"Then pledge me a toast to the glory of Wales--To her sons and her daughters, her hills and her vales;Once more--here's a toast to the mighty of old--To the fair and the gentle, the wise and the bold;Here's a health to whoever, by land or by sea,Has been true to the Wales of the brave and the free!"
"Then pledge me a toast to the glory of Wales--To her sons and her daughters, her hills and her vales;Once more--here's a toast to the mighty of old--To the fair and the gentle, the wise and the bold;Here's a health to whoever, by land or by sea,Has been true to the Wales of the brave and the free!"
And poor Phil Caradoc's voice, carolling this local ditty, was the last sound I heard, as I took the path that led first towards Balaclava and thence to the place of my destination, while the sun of the last day of November was shedding lurid and farewell gleams on the spires and white walls of Sebastopol. Many descriptions have rendered the name and features of Balaclava so familiar to all, with its old Genoese fort, its white Arnaout dwellings shaded by poplars and other trees, that I mean to skip farther notice of it, and also of the mud and misery of the place itself--the beautiful and landlocked harbour, once so secluded, then crowded with man-of-war boats and steam launches, and made horrible by the swollen and sweltering carcasses of hundreds of troop-horses, which our seamen and marines used as stepping-stones when leaping from boat to boat or to the shore. Some little episodes made an impression upon me, which I am unlikely to forget, after approaching Balaclava by a cleft between those rocky heights where our cavalry were encamped, and where, by ignominiously making draught-horses of their troopers for the conveyance of planks, they were busily erecting a town of huts that looked like a "backwood" hamlet. A picturesque group was formed by some of the kilted Highland Brigade, brawny and bearded men, their muscular limbs displayed by their singular costume, piling a cairn above the trench where some of their dead comrades lay, thus fulfilling one of the oldest customs of their country--in the words of Ossian, "raising the stones above the mighty, that they might speak to the little sons of future years." Elsewhere I saw two Frenchmen carrying a corpse on a stretcher, from which they coolly tilted it into a freshly dug hole, and began to cover it up, singing the while as cheerily as the grave-digger inHamlet, which I deemed a striking proof of the demoralising effect of war--for their comrade was literally buried exactly as a dog would have been in England; and yet, that the last element of civilisation might not be wanting, a gang of "navvies" were laying down the sleepers for the first portion of the camp-railway, through the main street of Balaclava, the Bella-chiare of the adventurous Genoese.
Though I did not loiter there, the narrow way was so deep with mud, and so encumbered by the débris and material of war, that my progress was very slow, and darkness was closing in on land and sea when I wheeled off to the left in the direction of Kokoz, after obtaining some brandy from a vivandière of the 12th French Infantry--not the pretty girl with the semi-uniform, the saucy smile, and slender ankles, who beats the drum and pirouettes so prettily as the orthodox stage vivandière--but a stout French female party, muffled in a bloodstained Russian greatcoat, with a tawny imp squalling at her back. I passed the ground whereon the picturesque Sardinian army was afterwards to encamp, and soon entered the lovely Baidar valley. The mountains and the dense forests made me think of Wales, for on my right lay a deep ravine with rocks and water that reflected the stars; on my left were abrupt but well-wooded crags, and I could not but look first on one side, and then on the other, with some uneasiness; for Russian riflemen might be lurking among the latter, and stray Cossacks might come prowling down the former, far in rear of Canrobert's advanced post at the Tartar village. A column such as he had with him might penetrate with ease to a distance most perilous for a single horseman; and this valley, lovely though it was--the Tempe of the Crimea--I was particularly anxious to leave behind me. I have said that I felt reckless of peril, and so I did, being reckless enough and ready enough to face any danger in front; yet I disliked the idea of being quietly "potted" by some Muscovite boor lyingen perdue, behind a bush, and then being brained or bayoneted by him afterwards; for I knew well that those who were capable of murdering our helpless wounded on the field, would have few compunctions elsewhere. Reflection now brought another idea--a very unpleasant one--to mind. Though I was inrearof this French advanced post, there was nothing to prevent Cossack scouts--active and ubiquitous as the Uhlans of Prussia--from deeming me a spy and treating me as such, if they found me there; for was not Major André executed most ignominiously by the Americans on that very charge, though taken in the uniform of the Cameronian regiment?
Unfortunately for me, there were and are two roads through the Baidar valley: one by the pass, of recent construction; and the other, the ancient horse-road, which is old, perhaps, as the days of the Greeks of Klimatum. A zigzag ascent, and a gallery hewn through the granite rocks for some fifty yards or so, lead to a road from whence, by its lofty position, the whole line of shore can be seen for miles, and the sea, as I saw it then, dotted by the red top-lights of our men-o'-war and transports. The other follows for some little distance, certainly, the same route nearly, but comes ere long to the Devil's Staircase, the steps of which are trunks of trees alternated by others hewn out of the solid rock; and this perilous path lies, for some part of the way at least, between dark, shadowy, and enormous masses of impending cliffs, where any number of men might be taken by surprise. And certainly I felt my heart beat faster, with the mingled emotions of fierce excitement and stern joy, as I hooked my sword-hilt close up to my waist-belt, assured myself that the caps were on my revolver, and spurred my roadster forward. Darkness was completely set in now, and before me there twinkled one solitary star at the distant end of the gloomy and rocky tunnel through which I was pursuing my solitary way.
I pursued the old road just described, urging my horse to a trot where I dare do so, but often being compelled--by the rough construction and nature of the way, and at times by my painful doubts as to whether I was pursuing the right one--to moderate his pace to a walk. Frequently, too, I had to dismount and lead him by the bridle, especially at such parts as those steps of wood and stone by the Merdven or Devil's Staircase, when after passing through forests of beech and elm, walnut and filbert trees, I found myself on the summit of a rock, which I have since learned is two thousand feet above the Euxine, and from whence the snow-capped summits of the Caucasus can be seen when the weather is clear. Around me were the mountains of Yaila, rising in peaks and cliffs of every imaginable form, and fragments of rock like inverted stalactites started up here and there amidst the star-lighted scenery. Anon the way lay through a forest entirely of oaks, where the fallen leaves of the past year lay deep, and the heavy odour of their decay filled all the atmosphere. The country seemed very lonely; no shepherd's cot appeared in sight, and an intense conviction of utter solitude oppressed me. Frequently I reined in my horse and hearkened for a sound, but in vain. I knew a smattering of Arabic and that polyglot gibberish which we call Hindostani, but feared that neither would be of much service to me if I met a Tartar; and as for a Greek or Cossack, the revolver would be the only means of conferring with them. Once the sound of a distant bell struck my ear, announcing some service by night in a church or monastery among the hills; and soon, on my left, towered up the range of which Mangoup-Kaleh is the chief, crowned with the ruins of a deserted Karaite or Jewish tower, and which overlooks Sebastopol on one side, and Sebastopol on the other. After a time I came to a place where some buffaloes were grazing, beside a fountain that plashed from a little archway into a basin of stone. This betokened that some habitation must be in the vicinity; but that which perplexed me most, was the circumstance that there the old road was crossed by another: thus I was at a loss which to pursue. One might lead me to the shore of the Black Sea; another back towards Sebastopol, or to the Russian pickets in the valley of Inkermann; and the third, if it failed to be the way to Kokoz, might be a path to greater perils still.
