a moment, as our party rushed up, they were made aware of their false security. Many were shot down; but stolid resistance remained at places, and wherever resistance was greatest and the task most unattainable there was our young officer cheering, inspiriting, and engaging in fierce personal combat. Within a bloody half-hour the Russians were driven out, and the long detested Quarries were in our hands.

In those days of constantly recurring deeds of heroic valour there was but one opinion of our young officer's extraordinary pluck and daring, and his name was in every mouth when on the following day the survivors were relieved and marched back into camp. It was to the assaulting party a day of rest, and our young friend's name appeared in general orders as having mainly conduced by his dash and courage in taking the Russian position, and nobody who knew what he had done grudged him the well-earned honour. The following morning he received a message summoning him to the general commanding his division.

Not without some fear and trepidation did he obey the summons, and was ushered into the awful presence of the general, who rose from his chair and shook him warmly by the hand.

'I have to thank you,' he said, and publicly to congratulate you on your splendid achievement at the attack on the Quarries, and I have to tell you that your name has been submitted by me, and I am sure with the approval of your colonel, for the honour of the Victoria Cross, an honour, as you know, more coveted than any other in the army.'

The young man was silent for a time, then pulling himself together he said—

'Sir, I deeply thank you for your kind words and the great honour you have done me. Your great kindness emboldens me to ask whether I may speak to you not as a subaltern to a general, but as a man to a man,' and then in a broken voice he prayed him not to make the recommendation.

The general was astonished.

'Never,' said the young subaltern, 'can I accept an honour the greatest in the power of a soldier to attain to, and if I am publicly recommended and publicly refuse to accept it I shall be publicly shamed for ever. I must tell you my reason, and make a confession as shameful as it is painful for me to make. On the

night of the attack I was drunk. We had all been carried away more or less with excitement, and I foolishly took a bottle of brandy with me into the trenches, and if I was brave, if I distinguished myself, I did not know it. I cannot accept an honour I do not deserve. I implore you to withdraw your recommendation, and let it be as if it had not been, and so save me from open shame.'

The general's eyes filled with tears, of which he had no cause to be ashamed, for a man, we are told, is never so manly as when he is unmanned.

'I congratulated you when you came in on your physical courage. I now congratulate you on a rarer quality, your moral courage-in which I feel sure you will never fail again. Your secret shall be safe. Good-bye!'

Six years from the time of which I am speaking I had some spare time, and was trying to occupy myself by taking some part in good works in becoming a guardian of the poor in Westminster. We guardians took upon ourselves in turns to visit the workhouse daily during a week.

One evening I had been my round, and asked the master if there were any new inmates that day. Only one, he said, and he had been in the lowest state of filth that he had ever seen a human being in, and was then in the bath room. I went away, feeling I would rather see that man in the second stage of his existence than in the first. In the morning I was surprised to find the new inmate a man of about thirty years of age, evidently a gentleman, a man of good education and address. I could hardly believe he was the man of whom the master had spoken on the previous evening. We entered into conversation, and he told me that he had been in the army, giving me the name of his regiment, that he had got into some trouble, evidently drink, and had retired on a pension, and now in spite of it he was a pauper. Gradually he confided to me that he was an absolute victim to drink, and that on the day he got his small pension he always then and there had a bout of drinking, which left him in an unconscious state of utter recklessness and disregard of dirt and filth, such as he was in when he took refuge in the workhouse last night.

He added that when sober he loathed his life, but drink without restraint made him mad.

I went away to a military club of which I was a member, and

was not long in discovering a friend who had been in the Regiment. He at once gathered from my description that this man had been an old brother officer of his. As a youngster he had distinguished himself in the Crimea, and they thought at the time he was rather ill-treated in not having some special honour for a very special act of gallantry before the Redan. After that he had gone to India, and had made himself rather notorious-indeed, ridiculous-by his dandyism, always with the last new scent from England. On one occasion he offered to fight a duel with a brother officer who had come into the mess billiard room not properly got up in evening dress; and this was the man evidently who was in so filthy a state that he was not a fitting companion for paupers in a workhouse.

My friend said, though he did not know it of his own knowledge, he had heard rumours that he had furious bouts of drink, and had been forced to retire. We arranged that on the following day we should pay him a visit, and the two old comrades met, one a successful officer in staff employment, the other the abject pauper. My friend instantly recognised his old comrade, and heard from him how he had become worse and worse, and was now almost a confirmed dipsomaniac. He made no secret of the past; he did not know how and whence he had inherited the curse, but confessed it was overwhelming and took him into the lowest haunts of vice and immorality.

