The Project Gutenberg eBook of Dulcie Carlyon, Volume 2, by James Grant

'Something must be done, and deuced soon too, to separate this pair of spoons, or else they will be corresponding by letter, somehow or anyhow, after he has taken himself off; and Lady Fettercairn is always saying it is high time that something was definitely arranged between the girl and me! But, of course, Finella thinks him handsome enough to be the hero of a three-volume novel.'

Thus muttered Shafto, who, after a long absence, had returned to Craigengowan again, believing that Hammersley must now be gone; but he found, to his extreme annoyance, that two days of that officer's visit yet remained; so, with the futile fracas about the cards in his mind, Shafto avoided him as much as possible, and the house and grounds were ample enough to give him every scope for doing so.

He was sedulously bent on working mischief, and Fate so arranged that, on the second day, he had the power to do so.

They were on the very eve of separation now, yet Finella knew their love was mutual and true, and a glow of exultation was mingled with the sadness of her heart—a glow which had a curious touch of fear in it, as if such joy in his faith and truth could not be lasting. It was a kind of foreboding of evil about to happen, and when the time came that foreboding was remembered.

On the day of Hammersley's departure, he was to leave Craigengowan before dinner: thus, after luncheon, he contrived, unseen, to slip a little note into her hand. It contained but two lines:—

'Darling, meet me in the Howe of Craigengowan an hour hence, for the last time. Do not fail.

She read it again and again, kissed it, of course, and slipped it into her bosom.

To avoid everyone and to be alone with her own thoughts, she ran upstairs to the top of the house—to the summit of the old Scottish square tower, which was the nucleus whereon much had been engrafted even before the Melforts came to hold it, and going through a turret door which opened on the stone bartizan—a pleasant promenade—she sat down breathlessly, not to enjoy the lovely landscape which stretched around her, where Bervie Brow and Gourdon Hill were already casting their shadows eastward, but to wait and re-read her tiny note.

She put her hand into her bosom to draw it forth; but it was gone—she had lost it—and her first thought was, into whose hands might it fall!

She had a kind of stunned feeling at first, and then a glow of indignation that she should be treated like a child, in awe of Lady Fettercairn, and in a state of tutelage.

Vincent Hammersley went to the trysting-place betimes—the shady Howe of Craigengowan. The evening air was heavy with the fresh pungent fragrance of the Scottish pines, the flat boughs of which nearly met overhead thickly enough to exclude the sunshine, which here and there found its way through breaks in the bronze-green canopy, and fell like rays of gold on the thick grass and pine cones below; but there was no appearance of Finella.

Shafto had resolved to achieve a separation between these two, we have said, and evil fortune put the power to do so completely in his hands.

Before Finella could reach the meeting-place among the shrubberies in the lawn, she came face to face with Shafto.

'Shafto!' she exclaimed, with intense annoyance, as she recoiled, 'you here—I did not know that you had returned.'

'I have much to pardon in you, Shafto,' said she, remembering the unpleasant trick he had played Hammersley about the cards.

'I thought we did so already,' said she defiantly, and impatiently at his untimely presence; 'surely we have spoken plainly enough before this.'

His face was pale, and there was an expression of mischief in his eyes that startled her. It was mere jealous rage that acted love. He caught her hand, and, fearing him at that moment, she did not withdraw it, but did so eventually and sharply.

'What folly is this?' exclaimed Shafto; 'do not shrink from me thus, Finella, but allow me to make a last appeal to you. I cannot think that you are so utterly changed towards me, but that you are wilfully blinding yourself.'

'This is intolerable!' exclaimed the girl passionately, knowing that precious time was passing, that Vivian had but a minute or two to spare to receive a farewell kiss and last assurance of her love.

'You used to love me, I think, in past days, before this man Hammersley came here?'

'I knew and loved him in London before I ever heard of your existence,' she exclaimed, wound up to a pitch of desperation. 'Give me up my note—I see it in your hand.'

'Precisely what I say, pretty cousin. I must have some reward,' and holding the note before her at arm's length he again captured her right hand.

'No,' replied Shafto, laughing now with triumphant malice, as he remembered Dulcie Carlyon and her locket. 'But what will you give me for it?'

'Something better than your grandmother will for it—a kiss, freely,' said he softly, as he saw what Finella did not see—Vivian Hammersley between the shrubberies, pausing in his approach, loth to compromise her, yet perplexed and startled by the presence of Shafto and the bearing of both.

Finella flashed a defiant glance at her tormentor, but aware that he was capable of much mischief, lest he might make some troublesome use of the note with her grand-parents, of whom she certainly stood in some awe, she was inclined to temporise with him.

'If I give you a kiss, cousin Shafto, will you please give me my note?' she asked.

She put up her sweet and innocent face to his, but instead of taking one, he clasped her close to his breast, and holding her tightly, he daringly and roughly kissed again and again the soft lips that he had never touched before save in his day-dreams, and all this was in sight of Vivian Hammersley, as he very well knew, and the latter, to Shafto's secret and intense exultation, silently drew back and disappeared.

Finella was greatly relieved when she obtained possession of her note; but her proud little heart was full of fury and indignation at the unwarrantable proceedings of Shafto, who hung or hovered about her just long enough to preclude all hope of her meeting with Hammersley, and when, full of sorrow, she returned to the house, she could see nothing of him, but was told by Grapeston, the old butler, that his departure had been suddenly hastened; that the trap was already at the hall-door to take him to the station, and the captain had charged him with a note for her.

It was hastily written in pencil, and a pencilled address was on the envelope. It ran thus:—

'I went at the appointed time. You did not come, but I saw you elsewhere in the arms of your cousin, who doubtless has been hereabout for some time past, unknown to me. Those were no cousinly kisses you gave him. God may forgive your falsehood, but I never will!

The room seemed to swim round her as she read and re-read the lines like one in a dream. As she did so for the second time and took in the whole situation, a cry almost escaped her. Then she heard some farewells hastily exchanged on the terrace, and the sound of wheels on gravel as the departing waggonette swept Hammersley away to the railway station, and no power or chance of explanation was left her.

The false light through which he—so brave, so true and honourable—must now view her tortured and humiliated her, and unmerited shame, mingled with just anger, burned in her heart. And Shafto had brought all this about!

Oh for language to describe her loathing of him! His was the mistake—the crime to be explained; but would it ever be explained? And she dared not complain to Lord or Lady Fettercairn, who openly abetted Shafto's avaricious aspirations as regarded herself.

She rushed away to her own room, lighted candles, and locked herself in. She sat down by the dressing-table; was that wan face reflected in the mirror hers? She leaned her elbows on the former, with her face in her hands, and sat there sobbing heavily in grief and rage without ever sighing, though her heart felt full to bursting.

She pleaded a headache as an excuse for non-appearance at dinner, and Lord and Lady Fettercairn exchanged a silent glance of mutual intelligence and annoyance, not unmingled, perhaps, with satisfaction.

Finella sat in her room as if turned to stone; at last she heard the stable clock strike midnight, and mechanically she proceeded to undress without summoning her maid.

A rosebud was in the rich cream-tinted lace about her pretty neck. He had given it to her but that morning, as they lingered on the terrace, and with haggard eyes she looked at it, kissed it, and put it in her white bosom.

This morning she was with him—her lover, her affianced husband—her own—and he was hers—all to each other in the world—and now!

A few days stole away, and she tried to act a part, for watchful eyes were upon her. Hammersley was gone! Doubly gone! How she missed his presence was known only to herself. He was ever so sweetly but not obtrusively tender; so quick of wit, ready in attention and speech, though the envious Shafto phrased it, 'he would coax a bird off a tree.' He was so gentlemanly and gallant—every way such irreproachably good style, that she loved him with all the strength of her loving and passionate nature. The memory of the past—of her lost happiness—lost more than she might ever know, through the deliberate villainy of Shafto, rose ever before her with vivid distinctness; the evening on which their love was avowed in the drawing-room—the evening in the Howe of Craigengowan, when he gave her the two rings, and many other chance or concerted meetings, were before her now, and she could but clasp her hands tightly, while a heavy sob rose in her throat.

The wedding ring, he had given her to keep, was often drawn forth fondly, and slipped on her wedding finger in secret—a temptation of Fate, as any old Scotchwoman would have told her. She would have written a letter of explanation to Hammersley, but knew not where to address him; and ere long the announcement in a public print that he had sailed from Plymouth with a strong detachment of the 2nd Warwickshire, for the seat of war in South Africa, put it out of her power to do so, and she had but to bear her misery helplessly.

CHAPTER II.

AN UNWELCOME VISITOR.

Lady Fettercairn was in the drawing-room at Craigengowan, and talking with Shafto seriously and affectionately on the subject of Finella and the wishes of herself and Lord Fettercairn; and Shafto was making himself most agreeable to his 'grandmother,' for he was still in high glee and elfish good humour at the mode in which he had 'choked off that interloper, Hammersley,' when a valet announced that an elderly woman 'wished to speak with her ladyship.'

The elderly woman appeared, and curtseyed deeply twice in a graceful and old-fashioned manner. Her once black hair was now seamed with white; but her eyes were dark and sparkling; her cheeks were yet tinged with red, and her rows of teeth were firm and white as ever, for the visitor was Madelon Galbraith, now in her sixtieth year, and with the assured confidence of a Highland woman she announced herself by name.

'I read in the papers,' said she, 'that the grandson of Lord Fettercairn had shot some beautiful eaglets at the ruins of Finella's castle. The grandson, thought I—that maun be the bairn I nursed, as I nursed his mother before him, and so I'm come a the way frae Ross-shire to see him, your leddyship.'

'I have heard of you, Madelon, and that you were in early life nurse to—to my younger son's wife,' said Lady Fettercairn, with a freezing stare and slight inclination of her haughty head; but she added, 'be seated.'

'Yes—I was nurse to Captain MacIan's daughter Flora,' said Madelon, her eyes becoming moist; 'the Captain saved my husband's life in the Persian war, but was killed himself next day.'

'What I have said. I heard that the son of Major Melfort—or MacIan as he called himself in the past time—was here at Craigengowan, and I made sae bold as to ca' and see him—the bairn I hae suckled.'

'If you nursed my grandson, as you say,' said Lady Fettercairn, 'do you not recognise him? Stand forward, Shafto.'

'Only nephew! The bairn I nursed—the son of Lennard Melfort and my darling Flora—was named after her, Florian, and was like herself, dark-haired, dark-eyed, and winsome. Where is he? What is the meaning of this, Mr. Shafto? I recognise ye now, though years hae passed since I saw ye.'

'How the devil should I know, or be accountable for him to a creature like you?'

'Ay, ay, Mr. Shafto, as a bairn ye were aye crafty, shrewd, and evil-natured, and if a lie could hae chokit ye, ye wad hae been deid lang syne.'

'This is most unseemly language, Madelon Galbraith,' said Lady Fettercairn, rising from her chair, 'and to me it seems that you are raving.'

'Unseemly here or unseemly there, it is the truth,' said Madelon, stoutly, and, sooth to say, Lady Fettercairn's estimation and knowledge of Shafto's character endorsed the description given of it by Madelon.

'Florian was dark, and you are, as you were, fair and fause too; and Florian had what you have not, and never had, a black mole-mark on his right arm.'

'No, these marks never pass away!' retorted Madelon; 'there is some devilry at work here. I say, where is Florian? Ay, ay,' she continued; 'my bairn, Florian, was born on a Friday, and a Friday's birth, like a Friday's marriage, seldom is fortunate; but this is no my bonnie black-eyed lad, Lady Fettercairn—so where is he?'

'This is intolerable!' said Lady Fettercairn, whom that name by old association of ideas seemed to irritate; and, on a valet appearing in obedience to a furious ring given to the bell by Shafto, she added, 'Show this intruder out of the house, and do so instantly.'

The man was about to put his hand on Madelon, but the old Highland woman drew herself up with an air of defiance, and swept out of the room without another word.

'See her not only out of the house, but off the grounds,' shouted Shafto, who was almost beside himself with rage and genuine fear. 'Nay, I'll see to that myself,' he added. 'Such lunatics are dangerous.'

Seeing her hastening down the avenue, he whistled from the stable court a huge mastiff, and by voice and action hounded it on her. The dog bounded about her, barking furiously and tore her skirts to her infinite terror, till the lodgekeeper dragged it off and closed the gates upon her. Then she went upon her way, her Highland heart bursting with rage and longing for revenge.

Shafto was glad that Lord Fettercairn was absent, as he might have questioned Madelon Galbraith more closely; but to his cost he was eventually to learn that he had not seen the last of Florian's nurse.

This visit taken in conjunction with the mode in which Finella now treated him made Craigengowan somewhat uncomfortable for Shafto, so he betook himself to Edinburgh, and to drown his growing fears plunged into such a mad career of dissipation and extravagance that Lord Fettercairn began to regret that he had ever discovered an heir to his estates at all.

While there Shafto saw in the newspaper posters one day the announcement of the terrible disaster at Isandhlwana, 'with the total extirpation of the 24th Warwickshire Foot!'

'His regiment, by Jove! I'll have a drink over this good news,' thought the amiable Shafto, and certainly a deep 'drink' he did have.

CHAPTER III.

A BRUSH WITH THE ZULUS.

When Florian recovered consciousness the African sun was high in the sky; but he lay still for a space in his leafy concealment, as he knew not what time had elapsed since he had last seen his mounted pursuers, or how far or how near they might be off.

Dried blood plastered all one side of his face, and blood was still oozing from the wound in his temple. Over it he tied his handkerchief, and with his white helmet off—as it was a conspicuous object—he clambered to the edge of the donga and looked about him.

The vast extent of waste and open veldt spread around him, but no living object was visible thereon. His pursuers must have ridden forward or returned to Elandsbergen without searching the donga, and thus he was, for the time at least, free from them.

In the distance he saw the Drakensberg range, and knew that his way lay westward in the opposite direction. It is the name given to a portion of the Ouathlamba Mountains, which form the boundary between the Free States, Natal, and the land of the Basutos. They rise to a height of nine thousand feet, and their topography is imperfectly known.

Having assured himself that he was unwatched and unseen, Florian quitted the donga, and, after an anxious search of an hour or more, succeeded in striking upon the ruts or wheel-tracks that must lead, he knew, to the camp at Rorke's Drift, beside the Buffalo River, and then he steadily, though weary and somewhat faint, proceeded upon his return journey.

How many miles he walked he knew not—there were no stones to mark them; but evening was at hand, and he had traversed a district of ruggens, as it is called there—a succession of many grassy ridges—before an exclamation of supreme satisfaction escaped him, when he saw the white bell-tents of Colonel Glyn's column, pitched on the grassy veldt beside the winding stream, and, passing the advanced sentinels, he lost no time in reporting himself to Sheldrake, and relieving himself also of that unlucky gold which had so nearly cost him his life.

Sheldrake sent instantly for Dr. Gallipott, a staff-surgeon, who dressed Florian's hurt. In the bearing of the latter as he related his late adventures Sheldrake was struck with a certain grave simplicity or quiet dignity—an air of ease and perfect self-possession—far above his present position.

'You are "not what you seem to be," as novels have it?' said the young officer inquiringly.

'I am a soldier, sir, as my—— (father was before me, he was about to say, but paused in confusion and substituted) 'as my fate decided for me.'

Impressed by his whole story and the terrible risks and toil he had undergone, young Sheldrake offered a substantial money reward to Florian, who coloured painfully at the proposal, drew back, with just the slightest air of hauteur, and declined it.

'Only that we enter Zululand to-morrow, and a draft from home joined us to-day under Captain Hammersley.'

Florian heard the name of Captain Hammersley without much concern, save that he was one of the same corps. He little foresaw how much their names and interests would be mingled in the future.

'Here he comes,' said Sheldrake, as the handsome officer in his fresh uniform came lounging, cigar in mouth, into the tent, and Florian, with a salute, withdrew. Ere he did so,

'Tom,' said Sheldrake to his servant, 'tell the messman to give the sergeant a bottle of good wine; he'll need it to keep up his pecker after last night's work and with the work before us to-morrow.'

Florian thanked the officer and retired; and he and Bob Edgehill shared the contents of the bottle, while the latter listened to his narration.

'You have grown to look very grave, Hammersley,' said Sheldrake; 'of what are you thinking so much?'

'Yes; the best way to get through life is not to think at all,' replied Hammersley bitterly, for his thoughts were ever and always of Finella and that fatal evening in the shrubbery at Craigengowan, where he saw her lift up her face to Shafto, who kissed her as though he had been used to do so all his life.

Colonel Glyn's column consisted of seven companies of his own regiment, the 24th, the Natal Mounted Police, a body of Volunteers, two 7-pounder Royal Artillery guns under Major Harness, and 1000 natives under Rupert Lonsdale, late of the 74th Highlanders.

At half-past three on the morning of the 12th of January, the colonel, with four companies, some of the Natal Native Contingent, and the mounted men, left his camp to reconnoitre the country of Sirayo, which lay to the eastward of it. With his staff, Lord Chelmsford accompanied this party, which, after a few miles' march, reached a great donga, in a valley through which the Bashee River flows, and wherein herds of cattle were collected, and their lowing loaded the calm morning air, though they were all unseen, being concealed in the rocky krantzes or precipitous fissures of the ravine.

A body of Zulus now appeared on the hills above, and Florian regarded them with intense interest, while the mounted men advanced against them, and his company, with the others, pushed in skirmishing order up the ravine where the cattle were known to be.

He could see that these Zulu warriors were models of muscle and athletic activity, and nearly black-skinned rather than copper-coloured. They were dressed in feathers, with the tails of wild animals round their bodies, behind and before; their ornaments were massive rings formed of elephants' tusks, and their anklets were of brass or polished copper; they had large oval shields, rifles, and bundles or sheafs of assegais, their native deadly weapon, and they bounded from rock to rock before our skirmishers with the activity of tree-tigers.

'With the assegai,' says Sir Arthur Cunynghame, 'the Zulu cuts his food, he fights and does many useful things, and it is used as a surgical instrument. Carefully sharpening it, he uses it to bleed the human patient, and with it he inoculates his cow's tail. In the chase it is his spear, a deadly weapon in his hand, and ready instrument for skinning his game.'

The orders of the main body of this reconnoitring force, which had suddenly become an attacking one, were to ascend a hill on the left, then to work round to the right rear of the enemy's position, and assault and destroy a kraal belonging to the brother of Sirayo, whose surrender the Government had demanded as one of the violators of the British territory.

The moment the companies of the 24th got into motion a sharp fire was opened on them by the Zulus, who were crouching behind bushes and great stones, and on the Native Contingent which led the attack, under Commandant Browne.

The latter had their own armament of assegais and shields, to which the Government added Martini-Henrys or Enfields, but their fighting-dress consisted of their own bare skins. Each company generally was formed of a separate tribe, under its own chief, with a nominal allowance of three British officers; but there were none of minor rank, to lead sections, or so forth, as these natives could not comprehend divided authority. They were pretty well drilled, and many were skilled marksmen; but now many fell so fast under the fire of the Zulus that every effort of their white officers was requisite to get the others on.

