onel prisoner. You saw it, I suppose, in the papers?"

"No. Pray let me hear it," said she, eagerly.

"Well, it was an observation--a 'reconnaissance' I think they called
it--the Russians were making of the Sardinian lines, and they came so
near that a young soldier--an orderly of General La Marmora's--heard one
of them say, 'Yes, I have the whole position in my head.' Determining
that so dangerous a fellow should not get back to head-quarters, he
watched him closely, till he knew he could not be mistaken in him,
and then setting off at speed,--for he was mounted,--he crossed the
Tchernaya a mile or so further up, and, waiting for them, he lay
concealed in a small copse. His plan was to sell his own life for this
officer's; but whether he relinquished that notion, or that chance
decided the event, there's no knowing. In he dashed, into the midst of
them, cut this colonel's bridle-arm across at the wrist, and, taking his
horse's reins, rode for it with all speed towards his own lines. He got
a start of thirty or forty strides before they could rally in pursuit,
which they did actually up to the very range of the rifle-pits, and only
retired at last when three fell dead or wounded."

[Illustration: 178]

"But _he_ escaped?" cried she.

"That he did, and carried his prisoner safe into the lines, and
presented him to the General, modestly remarking, 'He is safer here than
over yonder,'--pointing to Sebastopol; and, strangest part of the whole
thing, he turns out to be an Englishman."

"An Englishman?"

"Yes. He was serving, by some strange accident, on General La Marmora's
staff, as a simple orderly, though evidently a man of some education and
position,--one of those wild young bloods, doubtless, that had gone
too fast at home, but who really do us no discredit when it comes to a
question of pluck and daring."

"Do us no discredit!" cried she; "and have you nothing more generous to
say of one who has asserted the honor of England so nobly in the face of
an entire army? Do us no discredit! Why, one such feat as this adds more
glory to the nation than all the schemes of all the jobbers who deal in
things like these." And she threw contemptuously from her the colored
plans and pictures that littered the table.

"Dear me, Miss Kellett, here's a whole ink-bottle spilled over the
Davenport Obelisk."

"Do us no discredit!" burst out she again. "Are we really the nation of
shopkeepers that France calls us? Have we no p