While in this state of doubt, a light, hitherto unnoticed, attracted my attention. It glimmered among some trees about a mile distant on my left, and I rode warily towards it, prepared to fight or fly, as the event might require. Other lights rapidly appeared, and a few minutes more brought me before a long rambling building of Turkish aspect, having large windows filled in with glass, a tiled roof, and broad eaves. On one side was a spacious yard enclosed by a low wall, wherein were several horses, oxen, and buffaloes tethered to the kabitkas or quaintly-constructed country carts; on the other was a kind of open shed like a penfold, where lighted lanterns were hanging and candles burning in tin sconces; and by these I could perceive a number of bearded Armenians and Tartars seated with chibouks and coffee before them, chatting gaily and laughing merrily at the somewhat broad and coarse jokes of a Stamboul Hadji, a pretended holy mendicant, whose person was as unwashed and whose attire was as meagre and tattered as that of any wandering Faquir I had ever seen in Hindostan. His beard was ample, and of wonderful blackness; his glittering eyes, set under beetling brows, were restless and cunning; his turban had once been green, the sacred colour; and he carried a staff, a wallet, a sandal-wood rosary of ninety-nine beads, and a bottle, which probably held water when nothing stronger could be procured. The Tartars, six in number, were lithe, active, and gaily-dressed fellows, with large white fur caps, short jackets of red or blue striped stuff, and loose, baggy, dark blue trousers, girt by scarlet sashes, wherein were stuck their daggers and brass-butted pistols; for, though all civilians, they were nevertheless well armed.
The Armenians seemed to be itinerant merchants, or pedlars, as their packages were close beside them; and two Tartar women--the wife and daughter probably of the keeper of the khan--who were in attendance, bringing fresh relays of coffee, cakes, and tobacco, wore each a white feredji, which permitted nothing of their form to be seen, save the sparkling dark eyes and yellow-booted feet, as it covered them so completely that each looked like nothing else than a walking and talking bundle of white linen. The whole group, as I came upon it thus suddenly, when seen by the flickering light of the candles and lanterns, had a very picturesque effect; but the idea flashed upon me, that as all these men were, too probably, subjects of the Russian empire, I ran some risk among them; and on my unexpected appearance the Tartars started, eyed each other and me, in doubt how to act, and instinctively laid hands on their weapons, like men who were wont to use them. The Armenians changed colour and laid down their pipes, fearing that I was but the precursor of a foraging party; and even the Hadji paused in his story, and placed a hand under his short cloak, where no doubt a weapon was concealed. All seemed doubtful what to make of me. I heard "Bashi-bazouk" (Irregular) muttered, and "Frank," too. My gray greatcoat enabled me, in their unprofessional eyes, to pass for anything. If a Russian officer, they feared me; if one of the Allies, I was the friend--however unworthy an instrument--of the successor of Mahomet; one of those who had come to fight his battles against the infidels of the Russian-Greek church; so either way I was pretty secure of the Tartars' good will; and boldly riding forward, I proceeded to "air" some of the Arabic I had picked up in the East, by uttering the usual greeting; to which the keeper of the khan replied by a low salaam, bending down as if to take the dust from my right boot and carry it to his lips, while more than once he said,
"Hosh ghieldiniz!" (i. e., Welcome!)
Then a Tartar, as a token of goodwill, took a pipe from his mouth and presented it to me, while another offered me sliced water-melon on an English delph-plate.
"Aan coon slaheet nahss?" (Have you any coppers?) whined the Hadji.
I gave him a five-piastre piece, on which he salaamed to the earth again and again, saying,
"Kattel herac! kattel herac!" (Thank you, sir.)
The meeting was a narrow escape, for I might have fallen among Russians; but fortunately not one of their nation happened at that moment to be about the place. I laid some money on the low board around which they were seated, and asked for coffee and a chibouk, which were brought to me, when I dismounted. However, I remained near my horse, that I might vault into the saddle and be off on the shortest notice. On inquiring if I was on the right road for Kokoz, the host of the establishment shook his head, and informed me that I was several versts to the left of it. I next asked whether there were any Russian troops in the immediate neighbourhood. Still eyeing me keenly and dubiously, several of the Tartars replied in the affirmative; and the tattered Hadji, whose goodwill I had won by my peace-offering, told me that a party of Cossacks were now hovering in the Baidar Valley, the very place through which I had passed, and must have to repass, unless for safety I remained with Canrobert's flying column. But then my orders were to return with his answer, and without delay. Here was a pleasant predicament! After mature consideration I resolved to wait for daylight, when the Hadji promised to be my guide to the Tartar village, where the Franks were posted, and which he led me to understand was nearer the base of Mangoup-Kaleh than the town of Kokoz; and in the meantime, he added, he should resume a story, in the narration of which he had been interrupted by my arrival. This announcement was greeted with a hearty clapping of hands; the women came nearer; all adjusted themselves in attitudes of attention, for oral storytelling is the staple literature of the East. Thus their thoughts, suspicions, and conjectures were drawn from me; and as all seemed good-humoured, I resolved to make the best of the situation and remain passive and patient, though every moment expecting to hear the clank of hoofs or the jingle of accoutrements, and to see the glitter of Cossack lances; and while I sat there, surveying the singular group of which I formed one, the quaint aspect of the caravanserai on one side, the dark forest lands and starlit mountains on the other, my thoughts, in spite of me, reverted to the news I had so lately heard--to her I had now lost for ever, and who, in her splendid English home, was far away from all such wild scenes and stirring perils as those which surrounded me.