Dying or dead, with the red blood oozing from their bullet-wounds, rolling about and shrieking in agony, or lying still and lifeless, they studded all the rocky ascent, while the survivors gradually worked their way upward, planting in their fire wherever a dark head or limb appeared; and when they came within a short distance of the enemy's position, the men of the 24th prepared to carry it by a rush.

Hammersley's handsome face glowed under his white helmet, and his dark eyes sparkled as he formed his company for attack on the march.

Florian was now for the first time under fire. He heard the ping of the rifle-bullets as they whistled past him from the smoke-hidden position of the Zulus, and he heard the splash of the lead as they starred the rocks close by. Then came that tightening of the chest and increase of the pulse which the chance of sudden death or a deadly wound inspire, till after a time that emotion passed away, and in its place came the genuine British bull-dog longing to grapple with the foe.

The Zulus fired briskly and resolutely from their rocky eyries; and while one party made a valiant stand at a cattle-kraal, another nearly made the troops quail and recoil by hurling down huge boulders, which they dislodged by powerful levers and sent thundering and crashing from the summit of the hill till it was captured by the bayonets of the 24th; they were put to flight in half an hour, and by nine in the morning the whole affair was over, and Florian found he had come unscathed through his baptism of fire; but Lieutenant Sheldrake had his shoulder-arm lacerated by a launched assegai when leading the left half-company.

Sirayo's kraal, which lay farther up the Bashee Valley, was burned later in the day by mounted men under Colonel Baker Russell. Our losses were only fourteen; those of the Zulus were great, including the capture of a thousand cattle and sheep. All the women and children captured were sent back to their kraals by order of Lord Chelmsford, who, on the 17th of January, rode out to the fatal hill of Isandhlwana, which he selected as the next halting-place of the centre column, and which was eventually to prove well nigh its grave!

CHAPTER IV.

THE CAMP.

On the 20th of January the column began its march for the hill of Isandhlwana, through a country open and treeless.

'Where and how is Dulcie now?' was the ever-recurring thought of Florian as he tramped on in heavy marching order in rear of Hammersley's company. Oh, to be rich and free—rich enough, at least, to save her from that cold world upon which she was cast, and in which she must now be so lonely and desolate.

But he was a soldier now, and serving face to face with death in a distant and savage land, and, so far as she was concerned, hope was nearly dead.

'My position seems a strangely involved one!' thought Florian, when he brooded over the changed positions of himself and Shafto; 'there is some mystery in it which has not yet been unravelled. Am I to be kept in this state of doubt and ignorance all my life—but that may be a short period as matters go now. My father! Must I never more call or consider him I deemed to be so, by that name again!'

Four companies of the 24th Regiment were left at Rorke's Drift when Colonel Glyn's column reached Isandhlwana, which means the Lion's Hill. Precipitous and abrupt to the westward, on the eastward it slopes down to the watercourse, and grassy spurs and ridges rise from it in every direction. The waggon track to Rorke's Drift passes over its western ridge, and groups of lesser hills, covered with masses of loose grey stones, rise in succession like waves of a sea in the direction of the stream called the Buffalo.

When the column reached the hill and began to pitch their tents, the young soldiers of the 'new system' were sorely worn and weary—'pumped out,' as they phrased it. 'We may laugh at the old stiff stock and pipeclay school,' says a popular military writer, 'but it may be no laughing matter some day to find out that, together with the stock and pipeclay which could easily be spared, we have sacrificed the old solidity which army reformers should have 'grappled to their souls with hooks of steel,' and painfully was that want of hardihood and foresight shown in the tragedy that was acted on the Hill of Isandhlwana.

A long ridge, green and grassy, ran southward of the camp, and overlooked an extensive valley. Facing this ridge, and on the extreme left of the camp, were pitched the tents of the Natal Native Contingent. A space of three hundred yards intervened between this force and the next two regiments.

The British Infantry occupied the centre, and a little above their tents were those of Lord Chelmsford and the head-quarter staff. The mounted infantry and the artillery were on the right, lining the verge of the waggon track—road it could scarcely be called. The camp was therefore on a species of sloping plateau, overlooked by the crest of the hill, which rose in its rear, sheer as a wall of rock. The waggons of each corps were parked in its rear.

The camp looked lively and picturesque on the slope of the great green hill, the white tents in formal rows, with the red coats flitting in and out, and the smoke of fires ascending here and there, as the men proceeded to cook their rations.

Florian was detailed for out-piquet duty that night, for the Zulus were reported to be in force in the vicinity, and no one on that duty could close an eye or snatch a minute's repose. The circle of the outposts from the centre of the camp extended two thousand five hundred yards by day, lessened to one thousand four hundred by night, though the mounted videttes were further forward of course; but, by a most extraordinary oversight, no breastworks or other barriers were formed to protect the camp.

Before coming to the personal adventures of our friends in this story, we are compelled for a little space to follow that of the war.

Early on the morning of the following day, the mounted infantry and police, under Major Dartnell, proceeded to reconnoitre the mountainous ground in the direction of a fastness in the rocks known as Matyano's stronghold, while the Natal force, under Lonsdale, moved round the southern base of the Malakota Hill to examine the great dongas it overlooked.

Dartnell's party halted and bivouacked at some distance from the camp, to which he sent a note stating that he had a clear view over all the hills to the eastward, and the Zulus were clustering there in such numbers that he dared not attack them unless reinforced by three companies of the 24th next morning.

A force to aid him left the camp accordingly at daybreak, in light marching order, without knapsacks, greatcoats, or blankets, with one day's cooked provisions and seventy rounds per man; and with it went Lord Chelmsford.

These three detached parties so weakened the main body in camp that it consisted then of only thirty mounted infantry for videttes, eighty mounted volunteers and police, seventy men of the Royal Artillery, six companies of the 24th, including Hammersley's, and two of the Natal Native Contingent.

When these reconnoitring parties were far distant from Isandhlwana, the Zulus in sight of them were seen to be falling back, apparently retiring on what was afterwards found most fatally to be a skilfully preconceived plan; and, prior to making a general attack upon them, Lord Chelmsford and his staff made a halt for breakfast.

It was at that crisis that a messenger—no other than Sergeant Florian MacIan—came from the camp mounted, with tidings that the enemy were in sight on the left, and that the handful of mounted men had gone forth against them.

On this Lord Chelmsford ordered the Native Contingent to return at once to the hill of Isandhlwana.

Soon after shots were briskly exchanged with the enemy in front; a vast number were 'knocked over,' and some taken prisoners. One of the latter admitted to the staff, when questioned, that his King Cetewayo expected a large muster that day—some twenty-five thousand men at least.

It was noon now, and a suspicion that something might be wrong in the half-empty camp occurred to Lord Chelmsford and his staff, and this suspicion was confirmed, when the distant but deep hoarse boom of heavy guns came hurtling through the hot atmosphere.

'Do you hear that?' was the cry on all hands; 'there is fighting going on at the camp—we are attacked in the rear!'

Then a horseman came galloping down from a lofty hill with the startling tidings that he could see the flashing of the cannon at the hill of Isandhlwana, and that it was enveloped on every side by smoke!

To the crest of that hill Lord Chelmsford and his staff galloped in hot haste and turned their field-glasses in the direction of the distant camp, but if there had been smoke it had drifted away, and all seemed quiet and still. The rows of white bell-tents shone brightly in the clear sunshine, and no signs of conflict were visible. Many men were seen moving among the tents, but they were supposed to be British soldiers.

This was at two in the afternoon, and the suspicion of any fatality—least of all the awful one that had occurred—was dismissed from the minds of the staff and Lord Chelmsford, who did not turn his horse's head towards the camp till a quarter to three, according to the narrative of Captain Lucas of the Cape Rifles.

When, with Colonel Glyn's detachment, he had marched within four miles of it, he came upon the Native Contingent halted in confusion, indecision, and something very like dismay, and their bewilderment infected the party of the General, towards whom, half an hour after, a single horseman came up at full speed.

He was Commandant Lonsdale, the gallant leader of the Natal Contingent, who had gone so close to the camp that he had been fired on by what he thought were our own troops, but proved to be Zulus in the red tunics of the slain, the same figures whom the staff from the distant hill had seen through their field glasses moving among the snow-white tents.

Out of one of them he saw a Zulu come with a blood-dripping assegai in his hand. He then wheeled round his horse, and, escaping a shower of rifle-bullets, galloped on to warn Lord Chelmsford of the terrible trap into which he was about to fall. The first words he uttered were, 'My Lord, the camp is in possession of the enemy!'

Of the troops he had left there that morning nothing now remained but the dead, and that was nearly all of them.

The silence of death was there! And now we must note what had occurred in the absence of the General, of Colonel Glyn, and the main body of the second column.

CHAPTER V.

THE MASSACRE AT ISANDHLWANA.

'What the deuce is up?' cried Hammersley and other officers, as they came rushing out of their tents when the sound of firing was heard all along the crest of the hill on the left of the camp, as had been reported to Lord Chelmsford; and, soon after, the few Mounted Infantry under Colonel Durnford were seen falling back, pursued swiftly by Zulus, who, like a dark human wave, came rolling in thousands over the grim crest of the hill, throwing out dense clouds of skirmishers, whose close but desultory fire fringed all their front with smoke.

There was no occasion for drum to be beaten or bugle blown to summon the troops; in a moment all rushed to arms, and the companies were formed and 'told off' in hot and nervous haste.

The Zulus came on in very regular masses, eight deep, maintaining a steady fire till within assegai distance, when they ceased firing, and launched with aim unerring their deadly darts.

Our troops responded by a close and searching fire, under which the black-skinned savages fell in heaps, but their places were fearlessly taken by others.

The rocket battery had been captured by them in their swift advance, and every man of it perished in a moment with Colonel Russell.

Driven back by their furious rush and force, the cavalry gave way, and Captain Mostyn, with two companies of the noble 24th, was despatched at the double to the eastern neck of the hill of Isandhlwana, where the Zulus in vast force were pressing along to outflank the camp, and on this wing of theirs he at once opened a disastrous fire.

Near the Royal Artillery guns the other two companies of the 24th were extended in skirmishing order; this was about half-past twelve p.m., and, as the mighty semicircle—the horns of the Zulu army—closed on them, every officer and man felt that they were fighting for bare existence now, and only procrastinating the moment of extirpation.

The shock which Hammersley's heart had received by the supposed deception of Finella was still too terribly fresh to render him otherwise than desperate and reckless of life, and in the coming mêlée he fought like a tiger.

He longed to forget both it and her—to put death itself, as he had now put distance, between himself and the place where that cruel blow had descended upon him; thus he exposed himself with a temerity that astonished Sheldrake, Florian, and others.

D'Aquilar Pope's company of the 24th was thrown forward in extended order near the waggon track till his left touched the files of the right near the Artillery. Facing the north were the companies of Mostyn, Cavaye, and Hammersley, with two of the Native Contingent, all in extended order, and over them the guns threw shot and shell eastward. But all the alternative companies were without supports to feed the fighting line, unless we refer to some of the Native Contingent held as a kind of reserve.

The crest of that precipitous mountain in front of which our luckless troops were fighting with equal discipline and courage in the silent hush of desperation, is more than 4,500 feet high; but the camp upon, its eastern slope had been in no way prepared, as we have said, for defence by earthworks or otherwise.

'The tents,' we are told, 'were all standing, just as they had been left when the troops under Chelmsford and Glyn marched out that morning, and their occupants were chiefly officers' servants, bandsmen, clerks, and other non-combatants, who, until they were attacked, were unconscious of danger. Fifty waggons, which were to have gone back to the commissariat camp at Rorke's Drift, about six miles in the rear as the crow flies, had been drawn up the evening before in their lines on the neck between the track and the hill, and were still packed in the same position. All other waggons were in rear of the corps to which they were attached. The oxen having been collected for safety when the Zulus first came in sight, many of them were regularly yoked in.'

It was not until after one o'clock that our handful of gallant fellows on the slope of the hill fully realised the enormous strength of the advancing army, now ascertained to have been fourteen thousand men, under Dabulamanzi.

By that time the Zulus had fought to within two hundred yards of the Natal Contingent, which broke and fled, thus leaving a gap in the fighting line, and through that gap the Zulus—loading the air with a tempest of triumphant yells and shrieks—burst like a living sea, and in an instant all became hopeless confusion.

'Form company square,' cried Hammersley, brandishing his sword; 'fours deep, on the centre—close.'

But there was no time to close in or form rallying-squares, and never again would our poor lads 're-form company.'

Before Mostyn's and Cavaye's companies could close, or even fix their bayonets, they were destroyed to a man, shot down, assegaied, and disembowelled, while the shrieks and fiend-like yells of the Zulus began to grow louder as the rattle of the musketry grew less, and the swift game of death went on.

Hammersley's company, which had been on the extreme left, though unable to form square, succeeded in reaching, but in a shattered condition, a kind of terrace on the southern face of the hill, from whence, as the smoke cleared away, they could see the Zulus using their short, stabbing assegais with awful effect upon all they overtook below.

Under the fire of the cannon, which had been throwing case-shot, the Zulus fell in groups rather than singly, and went down by hundreds; but as fast as their advanced files melted away, hordes of fresh savages came pouring up exultingly from the rear to feed the awful harvest of death; and, as they closed in, 'Limber up!' was the cry of Major Smith, the Artillery commanding officer; but the limber gunners failed to reach their seats, and, save a sergeant and eight, all perished under the assegai; and while in the act of spiking a gun, the Major was slain amid an awful mêlée and scene of carnage, where horse and foot, white man and black savage, were all struggling and fighting in a dense and maddened mass around the cannon-wheels.

Notwithstanding the manner in which he exposed himself, Hammersley, up to this time, found himself untouched; but his subaltern, poor Vincent Sheldrake, whose wounded sword-arm rendered him very helpless, was bleeding from several stabs and two bullet-wounds, which it was impossible to dress, yet he strove to save his servant Tom, who was lying in his last agony, and who, in gratitude, strove to accord him a military salute, and died in the attempt.

'Ay; so many that my own mother—God bless her!—wouldn't know me; so many that if I was stripped of these bloody rags you would think I was tattooed. It is no crutch and toothpick business this!' replied Sheldrake, with a grim faint smile, as from weakness he fell forward on his hands and knees, and Florian stood over him with bayonet fixed and rifle at the charge.

At that moment an assegai flung by a Zulu finished the mortal career of Sheldrake. But Florian shot the former through the head, and the savage—a sable giant—made a kind of wild leap in the air and fell back on a gashed pile of the dead and the dying. It was Florian's last cartridge, and his rifle-barrel was hot from continued firing by this time.

Every man who could escape strove to make his way to the Buffalo River, but that proved impossible even for mounted men. Intersected by deep watercourses, encumbered by enormous boulders of granite, the ground was of such a nature that the fleet-footed Zulus, whose bare feet were hard as horses' hoofs, alone could traverse it, and the river, itself swift, deep, and unfordable, had banks almost everywhere jagged by rocks sharp and steep.

A few reached the stream, among them Vivian Hammersley, his heart swollen with rage and grief by the awful result of that bloody and disastrous day, by the destruction of his beloved regiment—the old 24th—for which he could not foresee the other destruction that 'the Wolseley Ring' would bring upon it and the entire British Army, and the loss by cruel deaths of all his brother-officers—the entire jolly mess-table. In that time of supreme agony of heart, we believe he almost forgot his quarrel with Finella Melfort, but found the track to Helpmakaar and Rorke's Drift, where a company of the 24th were posted under the gallant young Bromhead; but most of the fugitives were entirely ignorant of the district through which they wildly sought to make their escape, and thus were easily overtaken and slain by the Zulus; and so hot was the pursuit of these poor creatures, that even of those who strove to gain a point on the Buffalo, four miles from Isandhlwana, none but horsemen reached the river, and of these many were shot or drowned in attempting to cross it.

Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Pulleine of the 24th, on perceiving all lost, and that the open camp was completely in the hands of the savages, called to Lieutenant Melville, and said,

'As senior lieutenant, you will take the colours, which must be saved at all risks, and make the best of your way from here!'

He shook warmly the hand of young Melville, who, as adjutant, was mounted, and then exclaimed to the few survivors:

Then his gallant 'Warwickshires' threw themselves in a circle round him, and perished where they stood.

Melville galloped off with the colours, escorted by Lieutenant Coghill of the same corps, and by Florian, who was ordered to do so, as colour-sergeant, and who, luckily for himself, had found a strong horse. These three fugitives were closely pursued, and with great difficulty kept together till they reached the Buffalo River, the bank of which was speedily lined with Zulu pursuers armed with rifle and assegai.

Melville's horse was shot dead in the whirling stream, and the green-silk colours, heavy with gold-embroidered honours, slipped from his hands. Coghill, a brave young Irish officer, reached the Natal side untouched and in perfect safety; but on seeing his Scottish comrade clinging to a rock while seeking vainly to recover the lost colours, he went back to his assistance, and his horse was then shot, as was also that of Florian, who failed to get his right foot out of the stirrup, and was swept away with the dead animal down the stream.

The Zulus now continued a heavy fire, particularly on Melville, whose scarlet patrol jacket rendered him fatally conspicuous among the greenery by the river-side at that place. Two great boulders, six feet apart, lie there, and between them he and Coghill took their last stand, and fought, sword in hand, till overwhelmed. 'Here,' says Captain Parr in his narrative, 'we found them lying side by side, and buried them on the spot'—truly brothers in arms, in glory and in death.

When all but drowned, Florian succeeded in disentangling his foot from the stirrup-iron, and struck out for the Natal side. A shrill yell from the other bank announced that he was not unseen; bullets ploughed the water into tiny white spouts about him, and many a long reedy dart was launched at him—but with prayer in his heart and prayer on his lips he struggled on, and reached the bank, where he lay still, worn breathless, incapable of further exertion, and weakened by his recent fall in the donga, after escaping from Elandsbergen; thus believing that all was over with him, the Zulus ceased firing, and went in search of congenial carnage elsewhere. And there, dying to all appearance, in a reedy swamp by the Buffalo river, the tall grass around him, bristling with launched assegais, lay Florian Melfort, the true heir of Fettercairn, friendless and alone.

No Briton survived in camp to see the complete end of the awful scene that was acted there! And of that scene no actual record exists. For a brief period—a very brief one—a hand to hand fight went on among, and even in, the tents, and the company of Captain Reginald Younghusband of the 24th alone appears to have made any organized resistance. Making a wild rally on a plateau below the crest of the hill, they fought till their last cartridges were expended, and then died, man by man, on the ground where they stood. The Zulus surged round and over them with tiger-like activity, frantic gestures, remorseless ferocity, and lust of blood, whirling and flinging their ponderous knobkeries, or war-clubs, one blow from which would suffice to brain a bullock.