My friend left, promising to return and see him, which he did, with the offer that he should be taken into a home for inebriates. He gladly promised to avail himself of it, thinking that it might save him. Everything was settled down to the day, the place, and the hour. On the appointed day my friend called on him in a cab to take him to the station. 'He had left,' said the master, 'the night before.' We did all we could to trace him, but in vain. Poor fellow, let us hope that the sufferings of his inheritance may be taken into consideration when the day of account comes.

LUCY.

'LUCY DEANE? Yes, M'm, she's gone, there's new people there.

'Lucy, she did have a time with the old lady. You remember the old lady-her granny? There she lay all summer with no use of her limbs and her mind gone mostly, and she did call to Lucy cruel. She hadn't the sense, you see, M'm, to know that Lucy had to lay her work out of her hands to go to her, driven as she was and put to it to get done. For the work always comes together, and either we've too much or none at all. I did wonder, I did, how Lucy kept her temper. I'd have said, “Granny, you just hold your tongue and lie still till I've time to attend to you," but Lucy was never that way. And what did the old lady want when she did go to her, leaving the work so she had to sit up half the night to make up for lost time? Only some stuff and nonsense, and as often as not to bid her remember how she had given her word to take her home to be buried. "You remember, Lucy," she'd say, " as how you promised that I should lie beside grandfather. Father gave me his word for it when I came to London, and you said the same." By father she meant Lucy's father, M'm, and with him it was the old lady came to live when the old man, him that was Lucy's grandfather, died. And a deal of trouble I always heard 'twas to get her to come. For she was country born and bred, and hankered after the green fields, as some do that are used to them. For me I never could see much to take to in the country, and at one place where I was, down Hertfordshire way, last June twelvemonth, 'twas lonesome as lonesome, and the bats were just awful bad.

'Lucy looked dead beat, that she did, M'm, and no mistake sometimes, and 'twas worrying, as none can deny, when she might be cutting or trimming, or, maybe, finishing to take the work home that night, to hear "Lucy, Lucy," on and on till she heeded it; and then to find 'twas nothing but the old thing, "You did say, Lucy, as you'd bury me by grandfather." And some can't abide no interruption or to be called away, even when 'tis not a matter of a night's rest, or food to put into your mouth. But the old lady was past being sensible like, and how she did long for the old place, to be sure. Down home this and down home that 't

had always been with her. She said to me many a summer day before she was took ill and kept her bed, "Mrs. Simpson, 'tis all now looking beautiful, I'm thinking, down home. The leaves will all be out, and the birds singing, and the flowers quite a picture." She was one for a flower.

'I used to say to Lucy she ought by rights to let the old lady go away (to the infirmary, that is), for what with working for the two of them and her ill all that while, 'twas more than one pair of hands could do. And Lucy, 'twas like a ghost that she looked, and her eyes that red and her nerves all nohow; she'd tremble like a leaf if the door slammed or folk spoke rough. "You'll be struck down with a stroke, Lucy," I'd say, "if you work for two, and your sight will go from you, that it will; you may take my word for it, for your eyes look just like my poor sister Hannah's that went stone blind." So they did, but she would pay no heed. And then there was the trouble to get her money when she'd done the work. Ladies don't think, and some would keep her waiting for her money when she'd earned it who wouldn't wait themselves when a dress was wanted. I must have it," they'd say, "it's very particular; if you can't undertake it right off, some one else must,” and then, when 'twas sent home, they would, likely as not, forget all about it or mislay the bill, maybe they'd tell her, and some would never pay, if you would believe it, which I do call shameful. But ladies don't think. What they want they want, and then it's done with and clean forgotten.

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'Well, 'twas one drive, and Lucy was worn to a thread, for 'twas stifling hot last summer, as you may recall, and what with the work and the old lady that wanted waiting on hand and foot, and the heat and the bad debts, 'twas enough to kill her. And she got no holiday, for she could not spare the time-no, nor the money neither-to take one. Holidays often enough cost a sight more than those that want them most can pay for them, and I did think 'twas a merciful thing when I heard the old lady had passed away-went off in her sleep as quiet as a lamb. And then Mrs. Brownlow, the Bible-reader lady, she gave Lucy a letter for a nice place--a Home of Rest, they called it. And I said, "Lucy, that's just come in the nick of time; your Granny's gone, and a good thing too, all things considered, and now you can take a rest, and if you don't, I promise you you'll soon be in the cemetery where you'll lay her yourself." But Lucy, she never went, M'm, to that nice place (and as I heard, and so did Lucy from one who