamu, with his followers, occupied a district near the Black Umvolosi; the savage Swazis in thousands under Captain M'Leod held the bank of the Pongola River, armed with heavy lances and knobkeries; Russell advanced on a third quarter, and Clarke on a fourth; thus the sure capture of the fugitive King was deemed only a matter of time.

At a steep rocky hill overhanging the Idongo River the column of the latter, which included three battalions of infantry, was reinforced by five companies of the 80th (or Staffordshire Volunteers), the Natal Pioneers, and two Gatling guns, to which were added two nine-pounders on reaching once more the Entonjaneni Mountain.

It was now reported that Cetewayo had found shelter in a little kraal in the recesses of the Ngome forest, a dense primeval wilderness of giant wood and deep jungle. But the meshes of the net were closing fast around him.

Leaving the main body of his column at a redoubt named Fort George, at the head of only three hundred and forty mounted infantry Colonel Russell, at daybreak on the 13th of August, rode westward beyond the Black Umvolosi, into a district occupied by many Zulus, in the hope of picking up the royal fugitive.

The scouting advanced guard he entrusted to Florian, whose men rode forward in loose and open formation, with loaded rifles unslung.

The country through which they proceeded was very wild, steep, woody, and rugged, and on seeing how slender his force appeared to be, the Zulus began to gather in numbers, preparatory to disputing his further advance.

'My intention,' said Baker Russell, 'is to reach Umkondo, where Cetewayo is said to be lurking; you will therefore show a bold front and clear the way at all hazards.'

This left Florian no alternative but to fight his opponents, whatever their strength perhaps, and the region into which they were now penetrating had the new and most unusual danger of being infested by lions, as the 1st King's Dragoon Guards found to their cost.

Manning a narrow gorge fringed with thornwood trees and date palms, with brandished rifle and assegai and their grey shields uplifted in defiance, a strong party of the enemy appeared, led by a tall and powerful-looking chief, whose large armlets and anklets of burnished copper shone in the evening sunshine, and it was but too evident that, under his auspices, mischief was at hand.

That they remarked Florian was an officer was soon apparent, when two shots were fired from each flank of the gorge; but these whistled harmlessly past, and starred with white a boulder in his rear.

'Pick off that fellow who is making himself so prominent,' said Florian, with some irritation, as his two escapes were narrow ones.

One of the 24th fired and missed the leader.

'What distance did you sight your rifle at?' asked Florian.

'Four hundred yards, sir,' replied the soldier.

'Absurd! He is certainly six hundred yards off. Do you try, Tyrrell.'

Then Tom, who was a deadly shot, reined up, held his rifle straight between his horse's ears, sighted at six hundred yards, and pressing the butt firmly against his right shoulder and restraining his breath, took aim steadily at the chief, who stood prominently on a fragment of rock, his figure defined clearly against the blue sky like that of a dark bronze statue.

He fired; the bullet pierced the Zulu's forehead, as was afterwards discovered; he fell backward and vanished from sight.

'By Jove, he's knocked over, sir,' said Tom, with a quiet laugh, as he dropped another cartridge into his breech-block, and closed it with a snap.

'Bravo, Tom—a good shot!' said the men of the 24th, while, with a yell of rage that reverberated in the gorge, the Zulus fled, and Florian's scouting party rode on at a canter, and ultimately reached a deserted German mission station at a place called Rhinstorf.

As they rode through the gorge, with the indifference that is born of war and its details, Tom Tyrrell looked with perfect composure on the man he had shot, and remarked to Florian, with a smile:

'These Zulus are certainly one of the connecting links that old Darwin writes about, but links with the devil himself, I think.'

At the station of Rhinstorf Colonel Russell now ascertained that fully thirty-five miles of wild and rugged country would have to be traversed ere he could reach Umkondo, where Cetewayo was reported to be in concealment. To add to the difficulties of proceeding further, night had fallen, the native guide, having lost heart, had deserted, and many of the horses had fallen lame by the roughness of the route from Fort George; thus Baker Russell came to the conclusion that to proceed further then would be rash, if not impossible.

Cetewayo still resisted all the terms offered him, acting under the influence of Dabulamanzi, who urged him to distrust the British, in the hope that if the fugitive died of despair in the forest of Ngome, he himself might succeed to the throne of the Zulus.

While on this patrol duty our Mounted Infantry came upon the remains of some of our fellows who had fallen after the attack on the Inhlobane Mountain in March and lain unburied for nearly six months, exposed to the weather and the Kaffir vultures.

CHAPTER XII.

AT THE 'RAG.'

We now turn to a very different scene and locality—to Regent Street, still deemed the architectural chef d'œuvre of the celebrated Mr. Nash, though it is all mere brick and plaster.

The London season was past and over, but one would hardly have thought so, as the broad pavements seemed still so crowded, and so many vehicles of every kind were passing in close lines along the thoroughfare from Waterloo Place to the Langham Hotel.

It was a bright sunny forenoon, and as Vivian Hammersley, now a convalescent, and in accurate morning mufti, looked on the well-dressed throng, the shops filled with everything the mind could desire or the world produce, and at the entire aspect of the well-swept street, he thought, after his recent experience of forest and donga, of rocky mountain and pathless karoo, that there was nothing like it in Europe for an idler—that it surpassed alike the Broadway of Uncle Sam and the Grand Boulevard of Paris.