Even the savage warriors who slew and mutilated them were filled with admiration at their courage, while tossing their own dead again and again on the bayonet-blades to bear down the hedge of steel. 'Ah, those red soldiers at Isandhlwana!' said the Zulus after; 'how few they were, and how they fought! They fell like stones—each man in his place.'

There is something pathetic in the description of the stand made by the last man (poor Bob Edgehill, of the 24th), as given in the Natal Times.

Keeping his face to the foe, he struggled towards the crest of the hill overlooking the camp, till he reached a small cavern in the rocks. Therein he crept, and with rifle and bayonet kept the Zulus at bay, while they, taking advantage of the cover some rocks and boulders afforded them, endeavoured by threes and fours to shoot him.

Bob—that rackety Warwickshire lad—was very wary. He did not fire hurriedly, but shot them down in succession, taking a steady and deliberate aim. At last his only remaining cartridge was dropped into the breech-block of his rifle; another Zulu fell, and then he was slain. This was about five in the evening, when the shadow of the hill of Isandhlwana was falling far eastward across the valley towards the ridge of Isipesi.

'We ransacked the camp,' said a Zulu prisoner afterwards, 'and took away everything we could find. We broke up the ammunition-boxes and took all the cartridges. We practised a great deal at our kraals with the rifles and ammunition. Lots of us had the same sort of rifle that the soldiers used, having bought them in our own country, but some who did not know how to use it had to be shown by those who did.'

Five entire companies of the 1st battalion of the 24th perished there, with ninety men of the 2nd battalion; 832 officers and men mutilated and disembowelled, in most instances stripped, lay there dead, shot in every position, amid gashed and gory horses, mules, and oxen, while 1400 oxen and £60,000 of commissariat supplies were carried off.

At ten minutes past six in the evening of that most fatal day Lord Chelmsford was joined by Colonel Glyn's force. A kind of column was formed, with the guns in the centre, with the companies of the 2nd battalion of the 24th on each flank, and when the sun had set, and its last light was lingering redly on the rocky scalp of Isandhlwana, this force was within two miles of the camp, where now alone the dead lay. The opaque outline of the adjacent hills was visible, with the dark figures of the Zulus pouring in thousands over them in the direction of Ulundi; and after shelling the neck of the Isandhlwana Hill—where it would seem none of the enemy were, for no response was made—the shattered force, crestfallen in spirit, heavy in heart, and after having marched thirty miles, and been without food for forty-eight hours, bivouacked among the corpses of their comrades.

When, five months after, the burial parties were sent to this awful place, great difficulty was experienced in finding the bodies, the tropical grass had grown so high, while the stench from the slaughtered horses and oxen was overpowering. Every conceivable article, with papers, letters, and photographs of the loved and the distant, were thickly strewn about. 'A strange and terrible calm seemed to reign in this solitude of death and nature. Grass had grown luxuriantly about the waggons, sprouting from the seed that had dropped from the loads, falling on soil fertilised by the blood of the gallant fallen. The skeletons of some rattled at the touch. In one place lay a body with a bayonet thrust to the socket between the jaws, transfixing the head a foot into the ground. Another lay under a waggon, covered by a tarpaulin, as if the wounded man had gone to sleep while his life-blood ebbed away. In one spot over fifty bodies were found, including those of three officers, and close by another group of about seventy; and, considering that they had been exposed for five months, they were in a singular state of preservation.'

CHAPTER VI.

HAS SHE DISCOVERED ANYTHING?

Finella Melfort knew by the medium of telegrams and despatches in the public prints—all read in nervous haste, with her heart sorely agitated—that Hammersley had escaped the Isandhlwana slaughter, and was one of the few who had reached a place of safety. So did Shafto, but with no emotion of satisfaction, it may be believed.

When the latter returned to Craigengowan, Lady Fettercairn had not the least suspicion of the bitter animosity with which Finella viewed him, and of course nothing of the episode in the shrubbery, and thus was surprised when her granddaughter announced a sudden intention of visiting Lady Drumshoddy, as if to avoid Shafto, but delayed doing so.

At his approach she recoiled from him, not even touching his proffered hand. All the girlish friendship she once had for this newly discovered cousin had passed away now, crushed out by a contempt for his recent conduct, so that it was impossible for her to meet him or greet him upon their former terms. She feared that her loathing and hostility might be revealed in every tone and gesture, and did not wish that Lord or Lady Fettercairn should discover this.

To avoid his now odious society—odious because of the unexplainable quarrel he had achieved between herself and the now absent Vivian—she would probably have quitted Craigengowan permanently, and taken up her residence with her maternal relation at Drumshoddy Lodge; but she preferred the more refined society of Lady Fettercairn, and did not affect that of the widow of the ex-Advocate and Indian Civilian, who was vulgarly bent on urging the interests of Shafto, and would have derided those of Hammersley in terms undeniably coarse had she discovered them. And Lady Drumshoddy, though hard by nature as gun-metal, was a wonderful woman in one way. She could back her arguments by the production of tears at any time. She knew not herself where they came from, but she could 'pump' them up whenever she had occasion to taunt her granddaughter with what she termed contumacy and perverseness of spirit.

On the day Shafto returned Finella was in the drawing-room alone. She was posed in a listless attitude. Her slender hands lay idly in her lap; her face had grown thin and grave in expression, to the anxiety and surprise of her relatives. Her chair was drawn close to the window, and she was gazing, with unseeing eyes apparently, on the wintry landscape, where the lawn and the leafless trees were powdered with snow, and a red-breasted robin, with heart full of hope, was trilling his song on a naked branch.

It was a cheerless prospect to a cheerless heart. She had drawn from her portemonnaie (wherein she always kept it) the bitter little farewell note of Hammersley, and, after perusing it once more, returned it slowly to its place of concealment.

Where was he then? How employed—marching or fighting, in peril or in safety? Did he think of her often, and with anger? Would he ever come back to her, and afford a chance of explanation and reconciliation? Ah no! it was more than probable their paths in life would never cross each other again.

Tears welled in her eyes as she went over in memory some episodes of the past. She saw again his eager eyes and handsome face so near her own, heard his tender and pleading voice in her ear, and recalled the touch of his lips and the clasp of his firm white hand.

Another hand touched her shoulder, and she recoiled with a shudder on seeing Shafto.

'Because I loathe that the same roof should be over you and me. Think of what your infamous cunning has caused!'

'A separation,' said he, laughing malevolently, 'a quarrel between that fellow and you?'

'Well, if you leave Craigengowan simply to avoid me I shall certainly tell your grandmother the reason; and how will you like that?'

To say that Shafto loved Finella, with all her beauty, would be what a writer calls a 'blasphemy on the master-passion;' but he admired her immensely, longed for her, and more particularly for her money, as a protection—a barrier against future and unseen contingencies.

At his threat Finella grew pale with anticipated annoyance and mortification; but in pure dread of Shafto's malevolence, and for the other reasons given, she did not hasten her preparations for departure, and ere long the arrival of a new guest at Craigengowan decided her on remaining, for this guest was one for whom she conceived a sudden and lasting affection, and with whom she found ties and sympathies in common.

After being out most part of a day riding, Shafto returned in the evening, and, throwing his horse's bridle to a groom, was ascending the staircase to his own room, when, framed as it were in the archway of a corridor, he saw, to his utter bewilderment, the face and figure of Dulcie Carlyon!

His voice failed him, and with parted lips and dilated eyes she gazed at him in equal amazement, too, but she was the first to speak.

'Yes,' he snapped; 'what is there strange in that? This is my grandfather's house.'

'Your grandfather's house?' she repeated, and then the details of the situation came partly before her. She lifted up her eyes, wet with tears like dewy violets, for his voice, if hard and harsh, was associated with her home and Revelstoke, but she shrank from him, and her lips grew white on finding herself so suddenly face to face with one whom she felt intuitively was a kind of evil genius in her life!

Dulcie just then seemed a delightful object to the eye. That pure waxen skin, which always accompanies red-golden hair, was set off to the utmost advantage by the dead black of her deep mourning, and her plump white arms and slender hands were coquettishly set off by long black lace gloves, for Dulcie was dressed for dinner, and her soft white neck shone like satin in contrast to a single row of jet beads, her only other ornament being Florian's locket, on which the startled eyes of Shafto instantly fell.

Dulcie saw this, and instinctively she placed her hand—a slim and ringless little white hand—upon it, as if to protect it, and gather strength from its touch; but her bosom now heaved at the sight of Shafto, and fear and indignation grew there together, for she was losing her habitual sense of self-control.

'Yes,' she replied in a broken voice, 'and I wonder if I am the same girl I was a year ago, when poor papa was well and living, and I had dear Florian—to love me!'

'Dulcie here—d—nation!' thought Shafto: 'first old Madelon Galbraith and now Dulcie; by Jove the plot is thickening—the links may be closing!'

He had an awful fear and presentiment of discovery; thus perspiration stood like bead-drops on his brow; yet the mystery of her presence was very simple.

Poor Mrs. Prim could stand no longer the cold treatment and the 'whim-whams,' as she called them, of Lady Fettercairn; she had gone away, and it was known at Craigengowan that a substitute—a more pleasing one, in the person of a young English girl—was coming as companion, through the instrumentality of the Rev. Mr. Pentreath.

Shafto had been absent in Edinburgh when this arrangement was made. Lady Fettercairn had thought the matter too petty, too trivial, to mention in any of her letters to her 'grandson;' Dulcie knew not where Shafto was, and thus the poor girl had come unwittingly to Craigengowan, and into the very jaws of that artful schemer!

Few at the first glance might have recognised in Dulcie the bright, brilliant little girl whom Florian loved and Shafto had insulted by his so-called passion. The character of her face and perhaps of herself were somewhat changed since her affectionate father's death, and Florian's departure to Africa in a position so humble and hopeless. The bright hair which used to ripple in a most becoming and curly fringe over her pretty white forehead had to be abandoned for braiding, as Lady Fettercairn did not approve of a 'dependant' dressing her hair in what she deemed a fast fashion, though sanctioned by Royalty; and now it was simply shed back over each shell-like ear without a ripple if possible, but Dulcie's hair always would ripple somehow.

'Shafto,' said Dulcie, in a tone of deep reproach; 'what have you done with Florian? But I need not ask.'

'By the locket you wear, you must have seen or heard from him since he and I parted,' replied Shafto, with the coolest effrontery; 'so what has he done with himself?'

'What the devil more should we be?' asked Shafto, coarsely, annoyed by her questions.

'We are not enemies; he chose some way to fortune, I suppose, when Fate gave me mine.'

'No—no—I tell you no!' exclaimed Shafto, maddened with annoyance by these persistent questions and her tearful interest in her lover.

'Poor Florian!' said the girl, sadly and sweetly, 'he has become a soldier, and is now in Zululand.'

'In Zululand,' he chuckled; 'he too there! Well, beggars can't be choosers, so he chose to take the Queen's shilling.'

'Oh, Shafto, how hard-hearted you are!' exclaimed Dulcie, restraining her tears with difficulty.

'Am I? So he has left you—gone away—become a soldier; well, I don't think that a paying kind of business. Why bother about him?'

'Because, to my mind, a woman is seldom faithful, unless it suits her purpose to be so; and in this instance it won't suit yours.'

Dulcie's eyes sparkled with anger, though they were eyes that, fringed by the longest lashes, looked at one usually sweetly, candidly, with an innocent and fearless expression. Her bosom heaved, as she said—

'Florian will gain a name for himself, I am sure; and if he dies——' Her voice broke.

'In the workhouse,' was the mocking response of Shafto; and he thought, 'If he is killed by a Zulu assegai, or any other way, to prevent exposure or public gossip, the game will still lie in my hands.'

In the public prints Dulcie had of course seen details of the episode of Lieutenants Melville and Coghill, and their attempts to save that fatal colour, which was afterwards found in the Buffalo, and decorated with immortelles by the Queen at Osborne; the papers also added that the colour-sergeant who accompanied them was missing, and that his body had not been found.

As no name had yet been given, Dulcie was yet mercifully ignorant of what that appalling word contained for her!

'Already you appear to be quite at home here in Craigengowan,' said Shafto, after an awkward pause.

'I am at home,' replied Dulcie simply; 'and hope this may be the happiest I have had since papa died.'

'I am glad to hear it; but you don't mean to treat me—an old friend—as you have done?'

'Friend!' she exclaimed, and laughed a little bitter laugh, that sounded strange from lips so fresh, so young and rosy.

It was not quite a random speech this, but it stung the hearer. He crimsoned with fury, and thought—'She is as vindictive as Finella. Has she discovered anything about me?'

'Shafto, do you know that the dressing-bell was rung some time since?' said Lady Fettercairn with the same asperity, as she appeared in the corridor.

Both started. How long had she been there, and what had she overheard? was in the mind of each.

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?'

'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.

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.

'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.

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.'

'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.

'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!

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

'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.'

'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.'

'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.

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

'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.'

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.'

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

'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.'

'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.

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?'

'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.

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—

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?

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.'

'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 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.

'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?'

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.

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.

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

'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.

'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.'

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

'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.'

'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.'

'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.'

'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:—

'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.'

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

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.

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

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

'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!'

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

'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.

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

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

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?'

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?'

'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?'

'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.

'Please to let me look at this, Miss Carlyon. I have remarked your invariable ornament.'

Blushing deeply, Dulcie, with tremulous little fingers, re-opened the locket, expectant, perhaps, of reprehension; but Lady Fettercairn became strangely agitated.

'Lennard!' she exclaimed. 'This is my son Lennard as he looked when I saw him last.'

'Ah—true,' said Lady Fettercairn: 'when Lennard was that age—the age of this young man—the art was scarcely known. And who is he?'

'I have no right to ask,' said Lady Fettercairn, hauteur blending with the certainly deep interest with which she regarded the contents of the still open locket.

'It is the image of Lennard!' continued Lady Fettercairn musingly; 'but there sounds the breakfast-bell,' she added, and turned abruptly away.

What were the precise antecedents of this girl, Miss Carlyon, who had been recommended to her by her friend, the vicar, in London? thought Lady Fettercairn, as her cold, passive, and aristocratic frame of mind resumed its sway. Yet, though she remained silent on the subject, and disdained to inquire further about it, that miniature interested her deeply, and frequently at table and elsewhere Dulcie caught her eyes resting on the locket.

It filled her with a distinct and haunting memory of one seen long ago, and not in dreams, for Lady Fettercairn was not of an imaginative turn of mind.

It may seem strange that amid all this Dulcie never thought of mentioning that Florian was the cousin of Shafto; but she knew how distasteful to Lady Fettercairn was anyone connected with the family of Lennard's dead wife, Flora MacIan.

When Shafto heard of all this, as he did somehow, the qualms of alarm he experienced on seeing first Madelon Galbraith and then Dulcie at Craigengowan were renewed; and he resolved, if he could, to get possession of that locket, and deface or destroy the dangerous likeness it contained.

But Dulcie had an intuitive perception or suspicion of this; and finding that his evil gaze rested upon it repeatedly, after a time she ceased to wear it, but locked it away in a secure place, from whence she could draw it when she chose for her own private delectation.

When Finella, in mutual confidence, told Dulcie of the manner in which Shafto had brought about a separation between herself and Vivian Hammersley, the girl expressed her indignation, but no surprise. She knew all he was capable of doing, and related the two ugly episodes of the locket.

'Heavens!' exclaimed Finella; 'if Lord Fettercairn knew of this business he would surely expel him from Craigengowan.'

'No, no; the person expelled would to a certainty be poor me—an expulsion that Lady Fettercairn would endorse to the full on learning that Shafto had sought to make love to me. Then I should again be more than ever homeless; so let us be silent, dear Finella.'

'How can I ride now? In papa's time I had a beautiful little Welsh cob, on which I used to scamper about the shady lanes and breezy moors in Devonshire. I can see still in fancy his dear little head, high withers, and short joints.'

'You shall ride with me,' said Finella, in her pretty, imperative way. 'I have three pads of my own.'

'Then you shall wear one of mine. I have several. A blue or green one will be most becoming to you; and though you are as plump as a little English partridge, I have one that will be sure to fit you.'

'Now, let us go to the stables. I go there once every day to feed "Fern," as you shall see.'

Sandy Macrupper, the head-groom, always thought the stables never looked so bright as during the time of Finella's visit. He had known her from her childhood, and taught her to ride her first Shetland pony. He was a hard-featured and sour-visaged old man, with that peculiarity of grooms, a very small head and puckered face. He was clad in an orthodox, long-bodied waistcoat, in one of the pockets of which a currycomb was stuck, and wore short corded breeches. He was always closely shaven, and wore a scrupulously white neckcloth, carefully tied. His grey eyes were bright and keen; his short legs had that peculiar curve that indicates a horsy individual. And when the ladies appeared, he came forth from the harness-room with smiling alacrity, a piece of chamois-leather in one hand and a snaffle-bit in the other.

'Good-morning, Sandy. I want Fern and Flirt for a spin about the country to-day after luncheon;' and the sound of Finella's voice was the signal for many impatient neighs of welcome and much rattling of stall-collars and wooden balls.

Fern, the favourite pad of Finella—a beautiful roan, with a deal of Arab blood in it—gave a loud whinny of delight and recognition, and thrust forward his soft tan-coloured muzzle in search of the carrot which she daily brought to regale him with; but Flirt preferred apples and sugar. Then, regardless of what stablemen might be looking on, she put her arms round Flirt's neck, and rubbed her peach-like cheek against his velvety nose.

On hearing of the projected ride, at luncheon, Lady Fettercairn's face grew cloudy, and she took an opportunity of saying:

'Finella, you are putting that girl, Miss Carlyon, quite out of her place, and I won't stand it.'

'Oh, grandmamma!' exclaimed Finella, deprecatingly, 'this is only a little kindness to one who has seen better times; and she had a horse of her own in Devonshire.'

The horses were duly brought round in time: Fern with his silky mane carefully and prettily plaited by the nimble little fingers of Finella—a process which old Sandy Macrupper always watched with delight and approval. And Dulcie, mounted on Flirt, a spotted grey, looked every inch a lady of the best style, in an apple-green habit of Finella's, with her golden hair beautifully coiled under a smart top-hat, put well forward over her forehead. She was perfect, to her little tan-coloured gauntlet gloves, and was—Lady Fettercairn, who glanced from the window, was compelled to admit silently—'very good form indeed.'

Escorted by Shafto and a groom, they set forth; and, save for the unwelcome presence of the former, to Dulcie it was a day of delight, which she thought she never should forget.

Dulcie, we have said, had been wont to scamper about the Devonshire lanes, where the clustered apples grew thick overhead, on her Welsh cob, and now on horseback she felt at home in her own sphere again; her colour mounted, her blue eyes sparkled, and the girl looked beautiful indeed.