The story told by the Hadji referred to a piece of court scandal, which, had he related it somewhere nearer the Golden Horn, might have cost him his head; and to me it became chiefly remarkable from the circumstance that, soon after the Crimean War, a portion of it actually found its way as news from the East into the London papers; but all who heard it in the khan listened with eyes dilated and mouth agape, for it was replete with that treachery and lust of cruelty which are so peculiarly oriental. After extolling in flowing and exaggerated terms the beauty of Djemila Sultana, whom he called the third and youngest daughter of the Sultan Abdul Medjid, the Hadji told us that he had been present when she was bestowed in marriage upon Mahmoud Jel-al-adeen Pasha, to whom, notwithstanding the charms of this royal lady, the possession of her hand was anything but enviable, as oriental princesses usually treat worse than slaves their husbands, leading them most wretched lives, in consequence of their tyrannical spirit, their caprice, pride, and jealousy of other women. Now the Sultana Djemila was no exception to this somewhat general rule, and having discovered by the aid of her royal papa's chief astrologer, the Munadjim Bashee, that her husband had purchased and secluded in a pretty little kiosk near the waterside at Pera a beautiful Circassian, whom he was wont to visit during pretended absences on military duty, she found means to have the girl carried off, and ordered the Capi Aga, or chief of the White Eunuchs, an unscrupulous Greek, to decapitate her; an operation which he performed by one stroke of his sabre, for the neck of the victim was very slender, and shapely as that of a white swan. Not contented with this, she resolved still farther to be revenged upon her husband the Pasha when he returned to dinner.
Seating herself in the divan-hanee while the meal of which the Pasha was to partake alone--as women, no matter what their rank may be, never eat with men in the East--was being spread, she rose up at his entrance, and rendering the usual homage accorded by wives (much to his astonishment), she then clapped her white hands, on which the diamonds flashed, as a signal to serve up the dinner. Crushed and abashed by a long system of domestic tyranny and despair, Mahmoud Jel-al-adeen, who feared his wife as he had never feared the Russians, against whom he had fought valiantly at Silistria, failed to perceive the malignant light that glittered in the beautiful black eyes of Djemila. But a fear of coming evil was upon him, as on that day, when he had ridden past the great Arsenal, he had seen a crow fly towards him; in the East an infallible sign of something about to befall him, as it was a crow that first informed Adam that Abel was slain.
"So I pray you, Djemila, neither to taunt nor revile me to-day," said he, "for a strange gloom is upon me."
She laughed mockingly, and Mahmoud shivered, for this laugh was often the precursor of taunts that could never be recalled or forgotten, and of having his beard rent, his turban knocked off, and his lips--the same lips at whose utterance his brigade of three thousand Mahomediyes trembled--beaten with the heel of her tiny slipper. But she began to storm as was her wont; and then, while her husband's fingers went into the pillau from time to time, there began their usual taunting discussion, with quotations from the Koran, "which, as all the world knows, or ought to know," continued the Hadji, "is the one and only book for laws, civil, moral, religious, and domestic."
"Doth not the Prophet say," she exclaimed, closing the slender tips of her henna-dyed fingers, "in the fourth chapter entitled 'Women,' and revealed at Mecca, act with equity towards them?"
"Yes; but he adds, 'If ye act not with equity towards orphans of the female sex, take in marriage such other as please you, two, three, or four; but not more."
"So--so; and your fancy was for a slave!"
"Was?" stammered Mahmoud; then he added, defiantly, yet tremulous with apprehension the while, "A Circassian, whose skin is as the egg of an ostrich--her hair as a shower of sunbeams."
"This to me!" she exclaimed; and starting from the divan, she smote him thrice on the mouth with the heel of her embroidered slipper.
The eyes of the Pasha flashed fire; yet remembering who she was, he sighed and restrained his futile wrath, and said,
"If you will quote the Prophet, remember that he says in chapter iv., 'Men shall have pre-eminence above women, because of those advantages wherein God hath caused one of them to excel the other.'"
Djemila laughed derisively and fanned herself.
"Who dared to tell you of this slave girl?" asked Mahmoud, glancing nervously at the pretty little slipper; "who, I demand?"
"The wire of the Infidels, that passes over men's houses, and reveals the secrets of all things therein--even those of the harem," said she, laughing, but with fierce triumph now; "yea, telling more than is known by the Munadjim Bashee himself."
The Pasha knew not what to say to this; he quaffed some sherbet to keep himself cool, and then ground his teeth, resolving, if he dared, to have all the telegraph wires in his neighbourhood cut down; indeed, about this time, such was the terror the Turks had of those mysterious speaking wires, that in Constantinople, to prevent their destruction as telltales, a few human heads were placed upon the supporting poles by order of Stamboul Effendi, or chief of the police.
"Thou shalt be stoned by order of my brother, and according to the holy law!" said Djemila, her proud lips curling and quivering.
"Woman, she is but a slave--an odalisque!"
"Whom you would marry before the kadi?"
"Yes," said Mahmoud, through his teeth, for his temper was rising fast.
"And you love her?"
"Alas, yes--God and the Prophet alone know how well!" said the Pasha, whose head drooped as he mentally compared the sweet gentleness of his Circassian girl with the fiery fury of the royal bride he had been compelled to espouse, asa cheap rewardfor his military services.
"Chabauk!" exclaimed Djemila. "Serve the next dish. Eat, eat, I say, and no more of this!"
The cover was removed by a trembling servant, and there lay before the Pasha Mahmoud the head of the poor Circassian girl--the masses of golden hair he had so frequently caressed, the eyes, now glazed, he had loved to look on, and the now pale lips he had kissed a thousand times in that lonely kiosk beside the sea.
"There is your dessert--alfiert olsun!" (May it do you good!) exclaimed Djemila, with flashing eyes and set teeth.
Mahmoud, horror-struck, had only power to exclaim, as he threw his hands and turned his eyes upward, "My love--my murdered love--Allah bereket versin!" (May God receive your soul!) and then fell back on his divan, and expired.
As he had prior to this drunk some sherbet, it was whispered abroad, ere long, that the poor Pasha had been poisoned; but as no examination after death took place, the high rank of his wife precluding it, it was given out that he had died of apoplexy. So he was laid in the Place of Sleep, with his turban on, his toes tied together, and his face turned towards Mecca, and there was an end of it with him; but not so with the Capi Aga, whom the Sultan, for being guilty of obeying Djemila's order to execute the odalisque, subjected to an old Turkish punishment now, and long before that day, deemed as obsolete. He was taken to the Sirdan Kapussi, or Dungeon Gate of Stamboul, close by the Fruit Market, and placed in a vaulted room, where he was stripped of all his clothes by the Capidgi Bashi, who then brought in a large copper plate or table, supported by four pedestals of iron, and underneath which was a grate of the same metal, containing a fire of burning coals, at the sight of which a shriek of despair escaped the miserable Greek. When the plate of copper had become quite hot, the executioner took the turban-cloth of the doomed man, unwound it, and placing it round his waist, by the aid of two powerful hamals had it drawn tight, until his body was compressed into the smallest possible place. Then by one blow of his sabre he slashed the hapless wretch intwo, and placing his upper half instantly upon the burning copper, the hissing blood was staunched thereby, and he was kept alive, but in exquisite torture, till the time for which he was ordained to endure it was fulfilled. He was then lifted off, and instantly expired.
