uits which they pounded very fine, and a
handful of raisins somebody gave them. Stirring this mixture carefully
by turns, they calculated how long it would have to boil--in one of
captain Wolseley's three towels which he sacrificed for the purpose--so
that they might be able to enjoy it at a moment when they would all be
off duty. Five hours, they fancied, it must be on the fire, but it had
scarcely been boiling one when the summons came to go back to their
work. Resolved not to lose the fruits of so much labour and care, they
snatched the plum-pudding from the pot and ate a few spoonfuls before
running out to their posts. But Wolseley had hardly reached his place
before he was seized with such frightful pains that he felt as if he
would die. His commanding officer, who happened to pass, seeing his face
looking positively green, ordered him back to his hut. But a little rest
soon cured him, and, like the others, he spent the night in the
trenches.

* * * * *

You will have read in the story of the 'Lady in Chief' something about
the hardships which the allied army of English, French, and Turks went
through during the war with the Russians, so I will not repeat it here.
Gordon, whose quick eye saw everything, was greatly struck with the way
the French soldiers bore their sufferings. 'They had nothing to cover
them,' he says, 'and in spite of the wet and cold they kept their health
and their high spirits also.' Our men worked hard and with dogged
determination, but, as a rule, they could not be called lively. True,
till Miss Nightingale and her nurses came out they were left when
wounded to the care of rough and ignorant, however kindly, comrades,
while the French had always their own Sisters of Charity to turn to for
help. But it is pleasant to think that the sons of the men who had
fallen in the awful passage of the Berezina forty years before were
worthy of their fathers, and could face death with a smile and a jest as
well as they.

* * * * *

As the war went on and the assaults on the town of Sebastopol became
more frequent, the English generals learned to know of what stuff their
young officers were made, and what special duties they were fit for.
They marked that Gordon had some of Hannibal's power of guessing, almost
by instinct, what the enemy was doing--a quality that rendered him
extremely useful to his superiors. With all his untiring energy and