Loraine entered with her usual brisk manner, as if the business of the whole parish was on her, and she meant to do it in the most cheerful, decided, and earnest way in the world.

"Oh, Jessy, I am two hours and a half before the time," she said; "I didn't come to stop. But what is the matter, Jessy, why you seem perfectly entranced!" Jessy looked up radiant with smiles.

"Of what," cried Jessy, "have you not heard all about it?"

"Oh, you mean about Leonard's return,' said Cicely, "yes, I am very sorry for him, it will unsettle his mind so." Jessy looked at Cicely, and did not speak; though for the instant, something more like indignation and anger than was usually seen on her face quivered on her lip.

"Indeed," said she.

"Oh yes! to be sure," said Cicely, "he will be spoilt with flattery, and fancy that he has won the crown of life, when he has hardly earned a chaplet."

"But he has earned one," said Jessy, with a feeling of indignation; "have you read this ?"

"Oh, you mean that affair in the quarries, we have been talking of nothing else all the morning; it is very satisfactory, it is worthy of a Loraine; but he does not stand alone, there were some ten others complimented with him, I think."

"Were there?" said Jessy, "I only saw his name." "Oh, what nonsense you talk," said Maxwell; "how beastly it is of you, Cicely, to try and make the most of the matter. You know you are as proud as Lucifer

about Leonard.

Very few sisters have such brothers

to be proud of as you have.”

Cicely smiled.

"Well," said she, "Leonard has many softnesses and faults which need roughening off, and more of the sterner discipline of life will do him good.”

Jessy's view was widely different.

His eventful life of one brief year had made him shine to her as a hero of old: and then, as to the view of a fine roughened character, to say the truth, she did not like half the words of that sentence. She would fain he would remain very much where he was. She dreaded the chasm becoming wider between them.

"She keeps the gifts of years before,
A withered violet is her bliss,
She knows not what his greatness is,
For that, for all she loves him more.

"For him she plays, to him she sings
Of early faith and plighted vows;
She knows but matters of the house,
And he he knows a thousand things.

"His faith is fixed, and cannot move,
She daily feels him great and wise,
She dwells in him with faithful eyes,

I cannot understand: I love!"

But it was of no use; Jessy found talking of no avail when Cicely was in the case, and she had a kind of intuition that Cicely was in the right.

"Then you'll be back at one o'clock," said Jessy.

"Yes," said Cicely; "I only came to leave a letter

from papa with Mr. Seymour, and to tell you the news about Leonard, only Maxwell got here before me.” What, then, you do care something about Leonard, Cicely, do you?

CHAPTER XXVII.

INKERMANN.

BUT we must now return for a short time to the events that were occurring in the Crimea, and to those circumstances which followed the unexpected disaster attendant on the cavalry charge at Balaklava. As we have seen, Leonard had been a spectator of the event, while Dennis lay ill in his tent.

It will be for posterity to decide more easily than we can on the amount of blame or credit to be attached to that celebrated charge. The period that immediately followed it was one in which the operations of the siege oscillated between success and failure in such manner as to disappoint continually the expectations of Europe. But a few weeks passed away before that next remarkable battle, which stands foremost in the terrible events of the campaign.

"On a detailed map of the Crimea a path is shown, which branching to the right from the Woronzoff road, going towards Sebastopol, descends the heights to the valley of the Tchernaya, close to the head of the great harbour. On this road the second division were encamped across the slope.-The road passing over the

left turns to the right, down a deep ravine, to the valley. To the right of the road, the ground first sloping upwards then descends to the edge of the cliffs opposite Inkermann. From the first the Russians had shown great jealousy of any one advancing on any part of the ground beyond the ridge. As soon as any party, if even two or three in number, showed itself there, a signal was made from a telegraph to the ships in the harbour, which immediately sent up shot and shell at a good range.

"About noon on the day after the action at Balaklava, a Russian force was seen from the Naval Battery, sallying from the fortress, and, shortly afterwards, the pickets of the second division were drawn in. Volleys of musketry on the ground between the ridges showed the affair to be serious, and a battery from the first division hastened to join those of the second in repelling the attack, while the Guards were moved up the slope in support. Some shot from the enemy's field-pieces were pitching over the ridge, behind which the second division were lying, while their skirmishers met the enemy down the slope, and the guns of the second division had come into action on the crest of the hill. The battery of the first division ranged itself in line with them, and the enemy's guns being at once driven off the field, the whole eighteen pieces directed their fire upon a Russian column, advancing half way between the ridges:-unable to face the storm of shot, the column retired precipitately down the ravine to its left, where our skirmishers fired into it, and completed its discomfiture. Another strong column then showed it

F F

self over the ridge, and after facing the fire of the batteries for a minute, retired the way it came. Presently the first column, having passed along the ravine, was seen ascending in scattered order the height beyond; at fourteen hundred yards every shot and shell pitched among them, our skirmishers also pressing them on their rear and flank. The Russian skirmishers under the fire of our guns and musketry, retired, turning to fire as they went, and in less than an hour from the beginning of the combat, the space between the ridges was cleared of them. This was the first attack that the Russians made upon the position at Inkerinann, and was a preparation for the more formidable assault upon the now celebrated place that bears that name, and which should have been after this warning, placed in a better condition of defence, against an enemy that showed so great a vigilance and so great a knowledge of the weak points of our army."

During the early part of November an exchange of prisoners effected between Lord Raglan and the commandant of Sebastopol had given Mr. Randall his freedom. His first object was to repair to the quarters occupied by Leonard and his servant Dennis, who was now fast recovering from the effect of his wounds, and the shock that he had received from the perils attendant on his escape. The few days that intervened between the arrival of Mr. Randall and the celebrated conflict of the 5th of November were occupied principally in conversations between Leonard and his friend. There is no doubt that there is a close and