Title: Dulcie Carlyon, Volume II (of 3): A novel
Author: Grant, James
Language: English
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  DULCIE CARLYON.


  A Novel.



  BY

  JAMES GRANT,

  AUTHOR OF 'THE ROMANCE OF WAR,' ETC.


  IN THREE VOLUMES.

  VOL. II.



  LONDON:
  WARD AND DOWNEY,
  12, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.

  1886.

  [_All Rights Reserved._]



NEW NOVELS AT EVERY LIBRARY.


FROM THE SILENT PAST.  By Mrs. HERBERT MARTIN.  2 Vols.

COWARD AND COQUETTE.  By the Author of 'The Parish of Hilby.'  1 vol.

MIND, BODY, AND ESTATE.  By the Author of 'Olive Varcoe.'  3 vols.

AT THE RED GLOVE.  By KATHARINE S. MACQUOID.  3 vols.

WHERE TEMPESTS BLOW.  By the Author of 'Miss Elvester's Girls.'  3
vols.

IN SIGHT OF LAND.  By Lady DUFFUS HARDY.  3 vols.

AS IN A LOOKING-GLASS.  By F. C. PHILIPS.  1 vol.

LORD VANECOURT'S DAUGHTER.  By MABEL COLLINS.  3 vols.


WARD AND DOWNEY, PUBLISHERS, LONDON.



CONTENTS OF VOL. II.


CHAPTER

I. SEPARATED

II. AN UNWELCOME VISITOR

III. A BRUSH WITH THE ZULUS

IV. THE CAMP

V. THE MASSACRE AT ISANDHLWANA

VI. 'HAS SHE DISCOVERED ANYTHING?'

VII. FEARS AND SUSPICIONS

VIII. BY THE BUFFALO RIVER

IX. ON THE KARROO

X. FLORIAN JOINS THE MOUNTED INFANTRY

XI. DULCIE'S NEW FRIEND

XII. GIRLS' CONFIDENCES

XIII. THE EVENING OF GINGHILOVO

XIV. NEWS FROM THE SEAT OF WAR

XV. PERSECUTION

XVI. A THREAT

XVII. WITH THE SECOND DIVISION

XVIII. ON THE BANKS OF THE ITYOTYOSI

XIX. FINDING THE BODY

XX. THE SKIRMISH AT EUZANGONYAN



DULCIE CARLYON.



CHAPTER I.

SEPARATED.

'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.

'V. H.'


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.'

'And didn't care, no doubt?  Yes--you are on the way to meet someone
else?'

'How do you know that?'

'I found his little note to you.'

'Where?'

'At the foot of the turret stair.'

'And you dared to read it.'

'It was open.  Dared!--well, I like that.  Let us be friends at
least.'

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

'Let us understand each other, Finella.'

'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.'

'His note?'

'Mine, I say.'

'You shall not have it for nothing then.'

'What do you mean?'

'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.

'Restore my property.  Would you be guilty of theft?'

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

'What _can_ I give you?'

'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.

'Yes,' said he, and his heart leaped.

'Take it, then.'

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.

Shafto had certainly then his moment of triumph!

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!

'He hates me, most probably,' she murmured.

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.

More than ever were they now separated!



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.'

'What is her name?'

'She declined to say.'

'Is she one of our own people?'

'I think not, my lady.'

'But what can she want?'

'She would not say--it was a private matter, she admitted.'

'Very odd.'

'She is most anxious to see your ladyship.'

'It is some begging petition, of course,' said Shafto; 'desire her to
be off.'

'It may be so, sir.'

'Then show her the door.'

'She seems very respectable, sir,' urged the valet.

'But poor--the old story.'

'Show her in,' said Lady Fettercairn.

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 have we to do with this?' said Shafto, who felt himself growing
pale.

'Nothing, of course,' replied Madelon sadly.

'Then what do you want?'

'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.'

'Shafto--is this Mr. Shafto!' exclaimed Madelon.

'Yes, my son Lennard's son.'

'Shafto Gyle!' said Madelon bewildered.

'What _do_ you mean?'

'What I say, my leddy.'

'This is Major Melfort's only son.'

'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.'