Eagerly, with fixed eyes, half-open mouths, and in hushed silence, forgetting even to smoke, and permitting their chibouks to die out, his audience listened to this most improbable story, which the cunning Hadji related with wonderful spirit and gesticulation; and so "having supped full with horrors," at its close they showered coins--kopecs, paras, and even English pennies--upon the narrator. The whole story was a hoax, the Sultan having no such daughter as Djemila, the names of the three sultanas being quite unlike it; but that made as little difference then in Crim Tartary as it did afterwards nearer Cornhill; and Charley Gwynne and others of ours to whom I mentioned it were wont to call it "the bounce of the cold chop and the hot plate."
The night passed slowly with me in the khan. After the conclusion of the Hadji's story, the travellers who were halting there coiled themselves up to sleep, on the divan or on their carpets or felt mats; but I was too much excited, too wakeful and suspicious of the honest intentions of all about me, too anxious for dawn and the successful completion of the important duty confided to me, to attempt following their example, or even to allow that my horse should be unsaddled. I simply relaxed his girths, and remained in the travellers' common apartment, listening to every passing sound, and watching the sharp oriental features of the black-bearded and picturesque-looking sleepers by the smoky light of a solitary oil-lamp, which swung from a dormant beam that traversed the apartment. The arched rafters of the ceiling were painted in alternate stripes of white and black. There was a fireplace or open chimney, where smouldered on the hearthstone a heap of branches and dry fir-cones, the embers of which reddened and whitened in the downward puffs of wind that eddied in the vent; and round the walls were rows of shining tin plates, and under these were other rows of white cloths, like towels in shape and size, but worked and embroidered with gold thread, all made and prepared before marriage by the Tartar hostess in her bridal days. All these quaint objects appeared to recede or fade from my sight, and sleep was just beginning to overpower me, when my sleeve was twitched by the Hadji, who pointed to the snow-covered summits of the mountains then visible from the windows, and becoming tipped with red light; and stiff and weary I started up, to have my horse corned and watered for the task of that day, the close of which I could little foresee.
The wife of the Tartar placed before me, on a table only a foot high and little more than a foot square, a large tin tray, containing some hard boiled eggs, black rye bread, and a vessel filled with the sweet juice of pears. It was a strange and humble repast, but proved quite Apician to me after our mode of messing before Sebastopol. I had barely ended this simple Tartar breakfast, when the Stamboul Hadji, who was to be my guide to Canrobert's post near Kokoz, exclaimed, in a startled voice, "Allah kerim--look!"
I followed the direction indicated by his hand and dark, gleaming eyes, and with emotions of a very chequered kind saw, through an open window, "a clump of spears," as Scott would have called them; in short, a party of Cossacks riding slowly and leisurely down the mountain-path that led straight towards the house. In the eastern sunlight the tips of their lances shone like fiery stars; but no other appointments glittered about them; for unlike the gay light cavalry of France and Britain, their uniforms are generally of the most plain and dingy description. As yet they were about a mile distant, and if I would escape them, there was not a moment to be lost. I rushed to my horse, looked hastily but surely to bridle-bit, to saddle-girth, and stirrup-leather; and without waiting for the Hadji, who, being afoot, would only serve to retard my pace and lead to my capture, I gave some money to the Tartar hostess, and galloped away, diving deep into the forest, hoping that I had been as yet unseen, and should escape if none of the people at the caravanserai betrayed me, either under the inspiration of cowardice or malevolence. To avoid this party, who, it would appear, were coming right along the road I should pursue, I rode due eastward towards the ridge of Mount Yaila, which rose between me and the Black Sea, and which extends from Balaclava nearly to Alushta, a distance of fifty miles.
The day was clear and lovely, though cold and wintry, as the season was so far advanced, and I proceeded lightly along a narrow forest path, the purely-bred animal I rode seeming scarcely to touch, but merely to brush, the dewy grass with its small hoofs. The air was loaded by the fragrance of the firs; here and there, between the dark and bronze-looking glades, fell the golden gleams of the morning sun; and at times I had a view of the sombre sea of cones that spread over the hills in countless lines, and in places untrodden, perhaps, save by the wolf and the badger; overhead the black Egyptian vulture hovered in mid-air, the brown partridges whirred up before my horse's feet, and the hare, too, fled from its lurking-place among the long grass; but by wandering thus deviously in such a lonely place, though I might avoid those ubiquitous Cossacks, who were scattered "broadcast" over all Crim Tartary, I should never reach Kokoz, or deliver that despatch, which, if taken by the enemy, I meant to destroy. Once or twice I came upon some Tartar huts, whose occupants seemed to be chiefly women--the men being all probably employed as military wagoners, in the forest or afield; but they drew close their yashmacs and shut their doors at my approach; so midday came on, and I was still in ignorance of the route to pursue, and in a district so primitive that, when the simple natives saw me scrape a lucifer-match to light a cigar, they were struck dumb with fear and wonder. Vague, wild, and romantic dreams and hopes came into my mind, that, if I perished and my name appeared in theGazette, Estelle would weep for me; and in my absurd, most misplaced regard, and almost boyish enthusiasm, I felt that I should cheerfully have given up the life God gave me, for a tear from this false girl, could I be but certain that she would have shed it. Ay, there was the rub! Would she shed it, or the sacrifice be worth the return?
"Bah!" thought I, as I bit my lip, and uttering something like a malediction rode sullenly and madly on.
"Why cling thus to the dead past?" thought I, after a time. "Pshaw! Phil Caradoc was right in all he urged upon me. Yet that past is so sweet--it was so brilliant and tender--that memory cannot but dwell upon it with fondness and regret, with passion and bitterness."