She almost felt supremely happy; and Finella laughed as she watched her enjoying the sensations of power and management, and the independence given by horse-exercise—the life, the stir, the action, and joyous excitement of a thorough good 'spin' along a breezy country road.

Shafto, however, was in a sullen temper, and vowed secretly that never again would he act their cavalier, because the girls either ignored him by talking to each other, or only replied to any remarks he ventured to make and these were seldom of an amusing or original nature. Indeed, he felt painfully and savagely how hateful his presence was to both.

Despite Lady Fettercairn, other rides followed, for Finella was difficult to control, and in her impulsive and coaxing ways proved generally irrepressible. Thus she took Dulcie all over the country: to the ruined castle of Fettercairn, to Den Finella, and to the great cascade—a perpendicular rock, more than seventy feet high, over which the Finella River pours on its way from Garvock, where it rises, to the sea at Johnshaven.

Returning slowly from one of these rides, with their pads at a walking pace, with the groom a long way in their rear, Dulcie, breaking a long silence, during which both seemed to be lost in thought, said:

'Troubles are doubly hard to bear when we have to keep them to ourselves; thus I feel happier, at least easier in mind, now that I have told you all about poor Florian.'

'And I, that I have told you about Captain Hammersley,' replied Finella; 'though of course I shall never see him again.'

'After what he saw, and what he no doubt thinks, how can I expect to do so? My greatest affliction is that I must seem so black in his eyes. Yet it is impossible for me not to feel the deepest and most tender interest in him—to watch with aching heart the news from the seat of war, and all the movements of his regiment—the movements in which he must have a share.'

'Things cannot, nay, must not, go on thus between you. The false position should be cleared up, explained away. What is to be done?'

'Grin and bear it, as the saying is, Dulcie. Nothing can avail us now—nothing,' said Finella, with a break in her voice.'

Despite all she had been told about the antecedents of the latter, Finella blushed scarlet at the vision of what Hammersley—the proud and haughty Vivian Hammersley—would think of his love-affairs being put into the hands of one of his own soldiers; but Dulcie, thinking only of who Florian was, did not see it in this light, or that it would seem like a plain attempt to lure an angry lover back again.

'Unless you wish me to die of shame,' said Finella, after a bitter pause—'shame and utter mortification—you will do no such thing, Dulcie Carlyon!'

The latter looked at the speaker, and saw that her dark eyes were flashing dangerously as she added:

'He left me in a gust of rage and suspicion of his own free will; and of his own free will must he return.'

'Will he ever do so, if the cause for that just rage and suspicion, born of his very love for you, is not explained away?'

'No, certainly. He is proud, and so am I; but I will never love anyone else, and mean in time to come to invest in the sleekest of tom-cats and die an old maid,' she added, with a little sob in her throat.

'As you see, Dulcie; but I will rather die than fling myself at any man's head, especially at his, through the medium of a letter of yours; but I thank you for the kind thought, dear Dulcie.'

So the latter said no more on the subject, yet made up her mind as to what she would do.

The circumstance that both their lovers, so dissimilar in rank and private means, were serving in the same regiment, facing the same dangers, and enduring the same hardships, formed a kind of sympathetic tie between these two girls, who could share their confidences with each other alone, though their positions in life, by present rank and their probable future, were so far apart.

They never thought of how young they were, or that, if both their lovers were slain or never seen by them again through the contingencies of life, others would come to them and speak of love, perhaps successfully. Such ideas never occurred, however. Both were too romantic to be practical; and both—the rich one and the poor one—only thought of the desolate and forlorn years that stretched like a long and gloomy vista before them, with nothing to look forward to, and no one to care for, unless they became Sisters of Charity; and Finella, with all her thousands, sometimes spoke bitterly of doing so.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE EVENING OF GINGHILOVO.

Much about the time that the conversation we have just recorded was taking place between the two fair equestriennes, the subject thereof, then with the troops in the laager of Ginghilovo, was very full of the same matter they had in hand—himself and his supposed wrongs.

'She never could have really cared for me, or she never could have acted as she did, unless she wished with the contingencies of war to have two strings to her bow,' thought Hammersley, as he lay on the grass a little apart from all, and sucked his briar-root viciously. 'Perhaps she thought it was her money I wanted—not herself. Ah, how could she look into her glass and think so!'

Ever before him he had that horrid episode in the shrubbery, and saw in memory the girl he loved so passionately in the arms of another, who was giving her apparently the kisses men only give to one woman in the world—a sight that seemed to scorch his eyes and heart.

'Yes,' he would mutter, 'one may be mistaken in some things, but there are some things there is no mistaking, and that affair was one of them.'

Perhaps at that very instant of time Finella was posed, as he had seen her last, with 'Cousin' Shafto, and the thought made him hate her! He felt himself growing colder and harder, though his heart ached sorely, for the 'soul-hunger of love' was in it.

'Well, well,' he would mutter, as he tugged his dark moustache; 'what are called hearts have surely gone to the wall in this Victorian age.'

His bitter memories would have soon passed away, could he have seen, as if in a magic mirror, at that moment Finella, in her riding-habit, on her knees in the solitude of her own room, before a large photo of a handsome young fellow in the uniform of the 24th (his helmet under his right arm, his left hand on the hilt of his sword), gazing at it, yet scarcely seeing it, so full were her soft eyes of hot salt tears, while her sweet little face looked white, woe-begone, and most miserable. But now the bugles sounding on the various flanks of the laager, when about six in the evening a general hum of voices pervaded it, and the order 'Stand to your arms!' announced that the enemy was in sight of the trenches.

In front of the old kraal of Ginghilovo, behind an earthen breastwork and abattis of felled trees, were the 60th Rifles, in their tunics of dark green, and sailors of the Shah with their Gatling guns, which they playfully called 'bull-dogs and barrel-organs.'

They were flanked by some of the 57th and two seven-pounders; the Argyleshire Highlanders, then in green tartan trews, held the rear face; and the defences were prolonged by the Lanarkshire, the 3rd Buffs, and some more of the Naval Brigade with a rocket battery.

Every heart in the laager beat high, and every face flushed with intense satisfaction, as two sombre columns of Zulus appeared, spreading like a human flood over the ground, after crossing the reedy Inyezane stream, deploying in a loose formation, which enabled them to find cover behind scattered boulders and patches of bush.

Now, when on the eve of an action, Hammersley, like every other officer, felt that new and hitherto unknown dread and doubt of the result which has more than once come upon our troops of all ranks, born of the new and abominable system which in so many ways has achieved the destruction of the grand old British army—'the army which would go anywhere, and do anything'—by the abolition of the regimental system, and with it the power of cohesion; but the worst, the so-called 'territorial system,' had not yet come.

Encouraged by the countenance and praises of Hammersley, Florian left nothing undone to win himself a name, and had already become distinguished for his daring, discretion, and acuteness of observation among all the Mounted Infantry when scouting or reconnoitring, and his further promotion seemed now to be only a matter of time.

Both courted danger, apparently with impunity, as the brave and dashing often do: Florian with a view to the future; Hammersley to forget. Soldiers will make fun, even when under fire, so some of his comrades quizzed Florian in his old laced tunic, and dubbed him 'the Captain;' but Vivian Hammersley thought, how like a gentleman and officer he looked in the half-worn garment he had given him.

Through the long, wavy, and reed-like grass two columns of Zulus crept swiftly on in close rather than extended order, and furiously assailed the north face of the square held by the Highlanders, flanked as usual by extended horns, and all yelling like fiends broken loose, while brandishing their great shields and glittering assegais, till smitten with death and destruction under the close-rolling Highland musketry.

They were commanded by a noble savage, named Somapo, with Dabulamanzi and the eldest son of Sirayo as seconds.

Almost unseen by the darkness of their uniforms, the Rifles lay down flat behind their shelter-trenches; the barrels of their weapons rested firmly on the earthen bank, enabling them to take steady and deadly aim, while dropping in quick succession the cartridges into the breech-blocks without even moving the left arm or the right shoulder, against which the butt-plate of the rifle rested, and their terrible fire knocked over in writhing heaps the Zulus, who, in all their savage fury and bravery, came rushing on ten thousand strong and more.

'Their white and coloured shields,' wrote one who was present, 'their crests of leopard-skin and feathers, and wild ox-tails dangling from their necks, gave them a terrible unearthly appearance. Every ten or fifteen yards, and a shot would be fired, and then, with an unearthly yell, they would again rush on with a sort of measured dance, while a humming and buzzing sound in time to their movement was kept up.'

Meanwhile the laager was literally zoned with fire and enveloped with smoke; yet within it no sound was heard save the rattling roar of the musketry, the clatter of the breech-blocks, and triumphant bagpipes of the Highlanders, with an occasional groan or exclamation of agony as a bullet found its billet.

In the fury of their advance and struggles to get onward over their own dead and dying, the Zulus from the rear would break through the fighting line, jostling and dashing each other aside, and rush yelling on, until they too bit the dust.

The booming of the Gatling guns and the dread hiss of the blazing rockets were heard ever and anon amid the medley of other sounds, and for half an hour the showers of lead and iron tore through and through the naked masses, where the places of the fallen were instantly taken by others.

By half-past six the shrill yells of the Zulus died away; but in mute despair and fury they still struggled in hope to storm the laager, when, if once within its defences, the fate of all would be sealed.

Four times like a living sea they flung themselves against it, and four times by sheets of lead and iron they were hurled back from the reddened bayonet's point, while some remained in the open, firing from behind the bloody piles of their own dead, which lay in awful lines or swathes of black bodies with white shields, a hundred yards apart, in rear of each other.

And these, under Captain Barrow and Hammersley, sprang with alacrity to their saddles, slinging their rifles as they filed out of the laager.

'Front form squadron!' was now the order, and the sections of fours swept round into line.

'Come on, my lads!' cried Hammersley, as he unsheathed his sword and dug the spurs into his horse; 'forward—trot, gallop! By Jove! an hour of this work

And away went the Mounted Infantry over the terrible swathes at a swinging pace.

Like most of the few officers of that peculiar and extemporised force, Vivian Hammersley had been accustomed to cross country and ride to hounds, and to deem that the greatest outdoor pleasure in life.

Tattoo, Florian's horse, fortunately for him in the work he had to do that evening, proved to be a tried Cape shooting-horse, accustomed to halt the moment his rein is dropped, and to stand like a rock when his rider fires. An experienced shooting-horse requires no sign from his master when required to stand, and on hearing a sound or stir in the bush is alert as a dog scenting danger or game.

Florian loved the animal like a friend, and often shared his beer with him, as Homer tells us the Greek warriors of old shared their wine with their battle-chargers; we suppose it is only human nature that we must love something that is in propinquity with us.

The Mounted Infantry overtook the fugitive Zulus, and fell furiously, sword in hand, upon their left flank, but not without receiving a scattered fire that emptied a few saddles.

The routed fled with a speed peculiarly their own; but Captain Barrow and his improvised troopers were in close pursuit, and from the laager their sword-blades could be seen flashing in the evening sunshine, as the cuts were dealt downward on right and left, and the foe was overtaken, pierced, and ridden over and through.

In this work the force necessarily became somewhat broken, and Hammersley, who, in the ardour of the pursuit, and being splendidly mounted, had outstripped all the Mounted Infantry and gone perilously far in advance, had his horse shot under him.

'Captain Hammersley—Hammersley! He will be cut to pieces!' cried several of the soldiers, who saw him and his horse go down in a cloud of dust, and in another moment he was seen astride the fallen animal contending against serious odds with his sword and revolver. And now ensued one of those episodes which were of frequent occurrence in the service of our Mounted Infantry.

Florian saw the sore strait in which Hammersley was placed, and had, quick as thought, but one desire—to save him or die by his side. At that part of the field a watercourse—a tributary of the Inyezene River—separated him from Hammersley, but putting the pace upon Tattoo, he rode gallantly to face it. Rider and horse seemed to possess apparently but one mind—one impulse. Tattoo cocked his slender ears, gave a glance at the water, sparkling in the setting sun, and, springing from his powerful and muscular hind-legs, cleared the stream from bank to bank—a distance not less than fifteen feet.

'Hurra!' burst from several of the troop, some of whom failed to achieve the leap. So Florian rode forward alone, and in less time than we have taken to record it, was by the side of Hammersley, who was bleeding from a wound in the left arm from an assegai launched at him by one of three powerful savages with whom he was contending, and in whom Florian recognised Methagazulu, the son of the famous Sirayo.

The last shot in Hammersley's revolver disposed of one; Florian shot a second, 'and drove his bayonet through the side of Sirayo's son, whom others were now returning to succour, and, lifting Hammersley on his own horse, conducted him rearward to a place of safety, covering the rear with his rifle, pouring in a quick fire with an excellent aim till a dozen of his comrades came up and received them both with a cheer.

Though wounded, Methagazulu did not die then, for, as we have elsewhere said, the close of the war found him a prisoner in the gaol of Pietermaritzburg.

But for the succour so promptly accorded by Florian, another moment would have seen that savage, after wounding Hammersley by one assegai, give him the coup de grace with another; as it is a superstition with the Zulus that if they do not rip their enemies open, disembowelling them, as their bodies swell and burst when dead, so will those of the slayers in life; and so firm is their belief in that, that after the victory had been won at Rorke's Drift many of the Zulus were seen to pause, even under a heavy fire, to rip up a few of our dead who lay outside the entrenchment; and cases have been known in which warriors who have been unable to perform this barbarous ceremony have committed suicide to escape what they deemed their inevitable doom.

Florian tied his handkerchief round Hammersley's arm, above the wound, to stay the blood, till he left him safely with the ambulance waggons and in care of Staff-Surgeon Gallipot; and though faint with the bleeding, for the wound was long and deep—a regular gash—Hammersley wrung the hand of his saver, and said:

'My gallant young fellow, you will have good reason if I live—as I doubt not I will—to recall this evening's work with satisfaction.'

'I shall ever remember, sir, with pride that I saved your life—the life of the only friend I have now in our decimated regiment since I lost poor Bob Edgehill.'

'It is not that I mean,' said Hammersley faintly, 'but, if spared, I shall see to your future, and all that sort of thing, you understand.'

'Hope nothing,' said Hammersley, closing his eyes, as memory brought a gush of bitterness to his heart.

Florian knew not what to make of this sudden change of mood in his officer, and so remained discreetly silent.

Florian took the water-bottle from his waist-belt and drew out the plug; the sufferer drank thirstily, and on being placed in a sitting position, with a blanket about him, strove to obtain a little sleep, being weary and faint with the events of the past day.

'Whoever he is, that lad has good blood in his veins, and he has no fear of lavishing it,' was his last thought as he watched the receding figure of Florian leading away his favourite Tattoo by the bridle.

Our total casualties at Ginghilovo were only sixty-one; those of the Zulus above twelve hundred. The story of the encounter might have been different had another column of ten thousand men, which had been despatched from Ulundi by Cetewayo the day after the march of Somapo, effected a junction with the latter.

Etschowe, the point to be relieved, was now fifteen miles distant; but Colonel Pearson in his isolated fort must have heard of the victory, for Florian, when out with a few files on scouting duty, could see the signals of congratulation flashed therefrom.

After the fierce excitement of the past day, he felt—he knew not why—depressed and almost sorrowful; but perhaps the solitudes among which he rode impressed him when night came on.

Lighted up by hundreds and thousands of stars, the clear sky spread like a vast shining canopy overhead, and then the great round moon shed down a flood of silver sheen on the grassy downs where the black bodies of the naked dead, with fallen jaws and glistening teeth and eyes, lay thick as leaves in autumn, and Tattoo picked his steps gingerly among them.

And in such a solemn and silent time, more keenly than ever, came to Florian's mind the ever-recurring thoughts of Dulcie Carlyon and of what she was doing; where was she and with whom—in safety or in peril?

Next morning Florian—as he was detailed for duty to the front with the Mounted Infantry, paid a farewell visit to Captain Hammersley, whom he found reposing among some straw in a kind of tilt cart, and rather feverish from the effects of his wound, and who had been desired to remain behind in the laager for a little time, though he could with difficulty be prevailed upon to do so.

Preceding the march of the column, the Mounted Infantry under Barrow filed forth at an easy pace in search of the enemy.

It was scarcely a new experience to Florian now, or to any man with the army in Zululand, that of putting a savage to death. Every rifle slew them by scores, when a hundred rounds of ammunition per man were poured into the naked hordes in less than an hour's time.

Lord Chelmsford left some of the Kentish Buffs, the Lanarkshire, and the Naval Brigade to garrison the laager at Ginghilovo, and marched for Etschowe with the 57th, the 60th Rifles, and Argyleshire Highlanders, escorting a long train of Scottish carts, laden with food and stores, preceded by the Mounted Infantry scouting far in advance.

The whole column wore the white helmet, but the dark green of the Rifles and the green tartan trews of the Highlanders varied the colour of the scarlet mass that marched up the right bank of the Inyezene river, with drums beating and bayonets flashing in the April sunshine.

Along the whole line of march were seen shields, rifles, assegais, furs, and feathers strewed about in thousands, cast away by the fugitives who had fled from Ginghilovo, and here and there the Kaffir vultures, hovering in mid air above a donga, or swooping down into it with a fierce croak, indicated where some dead men were lying.

Briskly the troops pushed on to rescue Colonel Pearson and his isolated garrison, which, during a blockade that had now extended to ten weeks, had been in daily expectation of experiencing the fate of those who perished at Isandhlwana; and surmounting all the natural difficulties of a rugged country, intersected by watercourses which recent rains had swollen, by sunset the mounted men under Barrow were close to the fort, and heard the hearty British cheers of a hungry garrison mingling with a merry chorus which they were singing.

Under Colonel Pemberton, the Rifles pushed on ahead with Lord Chelmsford, just as an officer on a grey charger came dashing round the base of the hill surmounted by the fort.

'Old fellow—how are you?' and grasping each other's hand, they rode on towards the fort, where the General was received with an enthusiasm which grew higher when the Argyleshire Highlanders marched in with all their kilted pipers playing 'The Campbells are coming.'

The fort was destroyed and abandoned, and on the 4th of April the united columns began to fall back on Ginghilovo, the Mounted Infantry as usual in front, but clad in the uniform of that service—a Norfolk jacket and long untanned boots, all patched and worn now.

It was justly conceived that the laager would not be reached without fighting, as a body of Zulus, led in person by Dabulamanzi and the son of Sirayo, was expected to bar the way, and consequently serious loss of life was expected; but so far as Florian was concerned, he felt that he could face any danger now with comparative indifference, and his daily pleasure consisted in carefully grooming and feeding Tattoo; and Florian, as he rode on, was thinking with some perplexity of the farewell words of Captain Hammersley.

'Good-bye, sergeant—we have all our troubles, I suppose, whatever they are, and I should not care much if mine were ended here at Ginghilovo.'

'I should think that you cannot have much to trouble you, sir,' was Florian's laughing response as he left him.