'She is mad or drunk!' exclaimed Shafto, starting up savagely.

'I am neither,' said Madelon, firmly and defiantly.

'Turn her out of the house!' said Shafto, with his hand on the bell.

'There is some trick here--where is Florian?'

'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.'

'Such marks pass away,' said Shafto.

'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.

'You are somewhat of an enigma to me,' said the puzzled officer.

'Is there any news in camp, sir?'

'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?'

'Nothing.'

'Nothing?'

'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.

'From the right--four paces extend!'

Then the skirmishers swung away out at a steady double.

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.

'Poor Vincent! you are covered with wounds!' said Hammersley.

'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.

All was over now!

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:

'Men of the old 24th, here we are, and here we must fight it out!'

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.'

Such is the miserable story of Isandhlwana.



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.

'What is this I hear,' said he; 'that you think of leaving
Craigengowan?'

'Yes,' she replied, curtly.

'Because I have returned, I presume?'

'Yes.'

His countenance darkened as he asked:

'But--why so?'

'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?'

'Yes,' she replied with flashing eyes.

'Can nothing soften this hostility towards me?' he asked after a
pause.

'Nothing.  I never wish to see your face or hear your voice again.'

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

'You will?'

'By heaven, I will!  That he and you alike resented my regard for
you?'

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.

'Shafto,' she exclaimed, 'you here--_you_?'

'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.

'You--here?' he said again inquiringly.

'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?'

'I should ask that of you.'

'Of me!'

'Yes--why is he not here?'

'Why the deuce should he be _here_?' was the rough response.

'He is your cousin, is he not?'

'Yes: we are full cousins certainly,' admitted Shafto with charming
frankness.

'Nothing more?'

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

'Friends--you were almost brothers once--in the dear old Major's
time.'

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

'And you know not where he is?'

'No.'

'Nor what he has done with himself?'

'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.'

Shafto certainly started at this intelligence.

'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?'

'Why--Shafto?'

'It will be strange if you do so long.'

'Wherefore?'

'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.

'If not in the field it will be where England's heroes usually die.'

'Where?'

'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.

_Missing!_

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.'

(But she doubted that, with Shafto as an inmate.)

'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.

'You have not yet accepted my hand.'

'Nor ever shall, Shafto Gyle,' said she defiantly, and still
withholding hers.

'Melfort!' said he menacingly.

'I knew and shall always know you as Shafto Gyle.'

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?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'About whom?' she asked softly and wonderingly.

'Me!'

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

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

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

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

'To what end and purpose?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Well, what?'

'The garotters who are whipped in prison!'

His face grew very dark; then he said--

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

'How chivalrous, how gentlemanly, you are!'

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

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

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

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

'What was it?'

'A dear little canary--only a bird.'

'And why didn't you bring it?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'But you must never forget who she is.'

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

'What then?'

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

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

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

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

'What an absurd idea!'

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER VIII.

BY THE BUFFALO RIVER.

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

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

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

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

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

Florian's blood ran cold!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

These were seven-pounder Royal Artillery guns.

'I cannot,' replied Florian.

'Why?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Would he, or could he, escape so many?

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


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


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



CHAPTER IX.

ON THE KARROO.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  'Merrily, lads, so ho!'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How often of late had he lived a _lifetime_ in a _minute_!

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

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



CHAPTER X.

FLORIAN JOINS THE MOUNTED INFANTRY.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Sorry to hear it--poor fellow.'

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

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

'No, sir, thank Heaven!'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XI.

DULCIE'S NEW FRIEND.

And how fared it with Dulcie at Craigengowan?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'No.'

'Why?'

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

'People who are your enemies.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Why?'

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

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

'_We_--who?'

'The English, I mean.'

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

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

'And no one else to think of?'

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

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

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

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

'Another?' said Finella inquiringly.

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

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

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

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

'What is it?'

'Hatred on my part!'

'And on his?'

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

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

'That is my secret, Dulcie.'

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

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

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

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

'Young says in his "Night Thoughts:"

  '"Wishing of all employment is the worst!"

and Young was right, perhaps.'



CHAPTER XII.

GIRLS' CONFIDENCES.

