ere
destined to eclipse in their interest the old scenes of Spain and
Portugal. That any soldiers lived nowadays like the old Light Division,
that there were such fellows as the fighting Fifth, or Crawfurd's
Brigade, no man should persuade him; and when he triumphantly asked if
they had n't as good a general as Sir Arthur Welles-ley, he fell back,
laughing contemptuously at the idea of such being deemed war at all, or
the expedition, as he would term it, being styled a campaign.

"Remember, Captain Kellett, we had a fair share of your old Peninsular
friends amongst us,--gallant veterans, who had seen everything from the
Douro to Bayonne."

"Well, and did n't they laugh at all this? did n't they tell you fairly
it was not fighting?"

"I 'm not so sure they did," said Conway, laughing good-naturedly.
"Gordon told an officer in my hearing, that the charge up the heights
at the Alma reminded him strongly of Harding's ascent of the hills at
Albuera."

"No, no, don't say that; I can't stand it!" cried Kellett, peevishly;
"sure if it was only that one thinks they were Frenchmen--Frenchmen,
with old Soult at their head--at Albuera--"

"There's nothing braver than a Russian, sir, depend on 't," said the
youth, with a slight warmth in his tone.

"Brave if you like; but, you see, he isn't a soldier by nature, like the
Frenchman; and yet we beat the French, thrashed him from the sea to the
Pyrenees, and over the Pyrenees into France."

"What's the odds? You'd not do it again; or, if you did, not get Nap to
abdicate. I 'd like to have two thousand to fifty on the double event,"
said Beecher, chuckling over an imaginary betting-book.

"And why not do it again?" broke in Bella. "Is it after listening
to what we have heard this evening that we have cause for any
faint-heartedness about the spirit of our soldiery? Were Cressy or
Agincourt won by braver fellows than now stand entrenched around
Sebastopol?"

"I don't like it; as Grog says, 'never make a heavy book on a waiting
race!'"

"I conclude, then," said Conway, "you are one of those who augur ill of
our success in the present war?"

"I 'd not stake an even fifty, on either side," said Beecher, who had
shrewd suspicions that it was what he 'd have called a "cross," and that
Todleben and Lord Raglan could make "things comfortable" at any moment.
"I see Miss Bella's of my mind," added he, as he perceived a very
peculiar smile just parting her lips.

"I suspect not, Mr