Enjoying the situation and his surroundings to the fullest extent, he was walking slowly down towards where the colonnades stood of old, when suddenly he experienced something between an electric shock and a cold douche.

Both well mounted, a handsome fellow attired in excellent taste, with a tea rose and a green sprig in his lapel, and a graceful girl in a well-fitting dark blue habit, a dainty hat and short veil, ambled slowly past him—so slowly that he could observe them well—and in the latter he recognised Finella!

Finella Melfort, mounted on her favourite pad Fern; but who was this with whom she seemed on such easy and laughing terms, and with whom she was riding through the streets of London, without even the escort of a groom?

Erelong quickening their pace to a trot, they turned westward along Conduit Street, as if intending to 'do a bit of Park,' and he lost sight of them.

Her companion was one whom Hammersley had never seen before, but he could remark that he had all the manner and appearance of a man of good birth; but there was even something more than that in his bearing—an undefinable and indescribable air of interest seemed to hover about them, and Hammersley thought he might prove a very formidable rival. But surely matters had not come to that!

To letters that he had addressed to Finella at Craigengowan, under cover to 'Miss Carlyon,' no answer had ever been returned. He knew not that Dulcie was no longer there, and that the letters referred to had gone back to the Post Office. And so Finella's silence—was it indifference—seemed unpleasantly accounted for now.

He knew not her address in London. The house of the Fettercairn family was shut up, and he could not accost her while escorted by 'that fellow,' as she seemed ever to be, for on two occasions he saw them again in the Row; nor could he prosecute any inquiries, as most of the mutual friends at whose dances and garden parties he had been wont to meet her in the past times were now out of town.

It was tantalizing—exasperating!

Did she suppose he had been killed, and had already forgotten him? Did her heart shrink from a vacuum, or what? Thus pride soon supplemented jealousy.

A few days after the third occasion on which he had seen them, he was idling in the reading-room of 'The Rag'—as the Army and Navy Club is colloquially known, from a joke in Punch, and the smoking-room of which has the reputation of being the best in London; and few, perhaps none, of those who lounge therein are aware that the stately edifice occupies what was the site till 1790 of Nell Gwynne's house in Pall Mall.

'How goes it, Hammersley?' said Villiers, the aide-de-camp, who was also home on leave, and en route to join his regiment, being yet—as he grumblingly said—out of 'the Wolseley ring.' 'Has no Belgravian belle succeeded in capturing you yet—a hero, like myself, fresh from the assegais of Ulundi and all that sort of thing?'

'No—I am still at large; but you forget that by the time I reached town the season was over.'

'Talking of belles,' said an officer who was lounging in a window, 'here comes one worth looking at.'

Finella and her cavalier, mounted again, were quietly rambling into the square from Pall Mall.

'Ah—she is with Garallan of the Bengal Cavalry,' said Villiers; 'he has come in for a good thing—has picked up an heiress, I hear.'

'About the most useful thing a fellow can pick up nowadays,' replied a tall officer named Gore.

'That girl is said to be always ahead of the London season.'

'How?'

'Dresses direct from Paris.'

'Garallan?' said Hammersley, turning from the window, as the pair had disappeared.

'A Major of the old Second Irregular Cavalry, and gained the V.C. when serving on the Staff at the storming of Jummoo.'

'Jummoo—where the devil is that?' asked one.

'On the Peshawur frontier,' replied another; 'he is now in luck's way, certainly.'

'They say,' resumed Villiers in his laughing off-hand way, and who really knew nothing of Finella, but was merely ventilating some club gossip, to the intense annoyance of Hammersley; 'they say that she is a coquette from her finger-tips to her tiny balmorals, and would flirt with his Grace of Canterbury if she got a chance; and yet, with all that, she can be most sentimental. There is Gore of ours—a passed practitioner in the art of philandering——'

'Villiers, please to shut up,' said Hammersley impatiently in a sotto voce; 'I know the young lady, and you don't.'

'The deuce you do?'

'Intimately.'

Villiers coloured, and lapsed into silence.

'I always look upon flirtation as playing with fire,' said Gore; 'never attempt it, but I get into some deuced scrape.'

'How much money is muddled up with matrimony in the world nowadays!' said Villiers, thinking probably of the heiress's thousands; 'I suppose it was different in the days of our grandfathers.'

'Not much, I fancy,' said Gore.

Hammersley had now occasion for much and somewhat bitter thought. Finella and this officer were evidently the subjects of club gossip and not very well-bred banter; the conviction galled him.

'Where the deuce or with whom does she reside?' he thought; 'but to find anyone you want, I don't know a more difficult place than this big village on Thames.'

The wrong person—like himself apparently—turning up at the wrong time is no new experience to anyone; but this intimacy of Finella and her cavalier seemed to be a daily matter, as Hammersley had seen them so often; and how often were they too probably together on occasions that he could know nothing of?

The germ of jealousy was now planted in his heart, and 'such germs by force of circumstances sometimes flourish and bear bitter fruit; at others, nothing assisting, they perish in the mind that gave them birth;' but a new force was given to the remarks of Villiers by some that Hammersley overheard the same evening in the same place—the 'Rag.'

There he suddenly recognised Finella's cavalier in full evening costume, eating his dinner alone in a corner of the great dining-room, and all unaware that he was sternly and closely scrutinized by one man, and the subject of conversation for other two, whose somewhat flippant remarks from behind a newspaper reached the ears of the former.

'Who is he, do you say? His face is new to me.'