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

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

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

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

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

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

'For what?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Hopelessly so.'

'Hopelessly?'

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

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

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

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

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

'Of what regiment?'

'The 24th Warwickshire.'

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

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

'Yes, even if the present be sad.'

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

'Why?'

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

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

'And Florian--I am quite _au fait_ with his name,' said Finella; 'he
is a gentleman?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finella was in the act of closing Dulcie's silver locket, when a
voice said:

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

The speaker was Lady Fettercairn, who had approached them unnoticed.

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.'

'Oh, no, madam, that cannot be,' said Dulcie.

'Where got you it?'

'At home in Devonshire, where the photograph was taken about a year
ago.'

'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?'

Dulcie hesitated.

'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.

'One who loved me,' said Dulcie, with a kind of sob.

'And whom you love?' said the lady, stiffly.

'Yes, madam.'

'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.'

'Do you ever ride, Dulcie?' asked the latter.

'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.'

'But I have no habit.'

'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.'

'Thanks.  Oh, how kind you are.'

'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, miss,' said he, touching his billycock.

'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.'

'Ah! no doubt she told you so.'

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.'

'Never--why so?'

'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.'

'Finella, let me help you and him.'

'How?'

'I shall write about it to Florian.  I mean to write him now, at all
events.'

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.

'And meanwhile you are in misery?'

'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.

At last the survivors gave way, and all fled in confusion.

'Forward, the Mounted Infantry!' cried Lord Chelmsford.

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

  '"Is worth an age without a name!"'

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.

'Well done, old man!' exclaimed Florian; 'you _are_ game!'

'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.'

'I thank you, sir, and hope----'

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

'Why, sir?'

'Because when one is prepared for the worst, disappointment can never
come.'

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

'Have you any water in your bottle?' asked Hammersley.

'A little, sir.'

'Then give me a drop, for God's sake--mine is empty.'

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.

'Here is Pearson, gentlemen,' cried the Commander-in-Chief.

'How are you, my friend?'

'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?'

'Yes, Shafto,' replied Dulcie in a low voice, while her tears fell
fast.

'So--he is not killed yet!'

She regarded him with bitter reproach.

'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.

Not so Shafto.

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.

Was this acting?

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.'

'What do you mean?' asked Lord Fettercairn coldly.

'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?'

'Ay, who indeed!' exclaimed old Kippilaw, growing warm.

'She is content to be a mere province now.'

'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.'

'To please you, I will, my dear boy; but I fear I am rash.'

'I wish Finella were not so beastly rich!' he exclaimed.

'Do not use such shocking terms, Shafto!  But why?'

'It makes me look like a fortune-hunter, being after her.'

'"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.

'I am thinking, grandmamma,' said Finella wearily.

'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.

'Not always.'

'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.

In both instances vain thoughts!

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.

Shafto!--she quite shivered.

'Oh!' she exclaimed, as if a toad had crossed her path.

'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.

'Indeed; are you weaving out a romance?'

'Perhaps.'

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

'Oh, he is ready to hand,' said she daringly, with a flash in her
blue eyes.

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.'

Dulcie listened to this special pleading in contemptuous silence.

'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.'

'After the cruel trick you played her, is it to be expected?'

'So--you are in her confidence, then?'

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.'

'Then it cannot be me, nor shall it be Finella either, for the matter
of that.'

'Does she act under your influence?'

'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.'

Dissembling his rage, he said in a suppliant tone:

'Why are you so cold and repellant to me, Dulcie?'

'I do not know that I am markedly so.'

'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?'

'After all you have done to Florian!'

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

'Cast him forth into the world penniless.'

'Oh, is that all?' said he, greatly relieved.

'Yes, that is all, so far as I know as yet.'

Again his brow darkened at this chance shot; but, still dissembling,
he said:

'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.'

'Never, Shafto.'

'Surely you don't mean to carry on this game ever and always?'

'Ever and always, while I am a dependant here.'

'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--we shall never be even friends again, Shafto.'

'Why?'

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

'If found out,' he interrupted.

'And in the next, whether found out here or not.'

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

  'Many a shaft at random sent
  Finds mark the archer never meant.'