CHAPTER XIV.

NEWS FROM THE SEAT OF WAR.

It was a soft and breezy April morning. The young leaves had scarcely burst their husk-like sheaths in the alternate showers and sunshine; the lambs were bleating in the meadows, the birds sang on bush and tree, the white clouds were floating in the azure sky, and the ivy rustled on the old walls of turreted Craigengowan, when there came some tidings that found a sharp echo in the hearts of Dulcie and Finella.

Arm-in-arm, as girls will often do, they were idling and talking of themselves and their own affairs in all the luxury of being together alone, near a stately old gateway of massive iron bars, hung on solid pillars, surmounted by time-worn wyverns, and all around it, without and within, grew tall nettles, mighty hemlock, and other weeds; while the avenue to which it once opened had disappeared, and years upon years ago been blended with the lawn, for none had trod it for 146 years, since the last loyal Laird of Craigengowan had ridden forth to fight for King James VIII., saying that it was not to be unclosed again till his return; and he returned no more, so it remains closed unto this day.

And it has been more than once averred by the peasantry that on the 13th of November, the anniversary of the battle in which he fell, when the night wind is making an uproar in the wintry woods of Craigengowan, the low branches crashing against each other, a weird moon shines between rifts in the black flying clouds, and the funeral-wreaths of the departed harvest flutter on the leafless hedges, a spectred horseman, in the costume of Queen Anne's time, his triangular hat bound with feathers, a square-skirted coat and gilded gambadoes—a pale, shimmering figure, through which the stars sparkle—can be seen outside the old iron gate, gazing with wistful and hollow eyes through the rusty bars, as if seeking for the vanished avenue down which he had ridden with his cuirassed troop to fight for King James VIII.; for sooth to say, old Craigengowan is as full of ghostly legends as haunted Glamis itself.

Finella had just told this tale to Dulcie when a valet rode past the gate and entered the lawn by another with the post-bag for the house. From this Finella took out a newspaper—one of the many it contained—and with eager eyes the two girls scanned its columns for the last news from Zululand, and simultaneously a shrill exclamation, which made the man turn in his saddle as he rode on, escaped them both.

The paper contained a brief telegraphic notice of the conflict at the laager of Ginghilovo, and with it the following paragraph:

'Captain Vivian Hammersley, of the unfortunate 24th Regiment, led a squadron of Barrow's Mountain Infantry; and having, with the most brilliant gallantry, pressed the flying foe much too far, had his horse shot under him, and was in danger of being instantly assegaied by several infuriated savages, who were driven off and shot down in quick succession by Sergeant Florian MacIan, who mounted the wounded officer on his own horse and brought him safely into the lines, for which noble act of humanity and valour he is, we believe, recommended for promotion by Captain Barrow, of the 19th Hussars, commanding the Mounted Infantry, and by Lord Chelmsford. The fatal day of Isandhlwana has made many commissions vacant in the unfortunate 24th Foot; and we have no doubt that one of them will be conferred upon this gallant young sergeant.'

'Oh, Dulcie, let me kiss you—I can't kiss your Florian just now!' exclaimed the impulsive Finella, embracing her companion, whose eyes, like her own, were brimming with tears of joy and sympathy.

Hammersley had received a wound of which no details were given; and that circumstance, by its vaguity, filled the heart of Finella with the keenest anxiety. Oh, if he should die believing what he did of her, when she had been and was still so true and loyal to him!

The intelligence rather stunned her; and for some minutes she remained paralyzed with dismay. She was powerless, with all her wealth, to succour in any way her suffering lover, and no resolution could shape itself in her mind. He might be dying, or already dead, for the fight had taken place some days ago—dying amid suffering and misery, while she remained idly, lazily, and in comfort amid the luxuries of Craigengowan. Even Dulcie failed to console her; and declining to appear at the breakfast-table, she took refuge in her own room, with the usual feminine plea of a headache.

'Florian, poor dear Florian! so good, so brave, so fearless!' said Dulcie to herself aloud; 'how glad I am he has achieved this, for her sake!'

How sweet and soft grew her voice as she uttered the name of the lost, the absent one, while an hysterical lump was rising in her throat, and Shafto, who had seen the paper and knew the source of this emotion, looked grimly in her face, with twitching lips and knitted brows.

'I have no chance,' thought he, 'with these two girls—either Dulcie the poor or Finella the rich. Yet why should I not contrive to bend both to my purpose?' was his evil afterthought. 'Well,' said he aloud; 'you have seen the news, of course?'

'Don't cry, Dulcie!' said Shafto, with a little emotion of shame, 'or you will make me feel like a brute now.'

'I always thought you must have felt like one long ago,' retorted the girl, as she swept disdainfully past him.

As Lord and Lady Fettercairn had no desire to bring the name of Captain Hammersley on the tapis, no reference whatever to the affair of Ginghilovo, or even to the Zulu War, was made in the presence of Finella.

Even if the latter had not been engaged, as she still could not help deeming herself, to Hammersley, and had she not a decided, repugnance to Shafto, her pride and her whole soul must have revolted against a mariage de convenance. She had formed, girl-like, her own conceptions of an ideal man, and beyond all whom she met, in London or elsewhere, Vivian Hammersley was her 'Prince Charming;' and in a day or two her mind was partially set at rest when she read a description of his wound, a flesh one, inflicted by an assegai, and which was then healing fast, but, as she knew, only to enable him to face fresh perils.

To be bartered away to anyone after being grotesquely wooed did not suit her independent views, and ere long her grandparents began to think with annoyance that they had better let her alone; but Lady Fettercairn was impatient and irrepressible.

He had a low opinion of the sex, picked up perhaps in the bar-parlour of the inn at Revelstoke, if not inherent in his own nature. He had read somewhere that 'women love a judicious mixture of hardihood and flattery—the whole secret lies in that;' also, that if their hearts are soft their heads are softer in proportion.

Lady Fettercairn was somewhat perplexed when watching the young folks at Craigengowan.

She shrewdly suspected, of course, that Finella's coldness to Shafto was due to the influence of their late guest Hammersley, though she never could have guessed at the existence of the wedding-ring and diamond keeper he had entrusted to her care; but she failed to understand the terms on which her 'grandson' was with her companion, Miss Carlyon, and, though there was nothing tangible or reprehensible, there was an undefined something in their bearing she did not like.

Sometimes when talking of Devonshire, of Revelstoke, of the old town of Newton Ferrars, the dell that led to Noss, of the Yealm, the Erme, and the sea-beat Mewstone as safe and neutral topics, the girl seemed affable enough to him, for memories of her English home softened her heart; but when other topics were broached she was constrained to him and icy cold.

To further the interests of Shafto by keeping him and Finella isolated and as much together as possible, Lady Fettercairn did not go to London and thus seek society. Fashionable folks—unless Parliamentary—do not return to town till Easter; but Lord Fettercairn, though a Representative Peer, cared very little about English and still less about Scottish affairs, or indeed any interests but his own; so, instead of leaving Craigengowan, they had invited a few guests there—men who had come for rod-fishing in the Bervie, the Carron and the Finella, with some ladies to entertain them, thus affording the girl means of avoiding Shafto whenever she chose.

The stately terrace before the house often looked gay from the number of guests promenading in the afternoon, or sitting in snug corners in wicker chairs covered with soft rugs—the ladies drinking tea, the bright colours of their dresses coming out well against the grey walls of the picturesque old mansion.

Among other visitors were the vinegar-visaged Lady Drumshoddy, and Messrs. Kippilaw, senior and junior, the latter a dapper little tomtit of a Writer to the Signet, intensely delighted and flattered to be among such 'swell' company, believing it was the result of his natural brilliance and attractions, and not of respect for his worthy old father, Kenneth Kippilaw.

The latter—a rara avis, scarce as the dodo and his kindred—was intensely national—a lover of his country and of everything Scottish; an enthusiast at Burns' festivals, and singularly patriotic to be what is locally termed a 'Parliament House bred man.' Thus the anti-nationality or utter indifference of Lord Fettercairn was a frequent bone of contention between them; and so bitterly did they sometimes argue about Scotland and her neglected interests, that it is a marvel the Peer did not seek out a more obsequious agent.

'Like his uncle, the late Master of Melfort, Mr. Shafto must go into Parliament,' said old Mr. Kippilaw; 'but I hope he will make a better use of his time.'

'By attending to Scottish affairs, and getting us equal grants with England and Ireland for public purposes.'

'Stuff—the old story, my dear sir. Who cares about Scotland or her interests?'

'The more shame for her—a province that contributes all her millions to the Imperial Exchequer and gets nothing in return.'

'A sure sign she doesn't want anything,' replied the peer, with one of his silent laughs. 'I wish you would not worry me with this patriotic "rot," Kippilaw—excuse the vulgarity of the phrase; but so long as I can get my rents out of Craigengowan and Finella, I don't care a jot if all the rest, Scotland with all its rights and wrongs, history, poetry and music, was ten leagues under the sea!'

So thus, for two reasons, political and personal, the 'Fettercairns' just then did not go to 'town.'

On the terrace this very afternoon Lady Fettercairn was watching Finella and Dulcie, linked arm in arm conversing apart from all, and her smooth brow clouded; for she knew well that the fact of Hammersley owing his life to Florian MacIan would make—as it did—a new tie between the two girls.

'You see, Shafto,' said she, 'how more than ever does Finella put that girl out of her place. Though most useful as she is to me, always pleasant and irreproachably lady-like, I think I must get rid of her.'

'Not yet—not yet, grandmother,' said Shafto, who did not just then wish this climax; 'do give her another chance.'

'"After her"? Another vulgarism—impossible—you—you—the heir of Fettercairn!'

'Well, it gives one no credit for disinterested affection,' said this plausible young gentleman.

We have said that Lady Fettercairn was irrepressible in seeking to control Finella.

'How quiet and abstracted you seem! Why don't you entertain our friends?' said she, as the girl drew near her in an angle of the terrace, where they were alone.

'You seem to be for ever thinking, child; and I wonder what it can all be about.'

'I don't believe, grandmamma, it would interest you,' said Finella, a little defiantly.

'There you are wrong, Finella; what interests you, must of necessity interest me,' said Lady Fettercairn, haughtily yet languidly, as she fanned herself.

'Is it something new, then? I suspect your thoughts,' she continued with some asperity. 'Finella, listen to me again. You and Shafto are the only two left of the Melfort family; we wish the two branches united, for their future good—the good of the name and the title; and if Shafto goes into Parliament, I do not see why he should not perhaps become Viscount or Earl of Fettercairn.'

'The old story! I have no ambition, grandmamma,' shrugging her shoulders, 'and certainly none to be the wife of Shafto, even were he made a duke. So please to let me alone,' she added desperately, 'or I may tell you that of—of—Shafto you may not like to hear.'

And in sooth now, Lady Fettercairn, like her lord, had heard so much evil of Shafto lately that she abruptly dropped the subject for the time.

And now Shafto began once more to persecute poor Dulcie—a persecution which might have a perilous effect upon her future.

CHAPTER XV.

PERSECUTION.

Shafto felt, with no small satisfaction, that he could, to a certain extent, control the actions of both these girls. Finella could not reveal the secret of her quarrel with him without admitting the terms on which she had been with Hammersley; and Dulcie, he thought, dared not resent his conduct, lest—through his influence with Lady Fettercairn—she might be cast into the world, without even a certificate that would enable her to procure another situation of any kind. Thus, to a certain extent, he revelled in security so far as both were concerned.

And deeming now that all must be at an end between Finella and Hammersley, he thought to pique the former perhaps by attentions to Dulcie—attentions by which he might ultimately gain some little favours for himself.

He was aware that he had an ample field of old and mutual interest or associations to go back upon with Dulcie; thus he thought if he could entangle her into an apparent flirtation for the purpose of mortifying Finella, and catching her heart on the rebound, sore as it must be with the seeming indifference of Hammersley, he would gain his end; and this mutual intimacy eventually annoyed and surprised Lady Fettercairn, and was likely to prove fatal to the interests and position of Dulcie, whom he felt he must either win for himself in some fashion, and, if not, in revenge have her expelled from Craigengowan.

One day the girl was alone. She was feeding the swans in the artificial lakelet that lay below the terrace. It was a serene and sunny forenoon; the water was smooth as crystal, and reflected the old house with all its turrets, crow-stepped gables, and dormer-gablets line for line. It mirrored also the swans swimming double, bird and shadow, like beautiful drifting boats, and the great white water-lilies that seemed to sleep rather than float on its surface.

It was indeed a drowsy, golden afternoon, and Dulcie Carlyon, an artist at heart, was fully impressed by the loveliness of her surroundings, when Shafto stood before her.

'A penny for your thoughts, Dulcie.' said that personage smilingly, seeing that she had been pondering so deeply that his approach had been unnoticed by her.

'They might startle you more than you think,' replied Dulcie, with undisguised annoyance.

'With yourself for the heroine, or Finella; and that fellow Florian for the hero? Then there must be the requisite villain.'

Shafto's brow grew black as midnight, and what coarse thing he might have said we know not, but policy made him ignore her reply.

'Please not to remain speaking to me,' said she, glancing nervously at the windows of the house; 'your doing so may displease the friends of Finella.'

'It is of her I wish to speak. Listen, Dulcie. I have not the influence over her I had hoped to have before you came among us. If that interloper Hammersley had not absorbed her interest, no doubt, as matters once looked, she might have pleased her relations and bound herself to me, provided she had never found out that I had loved a dear one, far away in Devonshire, and had but a half-concealed fancy for herself.'

'I don't want to marry her now, any more than she wants to marry me,' he resumed unblushingly; 'but I may tell you it is rather hard to be ordered to play the lover to a girl who will scarcely throw me a civil word.'

But Dulcie only thought, 'What paradox is this? He dared again to make love to herself, after all that had passed with reference to Florian, and yet to be jealous of Finella's profound disdain of him.'

'Won't you try and love me a little, Dulcie?' said he, attempting his most persuasive tone.

'What do you mean, Shafto?' demanded the girl in great anger and perplexity; 'even if I would take you, which I would rather die than do, with all your wealth and prospective title, you could not marry me and Finella too!'

'Who speaks of marriage?' growled Shafto, under his breath, while a malicious smile glittered in his cold eyes, as he added aloud, 'You know which I wish to marry.'

'Do not think of it—she is under a more potent influence than I possess,' replied Dulcie, who, bewildered by his manner and remarks, was turning away, when he again confronted her, and the girl glanced uneasily at the windows, where, although she knew it not, the eyes of those she dreaded most were observing them both.

To marry Dulcie, even if she would have him, certainly did not suit 'the book' of Shafto; but, as he admired her attractive person, and hated Florian with unreasoning rancour, as some men do who have wronged others, he would gladly have lured her into a liaison with himself. He knew, however, her pride and purity too well, but he was not without the hope of blunting them, and eventually bending her to his will, under the threat or pressure of getting her expelled from Craigengowan, and thrown penniless, friendless, and with, perhaps, a tainted name, upon a cold, bitter, and censorious world.

'I know you better than to believe that you love me any more than I do you,' said Dulcie, with ill-concealed scorn; 'love is not in your nature, even for the brilliant Finella. You love her money—not herself.'

'But I do: beyond the affair of the locket, born of my very regard for you, what is my offence?'

'What you are doing now, following me about—forcing your society on me, and tormenting as you do. I shall be compromised with Lady Fettercairn if you do not take care.'

'I think you treat me with cruel coldness, considering the love I have borne you so long. Why should not we be even the friends we once were at Revelstoke, and like each other always?'

'What have I done to Florian?' he demanded, changing colour under the influence of his own secret thoughts.

'My dear little Dulcie, what is the use of all this foolish regard for Florian and revengeful mood at me? We shall never see him again.'

'Oh, Shafto, how can you talk thus coldly of Florian, with whom you went to school and college together, played together as boys, and read together as men—were deemed almost brothers rather than cousins! Shame on you!' and she stamped her little foot on the ground as she spoke.

'How pretty you look when angry! You do not care for me just now, perhaps; but in time you will, Dulcie.'

'But I will take you away from here, and you need be a dependant no longer,' said he, while his countenance brightened and his manner warmed, as he utterly mistook her meaning. 'My allowance is most handsome, thanks to Lord—Lord—to my grandfather, and he can't last for ever. The old fellow is sixty-eight if he is a day. Forget all past unpleasantness; think only of the future, and all I can make it for you. I will give you any length of time if you will only give me your love.'

'Never, I tell you. Oh, this is intolerable!' exclaimed the girl passionately, finding that he still barred her way.

'Beware, Dulcie,' said he, as his shifty eyes flashed. 'The world and success in it are for him who knows how to wait; meantime, let us be friends. Friendship is said to be more enduring than love.'

'Well do you know why. And let me remind you that all sin brings its own punishment in this world.'

'Why the deuce do you preach thus to me?' he asked savagely, his fears again awakened, so true is it that

'And what do you take me for that you treat me thus, and talk to me in this manner?'

'What do I take you for? By your treatment of me I take you to be an insolent, cruel, and heartless fellow, who can be worse at times.'

'Take care! the pedestal you stand on may give way. It lies with me to smash it, and some fine day you may be sorry for the way in which you have dared to treat me, Shafto——'

'Melfort, d—n you!' he retorted coarsely, and losing all command over himself.

Tears now sprang to her eyes, and then, as he half feared to carry the matter so far with her, he apologized.

She made no reply, but fixed her lovely dark blue eyes upon him with an expression of such loathing and contempt that even he was stung to the heart by it.

He stood aside to let her do so, and she swept by, holding her golden head haughtily erect; but Dulcie feared him now more than ever, and certainly she had roused revenge in his heart, with certain vague emotions of alarm.

Of all the thousands of homes in Scotland and England how miserable and unlucky was the chance that cast her under the same roof with the evil-minded Shafto! thought the girl in the solitude of her own room. But then, otherwise, she would never have known and shared the sweet and flattering friendship of Finella Melfort; and, as she never knew what wicked game Shafto might play, he would perhaps succeed in depriving her even of that solace as the end of his persecution.

The whole tenor of the conversation or interview forced upon her by Shafto impressed her with a keen and deep sense of humiliation that made her weep bitterly; how much more keen would the sense of that have been had she known what in the purity of her nature she never suspected, that, amid all his grotesque love-making, marriage was no way comprehended in his scheme!

Much as she disliked Shafto, an emotion of delicacy, with a timid doubt of the future with regard to Captain Hammersley, and what was behind that future with regard to 'the cousins,' as she of course deemed them to be, induced Dulcie to remain silent with Finella on the subject of his persistent and secret attentions to herself, though she would have deplored to see Finella the wife of Shafto.

'Fettercairn, look how Miss Carlyon and Shafto are flirting near the Swan's Pool!' said the Lady of that Ilk, drawing her husband's attention to the pair from a window of the drawing-room.

