Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

A Novel.

BY

SAMUEL RICHARDSON, A.B., B.L.,
Of the Middle Temple,

AUTHOR OF "NOEL D'AUVERGNE," ETC., ETC.

[blocks in formation]

KILLED AT SEDAN.

IT

CHAPTER I.

T was one of those delicious summer evenings when the special loveliness of Dame Nature is particularly revealed by the depth of golden sunlight lingering upon broad brown mountain, pellucid river, and varying sky, that a splendidlyequipped battery of royal artillery flashed irregularly in the departing gleams as the silent-voiced guns rumbled slowly, and the dust and travelstained soldiers sat at their ease in the hard saddles or else upon the warlike carriages attached to those grim-looking cannons, whose angry roar in the hour of battle has aided in hushing for aye the merry gladness of many a lovely and peaceful homestead.

The procession did not loiter anywhere as the soldiers hesitated whither they should proceed, but wended along its slow and tedious journey by the

skirts of a high roadway, which was one mass of white from the accumulation of the dust, which had been allowed to gather there during several hot days, coming after one another in regular sucesssion. The laughter of the men as they proceeded rose upwards upon the summer air, and it was mingled with happy songs and venturesome jokes, the convivial tone and merriment of which chimed in pleasing unison with the careless spirits which were possessed by those whose noble and enviable profession it is to guard jealously, come what may, through weal and through woe, the glorious and sacred honour and safety of our common and united empire.

These soldiers had not had the good fortune to have been in England for many years. And so everything they saw appeared new to them and peculiarly strange as they went along. Only one short week ago they landed in the Irish city of Cork, whither they had come from the far-off east, and the shining medals sparkling on the stalwart breasts of the brown-faced men, told with an eloquence all their own, the famous story of gallant battles fought and successfully won in distant lands, many leagues away from this, where the sound of unknown languages falls strangely on the ear of the listener, and makes the soldier exiles sigh wearily for the haunts and woodlands of ever merry

« ElőzőTovább »