nd scanned the distant ridge, from which a thin
line of smoke floated solemnly away, with keen, impatient eyes. Were
they to stand inactive all the day?

Presently the horse erects his head. His eyes sparkle--he pricks his
sensitive ears--his nostrils quiver with a strange delight. It is the
trumpet! Fan farra! Fan farra! The brazen voice speaks--the horses
move--the plumes wave--the helmets shine. On a summer's day they ride
slowly, gracefully, calmly down a slope, to Death or Glory. Fan farra!
Fan farra! Fan farra!

* * * * *

Of all this Master Tom knew nothing. The report of the cracker seemed
to him only an echo in his brain of a sound that had been in his ears
for thirty-six weary hours. The noise of a heavy sea beating against
the ship's side in a gale. It was over now, and he was keeping the
midnight watch on deck, gazing upon the liquid green of the waves,
which, heaving and seething after storm, were lit with phosphoric
light, and as the ship held steadily on her course, poured past at the
rate of twelve knots an hour in a silvery stream. Faster than any ship
can sail his thoughts travelled home; and as old times came back to
him, he hardly knew whether what he looked at was the phosphor-lighted
sea, or green gelatine paper barred with silver. And did the tutor
speak? Or was it the voice of some sea-monster sounding in his ears?

"The spirits of the storm have gone below to make their report. The
treasure gained from sunk vessels has been reckoned, and the sea is
illuminated in honour of the spoil."

* * * * *

The visitor now took a cracker and held it to the young lady. Her end
was of white paper with a raised pattern; his of dark-blue gelatine
with gold stars. It snapped, the bonbon dropped between them, and the
young man got the motto. It was a very bald one--

"My heart is thine.
Wilt thou be mine?"

He was ashamed to show it to her. What could be more meagre? One could
write a hundred better couplets "standing on one leg," as the saying
is. He was trying to improvise just one for the occasion, when he
became aware that the blue sky over his head was dark with the shades
of night, and lighted with stars. A brook rippled near with a soothing
monotony. The evening wind sighed through the trees, and wafted the
fragrance of the sweet bay-leaved willow towards him, and blew a stray
lock of hair against his face. Yes! _She_ also w