'What makes you think they are doing so?' he asked, but nevertheless with knitted brows.

'No; it is so long since I did anything in that way myself that really I—aw——'

'See with what empressement he bends down to address her, and she keeps her head down, too, though she seems to crest it up at times.'

'But she edges away from him palpably, as if she disliked what he is saying, and, by Jove, she looks indignant, too!'

'That may be all acting, in suspicion that she is observed, or it may be to lure him on; one never knows what may be passing in a girl's mind—if she thinks herself attractive especially.'

'That is more than I can tell you—he is rather a riddle to me; but the girl is decidedly more than pretty, and very good style, too.'

'And hence the more dangerous. I must speak with Shafto on this subject seriously, or——'

'If we fail in marrying Shafto to Finella, who can say whom he may marry, as his instincts seem somewhat low, and after we are gone there may be a whole clan of low and sordid prodigals here in Craigengowan.'

'Desecrating the spots rendered almost sacred by association with a great and famous past,' said Lord Fettercairn loftily.

What this great and famous 'past' was, he could scarcely have told. It was not connected with his own mushroom line, whatever it might have been with the former lords of Craigengowan, whose guests had at times been Kings of Scotland and Princes of France and Spain.

'Finella is young, and does not know her own heart,' he resumed; 'besides, I believe it is enough generally to recommend a girl to marry a certain man, for her to set her face against him unreasoningly. But I think—and hope—that our Finella is different from the common run of girls.'

Lady Fettercairn thought of Lennard and Flora MacIan and remained silent, remembering that he too, the disowned and the outcast, was a genuine Melfort in the same sense.

CHAPTER XVI.

A THREAT.

To Finella, so pure in mind and proud in spirit, it was fast becoming utterly intolerable to find herself in the false and degraded position the craft of Shafto had placed her in with regard to so honourable a man as Vivian Hammersley; and the more she brooded over it, the deeper became her loathing of the daring trickster—a sentiment which she was, by the force of circumstances, compelled to veil and conceal from her guardians: hence, the more bitter her thoughts, the more passionate her longing for an explanation, and more definite her wishes.

Hammersley, though still a fact, seemed somehow to have passed out of her life, and thus she often said in a kind of wailing way to Dulcie:

'Oh, that he had never come here, or that I had never known or met him, in London or anywhere else! Then I should not have felt what it is to love and to lose him!'

'Pardon me, darling, but take courage,' replied Dulcie, caressing her. 'I have written to Florian at last, and his reply will tell us all about Captain Hammersley, and how he is looking, and so forth; though Florian, in a position so subordinate, cannot be in his confidence, of course.'

She did not add that she had in her letter told the whole story of the false position in which Finella had been placed, lest the latter's pride might revolt at such interference in her affairs, however well and kindly meant; and lest the letter—if it proved disappointing, by her lover remaining jealous, suspicious, obdurate, or contemptuous, if Florian ventured to speak on the subject, which she scarcely hoped—should prove a useless humiliation to Finella, who longed eagerly as herself for the reply.

But Dulcie prayed in her simple heart that good might come of it before the evil which she so nervously dreaded fell upon herself; for Shafto had made such humble apologies for his conduct to her on the day he interrupted her when feeding the swans, that, though she gave him her hand in token, not of forgiveness but of truce, she feared he was concocting fresh mischief; for soon after, encouraged thereby, he began his old persecution, but carefully and in secret again.

Finding that his chances with Finella were now apparently nil, even though all seemed at an end between her and Vivian Hammersley, Shafto, by force of old habit, perhaps, turned his attention to Dulcie, who, in her humble and dependent capacity, had a difficult card to play, while feeling exasperated and degraded by the passion he expressed for her on every available opportunity. Not that he would, she suspected, have married a poor girl like her, as one with money, no matter who, was the wisest match for him, lest the discovery of who he was came to pass, though that he deemed impossible now.

Shafto had learned and imitated much among the new and aristocratic folks in whose circle he found himself cast; and thus it was that he dared to make secret love, and to torment the helpless Dulcie with words that spoke of—

Had he done that, she would have treated him quite as coldly and scornfully; but she could do no more than she did. Yet he was fast making her life at Craigengowan a torture, and she feared him almost more than his so-called grandmother, who was only a proud and selfish patrician, while he—ah, she knew too well what he was capable of; but Dulcie had something more to learn yet.

One day, after having imbibed more wine, or eau-de-vie, than was good for him in Mr. Grapeston's pantry, as he sometimes did, he addressed the girl in a way there was no misunderstanding. She trembled and grew pale.

'Well, one thing I promise you if you try to please me,' said he—'to please me, do you understand?—while you remain under this roof, which I hope, darling, will not be long now—I shall trouble you no more.'

She drew back with a pallid face and a hauteur that would have become Lady Fettercairn herself, while he in turn made her a low mock bow, and stalked tipsily off with what he thought a dignity of bearing, leaving her sick with terror of a future of insult and apprehension.

Watching closely, Lady Fettercairn observed the extreme caution and coldness of Dulcie's bearing to Shafto; but, not believing in it, or that a person in her dependent state could resist advances of any kind from one in his lofty position, supposed she had only to wait long enough and observe with care to find out if aught was wrong.

'But why wait?' said Lady Drumshoddy; 'why not dismiss the creature at once?' she added with asperity.

'How comes it that you are so intimate with this girl Carlyon?' said Lady Fettercairn one day.

'How often have I told you that we are old friends—knew each other in Devonshire since we were a foot high.'

'Besides, she has a lover, I believe, whose likeness she wears in a locket; and though she may be content to throw him over for rank and wealth with you, surely you would not care to receive a second-hand affection.'

'How your tongue goes on, grandmother!' said Shafto, greatly irritated; 'you are like Finella's pad Fern when it gets the bit between its teeth.'

'Thank you! But this lover or cousin, or whatever he is, of whom Miss Carlyon actually once spoke to me—who is he, and where is he?'

'How the deuce should I know!' exclaimed Shafto, growing pale; 'gone to the dogs, I suppose, as I always thought he would.'

That was enough for Lady Fettercairn, who, dropping that subject, returned with true feminine persistence to the other.

'I don't flirt with her; and, by Jove, he'd be a pretty clever fellow who could do so.'

'But can't I talk with her? We are old acquaintances, and have naturally much to say to each other.'

'Oh, by Jove! that is easier said than done. You don't know all the outs and ins of Finella; and one can't walk the course, so far as I can see.'

Shafto withdrew, but not before he saw the lace-edged handkerchief come into use, to hide the tears she did not shed at the brusque manner of her 'grandson,' who had failed to convince her, for she said to herself bitterly:

'There is a curse upon Craigengowan! Our youngest son threw himself and his life away upon a beggarly governess; and now our only grandson seems likely to play the same game with my upstart companion! I do like the girl, but, however, I must get rid of her.'

CHAPTER XVII.

WITH THE SECOND DIVISION.

Meanwhile the events of the war were treading thick on each other in Zululand. A fresh disaster had ensued at the Intombe river, where a detachment of the 80th Regiment was cut to pieces, and again old soldiers spoke with sorrow and disgust of the blunders and incapacity of those at head-quarters, who by their newfangled systems had reduced our once grand army to chaos.

Such alarms and surprises, like too many of the disasters and disgraces which befell our arms in these latter wars, were entirely due to the new formation of our battalions. 'That the destruction of the regimental system by Lord Cardwell has been the original cause of all our reverses, surprises, and humiliation, there can be little hesitation in saying,' to quote Major Ashe. 'The men at Isandhlwana were not well handled, it must be admitted, but it has since leaked out that many of them would not rally round their officers, but attempted safety in flight. Dozens of the men, sergeants, and other non-commissioned officers, have since disclosed that they did not know the names of their company officers, or those of their right or left hand men.'

Hence, by the newfangled system, there could be neither confidence nor cohesion. Elsewhere he tells us that the once-splendid 91st Highlanders, 'the envy of all recruiting sergeants, could only muster 200 men when ordered to Zululand,' but was made up by volunteers from other regiments—men all strangers to each other and to their officers, and whose facings were all the colours of the rainbow. Then, after the Intombe, followed the storming of the Inhlobane Mountain, where fell the gallant Colonel Weatherley, and the no less gallant old frontier farmer Pict Nys, who was last seen fighting to his final gasp against a horde of Zulus, across the dead body of his favourite horse, an empty revolver in his left hand, a blood-dripping sabre in his right, and more than one assegai, launched from a distance, quivering in his body.

The cry went to Britain now for more troops; and fresh reinforcements came, while the army in Zululand was reconstituted by Lord Chelmsford at Durban.

There, amid a brilliant staff in their new uniforms fresh from home, was one central figure, the ill-starred Prince Imperial of France, who had landed two days after the battle of Kambula, and had been appointed an extra aide-de-camp to the general commanding.

The army was now formed into two divisions: one under Major-General Crealock, C.B., and another under Major-General Newdigate, while a flying column under Sir Evelyn Wood was to act independently. Hammersley's squadron of Mounted Infantry was attached to the Second Division, with the movements of which our story has necessarily alone to do.

The 16th of April saw it marching northward of Natal, and on the 4th of May Lord Chelmsford, who had joined it after church parade—for the day was Sunday—suggested that a reconnaissance should be made towards the Valley of the Umvolosi River to select ground for an entrenched camp, and for this purpose Hammersley's squadron and Buller's Horse were ordered to the front.

The local troopers under that brilliant officer were now clad in a uniform manner—in brown cord breeches, mimosa-coloured jackets, long gaiters laced to the knee, and broad cavalier hats, with long scarlet or blue puggarees. The open collars of their flannel shirts displayed their bronzed necks; and picturesque-looking fellows they were, all armed with sabres and rifles of various patterns, slung across the back by a broad leather sling. Their horses were rough but serviceable, and active as mountain deer.

After riding some miles over grassy plateaux and rugged hilly ground, tufted with cabbage-tree wood, on a bright and pleasant morning, the local Horse were signalled to retire, as it was discovered that a great body of Zulus were watching their movements.

Unaware of this, Hammersley, with his Mounted Infantry, rode on for three miles, till they reached a great plateau near a place called Zungen Nek, where the pathway, if such it could be styled, was bordered by mimosa thorns, and where two bullets mysteriously fired—no one could tell from where, for no enemy was to be seen—whistled through the little squadron harmlessly, though both were as close to Florian as they could pass without hitting him, and one made Tattoo toss his head and lay his quivering little ears angrily back on his neck.

At this time some officers who had cantered to the front from where the division was halted, saw the dark figures of many of the enemy creeping along in the jungle, and watching them so intently that they were all unaware of their retreat being cut off by twenty of the Mounted Infantry under a sergeant—Florian.

'Forward, and at them!' cried the latter, as his men slung their rifles and galloped in loose formation, sabre in hand, to attack the savages, but suddenly found themselves on the edge of some precipitous cliffs, some three hundred feet in height, which compelled them for a moment or two to rein up till a narrow track was found, down which they descended in single file in a scrambling way, the hoofs of the rear horses throwing sand, gravel, and stones over those in front.

When the sounds made by the descent ceased, and the soldiers gained a turfy plateau, nothing could be seen of the foe, and all was silence—a silence that could be felt, like the darkness that rested on the land of Egypt. Then there burst forth a united yell that seemed to rend the welkin, and a vast horde of black-skinned Zulus, led by Methagazulu (the son of Sirayo), who had recovered from the wound he received at Ginghilovo, came rushing on, brandishing their assegais and rifles.

This ambuscade was more than Florian anticipated, and believing that all was lost, and that he and his party would be utterly cut off to a man, he gave the order to retire on the spur, and they splashed, girdle deep, through a ford of the Umvolosi, on which, as if by the guidance of Heaven, they chanced to hit.

With yells of baffled rage the savages followed them so closely that Florian and another trooper named Tom Tyrrell, who covered the rear, had to face about and fire by turns, till the open ground on the other side was reached.

'A close shave that business,' said Tom breathlessly. 'I thought that in three minutes' time every man Jack of us would have been assegaied.'

Galloping out of range, Florian's party now rejoined that of Hammersley, who congratulated them on their escape, and they all rode together back to head-quarters. But these movements had alarmed the whole valley of the White Umvolosi.

On every hand, in quick succession, signal fires, formed of vast heaps of dried grass, blazed on the hill-tops; vast columns of black smoke shot upwards to the bright blue sky, and were repeated from summit to summit, showing that the whole country was actively alive with armed warriors, who in many places could be seen driving and goading their herds of cattle into rocky kloofs and all kinds of places inaccessible to horse and foot alike.

From the summit of the Zungen Nek a full view of the beautiful valley through which the Umvolosi rolls could be obtained, and near a place there, called Conference Hill, were seen, like a field of snow, the white tents of the Second Division shining in the bright, sunny light.

Twenty-three days it remained encamped there, and during that time a vast amount of useful information regarding the topography of the country in which the coming campaign would be, was furnished by the reports and sketches made by Colonel Buller, the Prince Imperial, by Hammersley, and even by Florian, who was a very clever draughtsman, and on many occasions was complimented by the staff in such terms as made his young heart swell in his breast.

But the sketches of none surpassed those of the handsome and unfortunate Prince, whose passion for information was boundless, and the questions he was wont to ask of all were searching in the extreme.

One day, when out on a reconnaisance, the Mounted Infantry were suddenly fired upon from a kraal, and in the conflict that ensued many were killed and wounded, especially of the enemy, who were completely routed.

The great and unfathomable mystery of death was close indeed to Florian on that day, and around him lay hundreds who had discovered it within an hour or less. He had narrowly escaped it by skilfully dodging a ponderous knobkerie flung at his head as the last dying effort of a warrior whose black and naked breast had been pierced by a bullet from Tom Tyrrell's rifle, and from which the crimson blood was welling as if from a squirt; and so close was the weapon to doing Florian a mortal mischief that it took the gilt spike close off the top of his helmet.

And now, on the very evening before the division broke up its camp and marched, occurred an event which proved to Florian, and to his favourite captain too, the chief one of the campaign.

How little those who live at home at ease can know of the delight it gives an exile to have tidings, by letter or otherwise, from those who are dear to them in the old country when far, far away from it! No matter how short the sentences, how few the facts, or how clumsy the expressions, they all seem to show that we are not forgotten by the old fireside; for even amid the keen and fierce excitement of war the soldier has often time for much thought of friends and home, especially in the lonely watches of the night, and a pang goes to his heart with the fear that, as he is absent, he may be forgotten.

Florian had often envied the delight with which his comrades, Tom Tyrrell or poor Bob Edgehill, who perished at Isandhlwana, and others received letters from distant friends and relatives; but month after month had passed, and none ever came to him, nor did he expect any.

In all the world there was no one to think of him save Dulcie Carlyon. How he longed to write to her, but knew not where she was.

At last there came an evening—he never forgot it—when the sergeant who acted as regimental postman brought him a letter—a letter addressed to himself, and in the handwriting of Dulcie!

His fingers trembled as he carefully but hastily cut open the envelope. It was dated from Craigengowan, a place of which he scarcely knew the name, but thought he had heard it mentioned by Mr. Kenneth Kippilaw on the eventful day when he and Shafto visited that gentleman at his office.

After many prettily expressed protestations of regard for himself—every word of which stirred his heart deeply—of joy that he was winning distinction, and of fear for the awful risks he ran in war, she informed him that the situation obtained for her had been that of companion to Lady Fettercairn, 'and who do you think I found installed here as master of the whole situation, as heir to the title and a truly magnificent property—Shafto! Perhaps I am wrong to tell you, lest it may worry you, but he has resumed his persecution of me. He often taunts me about you, and fills me with terror lest he may do me a mischief with Lady Fettercairn, as he has already contrived to do with his cousin, Miss Finella (a dear darling girl) and Captain Hammersley, the officer whose life you so bravely saved at Ginghilovo, and who, I now learn, is in your regiment. It was an infamous trick, but it succeeded in separating them and nearly breaking Finella's heart.'

The letter then proceeded to detail how Finella, to her extreme dismay and discomfiture, had dropped Hammersley's pencilled note; how Shafto had found it, and intercepted her in the shrubbery on her way to the place of rendezvous, and would only restore it on receiving, as a bribe, a cousinly kiss, which she was compelled to accord, when he rudely seized her and snatched several before she could repulse him; how Hammersley had passed at that fatal moment, and misconceived the whole situation, since when, language could not express the loathing Finella had of Shafto. That was the whole affair.

'You know Shafto and all of which he is capable,' continued Dulcie; 'so poor Finella is heartbroken in contemplating the horrid view her lover must take of her, but is without the means of explaining it away, nor will her great pride permit her to do so.'

Dulcie under the same roof with Shafto, and apparently the bosom friend of Hammersley's love! Florian had now a clue to some of the bitter remarks that, in moments of unintentional confidence, his superior had uttered from time to time.

That Shafto and Dulcie were in such close proximity to each other—meeting daily and hourly—filled Florian's mind with no small anxiety. He had no doubt of Dulcie's faith, trust, and purity; but neither had he any doubt of Shafto's subtle character and the mischief of which he was capable, and which he might work the helpless and unfortunate girl if he pursued, as she admitted he did, the odious and unwelcome love-making he had begun at Revelstoke.

As he read and re-read her letter in that hot, burning, and far-away land, how vividly every expression of her perfect face, every inflection of her soft and sympathetic voice, came back to memory, till his heart swelled and his eyes grew dim. How self-possessed she was, with all her gentleness; how self-reliant, with all her timidity.

'Should I show this letter to Hammersley?' thought Florian. 'The communication in it must concern him very closely—very dearly, and my darling, impulsive little Dulcie has evidently written it with a purpose.'

Then Florian remembered that though suave and condescendingly kind to him, especially since the episode at Ginghilovo, Hammersley was naturally a man of a proud and haughty spirit, and might resent one in Florian's junior position interfering in the most tender secrets of his life.

Florian was keenly desirous of fulfilling what was evidently the wish of Dulcie—of befriending her friend, and perhaps, by achieving a reconciliation, conferring an unexampled favour upon his officer; yet he shrank from the delicate task, while giving it long and anxious thought.

'If it is a head, I'll do it. Head it is!' he exclaimed, and went straight to the tent of Hammersley, whom he found lounging on his camp-bed, with a cigar in his mouth and his patrol-jacket open.

'Only, sir, that I have just had a letter,' began Florian, colouring deeply, and pausing.

'I hope not, in my case and in some others, Captain Hammersley; but if you will pardon me I cannot help stating that in my letter there is something that concerns yourself and your happiness very nearly indeed.'

The red blood suffused Hammersley's bronzed face from temples to chin, and he sprang to his feet.

'What the devil do you mean, MacIan?' he exclaimed sharply; his supreme astonishment, however, exceeding any indignation to hear that name on a stranger's lips. 'I know well that you are not what you seem by your present position in life; but how came you to know the name of that young lady?'