'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----'

'Gyle,' interrupted Dulcie almost spitefully.

'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.

'Let me pass, sir,' said she.

'Won't you give me one little kiss first, Dulcie?'

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.

'Let me pass, sir!' she exclaimed again.

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.

The interview we have described had not passed without observers, we
have said.

'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.

'Cannot you see it?'

'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.'

'Well--to me they seem quarrelling,' said Lord Fettercairn.

'Quarrelling--and with my companion!  How could Shafto condescend to
do so?'

'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----'

'What then?'

'Get rid of her.'

'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.'

'And Radicals!' suggested Lady Fettercairn.

'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.'

'Not in contriving, perhaps, to fall in love with the wrong man.'

'You mean that young fellow Hammersley?'

'Yes; I must own to having most grave suspicions,' replied Lady
Fettercairn.

'She is a Melfort, and as such has no notion of being coerced.'

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--

  'Riches and love and pleasure,
  And all but the name of wife.'


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.'

'To please you, Shafto!' stammered the girl; 'what _do_ you mean?'

'I'll tell you that by-and-by, my pretty Dulcie, when the time comes.'

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.

Somehow she felt at his mercy, and began to contemplate flight, but
to where?

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.

'Your companion?' said Shafto.

'Yes.'

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

'But this intimacy now is--to say the least of it,
Shafto--undignified.'

'I am sorry you think so.'

'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.'

'It was of him that madwoman spoke?'

'Yes, Madelon Galbraith.  He was named Florian after his _aunt_.'

'Miss MacIan.'

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

'I don't like this sort of thing, I repeat, Shafto.'

'What sort of thing?'

'This secret flirting with my companion, Miss Carlyon.'

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

'Why?'

'She is so devilish stand-off, grandmother.'

'I am truly glad to hear it.'

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

'Too much, I fear.  You may talk, as you say, but not hover about
her.'

'Anything more?' asked Shafto rudely.

'Yes, I wish you to settle down----'

'Oh! and marry Finella?'

'Yes, that you know well, dear Shafto,' said the lady coaxingly.

'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.

He tossed up a florin.

'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.

'What is up?' he demanded abruptly, as if disturbed in a reverie.

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

'From home?'

'Yes, sir.'

'I hope it contains pleasant news.'

'It is from one who is very dear to me.'

'Oh, the old story--a girl, no doubt?'

'Yes, sir.'

'The more fool you: the faith of the sex is writ in water, as the
poet has it.'

'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.'

Hammersley stared at this information.

'Concerns me?' he asked.

'Yes, and Miss Finella Melfort: permit me to mention her name.'

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.

'Mentioned in what fashion?' asked Hammersley curtly and with knitted
brows.

'Please to read this paragraph for yourself, sir.'

'Thanks.'

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

'Dulcie?' said he, just glancing at the signature; 'is she your
sister?'

'I have no sister.  I think I have told you that I am alone in the
world.'

'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.

How would it all end with them both now?

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.

'Sergeant,' said he, holding forth his hand, 'I have to congratulate
you.'

'On what, sir?' asked Florian.

'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.

'Let me shake your hand for the last time, sir, as your comrade,'
said he.

'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.

Would either Hammersley or Florian be spared to write to the girl he
loved?

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.

'Speak, sir!' cried the General impetuously.  'What has happened?'

Still Carey seemed incapable of speech.

'Sir,' said one of the troopers, 'the Prince, I fear, is killed.'

The speaker was Private Le Toque, a Frenchman.

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

'I fear it is so,' faltered Carey, in a low voice.

'Then _what are you doing here, sir?_'

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--

  '_Eh gai, gai, gai, mon officier!_'

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.

'Saddle up at once!' said the latter; 'prepare to mount!'

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.

His faithful little Scottish terrier was found dead by his side.

All around him the ground was trampled, torn, and stained by gouts of
blood.

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:

'My master would not have abandoned one of them!'



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.'

'Yes, by Jove! but in the time to come?'

'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.

The sharp blare of the trumpets sounded 'the advance.'

'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.'

'And I too,' said Florian.

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.

If he was to act at all, there was no time for either.

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.



END OF VOL. II.



BILLING & SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.





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