winged birds; and nearer in, towards land, was one coquettish little craft, from whose pinnace, beside the Union Jack, waved a green and white silken flag. She not only

"Walked the waters like a thing of life,"

but she also seemed agitated with human hopes and fears, for on her deck might be seen a slight female figure looking intently through a telescope which was directed towards the shore, and presently the boat was lowered, and manned by a crew of four sailors; and then another man, in a rough Neapolitan boat-coat, with a pointed capuchin hood to it, sprang in amongst them, after which the boat pushed off, and the measured strokes of the oars kept time, as it were, to the beating heart of the figure on deck who stood gazing after them.

The vessel was 66 The Esmeralda," Lord De Baskerville's yacht. The man who had sprung the last into the boat was its owner, who, ever from the memorable shell affair at Balaklava, had found out and claimed (as his mother had dreaded) relationship with Harcourt, who had never accepted his cousin's invitation to sleep a single night on board his yacht, as he would not absent himself from his post. Still, one way or another, he had seen, between balls at Lord Stratford De Redcliffe's, and the plays acted by the Zouaves, and various excursions to be made, a great deal of his beautiful cousin Florinda, perhaps a great deal too much for the peace of both; for, besides Harcourt's high and strictly honorable nature, which alone would have deterred him from bringing a girl bred up in all the sybarite luxury of artificial wants into the struggles, lowerings, and privations inseparable from the position of a penniless soldier of Fortune, who had yet his way to win, and nothing to help him to do so but his high heart and his good right arm. These, in the French army, it is true, would have been allsufficient to have carved out any career, however great-to have planted whole wildernesses of laurel, and to have reaped them after; but in ours, having neither patronage nor parentage, they might, indeed, if the chances of war left him a cripple, procure him a crutch-that only baton our economical and exclusive system awards to the bravest of the brave, who have but their courage and their conduct to plead for them. And as one among many flagrant modern instances of this, look at that heroic stripling, "Redan Massy," as he is deservedly called; for had he been the two Scipios and Bayard and Condé girded into one, his young arm and antique spirit could not have achieved greater prodigies of valour. And has he not been rewarded? Yes, by the admiration of all Europe, the archives of his own conscience, and a graceful and well-merited testimonial from Trinity College, Dublin.

And the Government?

It has not interfered to prevent his accepting any of these rewards, nor have we heard that it has curtailed his pay for being crippled

for life; perhaps, even in its retrenching furor, it considers this sufficient curtailing; mais voila tout, honors are not to be wasted on those who can help themselves so lavishly to them.

But, to return to the other boy hero. Harcourt Penrhyn, exclusive of his own individual position, which precluded his thinking of taking Florinda for a wife, loved his mother with too much devotion of gratitude, too much holiness of respect, to think of entering a family (though his own) who had treated her with such contumely and neglect; and yet there were moments, when, in the presence of Florinda, and under the influence of those bewildering eyes of hers, prudence, principle, filial affection, gratitude, everything gave way! The world was wide, but in all its boundless expanse there appeared but two human beings-Florinda and himself! Then, horrified at his egotism, he would sum up her mother's failings, endow her with them all, and try to hate her. But hatred, like love, will not be hidden; so finding that impossible, he would then absent himself for days.

But never yet could love be concealed where it exists, and the efforts generally made to conceal it are so awkward, so exaggerated, that they, treacherously, only make it the more apparent. Notwithstanding, therefore, Harcourt's unequal manner, its sudden coldness, nay, almost rudeness at times, Florinda knew-that is, she felt-that he loved her. On her side there were not the same reasons for avoiding him, as she had never even heard him or his mother alluded to by her own family; and when she recognized Harcourt as the original of the picture she had seen worn by the lady she met at the Euston Square terminus, and that in a fit of heroic and Spartan virtue, thinking that would place an effectual barrier between them, he had confessed that his mother was Sir Gregory Kempenfelt's governess, Florinda replied, with generous candour and perfect truth

"She is still our relation, and you are my cousin; and I like her all the better for her honest independence."