'Ronald Garallan, of the Bengal Cavalry—a lucky dog.'

'How so?'

'Is going in for a good thing, I hear.'

'For what?'

'His cousin with no end of tin.'

'His cousin?' questioned the other and Hammersley's heart at the same time.

'Yes—the handsome Miss Melfort with the funny name—Finella Melfort.'

'So they are engaged?'

'I believe so; but I don't think from all I hear that the Major has much of a vocation for domesticity.'

'Even with Finella?'

'Even with Finella,' replied the other, laughing.

Hammersley felt a dark frown gather on his brow to hear her Christian name—his property as he deemed it—used in this off-hand fashion, and he felt a violent inclination to punch his brother-officer's head. However, he only moved his chair away from the vicinity of the speakers, but not before he heard one of them say to Garallan:

'Been to many dances since your return? England, you know, expects every marriageable bachelor to do his duty.'

'The season is over,' replied the Major curtly; and then added, 'you forget that I am on leave—the sick list, with a Medical Board before me yet.'

'What a bore! But you are bound for some festive scene to-night, I presume?'

'Only to the Lyceum.'

'The Lyceum—with her perhaps,' thought Hammersley; and to see the affair out to the bitter end, he resolved to go there too.

He was cut to the heart again, and bit his nether lip to preserve his self-control. He had never heard of this cousin, Ronald Garallan; he certainly found his name in the Army List, but did not believe he was any cousin at all; and this only served to make matters look more and more black.

Hammersley in his natural pride of spirit rather revolted at going to the theatre, feeling as if he was acting somewhat like a spy, but he had a right to learn for himself what was on the tapis with regard to Finella; and the Lyceum was as free a theatre to him as to anyone else; so a few minutes after saw him bowling along the Strand in a hansom cab.

He got a seat on the grand tier, but with difficulty, and, fortunately for his purpose, a little back and well out of sight; and, oblivious of the stage and all the usual scenic splendours there, he swept 'the house' again and again, with the same powerful field-glass he had so lately used on many a scouting expedition, but in vain, till the crimson satin curtain of a private box was suddenly drawn back, and Finella in a perfect costume, yet not quite full dress, sat there like a little queen, with many a sparkling jewel, and Garallan half leaning on the back of her chair, as she consulted the programme, after depositing a beautiful bouquet and her opera-glass on the front of the box before her.

Hammersley's heart seemed to give a leap, and then stood still, while he actually felt an ache in the bullet wound which had so nearly cost him his life.

There they were, in a private box together, and without a chaperone, which certainly looked like cousinship, though every way distasteful to Hammersley; and Garallan leant over her chair, ignoring the performance entirely, and evidently entertaining her in 'that original and delicious strain in which Adam and Eve were probably the first proficients.'

And Finella was smiling upwards at times with her radiant eyes and riant face, with the bright and happy expression of one who had nothing left to wish for in the world; while he—Vivian Hammersley—might be, for all she knew or seemed to care, lying unburied by the banks of the Umvolosi or the Lower Tugela!

He recalled the words of her letter, so long and so loving, which he received so unexpectedly in Zululand, in which she urged him to be brave of heart for her sake, and not to be discouraged by any opposition on the part of Lady Fettercairn, as she was rich enough to please herself, adding:

'Let us have perfect confidence in each other! Oh, you passionate silly! to run away in a rage as you did without seeking an explanation. How much it has cost me Heaven alone knows!'

'Now,' thought he, 'suppose all the explanation she gave Miss Carlyon at Craigengowan of that remarkable scene in the shrubbery, or that she was lured into a scrape with that cub Shafto, were mere humbug after all. It looks deuced like it from what I see going on here in London. And then the rings I gave her—one a marriage hoop to keep—an unlucky gift—ha! ha! what a precious ass I have been!'

Vivian Hammersley, though a tough-looking and well set-up linesman, was of an imaginative cast, and of a highly sensitive nature, and such are usually well skilled in the art of elaborate self-torture.

He now perceived that for a moment she had drawn the glove from off her left hand—what a lovely little white hand it was! He turned his powerful field-glass thereon, with more interest and curiosity than he had done while watching for Zulu warriors, and there—yes—there by Jove!—his heart gave a bound—was his engagement ring upon her engaged finger still—there was no doubt about that!

So what did all this too apparent philandering with another mean, if not the most arrant coquetry? Had her character changed within a few short months? It almost seemed so.

But Hammersley thought that, 'tide what may,' he had seen enough of the Lyceum for that night, and hurried away to the smoking-room of the 'Rag.'

CHAPTER XIII.

A REVELATION.

We have written somewhat ahead of our general narrative, and must now recur to Lord Fettercairn's visit to Mr. Kenneth Kippilaw in Edinburgh, at that gentleman's request—one which filled the old Peer with some surprise.

'Why the deuce did not his agent visit him?' he thought.

Smarting under Shafto's insolence, and acting on information given to him readily by Madelon Galbraith, Mr. Kippilaw took certain measures to obtain some light on a matter which he should have taken before.

'You look somewhat unhinged, Kippilaw,' said Lord Fettercairn, as he seated himself in the former's private business room.

'I feel so, my lord,' replied the lawyer, in a fidgety way, as he breathed upon and wiped his spectacles; 'I have to talk over an unpleasant matter with you.'

'Business?'

'Yes; perhaps you would defer it till after dinner?'