'She is mentioned in this letter, sir—the letter of the only being in all the world who cares for me,' replied Florian, with a palpable break in his voice.

Hammersley took the letter, and saw that it was written in a most lady-like hand.

'I have a delicacy in reading a young lady's letter,' said Hammersley, whose hand shook on perceiving by the next glance that it was dated from 'Craigengowan.'

Florian indicated the long paragraph with a finger; and as Hammersley read it his face became again deeply suffused.

'Permit me again, my good fellow,' said he as he read it twice, as if to impress its contents on his mind; and then, returning the letter with unsteady hand to Florian, he seated himself on the edge of the camp-bed and passed a hand across his forehead.

'Thank you for showing me this! You can understand what I felt and thought on seeing the episode this young lady explains so kindly in her letter—God bless the girl! It seems all too good to be true.'

'You do not know the vile trickery of which this fellow Shafto is capable,' said Florian.

'I do,' replied Hammersley, remembering the affair of the cards. 'Finella!' said he, as if to himself, 'how her memory haunts me! By Jove, she is a witch, a sorceress!—like that other Finella after whom she told me she is named, and who lived—I don't know when—in the year of the Flood, I think. I thank you from my soul, MacIan, for the sight of this letter, and it will be a further incitement to me to further your interests in every way within my power. Heaven knows how gladly I would betake me to my pen; but this is no time for letter-writing. By daybreak we shall be in our saddles, and on the spur to the front.'

Florian saluted his officer and withdrew, leaving him to the full tide of his new thoughts.

So she was true to him after all! The whole affair, so black apparently, seemed to be so simply and truthfully explained away by Dulcie's letter that he could not doubt the terrible misconception under which he had laboured, nor did he wish to do so. The tables were completely turned.

It was he—himself—who had cruelly wronged, doubted, upbraided, and quitted Finella, and now from him must the reparation come. His mind was full of the repentant, glowing, and gushing letter he would write her, renewing his protestations of love and faith, and imploring her to forgive him; but when could that letter be written and sent to the rear?—for the division advanced by dawn on the morrow, and there would scarcely be a halt, he supposed, till it reached Ulundi.

And how could a letter reach her from the Cape at Craigengowan unknown to Lady Fettercairn?—who, he knew but too well, was bitterly opposed to his love for Finella, and for many cogent reasons the adherent of Shafto.

In a runaway marriage too probably, unless he got knocked on the head in Zululand, a process he rather shrank from now, as life seemed to be invested with new attributes, greater hopes, and greater value.

Finella's mignonne face came before him; the small, straight nose, with thin, arched nostrils; the proud yet soft hazel eyes, with thin, long lashes; the firm coral lips; the abundant hair of richest brown; and with all these came, too, the memory of her favourite perfume, the faint odour of jasmine that clung to her draperies and laces.

In a similar mood to some extent, but without the sense of having aught to explain or a reparation to make, Florian lay in another tent at some little distance, contemplating the contents of a pretty white leather toy, lined with pale blue satin—a case containing a photo—altogether an unsuitable thing for the pocket of a soldier's tunic, or to place in his haversack, it may be among cooked rations, shoe-brushes, and a sponge for pipeclay; but it contained a poor reflection, though delicately tinted, of Dulcie's own sweet face.

He continued by turns to re-read her letter and contemplate her photo till the daylight faded and the moon, golden not silver coloured, shone amid a sky wherein dark blue seemed to blend with apple green at the horizon, lighting up all the lonely landscape, and making the blue gum trees and euphorbiæ stand out in opaque silhouette, while the—to him—new constellations of that southern hemisphere seemed to play hide-and-seek, as they sparkled in and out in the cloudless dome of heaven.

As there he lay, full of his own thoughts and tender memories, he was all unaware of two evil spirits that hovered near, and were actually watching him. Both were evil-visaged personages, and though clad in the ordinary costume of Cape Colonists belonged to the Natal Volunteer Force.

One had two hideous bullet wounds but lately healed—one on each cheek—and his jaws were almost destitute of teeth, as Florian's pistol had left them; for this personage was no other than Josh Jarrett, the ex-landlord of the so-called hotel at Elandsbergen; and the other was Dick of the Droogveldt—one of the two ruffians that had pursued Florian on horseback till his fall into the bushy donga concealed him from them.

On the destruction of the town of Elandsbergen by the Zulus these two worthies, for the sake of the ample pay given to the Colonial troops, and being incapable of obtaining any other means of livelihood, had joined the Volunteer Horse, and while serving in that capacity had discovered and recognised Florian.

'He's a boss now in the Mounted Infantry; but I'll be cursed if I don't put a lead plug into him on the first opportunity—kill him as I would a puff-adder!' said Josh Jarrett fiercely, as he mumbled the last words into the mouth of a metal flask filled with that villainous compound known as Cape Smoke, while they grinned, but without fun, and winked to each other portentously.

'Hopportunities we'll 'ave in plenty, with the work as goes on here,' responded Dick of the Droogveldt (which means a dry district), 'and that cursed fellow shall never quit Zululand alive, all the more so that they say he is to be made an officer soon.'

For Dick, like Josh, was one of 'Cardwell's recruits,' as they are named, and had been a deserter from a line regiment. So their appearance in camp probably accounted for the two mysterious shots that Florian had so recently escaped.[*]

[*] For many interesting details of the Zulu War, I am indebted to the narrative of Major Ashe; but more particularly to the Private Journal of the Chief of the Staff.

CHAPTER XVIII.

ON THE BANKS OF THE ITYOTYOSI.

It was bitterly cold in camp that night—one of the noctes ambrosianæ in Zululand, as Hammersley said laughingly; and on the morning of the 1st June, when the thin ice stood in the buckets inside the tents, the latter were struck, and the Second Division began its march from the Blood River towards the Itelezi Hill.

'My darling little Finella—may God love you and bless you!' was the morning prayer of Hammersley as he sprung on his horse, and the squadron of Mounted Infantry went cantering forward; prior to which, Florian, after fraternally sharing a ration biscuit with Tattoo—while the animal whinnied and rubbed his velvet nose against his cheek, as if thanking him therefor—kissed him quite as tenderly as Finella ever did Fern; for a genuine trooper has a true affection for his horse.

As the squadron rode on in advance of the column, Hammersley beckoned Florian to his side, and, as they trotted on together, he asked him many a kindly question about Dulcie Carlyon, of his past life and future hopes and wishes, betraying a genuine interest which touched Florian keenly.

In due time the Itelezi Hill, a long mass, the brown sides of which were scored by rocky ravines and woody kloofs, the lurking-places of many Zulus, who acted as spies along the border, was reached; and now, on the bank of the Ityotyosi River, at a short distance from the Natal frontier, a halt was made, and another temporary camp formed on ground selected by the Prince Imperial of France, who had previously examined it.

In advance of the whole force on the same morning, the Prince had ridden on with instructions to examine the nature of the ground through which the march would lie; and with an emotion of deep interest, for which he could not account, Florian saw him ride off at full speed, accompanied by Lieutenant Carey, of the 98th Regiment, the Deputy Assistant Quartermaster-General, with six of Captain Bettington's European Horse; and pushing on over the open and pastoral country, the Prince and his party soon disappeared in the vicinity of the Itelezi Hill, which he reached about ten a.m.

On the same day Sir Evelyn Wood—with orders to keep one day's march in front of the Second Division—was reconnoitring in advance of his flying column, when the halt was made by the Ityotyosi River, where despatches from the rear overtook the staff, and a few minutes after, the General sent his orderly for Florian, whom he found carefully grooming and rubbing down Tattoo.

Though ignorant of having committed any faux pas, Florian's first idea was that he had fallen into a scrape, and with some trepidation of spirit and manner found himself before the General, who, wearing a braided patrol-jacket and a white helmet girt by a puggaree, was examining the country through a field-glass.

'Your appointment to a second-lieutenancy in your regiment, as the reward of your disinterested bravery at Ginghilovo, and general conduct on all occasions. It is duly notified in the Gazette, and here is the letter of the Adjutant-General.'

Florian's breath was quite taken away by this intelligence. For a few moments he could scarcely realise the truth of what the general, with great kindness and interest of manner, had said to him. He felt like one in a dream, from which he might awaken to disappointment; and the white tents of the camp, the Ityotyosi that flowed beside them, the woods and distant hills, seemed to be careering round him, and it was only when after a little time he felt the firm grasp of Hammersley's hand, and heard the warm and hearty congratulations from him and other officers, that he felt himself now indeed to be one of them.

The first to accord him a 'a salute as Second Lieutenant' (a rank since then abolished) was Tom Tyrrell.

'Not for the last time, I hope, Tom,' replied Florian, whose thoughts were flashing home to Dulcie, and all she would feel and think and say.

An officer—he was already an officer! As his father—or he whom he had so long deemed his father—was before him. His foot was firmly planted on the ladder now, and with the thought of Dulcie's joy his own redoubled.

'Come to the mess tent,' said Hammersley. 'We must wet the commission and drink the health of the Queen after tiffin.'

For the first time on that auspicious afternoon Florian found himself among his equals, and the kindness with which they welcomed him to their circle made his affectionate and appreciative heart swell. Hammersley was President of the Mess Committee, and was a wonderful strategist in the matter of 'providing grub,' as he said.

A few rough boards that went with the baggage formed the table, and at 'tiffin' that day the menu comprised vegetable soup, a sirloin of beef, an entrée or two, for a wonder, with plenty of brandy-pawnee and 'square-face;' and what the repast lacked in delicacy and splendour was amply made up by the general jollity and good humour that pervaded the board, though, for all they knew, another hour might find them face to face with the enemy.

In the case of Florian it seemed somewhat impossible, especially now, when he had—all unknown to himself—two secret and unscrupulous enemies on his trail, and intent on his destruction.

Meanwhile a terrible tragedy, that was to form a part of the world's history, was being acted not very far off from where that jocund circle sat round the board presided over by Hammersley.

Sir Evelyn Wood, we have said, was reconnoitring in advance of his column, which was then on the march from Munhla Hill towards the Ityotyosi River. Scattered in extended order among the growing undulations and watercourses, the Horse of Redvers Buller were scouting.

Rain had fallen during the night, but the sky of the afternoon was clear, bright, and without a cloud, from the far horizon to the zenith.

Following, but at a distance, the line taken by the Prince Imperial and his six reconnoitring troopers, General Wood, after issuing from a dense coppice of thorn trees, interspersed with graceful date palms and enormous feathery bamboo canes, came suddenly on a deep and smooth tributary of the Ityotyosi, and after contriving to ford it at a place where its banks were fringed by beautiful acacias and drooping palms with fan-shaped leaves, to his astonishment some mounted men appeared in his front, and all apparently fugitives.

With twelve of his troopers the fearless Buller, who had seen them also, now came galloping up and rode on with Sir Evelyn, and in rounding the base of a tall cliff they came suddenly upon Lieutenant Carey, of the 98th Foot, and four troopers of Bettington's Corps, all riding at a furious pace, their horses flecked with white foam, and with sides bloody by the goring spurs.

They reined up pale and breathlessly, and in another minute or two their terrible secret was told.

'Where is the Prince Imperial?' cried Sir Evelyn, as he rushed his horse over some fallen trees in his haste to meet the fugitives.

But Carey, who seemed as dead beat as his horse, was at first apparently incapable of replying.

'Is that the case? Tell me instantly, sir!' resumed the General, with growing excitement.

A veil must be drawn over the rest of the interview, which was of a most painful character, wrote Major Ashe in his narrative of the occurrence.

A soldier—Tom Tyrrell, encouraged by the knowledge that his late comrade Florian was there—came rushing into the mess-tent, where Florian, with those who were now his brother-officers, was seated in happiness and jollity, bearing the terrible tidings, which spread through the camp like wildfire, and all who had horses mounted and rode forth to discover if they were true, and all spoke sternly and reprehensively of the luckless Lieutenant Carey, who eventually was tried by a court-martial, and died two years after in India, some said of a broken heart.

As Florian was one of the searchers for the slain Prince, the story of this latter's tragic death does not lie apart from ours.

It would seem, briefly, then, that the charger ridden by the Prince, when he left Lord Chelmsford's camp, and which in the end chiefly led to his death, was a clumsy and awkward animal, given to rearing and shying. After crossing the Ityotyosi, then swollen by the recent rains, the Prince and his party rode on through a district covered with grass-like rush, kreupelboom, and dwarf acacias.

The Prince, who from the time of his landing had always sought out any Frenchmen who might be among the local levies, and frequently gave them sovereigns, was riding with Le Toque by his side; and the latter, in the gaiety of his heart, and exhilarated by the beauty of the morning, sang more than one French song as they rode onward, such as—

And as they began to ascend a still nameless hill with a flat top, the Prince sang loudly 'Les deux Grenadiers,' an old Bonapartist ditty—Le Toque joining in the chorus of Beranger's chanson:—

'Vieux grenadiers suivons un vieux soldat,
            Suivon un vieux soldat!
            Suivon un vieux soldat!
            Suivon un vieux soldat!'

On the summit of the koppie the party slackened their girths, while the Prince made a sketch of the landscape. 'We may here digress to say,' adds the Cape Argus, 'that the Prince's talent with pen and pencil, combined with his remarkable proficiency in military surveying (which so distinguished the first Napoleon), made his contributions to our knowledge of the country to be traversed of great value.'

Amid the heat and splendour of an African noon they now rode on to a deserted kraal, consisting of five beehive-shaped huts, near a dry donga, or old watercourse, where they unsaddled and knee-haltered their horses to graze, while the Prince and his companions chatted and smoked, all unaware that some forty armed Zulus were actually stalking them like deer, crawling stealthily and softly on their hands and knees through the long Tambookie grass and mealies, drawing their rifles and assegais after them.

About four o'clock Corporal Grub, of Bettington's Horse, got a glimpse of a Zulu, and warned the Prince of the circumstance.

The brief orders had scarcely left his lips when a volley from forty rifles crashed through the long Tambookie grass and waving reeds, which bent as if before a breeze, and then the ferocious lurkers rushed with flashing and glistening teeth, bloodshot, rolling eyes, and loud yells, upon the solitary party of eight men.

Terrified by the sudden tumult, all the horses swerved wildly round; a trooper named Rogers was shot dead with his left foot in the stirrup, and those who actually got into their saddles found it impossible to control their horses, so terrific were the yells, mingled with ragged shots, and they bore their riders across the open karoo and towards the deep and dangerous donga.

Prince Napoleon's horse, a difficult one to mount at all times, and sixteen hands high, resisted every attempt at remounting in its then state of terror; thus one by one the party rode or were borne away, while the unhappy Prince endeavoured to vault into his saddle.

'Mon Prince, dépêchez-vous, si'l vous plait!' cried his countryman trooper, Le Toque, as he rushed past, lying across but not in his saddle, and then the heir of France found himself alone—alone and face to face with more than forty merciless and pitiless savages!

Who can tell what may have flashed through the brave lad's mind in that moment of fierce excitement and supreme mental agony—what thoughts of France and Imperial glory—the glorious past, the dim future, and, more than all, no doubt, of the lonely mother, who was so soon to weep for him at Chiselhurst—to weep the tears that no condolence could quench!

When last seen by Le Toque, as the latter gave a backward and despairing glance, he was grasping a stirrup-leather in vain attempts to mount the maddened animal, which trod upon him, and broke away when the strap parted; and then, for a moment, the young Napoleon covered his face with his hands—deserted, abandoned to an awful death, which no Christian eye was then to see.

All the obloquy of this tragedy was now heaped upon Lieutenant Carey, a native of the south of England. It was dark night when he got to head-quarters, and at that time nothing could be done to ascertain the fate of the deserted one.

Scarcely a man slept in our camp by the Ityotyosi River, and after 'lights out' had been sounded by the bugles, the soldiers could talk of nothing else but the poor Prince Imperial.

'The news of his death,' wrote an officer who was in the camp, 'fell like a thunderbolt on all! At first it was regarded as one of those reports that so often went round. Bit by bit, however, it assumed a form. Even then people were incredulous, only half believing the dreadful tale. The two questions first asked were—What will they say at home? and, secondly, the poor Empress? All was wildest excitement, and brave men absolutely broke down under the blow. To them it looked a black and bitter disgrace. The chivalrous young Prince, repaying the hospitality shown him by England with his sword—entrusted to us by his widowed mother—to have been killed in a mere paltry reconnaissance! to have fallen without all his escort having been killed first! to lie there dead and alone! Many there were who would have given up life to have been lying with him, so that our British honour might have been kept sacred.'

CHAPTER XIX.

FINDING THE BODY.

'Fall in, the Mounted Infantry!' cried the voice of Hammersley, when with earliest dawn strong parties were detailed from the camps of the Second Division and Sir Evelyn Wood to scout the scene of the tragedy; and as his squadron rode forth in the grey light with rifle-butt resting on the thigh, just as the dawn began to redden the summit of the Itelezi Hill, Florian remembered that this mournful search was his first duty as an officer; but the calamity clouded the joy of his promotion, and would be always associated with it.

He felt himself again the equal of Dulcie Carlyon; but, still, to what end? He could not go home to her, nor could she come there to him, a combatant in Zululand; besides, he knew well enough that an officer's pay, unless when on service, is not sufficient for himself without the encumbrance of a wife; and with this enforced practical view of the situation he could only sigh as he rode on and thought of poor Dulcie.

As some of the Volunteer Horse went to the front, Florian became conscious that two, wearing huge, battered hats, who rode together, were regarding him furtively, and with a curiously hostile and scowling expression; and his heart gave a kind of leap when he recognised in these, two of the ruffians whose odious features were indelibly impressed upon his memory by the adventures of that horrible night in the so-called hotel at Elandsbergen—Josh Jarrett and Dick of the Droogveldt, with his short, thickset figure, small, dull eyes, and heavy, bull-dog visage.

That they would work him some mischief, if possible, in their new capacity he never doubted; and possibly enough it was their design to do so, secretly and securely, amid the often confused scouting and scampering to and fro of the Mounted Infantry among bush and cover of every kind. But, as they were then going to the front, he thought it unwise to move in the matter at the time; besides, they might be knocked on the head, and all on the ground were thinking only of the Prince Imperial.

A deep silence hovered over the ranks of the various searching parties that rode round by the base of the flat-topped Itelezi Hill. The swallow-tailed banneroles of the 17th Lancers, who looked handsome and gay in their white helmets and blue tunics faced and lapelled with white, fluttered out on the morning wind; but the iron hoofs of their horses fell without a sound on the soft and elastic turf of the green veldt. Occasionally a low murmur would be heard as the searchers drew nearer the fatal kraal, and the lance was slung and the carbine grasped instinctively when at times the black Kaffir vultures, hinting of a dreadful repast, rose from among the tall, feathery Tambookie grass, and, croaking angrily, winged their way aloft as if enraged and interrupted.