In truth we are ashamed to confess that being, like her elder brother, determined not to sacrifice herself in marriage, and, therefore, having but little respect for her mother's ambitious designs, and thinking that Lady Mabel's marriage ought to be quite suffi. cient to satisfy her on that head; we greatly fear that could she only have been quite sure that Harcourt did love her, were it not for maidenly modesty she would have reversed the order of things in words (as so many English misses do by their acts of devotion and attention to men), and have offered him herself and her twenty thousand pounds, which, like all young persons who know only the abuse and not the use of money, she thought, without carriages and horses and gold plate, which of course (at that age) she did not care for, how happy Harcourt, his mother and herself might be for life in a dear little cottage ornée, all thatched at the top, all roses in the front, and a moon like the Irishman's, which,

by subscription, should be lighted up all the year round. Indeed, she had even gone as far as saying that when she was of age she should take a cottage of her own, and then she would ask that dear beautiful cousin Mary of hers to come and live with her, and she should no longer be governess to any one. But it invariably happened after one of these forward speeches that Harcourt was more distant, more impenetrable than ever; nay, sometimes he actually frowned and bit his lips as he turned away. And thus thrown back upon herself, reproved, almost rejected, the generous, devoted girl would suddenly be lashed into the chafed, proud woman, who had franchised every barrier for one whose only return was a stern though silent hint, that the sooner she replaced them the better. After any of these scenes what suffered most, next to herself, was her pocket-handkerchiefs, which were mercilessly torn asunder as she would (could he have got at it) have torn her own abject heart for having led her into such folly and humiliation: and the St. Bartholomew of these lingerie innocents caused the despair of Mademoiselle Ernestine, her maid, who would soliloquize over their fragmentary chef d'œuvres of broderie.

"Ah! certes, mi ladi, est un vrai bourreau d'argent, de déchirer de si bels mouchoirs, pour les quels Mlle. Félicie lui a fait payer, Dieu sait quoi!"

But with the double shrewdness of her sex and country, she was not long in suspecting that these poor handkerchiefs were the scapegoats of a grande passion, consequently as the destruction increased so did her commentaries, which for the most part were—

"Ah! ma foi! il faut qu'il soit bête comme Dieu est puissant. Ce petit militaire, avec ses beaux yeux, pour ne pas voir que miladi ne désire pas mieux que de tout sacrifier pour lui, y-compris elle même; puisque les demoiselles en Angleterre font la cour, et se marie à leur gré; pourtant c'est drôle ça comme se les hommes en valaient la peine!"

months

But notwithstanding Harcourt's reserve during the many they had now known him, and his aguish hot and cold fits, there had never been the slightest skirmish from which he had escaped unscathed, that he had not, however late at night, either rowed out or sent to "The Esmeralda" to report his safety; but now, after that dreadful day, when the cannon had scarcely ceased for a moment, and their dense smoke had enveloped the surrounding country like a veil of grey crape, he neither came nor sent. What could it mean?

Suspense, though in one way so dreadful, yet in attendance on the possibility of a horrible and irrevocable catastrophe is a boon, a positive angel-visit-for where there's doubt there's hope; and at best, in this poor little life, which for some is unrounded even by a dream, "What," as Miss Jewsbury truly says, "are hopes but inverted fears?" While we are in suspense, too, both body and mind are active, and peripatetic grief is never insupportable;

it is not till we are felled by some colossal certainty of consummated evil, and truth is seated in that desolate Carthage, a broken heart, that we perceive that we are surrounded by the stupendous ruins of all our hopes.

Florinda and her brother had paced that deck nearly the whole day; he had talked, she had listened-but it was not to him, it was to that murderous artillery, which, to her torturing fears, seemed to endow Harcourt with ten thousand lives, only to subject him to ten thousand deaths. But at length, when the sun set, and the moon rose, and still he neither came nor sent, Lord de Baskerville said, in a low, hoarse voice

66

Flo', dear, you had better go down below; I'm going on shore." "Let me go with you!" murmured she faintly, as she laid her hand upon his wrist, which, even through his coat, he could feel was cold as death.

