CHAPTER LXXVIII.

INVALIDED HOME.

WHEN Lorimer had to make an avowal on his part, of being in possession of news painfully interesting to Gertrude.

Sir Douglas was ill; very ill: any very sudden agitation might be fatal to him: he was in fact invalided home; and Lorimer had already resolved to go out to him, and had written to try and secure the services of Giuseppe as an excellent sick nurse and attendant, and who on his return might be of use to Kenneth, of whose bodily condition late accounts had been unfavourable. Gertrude must put her patient trust in God as hitherto; and believe, as Lorimer believed, that she would receive her reward, even in this world, for all the faithful uncomplaining tenderness with which she had borne her hard lot as respected her husband.

So Lorimer departed! And after her few days' anxious quarantine, Gertrude dwelt once more with her mother and her beloved Neil, and waited news from the Crimea.

Is it forgotten? Is it faded to a sad dream, except with those who actually took part in it, that war, waged with disaster as much as with the armed foe? That war in which, to the eternal glory of English courage, the heroism of endurance was proved equal to the heroism of action; when youths and men and aged warriors, alike showed their willingness not only to die fighting for their country, but to die miserably, tediously, obscurely, for their country,-without either murmur or appeal. When beardless boys, taken from luxurious homes, served in the trenches and camped in wreaths of snow, and bore the awful change with eager gallantry; till mothers made childless knew when the tidings reached them, that those they had so fondly cradled and so tenderly reared, had perished, killed but not conquered, by the lingering and persistent hardships which had surrounded them.

Are the names but names now, of strange far-away places, known to us only by maps and sketches, where the best blood of England reddened the streams, or sank in the alien earth? Are they vanished like the thirst that was quenched in the Bulganac river, after a burning and weary march, prelude to the war of the morrow: when men stood gazing, from the rugged and precipitous heights which crowned that river's banks, on the roots of willows mowed down in

a bitter harvest to prevent shelter or concealment of a foe; and three hundred yards of fire blazed in the distance, from the quiet village of Bouliok?

Is Alma but a vague melodious sound? where fording that unknown water, and marching straight into batteries held to be impregnable, we drove out five-and-forty thousand men before the sun marked three hours of time for the struggle? Do we still shudder at the tale of ever-memorable Balaklava; when, circled by a blaze of artillery, front, flank, and rear, our gallant horsemen rode to death at the word of a mistaken command, and left on the ground twothirds of their number? Do the dull November mists of morning never bring to mind the fogs of that miserable anxious dawn at Inkermann; when those who had worked in the trenches all night were suddenly called forth from their comfortless rest in tents or on the bare ground, to charge against barbaric foes; foes who mutilated the dead to avenge the bravery of the living?

Are our dreaming ears never haunted by floating watchwords through the night? brief sad sentences spoken by dying lips, whose farewells were given so far away?

'Forward, 23d!' shouts one young voice.- Stand firm, for the honour of England and the credit of the Rifles; firm, my men!' cries another. I will fight to the last,' pants the brave but overpowered swordsman called upon to surrender as prisoner. I do not move till the battle is won,' exclaims the crippled hero who lay bleeding before Sebastopol, amongst guns still directed by him against the enemy!

Do we think, as our daily post comes happily in, or as we ourselves carelessly sit down at our writing-tables for an uneventful correspondence, of that charnel-house at Varna, and all the last messages' written by deputy for poor soldiers at Scutari, and on board the swarming troop-ships, and in the miserable hospitals denuded of stores or fit appliances for the wounded? Do the stray scattered sentences return, recorded among a thousand others? when one writes, Praying my mother may not feel the misfortune of my death too much;' and another-Write to my father; he will best break this to my wife;' while a third indites the triumphant date, Written on the field we have taken from the enemy.'

Do we yet mourn for the later, nearer deaths of those who came back to native land and pleasant homes; whose faces were once more dwelt on by loving tender eyes; whose hands were once more clasped by loving hands; but who were so worn and shaken by the past tempest of that wintry war, that, like nipped trees, they stood for a little while, and then succumbed and fell? Those who have

not survived to win their laurels in future battles, but rest under the

of their own green land,-soldiers who died in time of peace, when the bitterness of death seemed ended; precious lives, whose loss left blanks in many a home, that never, never, can be filled!

Do we sometimes see a vision, as we cross on a sunny morning from the gardens opposite Buckingham Palace and the Horse Guards, of the crowded Park as it was on that thrilling day, when such of our wounded heroes as had returned, passed before their Queen in thin lines,-receiving a medal and a word, for the life that was risked, and the health or the limb for ever lost,—and loyally saluting, amid the cheers of the crowd, the Ruler of the country in whose service they had bled?

Events follow events in this busy world of ours, as wave follows wave on the wide and restless sea,-too happy if they do not pass like those waves, leaving only, here and there, a narrow heep of weed thrown up on the shore, where the landmarks of history stand.

How much is remembered, and how much forgotten,-how many are rewarded, and how many suffered to float away into oblivion and neglect, is best known to those who should receive, and those who could bestow, the prizes that glitter in the eyes of the lovers of glory; and which should also be the recompense of all who fight and suffer, even though some be willing to suffer without such reward, for duty and conscience' sake alone.

