Light Brigade, was dead. This
knowledge unseals my lips, and permits me to divulge an extraordinary
episode of the charge of Balaclava which was related to me by the
veteran, and which, as far as I can judge, has entirely escaped the
research of the romanticist and historian.

My original intention in going to see the old hero was to interview him
and learn if he could throw any new light on the tragic and immemorial
events of '54-5-6, through which, with the exception of a slight wound
in the wrist, he had passed unscathed.

I propitiated him with gifts of tobacco, and, having found the "open
sesame" to the cave of his reminiscences, visited him often. My object
was to filch, surreptitiously as it were, the treasures I coveted,
before their valuable crudity could suffer the unconscious adulteration
to which such goods are liable at the hands of the professional
story-monger. But I found, when the strings of his tongue were unloosed,
he had very little more to relate about the events of the campaign than
is already recorded. In fact, like many an actor in the drama of life,
he really knew less about the general _mise-en-scene_ than I, who had
only reviewed it through the lorgnon of Tennyson and other contemporary
writers. Seeing, however, that a shade of disappointment was cast by the
fogginess of his disclosures, the old fellow one day abruptly asked if I
could keep a secret were he to tell it me. I vowed my complete
trustworthiness, but at the same time remonstrated that confidences so
hampered would be of absolutely no use to the work I had on hand. He
rose laboriously from his chair--lumbago had almost crippled him--and
produced from a tin box a soiled rag containing the curl of red hair
which is now in my possession.

"This 'air," he explained in mumbling tones, "was cut off the 'ead of
Trooper Jones of ours--in times of war one 'asn't much truck with the
barber," he parenthesised. "We called 'im 'Carrots,' as bein' most
convenient and discriptive like. And that there bit of shirt belonged to
my pal Jenkins, as good a chap as ever wore shako. It's the 'istory of
'em both as I've 'alf a mind to tell you, but you must be mum as old
bones about it--at all events till this 'ere bloke's a-carried out feet
foremost."

"And then?" I said, with unbecoming eagerness.

"Then you can jest do what ye darn please; the 'ole three of us 'll be
orf dooty together."

So he related to me in a fragmentary manner, halting now