show him the city, which many Englishmen had longed to see, at the same time threatened to change his prison quarters, perhaps for worse.

It was now the second day from that in which he was taken captive. The long ride of yesterday, with the small food allotted to him, had reduced his strength.

He sallied forth into the street.

Above his head a sky

of cloudless lustre formed a deep blue vault over earth and sea. To the extreme right of him, the long azure line of the Euxine stretched with its blue circle. Upon that portion of it which he could descry between the cliffs that formed the end of the harbour, he noticed two or three ships of the British navy with the flag of his native country on their masts. Close at his feet was the harbour on which the war vessels of Russia floated in idle security. In front of him the hills that swelled over him toward Balaklava formed the southern boundary of the town, while on his left the wandering stream of the Tchernaya found its way into the harbour from the Inkerman road. Above his head rose the houses of solid stone, marking the amazing strength of the great stronghold of the naval power of Russia.

The town seemed large and ample, and multitudes were thronging its streets and high ways.

116

CHAPTER VIII.

DEATH.

With

WE must leave Dennis in Sebastopol and follow the movements of the British army. Up to this moment, the army in the Crimea, and Europe at large, had but a faint idea of what was coming or to come. the retreating Russians moving towards the south-east, and the ground strewn with their dead, their arms, and their trophies; it was but a very desperate or hazardous game which seemed to open out before the allies. Sebastopol lay to the south. The fleet was waiting to move, and the impression so long given and received in England and Europe appeared likely to be verified that the Allied armies had only to come and look at it to make it melt away as snow wreaths before the glance of a sunbeam.

The question was; what was to be done? Shall the great city be at once captured, if possible, by a coup de main? Or, shall a regular siege be formed, and the city taken by long and scientific but certain process?

But two days were to be spent yet in clearing the battle-field, and doing what could be done for the wounded. Thus every hour of day and night men were out in parties seeking missing comrades and burying the dead. The scene was very awful, and the grim chamber of death was enough to turn away with horror and disgust all but those whose province it peculiarly was to attend them in that awful hour; and who

were they? The surgeons were in full request; though the clenched hand and deep-fetched groan told but too sadly how many sufferers lay around waiting though in vain for the kindly hand of amputation or binding to

come near to save.

But more than surgeons: the ministers of CHRIST'S holy Church, where were they? What hospital needed so many chaplains? What clinic practice was ever like that when blood-soaked turf made the hospital-bed and the cannon ball had been the medium of the epidemic. Here and there could be seen flitting about the sisters of mercy or the Roman Catholic priest lifting up his cross to the dying, or administering the extreme rite of the Church to the poor sufferer whose soul was presently to see GOD. And why not the Church of England too? "Because," said Major De Lacy, who was standing in the little street of the village where temporary hospitals had been erected, "because that Church is a pure Church and we are free, thank GOD, from the vile pollutions of Rome. GOD forbid we should have extreme unction palmed on us."

"True," said young Loraine, who was leaning on a kind of litter which the men had made for him, and waiting till there was room and leisure for him to be examined and operated on in the hospital. "True, but surely we have something to do; surely we may have ministers to preach repentance to the dying who throng and crowd yonder awful hill," said the young officer, turning his eye heavily towards the sloping hill which overhung the stream and the village, and watching for a moment, where here and there one figure and then

another started up either in the agonies of dying or in the convulsive struggles of anguish and pain.

"Surely there," said the young man, his eyes firing with feeling, "there is work, there is opportunity to preach repentance and the salvation of every one who will turn to CHRIST."

here; thank GOD the Our good fellows know Young Loraine, I'm

"Oh, confound it, no cant English Church is free of cant. how to die and no humbug. ashamed of you," said the major, half in good humoured joke, half in earnest.

The colour mounted to Leonard's face. He never knew before that he could break through his reserve on these subjects. He never thought the outer surface would so readily break. He thought of Jessy; he remembered being once with her in a cottage and hearing her gentle pleading voice entreating a poor youth who had been struck down by sudden accident, to repent. He recollected the reality of her manner, and the happy and peaceful result; hand in hand with his love of Jessy came now the desire to speak for truth. Happy when an early union between the young not only gives point to life but also unites with the heroism for those we love a heroism for religion.

"No, no," said Leonard, "I cannot, I don't agree with you. I have heard the story of the thief on the cross, and I believe that especially in the case of those who have had few opportunities, pardon to a penitent's dying hour may be indeed offered and held out."

"Nonsense," said the major, "my dear fellow, you are touched with Tractarianism. I have a maiden

sister who is too; she is an excellent creature, but she once heard Dr. Pusey preach at Brighton, and this altered her whole life. It is madness, a sort of mad

ness.

"Call it what you will," said Leonard, "it is truth. Oh, why, why has not our Church got hundreds of clergymen here to go forth and scatter over that sad hill-side and preach to those poor fellows? How many of them are now recollecting what they learnt in an English Sunday school: I will answer for it. Remembering old bits of the LORD's Prayer which has not been used perhaps these five years. Oh, why have we no one here to stand on the hill-side and send forth a staff of good men to glean in such a harvest as that is. Why are we so ready and magnificent in our military and naval equipments, and so little heedful of the souls of our men ?"

"My dear fellow, you are delirious with your wound. I wish those cursed surgeons were ready; never mind the ministers; give me a surgeon or two; everything for its place and every man for his time: that's the motto of old England and mine too. Soldiers for battle-fields; surgeons for hospitals; and ministers for Church and dinner parties. Monstrous fine things are clergymen in their place-entertaining fellows enough; Oh, yes! I have great respect for the cloth. Church and State, my dear fellow, I'd get drunk in drinking it with any parson in the kingdom; but as for your parsons on the battle-field and when a poor honest fellow wants to die quietly: No! that won't take. If I were Lord Raglan, I wouldn't let it be. Why, my dear fellow,