r me to fill it
with potatoes, and halloo out, "Never mind, mother!" although the
gravy from the fowls on your saddle before you was soaking through the
little modicum of paper which was all I could afford you. So laden,
you would cheerfully start up the hill of mud hutward; and well for
you if you did not come to grief on that treacherous sea of mud that
lay swelling between the Col and your destination. Many a mishap,
ludicrous but for their consequences, happened on it. I remember a
young officer coming down one day just in time to carry off my last
fowl and meat pie. Before he had gone far, the horse so floundered in
the mud that the saddle-girths broke, and while the pies rolled into
the clayey soil in one direction, the fowl flew in another. To make
matters worse, the horse, in his efforts to extricate himself, did for
them entirely; and in terrible distress, the poor fellow came back for
me to set him up again. I shook my head for a long time, but at last,
after he had over and over again urged upon me pathetically that he
had two fellows coming to dine with him at six, and nothing in the
world in his hut but salt pork, I resigned a plump fowl which I had
kept back for my own dinner. Off he started again, but soon came back
with, "Oh, mother, I forgot all about the potatoes; they've all rolled
out upon that ---- road; you must fill my bag again." We all laughed
heartily at him, but this state of things _had_ been rather tragical.

Before I bring this chapter to a close, I should like, with the
reader's permission, to describe one day of my life in the Crimea.
They were all pretty much alike, except when there was fighting upon a
large scale going on, and duty called me to the field. I was generally
up and busy by daybreak, sometimes earlier, for in the summer my bed
had no attractions strong enough to bind me to it after four. There
was plenty to do before the work of the day began. There was the
poultry to pluck and prepare for cooking, which had been killed on the
previous night; the joints to be cut up and got ready for the same
purpose; the medicines to be mixed; the store to be swept and cleaned.
Of very great importance, with all these things to see after, were the
few hours of quiet before the road became alive with travellers. By
seven o'clock the morning coffee would be ready, hot and refreshing,
and eagerly sought for by the officers of the Army Works Corps engaged
upon making the great high-road to the