Pausing for nearly an hour, my whole "tiffin" being a damp cheroot, I loosened my horse's girths for the time, and turned his quivering and distended nostrils to the keen winter blast that blew from the Euxine, and then I remounted. After wandering dubiously backward and forward, and seeking to guide my motions by the sun, just as I was about to penetrate into a narrow rocky defile, the outer end of which I hoped would bring me to some proper roadway or place where my route could be ascertained, the distant sound of a Cossack trumpet fairly in my front, and responded to by another apparently but some fifty yards in my rear, made me rein in my horse, while my heart beat wildly.
"Cossacks again!" I exclaimed, for I was evidently between two scouting parties, and if I escaped one, was pretty certain to be captured by the other.
Instinctively I guided my horse aside into a clump of wild pear-trees, the now leafless stems and branches of which I greatly feared would fail to conceal either it or me; but no nearer lurking place was nigh, and there I waited and watched, my spirit galled and my heart swollen with natural excitement and anxiety. Death seemed very close to me at that moment; yet I sat in my saddle, revolver in hand, the blade of my drawn sword in the same grasp with my reins, and ready for instant use, as I was resolved to sell my life dearly. Preoccupied, I had been unconscious for some time past that the cold had been increasing; that the sun, lately so brilliant, had become obscured in sombre gray clouds, and even that snow had begun to fall. Delicate and white as floating swans'-down fell the flakes over all the scenery. On my clothing and on my horse-furniture it remained white and pure; but on the roadway I had to traverse it speedily became half-frozen mud. If I escaped these scouting parties my horse-tracks might yet betray me, and I thought vainly of the foresight of Robert Bruce when he fled from London over a snow-covered country with his horse-shoes inverted. If I escaped them! I was not left long in uncertainty of my fate in that respect.
Riding in double file, and led by an officer who wore the usual long coat with silver shoulder-straps and a stiff flat forage-cap, a party of forty Cossacks issued slowly from the defile. Their leader was either a staff-officer or a member of some other force, as his uniform was quite different from theirs, which declared them to be Tchernimorski Cossacks, the tribe who inhabit the peninsula of Tamar, and all the country between the Kuban and Asof, being literally the Cossacks of the Black Sea, and natives of the district. They carried their cartridges ranged across their breast in rows of tin tubes,à la Circassienne, and were all bronzed, bearded, and rough-looking men, whose whole bearing spoke of Crimean and Circassian service, of hard outpost work among the wild Caucasus, of many a bloody conflict with Schamyl--conflicts in which quarter was neither asked nor given! I had never been quite so near those wild warriors of the Russian steppes before, and have no desire ever to be so again, at least under the same dubious circumstances. They wore little squab-shaped busbies of brown fur; sheepskin shoubahs, or cloaks, over their coarse green uniforms; and had trusses of straw and bags of corn so secured over the shoulders and cruppers of their small shaggy horses, that but little more of the latter were visible than their noses and tails. They rode with their knees high and stirrup-leathers short, their lances slung behind them, and carbines rested on the right thigh. Captivity or escape, life or death, were in the balance as they slowly rode onward; but favoured by the already failing light and the falling snow, I am now inclined to think that my figure should have escaped even their keen and watchful eyes, had not evil fortune caused my horse, on discovering a mare or so among their cattle, after snuffing the air with quivering nostrils, to whinny and to neigh! At that moment we were not more than fifty yards apart.
A shout, or rather a series of wild cries, escaped the Cossacks. I pressed the spurs into the flanks of my gallant black horse, and he sprang away with a wild bound; while the bullets from nearly twenty carbines whistled past me harmlessly, thank heaven, and I rode steadily away--away. I cared not in what direction now, so that the more pressing danger was eluded, while cries and threats, and shot after shot followed me; but I had no great fear of them so long as they fired from the saddle, experience having taught me that even the best-trained cavalry are but indifferent marksmen. Before me rose the green ridge of Mount Yaila; the ground was somewhat open there, being pastoral hill-slopes gradually culminating in those peaks, from whence, in a clear day, the snow-clad summits of the Caucasus can be discerned; and to reach a ravine or cleft in the hills before me, I strained every effort of my horse, hoping, with the coming night, to escape, or find some shelter by the seashore.
The idea was vague, uncertain, and wild, I know; but I had no other alternative save to halt, wheel about, and sell my life as best I could at terrible odds; while to prevent me eluding them, the Cossacks had gradually opened out their files into a wide semicircle, lest I should seek to escape by some sudden flank movement; and all kept their horses--wiry, fiery, and active little brutes--well in hand. Their leader was better mounted and kept far in advance of them--unpleasantly close on my flanks, indeed--but still his nag was no match for the noble English horse I rode; and so as the blue shadows lengthened and deepened in the snow-coated valley, I began to breathe more freely, and to think, or hope, there was perhaps a chance for me after all. Perhaps some of the Cossacks began to think so, for they dismounted, and, while the rest kept fiercely and closely in pursuit, levelled their carbines over their saddles, over each other's shoulders, or with left elbow firmly planted on the knee, and thus took quiet and deliberate pot-shots at me; and two had effect on the hind legs of my horse, tending seriously to injure his speed and strength; and as each ball struck him he gave a snort, and shivered with pain and terror. On and on yet up the mountain valley!
An emotion of mockery, defiance, and exultation almost filled me--the exultation of the genuine English racing spirit--on finding that I was leaving the most of them behind, and was already well through the vale, or cleft, in the mountains, the slopes of which were then as easy to traverse as if coursing on the downs of Sussex; and already I could see, some three miles distant, the waters of the Euxine, and the smoke of our war-steamers cruising off Yalta and Livadia. I looked back. The Cossack leader was very close to me now, and five of his men, all riding with lance in hand, as they had probably expended their ammunition, were but a few horse-lengths behind him. I could perceive that he had also armed himself with a lance, and felt assured that in his rage at having had so long and futile a pursuit, he would certainly not receive my sword, even if I offered it, as a prisoner of war; so I resolved to shoot him as soon as he came within range of my "Colt," the six chambers of which I had been too wary to discharge as yet.
Checking my panting and bleeding horse for a second or two, to let the galloping Russian come closer, I fired at him under my bridle arm, and a mocking laugh informed me that my Parthian shot had gone wide of its mark. Not venturing to fire again, I continued to spur my black horse on still; for now the friendly twilight had descended on the mountains and the sea, whose waves at the horizon were yet reddened by the farewell rays of the winter sun as he sank beyond them. Suddenly the character of the ground seemed to change--vacancy yawned before me, and I found myself within some twenty yards of a pretty high limestone cliff that overhung the water!
