of the race, but that the
fellows are just as daring, just as steady, just as invincible as ever
they were; and he'll say, too, that to have won the friendship of such a
comrade I must have good stuff in me also.'"

"Oh, if he hadn't gone away and left his old father!" broke in Kellett,
lamentingly; "sure it was n't the time to leave me."

"Wasn't it, though?" broke in the soldier; "I differ with you there. It
was the very moment that every fellow with a dash of spirit about him
should have offered his services. We can't all have commissions,--we
can't all of us draw handsome allowances from our friends; but we can
surely take our turn in the trenches, and man a battery; and it's not a
bad lesson to teach the common fellow, that for pluck, energy, and even
holding out, the gentleman is at least his equal."

"I think it's the first of the name ever served in the ranks," said the
old man, who, with a perverse obstinacy, would never wander from this
one idea.

"How joyously he writes!" continued Bella, as she bent over the letter:
"'I see by the papers, dearest Bella, that we are all disgusted and
dispirited out here,--that we have nothing but grievances about green
coffee and raw pork, and the rest of it; don't believe a word of it.
We do curse the Commissariat now and then. It smacks like epicurism to
abuse the rations; but ask Charley if these things are ever thought of
after we rise from dinner and take a peep at those grim old earthworks,
that somehow seem growing every day, or if we grumble about fresh
vegetables as we are told off for a covering party. There's plenty of
fighting; and if any man has n't enough in the regular way, he can steal
out of a clear night and have a pop at the Russians from a rifle-pit.
I 'm twice as quick a shot as I was when I left home, and I confess the
sport has double the excitement of my rambles after grouse over Mahers
Mountain. It puts us on our mettle, too, to see our old enemies the
French taking the work with us; not but they have given us the lion's
share of it, and left our small army to do the same duties as their
large one. One of the regiments in our brigade, rather than flinch from
their share, returned themselves twelve hundred strong, while they had
close upon three hundred sick,--ay, and did the work too. Ask dad if
his Peninsulars beat that? Plenty of hardships, plenty of roughing,
and plenty of hard knocks there are, but it's the jolliest life ever a
fellow led, fo