CHAPTER XXXIX.

CAPTIVITY.

BUT the questions to be answered through many a long winter's evening and over many a Christmas hearth-while eager children sit with hands on knees to hear the oft told tale, and formless shadows gambol on the wall, and chesnuts crack with slumberous sound upon the glowing embers, and favourite spaniels doze upon the rug, and winter winds are quarrelling loudly outside the window, and crickets chirp beneath the warm hearth-stone-questions to be answered on many such a night, when you, reader, will not be there, must be answered for you now; where have Leonard and John Dennis been? and what is the history of their strange appearance now?

And before we go further, remember, I have not said it was Leonard's children, or Cicely's, or Allen's who are to listen to all these winter's tales, so do not imagine that for aught said here Leonard and Jessy are ever to be one: for the chances and changes of this war are great, and many is the fair vessel which its storms have beaten into harbour with shattered timbers and lagging windless sail. But all that anon.

Those happy days when after battles and war itself is over eager children ask for the oft told tale and never tire to hear of anguish and hairsbreadth escapes, of perils and ghastly scenes which wounded soldiers never tire to tell! How happy will be the day to many more when that day comes for them; as good Mrs.

Mulso would have said about it, as on some summer day she flung open her French window to the balcony and gathered a cluster of China roses which hung so coyly in at the window, and the grey church tower stood out on the sloping hill seen beneath the canopy of cool horse-chesnut boughs which shadowed the turf and flower borders under the burning June sun, as she would have said then, speaking of those to whom news of peace would bring little joy-for she ever took the sadder view of things and especially of war

"Had my sweet Harry had but half their numbers

To-day might I, hanging on Hotspur's neck

Have talked of Monmouth's grave.'

And now where have the wanderers been? for that they have been "long a coming" is plain to all, and must have been painfully so to those with whom we are but interested as the heroes of a tale of yesterday, whose events of weal and woe will be to us ere long but "as a post which hasteth by or as a stranger who tarrieth but a day."

And that we may see what tales of yore Leonard may have to tell at the hall, and John Dennis by the cottage hearth, we must go back awhile to the Crimea. We left them after Inkermann. The long protracted siege wore as heavily to them as to us at home; the constant sound of distant cannonades, the occasional near explosion of shells, the genuine flashes of mirth and merriment in the midst of trouble and danger which showed how truly the British could suit himself to London dissipation, or the march of Balaclava, and

be yet the same, the arrival of the Times with the account of what happened at the Crimea, or circumstances noted down by critical or sceptical minds to see how far "our own correspondent" on such a day was Mr. Russell, or some one who at the moment that he saw "our brave fellows coming out of the trenches," was in the act of walking down Grosvenor street. All these kinds of things occupied the mind and interest of men in the Crimea as much as they did us at home.

We always fancy that every one in the war knows everything which is happening, knows each gun which is fired, knows all the plans of the commander-in-chief on both sides, knows all the history of the wounded, knows all the emperor of Russia is intending to do, and has maps of the whole future campaign for the next year to come, all done by Wyld after the last newest fashion; we fancy that each drummer at Balaclava is intimate with the Princess Olga, and is more than half a counsellor at the Russian council-chamber; we imagine that every private who is marched out of our village by the recruiting sergeant and cried after by Dolly and Peggy, the moment he gets to the scene of war, is writing in the same tent with Sir William Codrington who is whispering into his ears the gravest apophthegms of war and strategy; whereas, those out there know less about the matter than we do; and a wounded sergeant at Balaclava seizes the Times with the utmost avidity to see what " our own correspondent" says about the battle he fought in last, to find out whereabouts he stood himself, and to discover where in fact the wound was which he had had a vague ima

gination was somewhere in his thigh. Well! in this state of things Leonard remained after Inkermann, reading the Times, walking in the Inkermann road, and gazing at the sea. The trenches became the allabsorbing employment, and Leonard had to take his share a work so wonderfully borne and entered on by so many of our men with such patience and heroism.

The trench work was very hard; at first dreadful from the extreme cold and great difficulty of getting provisions, which lying stored up at Balaclava could only be got to the army over the deep mud and through the heavy ruts which intervened between the trenches and Balaclava; the mortality among the soldiers was appalling especially among the recruits, who coming out fresh from England were quite unseasoned and died by hundreds. The poor fellows dug holes in the earth to hide themselves from the pitiless wind and the bitter inclemency of the weather; and they might be seen continually with their ragged dress and feet nearly bare pacing the wet mud, or wrapt in a single blanket, they shivered through the livelong night; "when relieved, they crept back," says an observer, "to the bleak shelter of their tents; while horrible cramps resembling cholera, seized numbers of those exposed, sometimes for night after night in succession, to guard the trenches." In December and January alone the sick varied from 2000 to 3000, and the sick returns included first and last 14,000 men ineffective in the British army alone. The trenches must be held at every cost or trouble; or the vast preparations, the high excitement and promise of last year, the blood of Alma and Inkermann had

been spent and spilt in vain. Leonard bore up wonderfully under these accumulated difficulties; he was the universal favourite of all the officers who knew him, and was ever foremost in going through his duty cheerfully; many a time he had witnessed scenes which made his blood curdle within him at the nearness of death and the sternness of human suffering.

One night he had gone down on his accustomed duty in the trenches; the night was dark and cold to freezing; the lurid light of the frequent missiles of war, and explosions blazed at the intervals of every few minutes in the air; the long dark lines of the trenches every now and then edged by the red line of fire seen beyond them, and then standing out dark against the sky, gave a graphic appearance to the scene of action. Two or three times shells had exploded near the working party in which Leonard stood, but without any damage being done to life; the men continued unceasingly at their work, although a worse night for firing had seldom been felt since the beginning of the siege. One man particularly had attracted Leonard's notice by the fearful way in which he was swearing and blaspheming GOD. The men around seemed to be appalled at it, but he continued despite the continual explosions around which might have made a stouter spirit quail, and to which many a dark sinful habit had succumbed.

The man in question was working next another who at first had been his companion also in his blasphemy, but the incessant explosions of the fatal implements around them for the time made him cease.

"What, have you turned saint?" said his companion,