The hand of fate seemed on me now, and reining round my horse, I found myself almost face to face with the leader of the Cossacks; and all that passed after this occurred in shorter time than I can take to write it. Uttering an exulting cry, he raised himself in his stirrups, and savagely launched at me with all his force the Cossack spear. I eluded it by swerving my body round; but it pierced deeply the off flank of my poor horse, and hung dangling there, with the crimson blood pouring from the wound and smoking upward from the snow. The animal was plunging wildly and madly now, yet I fired the five remaining pistol shots full at the Russian ere he could draw his sword; and one at least must have taken effect somewhere, for he fell almost beneath my horse's hoofs, and as he did so his cap flew off, and I recognised Volhonski--whom, by a singular coincidence, I thus again encountered--Count Volhonski, the Colonel of the Vladimir Infantry! At the same moment I was fiercely charged by the five advanced Cossacks, with their levelled lances, and with my horse was literally hurled over the cliffs into the sea, the waves of which I heard bellowing below me.
Within the pace of one pulsation--one respiration--as we fell whizzing through the air for some sixty feet together, I seemed to live all my past life over again; but I have no language wherewith to express the mingled bitterness and desolation that came over my soul at that time. Estelle lost to me; life, too, it seemed, going, for I must be drowned or taken--taken but to die. The remembrance of all I had loved and of all who loved me; all that I had delighted in--the regiment, which was my pride--my friends and comrades, and all that had ever raised hope or fancy, or excited emulation--seemed lost to me, as the waves of the Black Sea closed over my head, and I went down to die, my fate unknown, and even in my grave, "unhousled, disappointed, unaneled."
Even now as I write, when the danger has long since passed away, and when the sun has shone again in all his glory on me, in my dreams I am sometimes once more the desperate and despairing fellow I was then.
It was Christmas-eve at Craigaderyn as well as before Sebastopol, and all over God's land of Christendom--the "Land of Cakes," perhaps, excepted, as Christmas and all such humanising holidays were banished thence as paganish, by the acts of her Parliament and her "bigots of the Iron Time," as in England by Cromwell, some eighty years later, for a time. A mantle of gleaming white covered all mighty Snowdon, the tremendous abysses of Carneydd Llewellyn, and the lesser ranges of Mynyddhiraeth. Llyn Aled and Llyn Alwen were frozen alike, and the Conway at some of its falls exhibited a beard of icicles that made all who saw them think of the friendly giant--old Father Christmas himself! Deep lay the snow in the Martens' dingle and under all the oaks of the old forest and chase; for it was one of those hearty old English yules that seem to be passing away with other things, or to exist chiefly in the fancy of artists, and which, with their concomitants of cold without and warmth and glowing hospitality within, seemed so much in unison with an old Tudor mansion like Craigaderyn--a genuine Christmas, like one of the olden time, when the yule-log was an institution, when hands were shaken and faces brightened, kind wishes expressed, and hearts grew glad and kind. But on this particular Christmas-eve Winifred and Dora were not at the Court, but with some of their lady friends were busy putting the finishing touches to the leafy decorations of the parish church, for the great and solemn festival of the morrow, with foliage cut from the same woods and places where the Druids procured similar decorations for their temples, as it is simply a custom--an ancient usage--which has survived the shock of invading races and changing creeds.
The night was beautiful, clear, and frosty, and to those who journeyed along the hard and echoing highway the square tower of the old church, loaded alike by snow and ivy, could be seen to loom, darkly and huge, against the broad face of the moon, that seemed to hang like a silver shield or mighty lamp amid the floating clouds, and right in a cleft between the mountains. The heavens were brilliant with stars; and lines of light, varied by the tinting of heraldic blazons and quaint scriptural subjects, fell from the traceried and mullioned windows of the ancient church on the graves and headstones in the burial-place around it; while shadows flitted to and fro within--those of the merry-hearted and white-handed girls who were so cheerily at work, and whose soft voices could be heard echoing under the groined arches in those intervals when the chimes ceased in the belfry far above them. Huge icicles depended from the wyverns and dragons, through whose stony mouths the rain of fully five centuries had been disgorged by the gutters of the old church, and being coated with snow, the obelisks and other mementos of the dead had a weird and ghostlike effect in the frosty moonlight.
In the cosy porch of the church were Sir Madoc Lloyd and his hunting bachelor friend, Sir Watkins Vaughan, each solacing himself with a cigar while waiting for the ladies, to escort whom home they had driven over from the Court after dinner in Sir Watkins' bang-up dog-cart. While smoking and chatting (about the war of course, as no one spoke of anything else then), they peeped from time to time at the picturesque vista of the church, where garlands of ivy and glistening holly, green and white, with scarlet berries, and masses of artificial flowers, were fast making gay the grim Norman arches and sturdy pillars, with their grotesque capitals and quaint details. Nor were the tombs and trophies of the Lloyds of other times forgotten; so the old baronet watched with a pleased smile the slender fingers of his young daughter as they deftly wreathed with holly and bay the rusty helmet that whilom Madoc ap Meredyth wore at Flodden and Pinkey, her blue eyes radiant the while with girlish happiness, and her hair as usual in its unmanageable masses rolling down her back, and seeming in the lights that flickered here and there like gold shaded away with auburn.
The curate, a tall, thin, and closely-shaven man, in a "Noah's-ark coat" with a ritualistic collar, stood irresolutely between the sisters, though generally preferring the graver Winifred to the somewhat hoydenish Dora, who insisted on appropriating his services in the task of weaving and tying the garlands; but he was little more than an onlooker, as the ladies seemed to have taken entire possession of the church and reduced him to a well-pleased cipher. At last Sir Watkins, a pleasant and gentlemanly young man, though somewhat of the "horsey" and fox-hunting type, who had a genuine admiration for Winifred, and had actually proposed for her hand (but, like poor Phil Caradoc, had done so in vain), seemed to think that he was letting his reverence have the ladies' society too exclusively, tossed his cigar into the snow, entered the church, and joined them; while Sir Madoc preferred to linger in the porch and think over the changes each of those successive festivals saw, and of the old friends who were no longer here to share them with him.
"Here comes Sir Watkins, to make himself useful, at last!" said Dora, clapping her hands, as she infinitely preferred the fox-hunter to the parson. "I shall insist upon him going up the long ladder, and nailing all those leaves over that arch."