"No, no, dear; that's impossible," said he, resolutely; "go down below, there's a darling."

"Only let me stay here, then," said she, sinking down on a bench, and leaning her head against one of the port-holes. "Well, I'll send you up some wraps."

And down he went, first into the state-cabin, where he found the doctor stretched upon a couch, deep in Dumas' Paul Jones.

"Do you know, Ross," said Lord De Baskerville, "I'm terribly afraid that something has happened to poor Penrhyn, and I want you to come on shore with me.'

"GOD bless me! I hope not," and the doctor flung down his book; "but if your Lordship will allow me to suggest, I had better remain here, and get all my apparatus ready; for if the worst has happened, which Heaven forbid, I can be of no use; and if it is only a wound, and a curable one, he ought not to be moved after it is dressed, or the ball extracted. And I'll see a berth got ready." "Berth! oh, no! let him have the state-bed, it will be so much larger and more comfortable."

So it will; and it is very good of your Lordship to give it up; but as Lady Florinda's is only a small French bedstead, perhaps if that were brought into the second cabin that would be better and more airy." 'Well, whatever is best; and Florinda can have mine."

66

I advise you to take some bandages and lint, and a huntingflask of weak brandy and water."

And these preliminaries arranged, the boat, as we have already described, pushed off; and though one of the youthful heroes had redeemed his self-imposed pledge, and was first in at the Redan!— which we were now in possession of-still, the oars of "The Esmeralda's" boat were muffled as they had so long been accustomed to be, and on reaching the beach Lord De Baskerville left two sailors with the boat, taking the two others with the cushions and two oars, to make a sort of temporary litter, in case they should be successful in their search.

CHAPTER XXI.

VIVANDIERE. THE LOST
PHENOMENON; OR, THE

THE DRUNKEN SOLDIER. THE

FOUND. NEW ANATOMICAL DOCTOR PUZZLED. THOUGH not more than nine o'clock when Lord De Baskerville had set out, it was past one before Florinda, who had never moved from the seat where he had left her, perceived, more with a sort of spiritual clairvoyance than by her physical sight, the long watchedfor boat returning; but as the moon was now waning, and thick clouds gathering for rain, only the eyes of the heart would so soon have descried that long coffin-like phantom skimming the waters, and have seen the strokes of those muffled oars that could not be heard. For a moment every pulsation which had been so tumultuous before, was suspended, as she breathlessly counted, returning, but the five that went!-till the boat neared, and the companion-ladder was lowered, and she then heard her brother

say:

66

Gently, gently," to the men in the boat; afterwards telling those above to be in readiness to help them as they ascended the ladder.

Her first impulse was to kneel down and silently thank GOD!— for speak she could not; then, leaning over the side, her whole being seemed concentrated in her ears; for after all it might be but a corse that they were thus silently and solemnly raising, as the great dead-who are angels then-should ever be tended.

As the two sailors that came backward first up the companionladder with their burthen, an unintentional jerk they gave, caused him to groan.

"Oh, thank GOD!" escaped from her lips now, not only in words, but almost in a shriek; for never were tidings more glad!never was music more sweet to mortal ear than was that suffering moan to that poor trembling girl; for is not suffering the strongest of all proofs of life?

Mr. Ross, though a cannie, long-headed Scotchman, had also a kind heart, and being greatly addicted to the reading of romances, and by no means deficient in the perceptive organs, he had a pretty clear idea of the state of the case between the young hero of Balaklava, and the flower of Belgravia; so, just as the sailors reached the deck with their freight, he said to the latter

"If your ladyship will go down below, I be sure to let you have the first bulletin of your cousin," as he kindly and emphatically called him, to legitimize, as it were, her irrepressible anxiety about him, and make it appear perfectly orthodox to the bystanders.