Driving out roughly by lance point and rifle bullet about a hundred Zulus from some holes and scrub, several of the Lancers under Lieutenant Frith, their adjutant, and the Mounted Infantry under Hammersley, next drew near the fatal donga, which some officers crossed on foot. Among those who were in advance of all the rest was Lieutenant Dundonald Cochrane, of the Cornish Light Infantry.

'Look!' cried Hammersley to Florian, as Cochrane was seen to pause and with reverence take off his helmet. Then a hum went along the ranks of the searchers, who all knew what he had found.

And there, on the sloping bank of the donga in the evening sunshine, with his head pillowed on some sweet wild-flowers, nude as he came into the world, save that a reliquary and locket with his father's miniature were round his neck—supposed to be potent fetishes—lay the poor young Prince, the guest of Britain, the hope of Imperial France, and the only son of his mother, dead, and gashed by sixteen assegai wounds, among them the usual cruel Zulu coup de grace—the gash in the stomach.

It was found that, though an accomplished swordsman, he had failed to use his sword—the sword of his father the Emperor—which had dropped from the scabbard in his attempts to mount; but that, seizing an assegai which had been hurled at him, he had defended himself till he sank under repeated wounds; and a tuft of human hair clenched in his left hand attested the valour and the desperation of his resistance.

A bier was now formed by crossed lances of the 17th Lancers, covered by cut rushes and a cavalry cloak. Reverently and almost with womanly tenderness did our soldiers raise the body, and on this bier, so befitting to one of his name, Prince Napoleon was borne by loving hands by the rough and rugged track that led towards the hill of Itelezi; while all around the place where they had found him were flowers of gold and crimson tint, where in the gouts and pools of blood bright-winged moths and butterflies were battening.

That the Prince was duly prepared to meet any fate that might befall him the remarkable prayer composed by him fully attests. It was found in his repositories, and was published in the papers of the time.

The entire Second Division was under arms to receive his remains when brought into the camp beside the river. The body was borne through the lines on a gun-carriage, wrapped in linen and shrouded by a Union Jack; the funeral service was performed by the Catholic chaplain to the forces, and Lord Chelmsford acted as chief mourner. Though tolerably accustomed to bloodshed now, a profound impression of gloom pervaded the faces of the troops.

By mule-cart the body was sent to Pietermaritzburg, and in passing through Ladysmith there occurred a scene that was touching from its simplicity. This is a small village in the Division of Riversdale or Kannaland, where the body remained for the night at the entrance thereof, in the bleak open veldt, under a guard of honour; but from the school-house there came forth, and lined the roadway, a procession of little black children, who, to the accompaniment of an old cracked harmonium, sang a hymn, as the soldiers of the 58th Regiment took the body away, and sweetly and softly the voices of the little ones rose and fell on the chilly air of the morning.

'This,' says Captain Thomasson, of the Irregular Horse, in his narrative, 'was but one mark of the feeling that all in the colony, whatever their age, colour, position, or sex, had at the sudden and terrible close of that bright young life. And it may safely be affirmed that not one disassociated in his mind from the thought of the dead son, the recollection of the blow awaiting the widowed mother.'

The next striking scene was at Durban, the only port in Natal Colony, where the troops handed over the remains to the blue-jackets of H.M.S. Shah for conveyance to England.

Here the poor old majordomo of the Prince was left behind. He was so inconsolable for the loss of his master, that it was feared he would lose his reason, and more than once he said, with simple truth and bitterness:

CHAPTER XX.

THE SKIRMISH AT EUZANGONYAN.

The transmission rearwards of the Prince's remains causing a day's delay in the advance of the division, Florian gladly availed himself of it to write to Dulcie a letter full of love and all the enthusiastic outpouring of his heart to one who was so far away; to express his astonishment on learning that she was an inmate of the same house with Shafto, their bête noir, of whom she was to beware, he added impressively.

He told of his military success—of all that might be in store for them yet; for Florian had, if small means at present, the vast riches of youth and hope to draw upon, especially in his brighter moments, and—if spared—his future promotion from the rank of second-lieutenant was now but a thing of time.

There had not been much brightness in his life latterly; but it was impossible for him not to admit that the dawn of a happier day had come, and that he had made substantial progress in his profession.

He told her—among many other things—of Vivian Hammersley's friendship and favour for himself, even when in the rank and file, and of his pride and gratitude therefor; of the change her letter to himself had made in Hammersley's views of Miss Melfort, for whom he sent an enclosure from the Captain, lest watchful eyes—perchance those of Shafto—might examine too closely the contents of the Craigengowan post-bag; and from old experience they knew what the man was capable of—not respecting even 'the property of H.M. Postmaster-General.'

For, now that Florian was an officer, his friend Hammersley, though proud as Lucifer and at times haughty to a degree, was, under the circumstances, not loth to avail himself of Dulcie's assistance in this matter, so necessary to his own happiness; so the two missives in one were despatched, and with an emotion of thankfulness that was deep and genuine, Florian dropped it into the regimental post-bag at the orderly-room tent, for conveyance with the mail to Durban.

The Second Division began its forward march on the 3rd of January, and encamped half a mile distant from the kraal near which the Prince Imperial had perished, while Sir Evelyn Wood's column, advancing by the left, proceeded along the further side of the Ityotyosi. Already the bad rations to which they were reduced—eight pounds of inferior oats and no hay—were telling severely on the horses of the 17th Lancers and Mounted Infantry.

On the 4th, when encamped on the bank of the Nondweni River, a cavalry patrol, under Redvers Duller, Hammersley, and others, had a narrow escape from being cut off by two thousand five hundred Zulus, of whom, on the following day, the entire cavalry column went forth in search.

When the whole mounted force was getting under arms, Hammersley threw away the end of a cigar before falling in, and said to Florian—

'Look here, old fellow, I have been thinking about you. I am not a millionnaire, you know, but I have enough and to spare. You have not, I presume—pardon me for saying so; but now that you are an officer, and must want many things, my cheque-book is at your disposal, if you wish to draw on old Chink the Paymaster.'

'A thousand thanks to you, Captain Hammersley,' replied Florian, his heart swelling and his colour deepening with gratitude; 'but I have no need to trespass on your kindness—I want nothing here; we are all pretty much alike in Zululand—officer and private, general and drum-boy.'

'Thanks again, I say, dear Hammersley, but I am inclined to let to-morrow take care of to-morrow, especially while campaigning in Zululand.'

'Tiresome work I find that, with all my zeal for the service,' observed Hammersley, as the entire cavalry force moved off about four in the morning, when the sky and landscape were alike dark. 'We have much bodily endurance, and run enormous risks which the people at home don't understand or fully appreciate, because our antagonists are naked savages, though second to no men in the world for reckless valour; thus honour may be accorded to us but scantily and grudgingly, because they are savages and not civilised enemies, or, as some one says of the days of the Great Duke, when so many thousand men in red coats and blue breeches met and beat so many thousand men in blue coats and red breeches.'

General Marshall, with the King's Dragoon Guards and 17th Lancers, had reconnoitred the country in advance as far as the Upoko River, and there effected a junction with Buller's command on the same ground where the latter had escaped the ambuscade referred to.

On a green plain below it a great mass of Zulus, sombre and dark, spotted with the grey of their oval shields, was seen hovering, the flash of an assegai-head sparkling out at times when the sun arose, and near them, enveloped in smoke and all sheeted with flame at once, were some kraals that had been set on fire by the Irregular Horse; so the scene, if beautiful, was also a stirring one.

Above the vast mountain opposite, where the Upoko (a tributary of the great White Umvulosi, which flows towards the sea) was rolling in golden sheen between banks clothed with date palms, Kaffir plums, flowering acacias, and thornwood, the uprisen sun was shining in all his glory. The mountain was torn by ravines and studded with mimosa groups. On the left of the troops rose the vast Inhlatzatye, or mountain of greenstone, turned to crimson in the morning sun, its base clothed with lovely pasture, and twenty miles in its rear was known to be Ulundi, the great military kraal of Cetewayo, the chief object of the advance.

In the immediate foreground was the force of cavalry, with all their white helmets and sword blades shining in the sun, the dark blue of the Lancers, and the sombre uniforms of the Irregular Horse, relieved and varied by the bright scarlet of the King's Dragoon Guards and the mimosa-coloured tunics of the Mounted Infantry.

'Buller's Horse to the left!' cried the officer of that name, digging spurs into his charger; 'Whalley's to the right! Frontier Light Horse and Hammersley's Mounted Infantry the centre!'

Uncovering to the flanks, the formation was made at a canter, and the forward movement began. During the morning Florian had more than once (till his men required his attention) an unpleasant sense of the presence of two secret enemies on the ground, which made him look frequently to where the oddly costumed volunteer troopers were advancing, and before that day's fighting was quite over he had bitter cause to know that both were in the field.

The 1st King's Dragoon Guards had been quartered in the same barracks with the regiment to which these two deserters belonged, and, feeling themselves now in hourly expectation of recognition by some of them, the camp of the Second Division had become perilous for the two desperadoes, and on that day they had resolved to 'levant,' but not before effecting their villainous purpose, if possible.

They knew well that by the rules of the service, at foreign stations, when there is no doubt as to the identity of a deserter, he is sent at once to his own corps to be dealt with there; moreover, they know that the fact of their serving with the Volunteer Horse constituted another crime—that of fraudulent enlistment; and neither had any desire to be tied to the wheel of a field-piece and flogged as an example to others, for that punishment had not been quite abandoned yet.

While Colonel Buller's force was advancing, the Zulus had moved off by companies in singularly regular formation, and taken post in the rocky ravines at the base of the Euzangonyan Hill, which was covered with thick scrub and high feathery reeds, that swayed to and fro in the wind like a mighty cornfield.

After crossing the river, the Irregulars and Mounted Infantry at full speed advanced to within three hundred yards of the foe, and leaped from their saddles, with rifles unslung. The horses were then led forward out of fire, or nearly so, by every third file, told off for that purpose.

Kneeling and creeping forward by turns, the fighting line opened a steady fire upon the partly concealed Zulus, whose dark figures were half seen, half hidden amid the smoke that eddied along the slopes of the hill, and this continued till the watchful Buller, who was surveying the position through a field-glass from the summit of a knoll, discovered from a flank movement that the Zulus had a large force in reserve, and, in a wily manner, were luring his troops on to destruction.

He ordered his bugle to sound the 'retire' and the whole to recross the river, but not before several men were killed or wounded, with fifteen horses placed hors de combat; then the Queen's cavalry were ordered to advance to the attack with lance and sword.

In his saddle, Florian watched them advance in imposing order, led by that preux chevalier, Drury Lowe, the hero of Zurapore, where the pursuit and the destruction of Tantia Topee were achieved in the Indian war. When Buller's scouting horse, skilled marksmen even from the saddle, and mounted on cattle nimble as antelopes, had partly failed, he could scarcely hope to achieve much with his heavy Lancers and still heavier Dragoon Guardsmen; but sending a troop of the latter to guard against any chance of the Zulus creeping down the bed of the river, he led three troops of Lancers close to the margin, where the marigold figs grew in profusion, and the yellow Kaffir melons, large as 40-pound shot, were floating in the current; and splashing through, he deployed them on some open ground beyond, full of that fiery confidence that there is nothing in war which the genuine dragoon cannot achieve.

'By Jove!' exclaimed Hammersley, 'but it is sad to see these splendid Lancers going in for this kind of work. It is hopeless for them to charge such a position, and attempt, at the lance's point, to ferret these savages out of their holes and dongas.'

From the Euzangonyan Hill the Zulus were now firing heavily, but as their rifles were all wrongly sighted—if sighted at all—their bullets went high into the air. Between these and Lowe spread a mealie-field, which he believed to be full of other Zulus, and resolved to let all who might be lurking there feel what the point of a lance is, he rode straight at it.

'Trot—gallop—charge!' sounded the trumpets; and with their horses' manes and the banneroles of their levelled lances streaming backward on the wind, the 17th rushed on, sweeping through the tall, brown stalks of the dead mealies, but found no Zulus there.

When clear of the mealies, Lowe ordered some of the Lancers to dismount and open fire with their carbines on those Zulus who were lurking on the hill-slope among some thorn-trees, and there many were shot down, and their half-devoured and festering remains were found by our soldiers in the subsequent August.

After punishing them severely, the cavalry were recalled, but not before there were some casualties among the Lancers, whose adjutant, Lieutenant Frith—a favourite officer—was shot through the heart, and brought to camp dead across the saddle of his charger.

From fastnesses that were quite inaccessible to horsemen, the Zulus, covered by an undergrowth of prickly thorns and plants with enormous brown spiky leaves, continued to fire heavily, wreathing all the hill-side in white smoke, streaked with jets of fire; while another portion of them, yelling and running with the swiftness of hares, lined the bed of the river and opened a sputtering fusilade in flank, rendering the whole position of our cavalry most perilous.

'Retire by alternate squadrons!' was now the order for the cavalry, and beautifully and steadily was the movement executed.

'Fours about—trot,' came the order in succession from the leaders of the even and odd squadrons.

A front was thus kept to the Zulus, but the hope to lure them from their fastnesses by a movement they had never seen before, and to have a chance of attacking them in the open, proved vain; and upon broken and steep ground, on which it would have been impossible for any cavalry force to assail them, they were seen swarming in vast black hordes round the flanks of the Euzangonyan Hill, and still maintaining a sputtering but distant though defiant fire, while the cavalry and other mounted men fell back towards their respective columns; and now it was that the calamitous outrage we have hinted at occurred.

When the cavalry began to fall back by alternate squadrons, it was remarked that two men of the Irregular Horse lingered at a considerable distance in the rear, still firing occasionally, as if they had not heard the sound of the trumpet to 'retire.'

'Those rash fools will get knocked on the head if they don't come back,' said Hammersley to Florian, as they were riding leisurely now at a little distance in rear of their men. 'They are nearly six hundred yards off. Well, we have not got even a scratch to-day,' he added, laughing, as he manipulated and proceeded to light a cigar; 'and now to get back to camp and have a deep drink of bitter beer. By Jove, I am thirsty as a bag of sand.'

Again the 'retire' was sounded, now by two trumpeters together, but without avail apparently.

At that moment two rifle-shots came upon the speakers, delivered by the very men in question, and then they were seen to gallop at full speed, not after the retreating column, but at an angle towards the north-west, on perceiving that their shots had taken fatal effect; for Hammersley, struck by one, fell from his saddle on his face, and rolled over apparently in mortal agony, while Florian felt Tattoo give a kind of writhing bound under him and nearly topple over on his forehead till recovered by the use of spur and bridle-bit. Florian at once dismounted, for the horse was seriously wounded; but he could only give a despairing glance at his friend, if he meant to act decisively and avenge him.

'These scoundrels are deserters doubly—I know; follow me, men, we have not a moment to lose!' cried Florian, in a voice husky with rage, grief, and excitement, as he leaped upon poor Hammersley's horse; and with a section of four men, one of whom was Tom Tyrrell, he spurred after them at full speed, without waiting for orders given or permission accorded.

He never doubted for a moment that they were Josh Jarrett and Dick of the Droogveldt, who were boldly attempting to escape in the face of the column after failing to shoot himself, and who had now fully thousand yards start of him and his pursuing party.

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DULCIE CARLYON.

CHAPTER I.

SEPARATED.

CHAPTER II.

AN UNWELCOME VISITOR.

CHAPTER III.

A BRUSH WITH THE ZULUS.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CAMP.

CHAPTER V.

THE MASSACRE AT ISANDHLWANA.

CHAPTER VI.

HAS SHE DISCOVERED ANYTHING?

CHAPTER VII.

FEARS AND SUSPICIONS.

CHAPTER VIII.

BY THE BUFFALO RIVER.

CHAPTER IX.

ON THE KARROO.

CHAPTER X.

FLORIAN JOINS THE MOUNTED INFANTRY.

CHAPTER XI.

DULCIE'S NEW FRIEND.

CHAPTER XII.

GIRLS' CONFIDENCES.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE EVENING OF GINGHILOVO.

CHAPTER XIV.

NEWS FROM THE SEAT OF WAR.

CHAPTER XV.

PERSECUTION.

CHAPTER XVI.

A THREAT.

CHAPTER XVII.

WITH THE SECOND DIVISION.

CHAPTER XVIII.

ON THE BANKS OF THE ITYOTYOSI.

CHAPTER XIX.

FINDING THE BODY.

CHAPTER XX.

THE SKIRMISH AT EUZANGONYAN.

DULCIE CARLYON.

CHAPTER I. SEPARATED.

CHAPTER II. AN UNWELCOME VISITOR.

CHAPTER III. A BRUSH WITH THE ZULUS.

CHAPTER IV. THE CAMP.

CHAPTER V. THE MASSACRE AT ISANDHLWANA.

CHAPTER VI. HAS SHE DISCOVERED ANYTHING?

CHAPTER VII. FEARS AND SUSPICIONS.

CHAPTER VIII. BY THE BUFFALO RIVER.

CHAPTER IX. ON THE KARROO.

CHAPTER X. FLORIAN JOINS THE MOUNTED INFANTRY.

CHAPTER XI. DULCIE'S NEW FRIEND.

CHAPTER XII. GIRLS' CONFIDENCES.

CHAPTER XIII. THE EVENING OF GINGHILOVO.

CHAPTER XIV. NEWS FROM THE SEAT OF WAR.

CHAPTER XV. PERSECUTION.

CHAPTER XVI. A THREAT.

CHAPTER XVII. WITH THE SECOND DIVISION.

CHAPTER XVIII. ON THE BANKS OF THE ITYOTYOSI.

CHAPTER XIX. FINDING THE BODY.

CHAPTER XX. THE SKIRMISH AT EUZANGONYAN.

CHAPTER I.

SEPARATED.

CHAPTER II.

AN UNWELCOME VISITOR.

CHAPTER III.

A BRUSH WITH THE ZULUS.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CAMP.

CHAPTER V.

THE MASSACRE AT ISANDHLWANA.

CHAPTER VI.

HAS SHE DISCOVERED ANYTHING?

CHAPTER VII.

FEARS AND SUSPICIONS.

CHAPTER VIII.

BY THE BUFFALO RIVER.

CHAPTER IX.

ON THE KARROO.

CHAPTER X.

FLORIAN JOINS THE MOUNTED INFANTRY.

CHAPTER XI.

DULCIE'S NEW FRIEND.

CHAPTER XII.

GIRLS' CONFIDENCES.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE EVENING OF GINGHILOVO.

CHAPTER XIV.

NEWS FROM THE SEAT OF WAR.

CHAPTER XV.

PERSECUTION.

CHAPTER XVI.

A THREAT.

CHAPTER XVII.

WITH THE SECOND DIVISION.

CHAPTER XVIII.

ON THE BANKS OF THE ITYOTYOSI.

CHAPTER XIX.

FINDING THE BODY.

CHAPTER XX.

THE SKIRMISH AT EUZANGONYAN.