accident giving me my old hold on her. George, there was a time when that woman hung on every word I said, when I could have made her jump off the keep or turn Roman Catholic."

"How did you lose it?"

"You are rather provoking; but I will stick to our bargain, and tell the truth. Through my own conceit and folly, not to mention my tongue; I bullied her too much."

"And she thought you stood between her and Colonel Hilton at the time you encouraged him to pay you so much attention ?” "If snapping his nose off every time he opened his mouth meant encouragement, you are quite right.”

"I know," said Lord Hatterleigh, giving one of his own “Alcedo gigantea" guffaws. "I used to watch you. What on earth made you hate the man so?”

"The same thing which makes me dislike you so much,— he is a gaby!"

"I don't think he is a gaby at all, — at all events, not such a gaby as I was.”

"I never examined into the degrees of gabyism."

"Bless thy sweet tongue, Kate! And you wonder you lost your power over Maria Poyntz?

"Bless thy sweet temper, George! Did any one ever make you cross? I have tried hard enough.”

"No, I never was cross. My mother remarks it in public often, a great deal too often. She damages my reputation, and makes people take liberties with me, by always representing me a lamb. It would do me infinite good in the world if people could be got to believe that I was a terrible tiger at bottom; but they won't. By the by, do you remember that you told me once that the reason you hated Colonel Hilton was that he agreed with every word you said? Now that is singular, is n't it?”

"Come to your dinner, will you, and don't stay exasperating me on the stairs. The cases are utterly different. You contradict me, and argue with me in perfect good-humor; he flattered one until he made one contradict him, and only opposed one when he was thoroughly angry. Now that is quite enough to carry you on for the rest of the evening; I cannot be always flattering you."

Very well; I can take care of myself." "They are coming to-night," said Laura. "Who?"

"The Poyntzes and Colonel Hilton. That is the last civil thing I shall say to-night. As an illustration, you knew who I meant well enough, only for the chance of another spar you pretended you did n't.”

They both burst out laughing. There was something very

pretty in the friendship between these two. They sparred at times, but Laura always lost. She sometimes lost her temper, for instance, which that sweet-natured gorilla of a nobleman never did. They did one another a deal of good. She civilized him to an extent which his own mother had never conceived possible; and he, by his persistent good-humor, broke her of her petulance, and cured her of her unfortunate habit of speaking her mind. When on this occasion they had both done laughing, she answered him,

"The Poyntzes and the other gaby- you know whom I mean by the first one are coming. Now."

Pax, be serious! I am in earnest, Laura. I want to speak to you; I want to consult you. There, now let us be wise."

They were at once as wise as Solomon.

"I wish he was gone from here," said Lord Hatterleigh. "We all wish that."

"If he has a spark of honor or manliness left in him -- and the man is a noble soldier, Laura-he will go after hearing today's news."

"What news?"

"News!" cried Lord Hatterleigh, and looking sternly at her. "Heavens! have you heard nothing? that India is lost; that the Sepoys have risen, and are driving the British before them like sheep; that the European men and women are being shot down like dogs, and treated worse; that the whole remnant of British rule in India consists in a few hopeless garrisons, shut in, with their women and children, in the principal towns, holding out, through thirst and hunger, lest a fate worse than death befall them? India is lost gone hopelessly gone!"

"That is very dreadful, Hatterleigh! Are we really to lose India? But we shall get on pretty well without it, sha'n't we?" "Heaven help her!" said Lord Hatterleigh, addressing a case full of stuffed birds, which stood in the hall close before him. "My mother was right; I can't lose my temper. Laura dear, you can understand this. We have suffered a fearful disaster in India, more fearful, more terrible than you can understand ! I will teach you to understand it, dear, and you shall be as angry and as fierce as I am. But this terrible disaster strikes home

here in two ways."

"As how? I cannot understand."

Surely

"Colonel Hilton's brother is there in the thick of it. the danger of his only brother, his favorite, will be sufficient to arouse him from this unmanly sloth? Surely he will exchange into some regiment ordered for service, and quit this place forever?"

"It would be an excellent solution; let us hope so."

"Then there is Poyntz's brother Robert. He is in the thick of it too. Now would be the time for some one to say a kind word for him to his brother, and to reconcile them."

"Is their quarrel very bitter?'

Very so. He was very wild. There, your mother has rung for dinner; we shall catch it.”

"Not we,” said Laura, laughing; "my mother never scolds you."

CHAPTER XXXVII.

DURING dinner, and after dinner, they talked of only one thing, the Indian Mutiny; and more particularly that part of it which was illustrated by a wonderful letter just received by Sir Peckwich Downes from his son George, who was in the heart of the whole matter.

The party was complete, with the exception of Colonel Hilton, who could not come. Sir Peckwich looked seven sizes larger than usual, and tried to be as pompous as ever, but failed. A radiant genial smile overspread his features continually; and more than once, like our dear Sir Hugh, he manifested a mighty disposition to cry. All the best part of the man (and he was a noble man enough) was coming out of him as he talked of his son's heroism, and his son's friend's heroism. And Lord Hatterleigh and Laura noticed, as a curious thing, that he addressed himself almost entirely to Sir Harry Poyntz, to whom he had hardly deigned to speak before. He appealed to him, and he flattered him: when he told the most exciting part of the noble story, as he did by request half a dozen times over, he addressed himself almost entirely to Sir Harry Poyntz. Once, when his utterance was stopped, and his great chest began heaving, he sat calmly looking at Sir Harry, until he had succeeded in smothering the sobs which were trying to rise. And Sir Harry, with his shallow pale-blue eye, sat watching and listening to him with his head on one side, like a parrot. No one but Hilton could have read that intense look: it meant, "My brain is getting dull; but I think I know what you are after, old gentleman!" Lord Hatterleigh could n't make it out at all.