'Not at all—what the deuce is it? Debts of Shafto's?'

'Worse, my lord!'

'Worse! You actually seem unwell; have a glass of sherry, if I may press you in your own house.'

'No thanks; I am in positive distress.'

'How—about what?' asked the Peer impatiently.

'The fact is, my lord, I don't know how to go about it and explain; but for the first time since I began my career as a W.S.—some forty years ago now—I have made a great professional blunder, I fear.'

'Sorry to hear it—but what have I to do with all that?'

'Much.'

Lord Fettercairn changed colour.

'You wrote strangely of Shafto?'

'No wonder!' groaned Mr. Kippilaw.

'How?'

'The matter very nearly affects your lordship's dearest interests—the honour of your house and title.'

'The devil!' exclaimed the Peer, starting up, and touched upon his most tender point.

'I have had more than one long conversation with the old nurse, Madelon Galbraith, and therefore instituted certain inquiries, which I should have done before, and have come to the undoubted and legal conclusion that—that——'

'What?' asked Fettercairn, striking the floor with his right heel.

'That the person who passes as your grandson is not your grandson at all!'

'What—how—who the devil is he then?'

'The son of a Miss MacIan who married a Mr. Shafto Gyle.'

'D—n the name! Then who and where is my grandson and heir?'

'One who was lately or is now serving as a soldier in Zululand.'

'My God! and you tell me all this now—now?'

'When Lennard Melfort lay dying at Revelstoke he entrusted the proofs of his only son's birth with his older nephew, Shafto, who, with amazing cunning, used them to usurp his rights and position. I blame myself much. I should have made closer inquiries at the time; but the documents seemed all and every way to the point, and I could not doubt the handwriting or the signatures of your poor dead son. The result, however, has rather stunned me.'

'And, d—n it, Kippilaw, it rather stuns me!' exclaimed Lord Fettercairn, in high wrath. 'May it not be a mistake, this last idea?'

'No—everything is too well authenticated.'

'But, Kippilaw,' said Lord Fettercairn, after a pause, caused by dire perplexity, 'we had the certificate of birth.'

'Yes—but not in Shafto's name. The document was mutilated and without the baptismal certificate, of which I have got this copy from the Rev. Mr. Paul Pentreath. The name in both is, as you see,' added Mr. Kippilaw, laying the document on the table, 'Florian, only son of the Hon. Lennard Melfort (otherwise MacIan) and Flora, his wife—Florian, called so after her.'

'You have seen this young man?'

'Yes—once in this room, and I was struck with his likeness to Lennard. He is dark, Shafto fair. The true heir has a peculiar mark on his right arm, says Madelon Galbraith, his nurse. Here is a letter from a doctor of the regiment stating that Florian has such a mark, which Shafto has not; and mother-marks, as they are called, never change, like the two marks of the famous "Claimant."

'I cannot realize it all—that we have been so befooled!' exclaimed Lord Fettercairn, walking up and down the room.

'But you must; it will come home to you soon enough.'

'Egad, so far as bills and debts go, it has come home to me sharply enough already. It is a terrible story—a startling one.'

'Few families have stories like it.'

'And one does not wish such in one's own experience, Kippilaw. It is difficult of belief—monstrous, Kippilaw!'

'Monstrous, indeed, my Lord Fettercairn!' chimed in Mr. Kippilaw, who then proceeded to unfold a terrible tale of the results of Shafto's periodical visits to Edinburgh and London—his bills and post-obits with the money-lenders, who would all be 'diddled' now, as he proved not to be the heir at all; and though last, not least, his late disgraceful affair of the loaded die, and the fracas with Major Garallan.

'Garallan! that old woman Drumshoddy's nephew—whew!' His lordship perspired with pure vexation. 'I have to thank you, however, for finding out the true heir at last.'

'When there are a fortune and a title in the case, people are easily found, my lord.'

'Things come right generally, as they always do, if one waits and trusts in God,' said Madelon Galbraith, when she was admitted to an audience, in which, with the garrulity of years, she supplemented all that Mr. Kippilaw had advanced; and, as she laughed with exultation, she showed—despite her age—two rows of magnificent teeth—teeth that were bright as her eyes were dark.

'Laoghe mo chri! Laoghe mo chri!' she murmured to herself; 'your only son will be righted yet.'

Every nation has its own peculiar terms of endearment, so Madelon naturally referred to Flora in her own native Gaelic.

'And Florian is—as you say, Kippilaw—serving in Zululand?' said Lord Fettercairn.

'Yes.'

'Serving as a private soldier?'

'He was——'

'Was—is he dead?' interrupted the Peer sharply.

'No; he is now an officer, and a distinguished one—an officer of the gallant but most unfortunate 24th. I have learned that much.'

'Write to him at once, and meanwhile telegraph to the Adjutant-General—no matter what the expense—for immediate intelligence about him. You will also write to Shafto—you know what to say to him.'

With right goodwill Mr. Kippilaw hastened to obey the Peer's injunctions in both instances.

He wrote to Shafto curtly, relating all that had transpired, adding that he (Shafto) could not retain his present position for another day without risking a public trial, and that if he would confess the vile and cruel imposture of which he had been guilty he might escape being sent to prison, and obtaining perhaps 'permanent employment' in the Perth Penitentiary.

This letter—though not unexpected—proved a most bitter pill to Shafto! He saw that 'the game was up'—his last card played, that life had no more in it for him, and that there was nothing left for him but to fly the country and his debts together.