But Winifred, to whom his rather clumsy attentions, however quietly offered, were a source of secret annoyance, drew nearer her female friends, four gay and handsome girls from London, who were spending Christmas at the Court (but have nothing else to do with our story), and whose eyes all brightened as the young and eligible baronet joined them. But for the charm which the presence of Winifred always had for him, and the pleasure of attending on her and the other ladies, Sir Watkins would infinitely have preferred, to a cold draughty church on Christmas night, Sir Madoc's cosy "snuggery," or the smoking-room at the Court, where they could discuss matters equine and canine, reckon again how many braces of grouse, black-cock, and ptarmigan they lad "knocked over" that day, or discuss the comparative merits of coursing in well-fenced Leicestershire, and in Sussex, where the downs are all open and free as the highway, or other kindred topics, through the medium of hot brandy-and-water.
"Now, Sir Watkins, here are my garlands and there is a ladder," said Dora.
"Any mistletoe among them, Miss Dora?" he asked, laughing.
"No; we leave the arrangement of that mysterious plant to such Druids as you; but here are some lovely holly-berries," said Dora, holding a bunch over the head of one of her companions, and kissing her with all thatempressementpeculiar to young ladies.
"By Jove," said the baronet, with a positive sigh, "I quite agree with some fellow who has written that 'two women kissing each other is a misapplication of one of God's best gifts.'"
Glancing at Winifred, who looked so handsome in her cosy sealskin jacket, with its cuffs and collar of silver-coloured grebe, the bachelor curate smiled faintly, and said, while playing nervously with his clerical billycock.
"I do not plead for aught approaching libertinism, but I do think that to kiss in friendship those we love seems a simple and innocent custom. In Scripture we have it as a form of ceremonious salutation, as we may find in the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, and in first Samuel, where the consecration of the Jewish kings to regal authority was sealed by a kiss from the officiator in the ceremony."
"And we have also in Genesis the courtship of Jacob and the 'fair damsel' Rachel," said Dora, looking up from her task with her bright face full of fun, "wherein we are told that 'Jacob kissed Rachel, and then lifted up his voice, andwept.' If any gentleman did so after kissing me, I am sure that I should die of laughter."
"We are having quite a dissertation on this most pleasant of civilised institutions," said Sir Watkins, merrily, as he flicked away a cobweb here and there with his silver-mounted tandem whip; "have you nothing to say on the subject, Miss Lloyd--no apt quotation?"
"None," replied Winifred, dreamily, while twirling a spray of ivy round her white and tapered fingers.
"None--after all your reading?"
"Save perhaps that a kiss one may deem valueless and but a jest may be full of tender significance to another."
"You look quitedistraite, Winny, dear, as you make this romantic admission," said one of her friends.
"Do I--or did I?" she asked, colouring.
"Yes. Of what or ofwhomwere you thinking?"
"Such a deuced odd theme you have all got upon!" said Sir Watkins, perceiving how Winifred's colour had deepened at her own thoughts.
"But how funny--how delightful!" exclaimed the girls, laughing together; while Dora added, with something like a mock sigh, as she held up a crape rose,
"When last I wore this rose in my hair, I danced with little Mr. Clavell--and he is spending his Christmas before Sebastopol! Poor dear fellow--poor Tom Clavell!"
Winifred's colour faded away, her usual calm and self-possessed look returned; and, stooping down, she bent all her energies to weave an obstinate spray of ivy round the carved base of a pillar, some yards distant from the group.
"Permit me to be your assistant, Miss Lloyd," said the baronet, in a low voice and with an earnest manner. "Miss Dora must excuse me; but I don't see the fun of craning my neck up there from the top of a twelve-foot ladder."
Winifred started a little impatiently, for as he stooped by her side, his long fair whiskers brushed her brow. "Do I annoy you?" he asked, gently.
"O no; but I feel nervous to-night, and wish our task were ended."
"It soon will be, if we work together thus. But you promised to tell me, Miss Lloyd, why your old gamekeeper would not permit me to shoot that hare in the Martens' dingle, to-day."
"Need I tell you, Sir Watkins--a Welshman?"
"You forget that my place is in South Wales, almost on the borders of Monmouthshire, and this may be a local superstition."
"It is."
"Well, I am all attention," said he, looking softly down on the girl's wonderfully thick and beautiful eyelashes.
"The story, as I heard it once from dear mamma, runs thus: Ages ago, there took shelter in our forests at Pennant Melangell, the daughter of a Celtic king, called St. Monacella, to whom a noble had proposed marriage; one whom she could not love, and could never love, but on whom her father was resolved to bestow her."
"By Jove!" commented Sir Watkins, while poor Winifred, feeling the awkwardness of saying all this to a man she had rejected, became troubled and coloured deeply; "and so, to escape her tormentors, she fled to the wilderness."
"Yes, and there she dwelt in peace for fifteen years, without seeing the face of a man, till one day Brochwel, Prince of Powis, when hunting, discovered her, and was filled with wonder to find in the depth of the wild forest a maiden of rare beauty, at prayer on her knees beside a holy well; and still greater was his wonder to find that a hare his dogs had pursued had sought refuge by her side, while they shrank cowering back with awe. Brochwel heard her story; and taking pity, gave to God and to her some land to be a sanctuary for all who fled there; she became the patron saint of hares, and for centuries the forest there teemed with them; and even at this hour our old people believe that no bullet can touch a hare, if any one cries in time, 'God and St. Monacella be with thee!'"
"A smart little nursery legend," said Sir Watkins, who perhaps knew it well, though he had listened for the pure pleasure of having her to talk to him, and him alone.
"It is one of the oldest of our Welsh superstitions," said Winifred, somewhat piqued by his tone.
"Why are you so cross with me?" he asked, while venturing just to touch her hand, as he tied a spray of ivy for her. "Cross--I, with you?"
"Reserved, then."
"I am not aware, Sir Watkins, that I am either; but please don't begin to revert to--to--"
"The subject on which we spoke so lately?"
"Yes."
"Ah, Miss Lloyd--my earnest and loving proposal to you."
"In pity say no more about it!" said Winifred, colouring again, but with intense annoyance at herself for having drawn forth the remark.
"Well, Miss Lloyd, pardon me; I am but a plain fellow in my way, and your good papa understands me better than you do."
"And likes you better," said she, smiling.
"I am sorry to be compelled to admit that such is the case; but remember the maxim of Henry IV. of France."
"Why--the roses please--what was it?"
"There are more flies caught by one spoonful of honey than by ten tuns of vinegar."
"Thanks, very much, for the maxim," replied Winifred, proudly and petulantly; "but I hope I am not quite of the nature of vinegar, and I don't wish to catch flies or anything else."
It was now Sir Watkins' turn to blush, which he did furiously, for her proud little ways perplexed him; but she added, with a laugh,
"The base of the next pillar requires our attention, and then I think the decorations are ended. Do let the cobwebs alone with your whip, and assist me, if you would please me."