Sir Douglas was not among those who could claim the meed of fame that day. He had served his country well in many a past campaign, but the dreary hour had come to him, as to many another gallant heart, when he was compelled to own that the body could no longer obey the soul's behest; any more than the soldier, bleeding faintly to death on the battle-field, can rise at the sound of the bugle-call, and march with his comrades to victory.

In bed, or in a blanket on the ground in his tent; on board a crowded steamer borne to an hotel at Pera; looking forward at one time only to a grave at Scutari; rallying a little, and struggling so far with sickness as again to engage with the enemy, only again to be disabled, not by wounds, but by sickness; depressed, worn out, exhausted, and miserable at the helplessness consequent on this condition, Sir Douglas Ross had at last to surrender to the force of circumstances, and confess himself a dying invalid.

His letter to Lorimer was the letter of a broken-hearted man; and he proved his consciousness of that fact by its closing words: I am not the only officer in command here, whose fate it will be to

die, not of the privations of the camp or the wounds received in battle, but of a broken heart.'

And Lorimer knew that only the extreme of fading and failing weakness would have wrung that sentence from his friend and comrade; dear to him from boyhood till the present hour.

CHAPTER LXXIX.

PEACE IN GLENROSSIE.

THE summer days wore on. Sir Douglas had embarked, and was on his way home! So much at least was known to Gertrude's restless heart. That strange and dreadful life, so busy round him; of alternate wet and cold and heat; of toil to procure water or proper food; of roads impassable, and insufficient clothing; of wounds and cholera and exhaustion; of trenches and pickets; of overloaded troop-ships, and miserable moving of dying men on mules and rough contrivances of planks; decimated companies, and needless sacrifice by neglect and mismanagement of lives that might have been spared -all that was over! But the mortification of inaction, and the private sorrow of heart: these things remained, ever present with him; and at first his state of debility was such, that the faithful friend who had joined and now accompanied him, daily expected the bitter task of writing home to say that all was ended,' and that the gallant spirit had passed away from earthly struggles to the long peace of death.

A better fate was in store for him. As they neared England, his health improved, and when at length Lorimer Boyd announced their landing at Folkestone, he was also able to add that he hoped, before leaving that port, to break to him all that had occurred since the day that Gertrude had been called to Frere's strange and dreadful sick bed, and in obeying that call had indeed gained the 'special blessing' which her young son believed would descend on her head!

Once again he wrote from the hotel at Folkestone. Sir Douglas had such an access of despondency on finding himself once more in that saddened England which he had quitted under such grievous circumstances, that he had been confined to his room with low fever. Lorimer owned that at last he risked the shock of a more abrupt communication than he had originally intended, 'lest our Douglas should die, and never know the truth on this side of the grave!'

All had now been told him; the papers given by Gertrude were in his possession, and had been read and re-read with many a bitter groan of vehement self-reproach. He sought no excuse in the chain of circumstances that had led him to deem her false, whose truth had been so dearly proved: though he spoke sorrowfully of the constant concealment of facts which, clearly explained and understood, would have seemed harmless and innocent as they were in reality. He spoke also of the suffering he had endured at times from flashes of torturing doubt, repelled with all the strength of his heart, but recurring at wretched intervals, as on the day when he heard Kenneth so passionately speaking with Gertrude in the morning-room, and found her agitated beyond what a common sympathy in his supposed domestic troubles could reasonably justify. And, lastly, he revealed to Lorimer-with injunctions never while he lived to breathe that secret to mortal ear- the events of that fearful morning when Kenneth, delirious from drunken excess, had attempted his uncle's life, accompanying that murderous assault with the wild speech: Part from her yourself; part from her for ever! And be sure if I do not marry your widow, no other man shall!'

The narrow escape from death which the unsteadiness of the drunkard's aim had then permitted; the pain and misery of mind Sir Douglas had undergone, sitting with his bandaged hand throbbing with pain, listening to the treacherous tale of Alice Ross, and reading, as he thought-as any one would have thought-the certain, incontrovertible proof that Gertrude was on the eve of a sinful yielding to the passion so wildly and daringly expressed for her, not only to herself but to her husband; the pining for her, the haunting of all memories of her, in spite of these convictions; the yearning for death on the battle-field, and the slow, ignoble, sickly wasting away of life that came instead; the agony of perplexity caused by Neil's innocent boyish letters about his mother, and Kenneth, and his young cousin Effie; the longing he had had to countermand his own strict and solemn injunctions to Lorimer, and entreat for news of Gertrude, of home, of the treasures he had lost and abjured in vain;—all this did Sir Douglas acknowledge with an out-pouring of the heart that left no thought unknown to the faithful friend who now soothed, and nursed, and consoled him, with assurances of the patient love and lingering hope that had upborne his innocent wife through all the bitter misunderstanding that had parted them.

'I knew this happier day would come,' Lorimer wrote to her. 'I was a true prophet of good; and I think in the depths of your heart you also looked for it sooner or later. Now let me beseech you to try and be as calm and well as possible; and expect Douglas