His face was set hard, and into his shifty grey eyes came the savage gleam one may see in those of a cat before it springs, but with this expression were mingled rage and fear.

With Mr. Kippilaw's letter were two others, from different parties. In one he was informed that legal proceedings had been taken against him, and in default of his putting in an appearance, judgment for execution and costs had been given against him in an English court, for £847 16s. 8d., in favour of a Jew, who held another bill, which, though it originally represented £400, would cost £800 before he parted with it; and Shafto actually laughed a little bitter and discordant laugh as he rent the lawyers' letters into fragments and cast them to the wind.

Before departing, however, and before his story transpired, he contrived to borrow from the butler and housekeeper every spare pound they possessed, and quietly went forth, portmanteau in hand.

Did he as he thus left the house recall the auspicious day on which he had first seen, with keen and avaricious exultation, Craigengowan in all its baronial beauty, its wealth of pasture and meadow-land, of wood, and moor, and mountain, and deemed that all—all were, or would be, his?

He turned his back on the Howe of the Mearns for ever, and from that hour all trace of him was lost!

* * * * *

The reply to Mr. Kippilaw's telegram to South Africa gave him, and even his noble client, cause for some anxiety.

It was dated from Headquarters, Ulundi, on the last day of August, and stated that Lieutenant MacIan 'was down with fever, and not expected to live.'

So—if he died—the title of Fettercairn, being a Scottish one, would go to Finella, and the heir male of whosoever she married.

CHAPTER XIV.

IN THE NGOME FOREST.

We now approach the last scenes of Florian's foreign service.

By the 13th of August the cordon of European troops and Native lines drawn round the district in which the fugitive King of the Zulus lurked had been drawn closer, and it was now distinctly known at headquarters in Ulundi that he had sought refuge in the Forest of Ngome, a wild, most savage and untrodden district between two rivers (with long and grotesque names), tributaries of the Black Umvolosi, and overshadowed by a mountain chain called the Ngome.

Various parties detailed for the pursuit, search, and capture failed, till, on the 26th August, the Chief of the Staff received information indicating where Cetewayo was certain to be found, and Major Marter, of the King's Dragoon Guards, was ordered to proceed next day in that direction with a squadron of his own regiment, a company of the Native Contingent, Lonsdale's Horse, and a few Mounted Infantry, led by Florian and another officer. The former was already suffering from fever caught by exposure to the night dews when scouting, and felt so weak and giddy that at times he could barely keep in his saddle; but, full of youthful ardour and zeal, fired by the promotion and praises he had won, he was anxious only, if life were spared him, to see the closing act of the great campaign in South Africa.

The early morning of the 27th saw the Horse depart, the King's Dragoon Guards leading the way, after the Mounted Infantry scouts; and picturesque they looked in their bright scarlet tunics and white helmets, with accoutrements glittering as they rode in Indian file through the scenery of the tropical forest, and then for a time debouched upon open ground.

Nodding in his saddle, Florian felt spiritless and sick at heart, wishing intensely that the last act was over.

Far in the distance around extended a range of mountains that were purple and blue in their hues, even against the greenish-blue of the sky, and vast tracts of wood, tinted with every hue of green, red, and golden; in the foreground were brawling streams dashing through channels of rock to join the Black Umvolosi, under graceful date palms, mimosa trees, and the undergrowth of baboon ropes and other giant trailers. Scared troops of the eland, grey and brown herds of fleet antelopes glided past, and more, than once the roar of a lion made the wilderness re-echo.

And this ground had to be traversed under a fierce and burning sun till the valley of the Ivuno River was reached, prior to which three Dragoon Guard horses were carried off and devoured by lions.

So passed the day. The party reached a lonely little kraal on the summit of the Nenye Mountain, and bivouacked there for the night.

Stretched on the floor of a hut, after drinking thirstily of some weak brandy and water, Florian watched the blood-red disc of the sun, mightier than it is ever seen in Europe, amid the luminous haze, begin to disappear behind the verge of the vast forest—the sea of timber—that spread below, casting forward in dark outline the quaint and grotesque euphorbia trees that at times take the shape of Indian idols.

Then a mist stole over the waste below, and a single star shone out with wondrous brilliance.

Florian was so weak in the morning that he would fain have abandoned the duty on which he had come, and remained in the hut at the kraal; but to linger behind was only to court death by the teeth of wild animals or the hands of scouting Zulus, so wearily he clambered, rather than sprang as of old, into his saddle.

'Pull yourself together, if you can, my dear fellow,' said an officer; 'our task will soon be over. It is something after a close run to be in at the death; and it is waking men with their swords, not dreamers with their pens, who make history.'

'I am no dreamer,' said Florian, scarcely seeing the point of the other's remark.

'I did not mean that you were,' said the other, proffering his cigar-case; 'have a weed?'

But Florian shook his head with an emotion of nausea.

'Forward, in single file from the right,' was the order given, for the sun would soon be up now. Already the bees were humming loudly among the tall reeds and giant flowers beside the stream that flowed downward from the kraal, the forest stems looked black or bronze-like in the grey and then crimson dawn, while the stars faded out fast.

