hours in which Dennis was employed at his work the frequent sound of the tread of those who were bringing in the wounded told that the work of destruction was still going on, and that it was simply removed from the battle field to the streets of the besieged city. The bursting of a shell every now and then in the street, the tremendous shock of the explosion, and the cry of anguish which succeeded it made Dennis often fear for the safety of the hospital itself. He soon found that his work of attention was not likely to be confined to the youth of his own country, whom he had been first interested in; other claimants constantly put in their claim for the relief of thirst, or when the movement of some tortured limb from one side to the other increased their pain. Dennis had no long time pass by before he had large opportunity of exercising kindness towards his enemies.

It was not long after his entrance into the wards that one evening as he sat watching the broken slumbers of the youth whom he was tending, he was startled by the mention of his own name, and suddenly looking round saw not far from him a pale face peering from the sheet, and a hand extended in his direction. He went to the place; and as he approached it heard again in earnest entreaty, "John Dennis, John Dennis, give us a helping hand, there's a good fellow. Those chaps have given me such a handling as I shan't recover for I don't know when."

John had no difficulty in discovering in the applicant Sally's husband, who being an inhabitant of his own village, quickly recognised the voice and face of home.

"I wish, Jack, you would write a letter to my Sally. Poor thing, I left her when I ought to have known better. As to the young'un, why that don't know its right hand from its left, and that's certain; so it don't matter so much about him, as he won't fret, but my Sally will, poor thing. I have never treated her as I should; and now I'm lying here like, I think of it, and there's the odds."

After this speech, delivered in broken accents as his weakened strength and constant pain would allow him, Sally's husband ceased.

"Do you want me to write for you?" said John. "I'll do it gladly, but how is it to go? There'll be no getting it sent any how to England."

"Ay! now, that's what I've been thinking about these two nights. But I think I have got a thought. I've heard as how in a shipwreck men put letters into a bottle, and throw it into the sea, and as how they generally came to hand; and I thought if you were just to cork up my letter and throw it into the harbour, it might find its way either to Sally, or to some friendly ship, who would pick it up and take it home properly directed."

Though the poor fellow's face assumed so perfectly grave an expression, Dennis could scarcely restrain a smile. But he saw that it would be simply hopeless to attempt to reason with him on it, and that to write the letter, and discover some chance for its delivery was the only thing which would satisfy the mind of the man.

Accordingly he sat down by his bedside, and with

such materials as he could get from the Russian authorities in the hospital, he indited the epistle.

"My girl," began Barton.

"You must not begin so," said his scribe, whose school teaching had given him more refined ideas of letter writing, and whose sight once of the Universal Letter Writer had given him a truer sense of style.

"Oh! you know I be's no scholar. I never was. More's the pity. You young fellows have a fine headpiece, and it's a good thing too. A fellow feels it now when he wants to say a word to his own beyond the sea. I always called her 'old girl,' so why won't it do? Maybe if it's opened by some wrong person, they wouldn't stop reading it if they saw 'Sally,' for there's a rare sight of 'Sallies' at Brandon; but no one would think 'old girl' meant any but my Sally."

The force and logic of this remark was not very pungent or apparent, but there was just that amount of quick shrewdness which underlies so much roughness in our agricultural poor.

So John began, and pleased the sick man by addressing his wife in the terms which he chose.

"Old girl, here I be on my back, shot through by one of those 'ere chaps as we came to drub, the odds is they've drubbed me. Sally, my girl, I'm very sorry I have listed. The LORD has punished me. I never was no scholar; more's the pity. I hope I shall be a better man to you if I come back, and to the young'un. I hope you do not want. I'm afraid you will find it hard to drag on; but pull on and keep up till I come back, and I'll be a better man to you, if the LORD

brings me out of this place. There's a blessed GOD sees all. Trust in Him, Sal, and He will not forsake.-" "I think that's the right word, isn't it?” said he, looking up at Dennis, as if he felt some hesitation as to the use of his terms, though the evident satisfaction which passed over his face, and the correction of his several sentences told plainly enough that he had as much satisfaction in inditing his first letter as the poet laureate could have had in arresting and fixing for ever the lovely vision fleeting past his mind of his friend's tomb in the church where his dust reposed.

"All right," said John, no little pleased at his turning his powers to such definite account, and finding that education was a marketable commodity, "all right"; and the moral reflection was stereotyped and Barton proceeded.

"I hope as how you've not gone to the House, but if you have, cheer up, old girl; I'll come and take you out, old girl; I've been a bad one, and the LORD has shown me now the error of my ways, I'm very sorry for all my hard words to you; when I'm back, we'll go to church, on Sundays, clean and tidy, like Jack Hill and his missus, and the boy shall go to school, as education and scholarship is a tarnation fine thing, that's as I've found out however."

Then came a pause during which the poor fellow seemed to sink into a dreaming state of reflection. John was in doubt whether it was the effects of his exhaustion or whether he was searching for thoughts and expressions. But the silence was presently broken by the words

"I'm stumped, and that's certain."

Dennis asked if this began the next sentence, but was met by the assurance that it simply implied that the fountain of expression was dry, and that Barton had nothing more to say. The letter was folded, and directed, and Dennis placed it inside his coat, with the intention and promise of seizing the first opportunity of sending it to England; that opportunity occurred more quickly than either Dennis or Barton expected.

Dennis returned to the sick bed of his young companion-in-arms. Robert Watson, who had fallen amongst the wounded at the Battle of Alma, was a youth of about the same age as John himself, but his mode of entering the army, and the present campaign, were strikingly different. The only son of his mother, and she was a widow, left an orphan when quite little ; he had been from his earliest boyhood, the delight and dependence of his grandmother, Widow Hughes. The poor old woman, with her wrinkled face, her one blind eye, and her black silk bonnet which she wore all day long, and some people said all night, used to gaze down through the trap-door on to the steep ladder which led to her loft, as regularly at half-past five in the afternoon to see Robert return from school, as any Chamois hunter of the Alps would gaze down a precipice to take off a mountain goat. And as regularly as the old lady looked down, Master Bob looked up, mounted with unhesitating step the giddy stair, and kissed the wrinkled face for peppermint or toffee. And the two