The gist of the story was this. The garrison of Gorumpore, reduced to about sixty European soldiers, one hundred Sikhs, and the civilian volunteers, had, finding their position untenable, made a glorious retreat, with the women and children, back in safety

to a nucleus of the army, which was now sufficiently large to retreat the next day into communication with the base of operations at Calcutta,--and this through masses of swarming Sepoys. You can read a hundred such stories. Their rear had been sorely pressed by rebel cavalry. The handful of mounted Europeans and Sikhs had charged back, against overwhelmingly superior numbers, time after time through the burning day. At last, at evening, when the main body were just getting into safety, within hearing of British bugles, George Downes, in command of the party, had ordered one last charge. But the rebels, getting more reckless as they saw their prey escaping, were too strong for them, — the British got the worst of it. Several of the Sikhs went to Paradise with closed teeth, laying about them like glorious fellows as they are; but the rest cut their way through the rebels, and, led by a certain Cornet, were in a fair way to get home; when this Cornet, now their leader, looking round, missed Downes, and, crying out to the rest of his handful of Sikhs and Europeans, turned bridle and rode back again as hard as he could go.

The main body of the rebels had found themselves too near the British bugles, and had retreated. But in the centre of the plain there were left somewhere near fifty of them, riding round and round one another in a circle, the inner ones of them cutting and slashing at something with their sabres. The Cornet, sailing straight away into this embroglio, never looking as to who were following, and making himself felt right and left, discovered that the something they were cutting at was George Downes, standing, dismounted, over the body of a wounded British trooper, fighting the whole fifty of them single-handed.*

The Cornet dashed at the whole of them alone; and whether it was that he laid about him so stoutly, or whether the mere appearance of "an angry sahib " which, as Mr. Trevelyan tells us, is sufficient to produce any amount of panic among Indians caused it, we cannot say; at all events there was a general "skedaddle,” which is one fact; and another is, that we agree with Mr. Trevelyan that an angry Englishman is a very terrible business indeed.

However, the Cornet and the Cornet's tail got Captain Downes out of his terrible situation in triumph, and that was the story. "And what I say is," thundered Sir Peckwich Downes, "that

* I have not drawn on my imagination here. I met a quiet man at a country dinner-party, not many years ago, on whose dress-coat I detected the Victoria Cross. In the half-hour before dinner I got introduced to him, for the purpose of having a look at his shabby bit of gun-metal, a decoration which I had never seen closely before. A few years afterwards I saw his sword-arm, and then I began to understand what war meant. He had eight-and-twenty sabre cuts in various parts of his body.

nobly as that most noble boy of mine has behaved, the Cornet has behaved more nobly still. Just think of it, by Jove! coming back after poor George, all alone, single-handed, by Jove! And you talk to me of your ancient Romans," he continued, turning with sudden asperity on Sir Charles, as if that innocent and perfectly silent gentleman had just finished a string of highly offensive classical allusions, your Quintus Curtius, your Leonidas, your rubbish! What were they to this glorious self-devoted Cornet, eh, sir? eh, sir? Go along with you, sir; don't talk that nonsense to me!"

"A glorious fellow truly," said Sir Charles; a hero among heroes!"

"We have not had his name yet," said Laura. this noble man's name."

66

a noble fellow,

"Let us have

"Ask Sir Harry Poyntz," said Sir Peckwich, with a toss of the head and a puff.

Laura did so, with her eyes flashing, and her whole face animated by the glorious story. Sir Harry looked at her steadily, and thought, "I shall have to play the mischief with you tomorrow, my dear young lady, I shall indeed"; and then said slowly, aloud, "I do not know his name. I know nothing of the story but what I have heard here. But I begin to make a guess, from Sir Peckwich Downes's exceedingly personal gaze, that this hero is no other than that lunatic young rascal, my brother Bob; it's exactly like a piece of his tomfoolery."

Right, by Jingo!" said Sir Peckwich, bringing his fist on the table with a crash: a piece of vulgarity which, coupled with the lowness of the remark which accompanied it would at an ordinary time have raised extreme anger in the aristocratic soul of Lady Downes: but she now only sat, flushed and proud, looking so really noble that Laura remarked it, and pointed it out to Lord Hatterleigh.

"Wonderful!" he whispered; "and such a very commonplace looking person on ordinary occasions!

"We have all got a little extra fire in our eyes to-night,

not

one of us but looks nobler," said Laura; "but the proud mother beats us all. I wonder whether that strange creature Sir Harry will notice his brother now: he is going to speak.

"It was not a difficult guess of mine, Sir Peckwich. I know now that he must have charged into that Clanjam fry because your son was there. They were boy-lovers at Eton, you remember."

"I congratulate myself on the result," said Sir Peckwich. "I say," said Sir Harry, with some show of interest, "what does one do in these cases? "

"What do you mean?" said Sir Peckwich, puzzled.