In advancing to another kraal on the mountain, Major Marter's force had to traverse the forest bush, where trees of giant height and girth, matted and inter-woven by baboon ropes and other trailers, shut out even the fierce sun of Africa, and made a cool green roof or leafy shade, where the grass grew tall as a Grenadier, where hideous apes barked and chattered, bright-hued parrots croaked or screamed, and where nature seemed to have run wild in unbridled luxuriance since the Ark rested on Ararat, and the waters of the flood subsided.

The mountains of the Ngome, and overlooking the forest of that name, are flat-topped, like all others in South Africa; but Major Marter found the western slope to be dangerously precipitous, and thence he and his guides looked down into a densely wooded valley, lying more than two thousand feet below.

About two miles distant, thin smoke could be seen ascending amid the greenery, from a small kraal by the side of a brawling stream, and therein Cetewayo was known to be.

As cavalry could not reach the bottom without making a very long detour, the Major ordered all the mounted men to lay aside their bright steel scabbards, and all other accoutrements likely to create a rattling noise, and these, with the pack horses, were left in charge of a small party, the command of which was offered to the sinking Florian, who foolishly declined, and rode with the rest to a less precipitous slope of the hills three miles distant, down which the Dragoon Guards led their chargers by the bridle, crossed the stream referred to, a small fence, and a marsh, and, remounting, made a dash for the kraal, sword in hand, from the north, while the Native Contingent formed up south of it on some open ground.

The capture of Cetewayo is an event too recent to be detailed at length here.

It is known how his few followers, on seeing the red-coated cavalry riding up, shouted, in unison with the Native Contingent:

'The white men are here—you are taken!'

Then the fallen royal savage came forth, looking weary, weak, and footsore; and when a soldier—Tom Tyrrell—attempted to seize him, he drew himself up with an air of simple dignity, and repelled him.

'Touch me not, white soldier!' he exclaimed; 'I am a King, and surrender only to your chief.'

With their prisoner strictly guarded, the party passed the night of the 29th August in the forest of Ngome, and Florian, as he flung himself on the dewy grass, with fevered limbs and aching head, felt an emotion of thankfulness that all was over, and it was nearly so with himself now!

The moon had not yet risen; the darkness was dense around the hut where lay Cetewayo, guarded by many a sabre and bayonet; and the jackals and hyenas were making night hideous with their howling, mingled at times with the yells of wild dogs.

Ever and anon the barking of baboons, as they swung themselves from branch to branch, seemed to indicate the approach of some great beast of prey, and the crackle of dry twigs suggested the slimy crawling of a poisonous snake.

So passed the night in the Forest of Ngome. With dawn the trumpet sounded 'To horse,' and again the whole party moved on the homeward way to Ulundi. The night in the dreary forest, lying out in the open, had done its worst for Florian. On reaching the camp he fell from his saddle into the arms of the watchful Tom Tyrrell, and was carried to his tent, prostrate and delirious.

Hence the tenor of the telegram received from the medical staff by Mr. Kenneth Kippilaw.

How Florian lived to reach Durban, conveyed there with other sick in the ambulance waggons, he never knew, so heavily was the hand of fever laid on him; but many a time he had seen, as in a dream, the horses straggling through bridgeless torrents, and graves dug amid the pathless wastes for those who died on the route, and were laid therein, rolled in their blanket, and covered up before their limbs were cold, till at last the village of Durban—for it is little else, though the principal seaport of Natal—was reached, and he was placed in an extemporised hospital.

In his weakness, after the delirium passed away, he felt always as one in a dream. The windows were open to the breeze from the Indian Ocean, and the roar of the surf could be heard without ceasing on the sandy beach, while at night the sharp crescent moon shone like a silver sabre in the clear blue sky, and, laden with the perfume of many tropical plants, the sweet air without struggled with the close atmosphere of the crowded hospital wards, in which our 'boy soldiers died like sick flies,' as a general officer reported.

And there he lay, hour after hour, wasted by the fever born of miasma and the jungle, rigid and corpse-like in outline, under the light white coverlet. For how long or how short this was to last no one ventured to surmise.

He had ceased now to toss to and fro on his pillow and pour forth incoherent babble, in which Revelstoke, Dulcie Carlyon, his boyish days, and the recent stirring events of the now-ended campaign were all strangely woven together, while Tom Tyrrell, now his constant attendant, who nursed him tenderly as a woman would have done, had listened with alarm and dismay. And more than once Florian had dreamed that Tom, bearded to the eyes, bronzed to negro darkness, and clad in an old patched regimental tunic, was not Tom at all, but Dulcie, the girl he loved so passionately, watching there, smoothing his pillow and holding the cup with its cooling draught to his parched lips.

'They say that fever must run its course, sir, whatever that means,' said Tom to the doctor.

'Ah! a fever like this is a very touch-and-go affair,' responded old Gallipot, in whom the telegrams from headquarters and from Edinburgh had given a peculiar interest for his patient.

'Am I dying, doctor—don't fear to tell me?' asked the latter suddenly in a low, husky voice.

'Why do you ask, my poor fellow?' replied the doctor, bending over him.

'I mean simply, is the end of this illness—death?'

'To tell you the truth, I greatly fear it is,' replied the doctor, shaking his head.

'God's will be done!' said Florian resignedly. 'Well, well, perhaps it is better so—I am so far gone—but Dulcie!' he added to himself in a husky whisper—'poor Dulcie, alone—all alone!'

His senses had quite returned now, but he was so weak that he could neither move hand nor foot, and his eyelids, unable to uphold their own weight, closed as soon as raised, and often while his parched tongue clove to the roof of his mouth as he lay thus he was supposed to be asleep.

