ries written about the wants and contrivances of the goldhunters. Sir Stephen Lakeman and Kaffirland had furnished us with some valuable lessons; and Sir Richard England at least knows something of the causes which had brought about our deep disgrace in Affghanistan. Yet we have wilfully neglected everything in a manner which it is most lamentable to witness, the more so because Englishmen are not given to complaining of mere personal suffering; and among all of those whom I see around me, there is a gallant (I might have written touching) determination to put a bluff gay face upon things.

Therefore, we sit (there were four of us) curled up in various attitudes, and joking about the state of things in general, over short clay pipes almost as black and dirty as ourselves. We sit waiting for dinner, and our host every now and then shouts out lustily to a servant who is preparing it somewhere outside within hearing. As the servant does not appear, however, to make much progress, and our appetites goad us at last into extreme measures, we go out to help him, or worry him into greater speed.

Our cook is a tattered, lantern-jawed, hollow-eyed fellow, who would not be recognised as a soldier by any servantmaid in Knightsbridge. We find him in a state of that despondency which is, I think, peculiar to the cooking Englishman. He is kneeling down on the damp ground, and blowing testily at some wettish, smoky shrub roots, crammed in a manner, inartistic enough, into an impromptu fire-place. He looks a fine illustration of shame and anger-he dislikes his job, and he does not know how to perform it. Let us help him. I know somebody who is not a bad cook at a pinch, and if we can only get some charcoal, of which there is no scarcity, I dare say, we shall do very well. We are not badly off for prog. There is some ration pork, a lean fowl, some eggs, potatoes, and honey. We have also got an old iron kettle, and a coffee-pot, with the lids thereto belonging. They are worth their weight in gold, and I hope we know how to appreciate them.

Modesty prevents us telling, at length, how, by frying the pork in the lid of the kettle, we obtained enough grease to poach the eggs and fry the fowl-how a mess of bread and

honey and whipped eggs was manufactured, which caused quite a chorus of lip-smacking, and which was pensively remembered long after its abrupt disappearance. Then we roasted some potatoes among the embers and ate them (with the remains of the grease extracted from the pork), as a bonne bouche, or delicate mouthful, to crown our repast; and, lastly, it was with all the pride of art that we were enabled to stew some tea in the coffee-pot, and convert it into punch of no common bouquet and flavour. With this seasonable beverage, added to devilled biscuits and pipes, our spirits rose rapidly, and we soon became joyous-perhaps noisy.

We must have looked a strange company all, except myself, were excessively ragged and oddly arrayed. They wore their full-dress uniforms, dingy, and covered over with dirt till their colour was completely undistinguishable. They looked something between the military mendicants who prowl about elderly lady-like neighbourhoods, and fancy portraits of noted brigands. Their beards appeared to begin at their eyelashes, and go on till they were lost in the folds of the voluminous scarfs which they wore round their waists. Between the dark neutral tint of their clothes and that of their hands there was but small difference, and when they removed their caps for a moment, the bit of clean skin underneath presented a contrast quite startling and ludicrous. There was one thing also which struck me particularly, and that was the prudent and laudable anxiety which our host displayed with respect to the fragments of our feast: nay, once, I remember, as a soldier passed chuckling and lugging along a powerful and struggling goose by the neck, the captain cried out with an eagerness of speech inexpressibly droll, "Hang it, Martin! There goes a fellow with a goose : be quick and cut after him, perhaps he will let us go halves, or tell you where he got it, or if there is another. Come, look sharp, or you'll lose him." I should be sorry to bring anything like an unhandsome charge against the captain's guests, but it certainly was my impression that Ensign Dash had placed something in his coat pocket, and that that something was the drumstick of a fowl, and a hunk of precious black bread, done up in a pocket-handkerchief.

I remember, as the night deepened, and we still sat

talking, that there was a certain deep-seated piety and resignation about my companions which I do not ever remember to have observed in young men before. There was a tenderness, a brotherhood in their manner when they spoke of fallen comrades; it seemed as if their own chances of life being so uncertain, gave them a kindred with the dead. Little words passed perhaps unconsciously enough among them which may be some day told solemnly on summer evenings and by winter hearths, as the last yearnings and expressed desires of gallant hearts which shall then be cold. Sometimes what they said had a simple and impressive earnestness, as if the speaker spoke with intention that his words should be hereafter recorded faithfully, as if he felt himself among those who are doomed to pass away in battle and stormy times. There was no fear or gloom in our little party that night, but only a serious sense of a grave position, such as a good man should not look on lightly. It was only a something which drew the bands of kindly friendship closer. There was a fulness of mutual trust in our hearts, an implied promise to do all which was silently asked, if needs were, and a quick conviction that we understood each other without forms of words such as the brave might deem it unmanly to speak.

:

They talked with cheerful pathos about their distant families and friends, so that I felt even then, while I listened, as if I were becoming the depository of many precious secrets, and that I should go upon my way laden with things which to some would be held of higher value than an argosy. God be merciful to the bereaved! for of those who sat beside me on that day but one remains for two were smote with tardy sickness, and the third fell suddenly in fight! God be merciful to the bereaved! and teach them to think, even in their agony, with a pride which shall be as balm to them, how their kindred have gone to join the radiant band of those who have died, uncomplaining, for the pure cause of duty. Let us resolve that, they shall be surrounded with respect and active sympathy, which shall not die away in words so long as they abide on earth amongst us. We cannot do too much, we have only to shrink with honest sensibility from the burning shame of doing too little!