"There is not in all the world a girl I would do more to please," said Sir Watkins, earnestly, his blue eyes lighting up with honest enthusiasm as he spoke in a low and earnest tone, "and I know that there is not in all England another girl like you, Winifred: you quite distance them all, and it is more than I can understand how it comes to pass that those who--who--don't love you--"
"Well, what, Sir Watkins?"
"Can love any one else!" said he, confusedly, while smoothing his fair moustache, for there was a quick flash in the black eyes of Winifred Lloyd that puzzled him. In fact, though he knew it not, or was without sufficient perception to be aware of it, this was an offhand style of love-making that was infinitely calculated to displease if not to irritate her.
"You flatter me!" said she, her short upper lip curling with an emotion of disdain she did not care at that moment to conceal.
"Does it please you?"
"No."
"I am sorry for that, as we are generally certain of the gratitude at least, if not the love, of those we flatter."
Much more of this sort of thing, almost sparring, passed between them; for Sir Watkins, piqued by her rejection of him, would not permit himself again as yet to address her in the language of genuine tenderness, and most unwisely adopted a manner that had in it asoupçonof banter. But Winifred Lloyd heard him as if she heard him not: the memories of past days were strong at that time in her heart, and glancing from time to time towards the old oak family pew, then half lost in obscurity and gloom, she filled it up in fancy with the figures of some who were far away--of Philip Caradoc and another; of Estelle Cressingham, who, for obvious reasons of her own, had omitted her and Dora from the Christmas circle at Pottersleigh House; and so, while Sir Watkins continued to speak, she scarcely responded. The girl's thoughts "were with her heart, and that was far away," to where the lofty batteries of Sebastopol and the red-and-white marble cliffs of Balaclava looked down upon the Euxine, where scenes of which her gentle heart could form no conception were being enacted hourly; where human life and human agony were of no account; and where the festival of the Babe that was born at Bethlehem, as a token of salvation, peace, and goodwill unto men, was being celebrated by Lancaster guns and rifled cannon, by shot and shell and rockets, and every other device by which civilisation and skill enable men to destroy each other surely, and expeditiously.
Just as some such ideas occurred to her she saw her father, followed by old Owen Gwyllim, enter the church, and in the faces of both she read an expression of concern that startled her; and from her hands she dropped the ivy sprays and paper roses, which she was entwining together. Sir Madoc held in his hand an open newspaper, with which the old butler had just ridden over from the Court, and he silently indicated a certain paragraph to the curate, who read it and then lifted up his hands and eyes, as with sorrow and perplexity.
"What the devil is up now?" asked Sir Watkins, bluntly; "no bad news from the Crimea, I hope--eh?"
"Very--very bad news! we have lost a dear, dear friend!" replied Sir Madoc, letting his chin drop on his breast; while Sir Watkins, taking the journal from his hand, all unconscious of error or misjudgment, read aloud:
"'It is now discovered beyond all doubt, by the Chief of the Staff, that Captain Henry Hardinge, of the Royal Welsh Fusileers, whose disappearance, when on a particular duty, was involved in so much mystery, has been drowned in the Black Sea, by which casualty a most promising young officer has been lost to her Majesty's service.'"
"Drowned--Harry Hardinge drowned in the Black Sea!" exclaimed Dora, with sudden tears and horror.
"By Jove, the same poor fellow I met at your fête, I think--so sorry, I am sure!" said Sir Watkins, with well-bred regret; "and see--I have quite startled poor Miss Lloyd!"
Winifred, who for a moment seemed turned to stone, covered her face with her handkerchief, while her whole delicate form shook with the sobs she dared not utter.
Mothers, wives, and friends, the tender, the loving, and the true, had all read, until their hearts grew sick and weary, of the perils and sufferings of those who were before Sebastopol, as the horrors of the Crimean winter, adding to those which are ever attendant on war, deepened over them. And now here was one horror more--one that was quite unlooked for in its nature, but which now came home to their own hearts and circle.
"Take me away, papa--take me home!" said Winifred, in a faint voice, as she laid her face on his shoulder, for her tears were irrepressible; and the tall, slender curate in the long coat--an Oxonian, who chanted some portions of his church service, turned to the east when he prayed, had an altar whereon were sundry brazen platters, like unto barbers' basins, and tall candles, which (as yet) he dared not light, and who secretly, but hopelessly, admired Winifred in his inner heart--knew not what to think of all this sudden emotion; but he kindly caressed her passive white hands between his own, and whispered lispingly in her ear, that "the Lord loved those whom He chastened--afflictions come not out of the ground--all flesh was grass--that God is the God of the widow and fatherless--yet there were more thorns than roses in our earthly path," with various other old stereotyped crumbs of comfort.
"To the Court--home!" cried Sir Madoc; "call round the carriages to the porch, Owen, and let us begone."
A few minutes after this they had all quitted the church, and were being driven home in their close vehicle, Sir Watkins excepted, who drove in his dog-cart, sucking a cigar he had forgotten to light, and wondering what the deuced fuss was all about. Had Hardinge stood in his way? If so, by Jove, there was a chance for him yet, thought the good-natured fellow. In the dark depth of the large family carriage, as it bowled along noiselessly by a road where the white mantle of winter lay so deep by hill and wood that one might have thought the Snow-King of the Norsemen had come again, Winifred could weep freely; and as she did so, her father's arm stole instinctively and affectionately round her.
"Drowned," she whispered in his ear; "poor Harry drowned--and I loved him so!"
"It may all be some d--d mistake," sighed Sir Madoc, in sore grief and perplexity.
"But, O papa," whispered the girl, "I loved him so--loved him as Estelle Cressingham never, never did!"
"You, my darling?"
"Yes, papa."
"My poor pet! I suspected as much all along. Well, well, we are all in the hands of God. It is a black Christmas, this, for us at Craigaderyn, and I shall sorrow for him even as Llywarch Hen sorrowed of old for all the sons he lost in battle. But what a strange fatality to escape so narrowly at the Bôd Mynach, and then to be drowned in the distant East!"
And with a heart swollen alike by prayer and sorrow, the girl, whose tender and long-guarded secret had at last escaped her in the shock of grief, sat alone in her room that night, and heard the Christmas chimes ringing out clearly and merrily to all, it seemed, but for her; for those bells, those gladsome bells, which speak to every Christian heart of bright hope here and brighter hope elsewhere, seemed to chime in vain for Winifred Lloyd; so she thought in her innocent heart, "I shall go to him yet, though he can never come back to me!"