'Poor fellow!' he heard Tom Tyrrell whisper to an hospital orderly in a broken voice; 'he's got his marching orders, and will soon be off—yet he doesn't seem to suffer much.'

How hard it was to die so young, with what should have been a long life before him, and now one with honours won to make it valuable.

Well, well, he thought, if it was God's will it would be no worse for him than for others. It seemed as natural to die as to be born—our place in the world is vacant before and after; but yet, again, it was hard, he thought, to die, and die so young in a distant and barbarous land, where the savage, the wild animal, and the Kaffir vulture would be the only loiterers near his lonely and unmarked grave.

There came a day when the scene changed to him again. He was in the cabin of a ship, lying near an open port-hole, through which he could see the ocean rippling like molten gold in the setting sun, the red light of which bathed in ruddy tints the shore of Durban and the white lighthouse on the bluff that guards its entrance.

Anon he heard the tramp overhead of the seamen as they manned the capstan bars and tripped merrily round to the sound of drum and fife, heaving short on the anchor, and heaving with a will, till it was apeak. Then, the canvas was let fall and sheeted home; the revolution of the screw-propeller was felt to make the great 'trooper' vibrate in all her length, and the glittering waves began to roll astern as she sped on her homeward way.

Would he live to see the end of the voyage? It seemed very problematical.

CHAPTER XV.

THE MAJOR PROPOSES.

Meanwhile Hammersley's suspicion and jealousy grew apace, and it has been said that when the latter emotion begins to reason, we legally 'always hold a brief for the prosecution in such cases, and admit no evidence save that which tends to a conviction.'

In his rage he thought of quitting London and going—but where? He knew not then precisely.

'Oh, to be well and strong again!' he would mutter; 'out of this place and back to the regiment and the old life. There is a shindy brewing fast in the Transvaal, and that will be the place for me.'

At other times he would think—'I wish that recruit of Cardwell's had put his bullet through my brain. I would rather he had done so than feel it throb as it does now.'

Some loves may dwindle into indifference or turn to hatred, but seldom or never to mere friendship. Yet it is not easy 'to hate those we have once loved because we happen to discover a weak point in their armour, any more than it is easy to love unlovable people because of their resplendent virtues.'

No response had ever come to the letters he had written Finella under cover to Dulce; thus he ceased to send them, all unaware that these letters addressed to 'Miss Carlyon' had been returned to the Post Office, endorsed, by order of Lady Fettercairn, 'not known at Craigengowan;' and now the heavy thoughts of Hammersley affected his manner and gait, and thus he often walked slowly, as if he were weary; and so he was weary and sick of heart, for the sense of hope being dead within the breast will give a droop to the head and a lagging air to the step.

Lady Drumshoddy rented a grand old-fashioned house in that very gloomy quadrangle called St. James's Square, the chief mansion in which is that of his Grace of Norfolk, and round the still somewhat scurvy enclosure of which Dr. Johnson and Savage, when friendless and penniless, spent many a summer night with empty stomachs and hearts heated with antagonism to the then Government. About a hundred years before that, Macaulay tells us that St. James's Square 'was a receptacle for all the offal and cinders, and all the dead cats and dogs, of Westminster. At one time a cudgel-player kept his ring there. At another an impudent squatter settled himself there, and built a shed for rubbish under the windows of the gilded salons in which the first magnates of the realm—Norfolk, Ormond, Kent, and Pembroke—gave banquets and balls. It was not till these nuisances had lasted through a whole generation, and till much had been written about them, that the inhabitants applied to Parliament for permission to put up rails and plant trees.'

Here, then, in this now fashionable locality, had my Lady Drumshoddy pitched her tent, and hence it was that Vivian Hammersley, being almost daily at 'The Rag,' close by, saw Finella and her cousin so frequently; yet it never occurred to him to think of the old Scoto-Indian Judge's widow, of whom he knew little or nothing.

The circumstance that Finella was undoubtedly still wearing his engagement ring made Hammersley, amid all his misery and anger, long for some more certain information than mere Club gossip and banter afforded, and for that which was due from her—an explicit explanation. He thought, as a casuist has it, 'that to know her false would not be so bitter as to doubt. To mistrust the woman we love is torture. To have a knowledge of her guilt is the first step towards burying our love. Our pride is then thoroughly aroused, and that contempt for treachery, inherent in our nature, flames out.'

On her part, Finella had some cause for pique—grave cause, she thought. She had twice, at intervals, seen Vivian Hammersley riding in the Row, when it was impossible for her to address him or afford him the least sign; and now, knowing that he was home, and in London, she naturally thought why did he not make some effort to communicate with her, in spite of any barrier Lady Fettercairn might raise between them, if he supposed she still resided at Craigengowan. Thus she too was beginning to look regretfully back to his love as a dream that had fled.

'A pretty kettle of fish they have made of it at Craigengowan, my dear!' snorted Lady Drumshoddy, when she heard of the late events that had transpired there. 'They have been imposed upon fearfully—quite another "Claimant" affair; but I always had my suspicions, my dear—I always had my suspicions, I am glad to say,' she coolly added, oblivious of the fact that she always aided and abetted Shafto in all his plans and hopes to secure Finella and her fortune.

It was convenient to ignore or forget all that now.

