the bitter pains of eternal death, suffer us not at our last hour for any pains of death to fall from Thee.”

By the time he had, finished these words, the body lay in its hill-side sepulchre. Deeply impressive are those words ever uttered in the open air, but peculiarly so to-night. The father continued gazing down on the face of his boy, unwilling to throw the clod upon features so mixed up with his cottage home and his fireside. The sound of Mr. Randall's voice died away upon the evening air amid a stillness which was only broken by two other sounds; the continued moan of the dying which rose from every side; and once by a scream from the carrion eagle, which having smelt the dead from the crag on the sea shore, uttered its lonely note like a clarion for battle, and spread its strong wings, to soar towards its grim repast.

The following letter afterwards written by the father home, will a little show the temper of our English soldiery. For the roughest soldier can realise the tenderest emotion when severed from his home.

"DEAREST MARY,

"I hope this will find you well, as it leaves me at present, thank God for it. Our Tom and I got quite safe to the seat of war, he bore up bravely through all his troubles, it made my old heart proud to hear how many called him a fine lad.-Dear wife, he's been a good boy to me, and looked well after me. a dreadful battle on the heights of the Alma. fought like lions, and so did our Tom. could take my eyes off the Russians, I couldn't but look at him, and think what the fine people in our

We've had

Our men Whenever I

parish would say to him. Well, dear wife, Tom's dead. But don't fret, he died like a British soldier should. We were charging up the hill, and I hadn't time to look round more than a minute, and I heard him cry, 'Oh, father!' Those rascally Russians shot him with three bullets through his breast. I was able to watch the place where he fell, and, thank GOD, found his body before any of those fellows had time to strip him. I've been burying the poor boy to-night, though it's enough to break a heart of stone to put his face under the ground. But I put a lock of little Jane's hair in his hand, which she gave him; and I left it there, that he might not be altogether without something that belonged to him like on the cold dull hill here."

Such was a portion of the letter which the good man wrote; a type of how many letters of woe and sorrow even at this moment wending their way like birds of evil omen! each one to be lost in the crowd of sorrowers, and to win no tributary tear of national regret.

Mr. Randall and Dennis wended their way along the earlier slopes of the hill, deeply saddened by the reflection of the impossibility of stopping to tend the crowds of sufferers that thronged this Pool of Bethesda. Each one was lying within sound of the rolling Alma, and lingering like the impotent folk of old, for some one to move them to the waters. Bright indeed would be the messenger who would come to that water and give them its healing draught; for on the Crimean hill that night there "lay a great multitude of impotent folk, blind, halt, withered," waiting, but how vainly! to be borne to the stream.

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CHAPTER VI.

THE WOUnded.

THOUGH for hundreds there no angel comes to stir the Alma-though for hundreds there no kindly hand will come to lift the wounded to the longed for stream, yet there is One Whose silent footfall treads amid the five porches crowded with the wounded, Whose Bosom yearns to comfort and give rest, and Who whispers into each ear that will listen to it, "Wilt thou be made whole?" and if they will but answer "yes," He will tell them that ere to-morrow morning they shall rise and take up their bed and walk. Rise above this corruptible body into the regions where sorrow is known no more, for " He shall change this vile body that they may put on a glorious body."—"Verily I say unto thee, to-day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise."

"It was somewhere near here," said Dennis, letting down the ray of his light to bring its focus on the bodies of the soldiers.

"It was here that the guards charged just at the time the chasm was made through which we retreated. You may depend upon it, it is not far from here," said Dennis, keeping his face down on the ground, "for he was badly wounded."

At that moment a low moan struck upon their ears, and looking round, they saw propped against a large stone or fragment of a rock, the head of a boy; his face had assumed the most ashy paleness. Cold sweat drops stood upon his forehead, and round his eyes was

H

that dark rim which we so often notice in the face of the dying, like as when the deep shadows of the clouds gather in round the evening sun. One hand was on his breast, and the other lay maimed and shattered by his side. The sound of footsteps seemed to arouse him, and he began to talk, and yet in such a strain as to show that his mind was wandering.

"Mother! dear mother!" he said, "why don't you come closer to me? I see you out there, but I can't reach you. I want to rest my tired head upon your breast. Do come to your poor boy as you used to do! for I'm so cold in this bed, and the rushlight circles are so many that they look like stars on a great wide sky."

He turned his heavy eye towards Mr. Randall, who approached him, and stared at him fixedly.

"My GOD!" said the Clergyman, as he dropped on his knee by the boy. What strong emotion worked in his bosom there was none there to know or to ask, but there was something in the emphasis with which he spoke that made Dennis look up.

The presence of the two figures seemed to recall his fleeting sense.

"Oh," said he, "forgive me, I didn't know where I was. Hasn't he come back with the water? I'm so thirsty."

"Who?" said Mr. Randall, with a voice of the utmost tenderness.

Why that kind officer," said he, "who has gone down to fetch me some in his hat, as he said he would, from the river. And yet he's so badly wounded him

self, I'm half afraid he's dead without getting back to me."

"Who was he?" said Dennis quickly-the idea struck him it might be Leonard. But the youth's mind had gone again, and he fancied he was in his mother's room.

Dennis remembered that he had seen Leonard start forward to save a boy just of this description when he received his gunshot wound. Possessed of this idea, Dennis shot off in the direction of the stream, down the sloping sides of the mountain. He had not gone far before he discovered a figure crawling rather than aught else, keeping one hand up, between which and his teeth he was holding up a cap full of what was, oh how precious then,-water.

It was Leonard-and the noble minded fellow had with all his agony struggled down to the stream and back again; faint with loss of blood, he found it difficult to walk.

The scene which he afterwards described he had seen by the water's side baffled all description. In one case, a man with neither hand or legs literally had managed to crawl to the edge, and all along as far as the eye could reach, poor wretches on their breasts were hanging their thirsty lips over the rushing wave, and yelled and laughed again with mad delight as the cold stream washed their withered tongues-Leonard but paused to take one deep draught himself, and then returned on his work of mercy. Exhausted and nearly sinking with the weakness he suffered, he heard with delight the kindly tones of Dennis's voice by his side.