"

compassion upon us; He will subdue our iniquities; and He will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.’ "Wonderful words," said Leonard, "where do they come from?”

"The Bible," said Mr. Randall, "which reveals GOD as indeed a pardoning and a long-suffering FATHER. But we must be thinking of our poor wounded sufferer on the stone yonder. We shall never be able to carry him ourselves with you, Leonard, ill as you are, for your wound seems bleeding afresh. I see numbers of small lanterns and torches flitting over the hill, if you were to go, Dennis, yonder, towards the east side, I think you might get some one to help us to carry this poor fellow to the camp."

"That I will," said Dennis, "just tell me where to go to, and I will not lose a moment."

Difficulties bring out character. How had Dennis come out since he left little Jane at his mother's door!

He went rapidly across the turf in the direction Mr. Randall pointed him, finding it no easy matter to thread his way amid the heaps of dying. Once he stumbled over the body of a man which lay flat upon the ground, and before he had extricated his foot from the arm in which it had caught, the figure suddenly leant up upon its elbow. It was that of a Russian, the ghastly paleness of his features struck a peculiar horror into the breast of Dennis. He could not for the instant take his eye off the glaring eye-balls of the wounded foe; he noticed the blood was flowing from a wound in his arm which had been re-opened by the jerk of his motion. Dennis, with his compassionate honest heart,

taking his own handkerchief off, bound up the Russianʼs arm. The Russian looked at him with a peculiar expression as he was doing it, which the English boy interpreted into gratitude.

CHAPTER VII.

THE COSSACKS.

As soon as he had done it he started off again on his errand for his comrade. He had scarcely turned when a bullet whizzed by his ear, and on moving round his head, startled by the sound, he saw to his horror the Russian, whose wound he had been dressing, with his firelock in his hand, which he had just fired, and the smoke scarcely curling off on the dewy air. The wretch had tried to destroy his benefactor; a grim and ghastly smile played round his lips, his eyes glared for a moment upon Dennis with a fiendish expression as he sunk back again upon the turf. The exertion burst a blood vessel, whose purple torrent poured through the gaping lips of his wound. With an echoing yell he died as Dennis stood looking, but not before he had twice torn up with his clenched fingers the grass and dust.

Dennis turned away in horror and pursued his course. The night was dark, and the starlight had become obscured by heavy clouds. Dennis, ignorant of his way, which was bounded by no intelligible mark, save the roaring of the Alma at the foot of the hill, had soon wandered away from the right track, and was presently

alarmed to find himself beyond the range of hill on which he had left Mr. Randall and Leonard. The place however distant from the scene of battle, had its own little companies of dead and dying. He became, for a moment uneasy on finding the distance was great which he had traversed, and he was impressed with the idea that he had got beyond the lines of the British pickets. He paused for a moment and put his finger on his lip in the attitude of one who was listening for a sound to determine his course. He was near a bush, on which his eye inadvertently rested. A corpse was sitting up inside the boughs, and the dead unclosed eyes stared upon him as he turned suddenly round.

A horror deeper than that which had seized him in the thickest fight occupied his mind. But before he had recovered himself he became conscious of the sound of something new to him. It was like that of human voices in the extreme distance, which were rapidly approaching; and the next moment the terrible rolling of the hoofs of horses at full gallop excited still more keenly his alarm. A wild hurrah burst upon the air, and a cloud of Cossacks, spear in hand, swept over the hill side. He had hardly had time to notice their dense mass, when scattered, as by a lightning shock, the whole body broke into fragments and swept in solitary units in a hundred directions, like a cloud of smoke, which dense at first, lies heavily on the air, but which in a few seconds frays itself away into a thousand thread-like gossamers upon the sky. The dense mass were broken into all directions. But Dennis had imagined that an eye rested on him as the nearest Cos

sack swept by the bush; he was not mistaken; hardly had the horseman galloped past him than he wheeled suddenly round, and the English soldier-boy stood face to face confronted with the Russian.

Dennis was by no means deficient in personal courage. His position was highly critical. The Cossack for a moment looked at him, and uttering a wild hurrah set up a shriek something between a laugh and a yell. Dennis had no weapon of defence; looking round he saw a stake stuck in a bush; he caught it up, and with great dexterity avoiding the well-aimed blow which the Cossack darted at him with his spear, he started on one side and struck the Cossack with full force with his stake. The Russian wheeling suddenly round received the blow on the back of his head, and for a moment stunned, he reeled on the horse, and clutching hold of its mane, fell with a blow on the earth. In another minute, attracted by the noise and shouting of their companion, the other Cossacks had ridden up. Dennis defended himself with the utmost courage, and placed his back against the bush. It took but a very few seconds for the force that surrounded him to overcome him. This accomplished, Dennis was bound, and blindfolded, found himself being whirled through the air a prisoner.

They took the route of the hill side of the battle, and as far as he could judge more than once other victims were added and borne on to swell the triumph of captivity in Sebastopol.

As yet, the horrors of plague, famine, corruption, and crowded masses had not infected that devoted city, but

as the horses swept along the street beneath the lines of stone, a peculiar sensation of dread crept over the poor boy's mind, when he felt to himself that he was a prisoner among men, who had already begun to earn for themselves a character for barbarity and savage cruelty. A thousand anxious thoughts crowded into his mind with respect to the condition of Leonard, the anxiety he would be in, and the need he might stand in of the kind and tender attention of his faithful servant. Thoughts of home came crowding and brooding over his soul in a way which they had not done since he came from England. He soon found that he was placed in the charge of some one who committed him to a solitary chamber in which the bandage was removed from his eyes.

The grey dawn of morning was just beginning to hover on the wall of his prison, and a sensation of chilling cold seized the limbs of the young captive. He was in the far famed town to which the eyes of the world were looking. What might be his fate there? A bombardment, and assault, and capture, might end as much in the destruction of the English captive as of the Russian soldier.

As far as Dennis could see, there was no intention on the part of his captors to illtreat him; but the painful re-action of the activity of the past few days, and the dull uncertainty of the future weighed heavily upon his spirits. He was surprised, at an early hour, by the appearance of one, whom he supposed to be his jailor, bearing no mean breakfast; after which he was bidden to follow his keeper on a walk, which while it promised to