'My Ronald is all right,' snorted the hard-featured old dame to herself; 'he is the right man in the right place; but, as for Finella, she is like most girls, I suppose—will not fall in love where and when it is most clearly her duty to do so—provoking minx!'

It was a prominent feature in the character of my Lady Drumshoddy, contradiction, though she would not for a second tolerate it in anyone else; and as Major Garallan was temporarily a resident at her house in St. James's Square, she, like Lady Fettercairn on the other occasion, put great faith in cousinship and propinquity.

What a different kind and style of cousin Ronald Garallan was from Shafto, Finella naturally thought; not that as yet she loved him a bit, as he evidently loved her, but he was such a delightful companion to escort her everywhere.

She had received plenty of admiration and adulation during her short season in London before, and to suppose that she was blind to the young Major's attentions would be to deem her foolish; no woman or girl is ever blind to that sort of thing. She, like the rest of her charming sex, knew by instinct when she had won a success; but she also knew that she had one powerful attraction—money—and knew, too, that her heart was engaged otherwise; and this knowledge made her tolerably indifferent to the admiration of her cousin, while the indifference laid her open to the appearance of receiving his close attentions. Meanwhile the latter was enjoying his Capua.

'How delicious all this is!' he often thought, as he lounged by Finella's side in the drawing-room, or rode with her in the Row, 'after sweltering so long in that hottest and most hateful of up-country stations, Jehanabad, on the shining rocks of which the Indian sun pours all its rays for months, till the granite at night gives out the caloric it has absorbed by day, and so the roasting process never ceases, and sleep even on a charpoy becomes impossible, all the more so that hyenas, jackals, and wild cats make night hideous with their yells. This is indeed an exchange,' he once added aloud, 'and all the more delicious that I have it with you, Cousin Finella.'

And Lady Drumshoddy, if she was near, would watch the pair complacently through her great spectacles, while pretending to be intent on her only paper (after the Morning Post), the Queen, which she read as regularly—more so, we fear—than she read her night prayers.

And while Garallan's attentions were gradually warming and leading up to a declaration, Finella was thinking angrily of Hammersley.

'Perhaps he has forgotten his love for me—nay, he would never forget that! but absence, time, change of scene, or a regard for some one else may have come between us. It is the way with men, I have been told.'

So, in the fulness of time, there came one fine forenoon, when Lady Drumshoddy had judiciously left the cousins quite alone, and when Finella, in one of her most bewitching costumes, was idling over a book of prints, with Ronald Garallan by her side, admiring the contour of her head, the curve of her neck, her pure profile, the lovely little ear that was next him, and everything else, to the little bouquet in her bosom that rose and fell with every respiration, let his passion completely overmaster him, and taking caressingly within his own her left hand, which she did not withdraw, he said:

'I have something to ask you, Finella—you know what it is?'

'Indeed, I do not.'

'Then, of course, I must tell you?'

'I think you must,' said she, looking him calmly in the face for a second.

'For weeks you must have known it.'

'Known—what?'

'That I love you!' he said in a low voice, and bending till his moustache touched her cheek; 'and now I ask you to give me yourself.'

The hand was withdrawn now; she coloured, but not deeply, and her eyelashes drooped.

'Give me yourself, darling,' he resumed, 'and trust to me for taking care of you all the days of your life.'

Though she must have expected some such ending as this to their late hourly intimacy, she was nevertheless astonished, and said, with a little nervous laugh at the abruptness and matter-of-fact form of the proposal:

'Cousin Ronald, I can surely take care of myself. But—but do you want to marry me?'

'Of course!' replied Cousin Ronald, with very open eyes, while tugging the ends of his moustache.

'Well—it can't be.'

'Can't be?'

'No. I thank you very much, and like you very much—there are both my hands on that; but marriage is impossible. Yet don't let us quarrel, for that would be absurd, but be the best of good friends as ever.'

'And this is my answer?' said he, with a very crushed air.

'Yes,' she replied, colouring deeply now; 'once and for all.'

'I won't take it,' said he, with mingled sorrow and anger. 'I will not, darling!—I shall come to it again, when, perhaps, you may think better of it and of me. Till then good-bye, and God bless you, dearest Finella!'

Kissing both her hands, he abruptly withdrew, and soon after leaving the house took his departure for Brighton; and now the luckless Finella had to explain the reason thereof, and to undergo the ever-recurring admonitions, reprehensions, parables, and absolute scoldings of 'grandmamma Drumshoddy,' who was neither quite so well bred nor so calm in spirit and outward bearing as Lady Fettercairn, then 'eating humble pie' at Craigengowan.

If Florian, the new heir, was indeed dying, as reported, when he was embarked with other sick and wounded officers and men at Durban, a prospective peerage, with all the estates, enhanced the value and position of Finella in the eyes of Lady Drumshoddy, so far as a marriage with her nephew, the Major, was concerned, and most wrathful she was indeed to find that her schemes were going 'agee.'

Lord Fettercairn fully shared her ideas, and knew that whoever married the only daughter of the House of Melfort, though he might assume the old name, it and the title too went virtually out of the family.

Finella had remarked to herself that for some time past Lady Fettercairn in her letters never mentioned the name of Shafto, or hinted of the old wish about marrying him.

Why was this?

She knew not the reason that his existence was ignored, till Lady Drumshoddy bluntly referred to 'the pretty kettle of fish' made lately by the folks at Craigengowan, and then, in the gentleness of her heart, Finella almost felt pitiful for the now homeless and worthless one.