hearty laugh.

"It's no laughin' matter, boys," cried the corporal, looking up with an
expression so solemn that his comrades almost believed it to be genuine.
"There's my owld uncle Macgrath gone to his long home, an' he was the
support o' me grandmother. Och! what'll she do now wid him gone an' me
away at the wars?"

"Won't some other relation look after her, Flynn?" suggested Moses.

"Other relation!" exclaimed the corporal; "I've got no other relations,
an' them that I have are as poor as rats. No, uncle Macgrath was the
only wan wid a kind heart an' a big purse. You see, boys, he was rich--
for an Irishman. He had a grand farm, an' a beautiful bit o' bog. Och!
it'll go hard wid--"

"Read on, Flynn, and hold your tongue," cried one of his comrades;
"p-r-aps he's left the old woman a legacy."

The corporal did read on, and during the perusal of the letter the
change in his visage was marvellous, exhibiting as it did an almost
magical transition from profound woe, through abrupt gradations of
surprise, to intense joy.

"Hooray!" he shouted, leaping up and bestowing a vigorous slap on his
thigh. "He's gone an' left the whole farm an' the beautiful bog to ME!"

"What hae ye got there, sergeant?" asked Saunders, refolding the letter
he had been quietly perusing without paying any regard to the Irishman's
good news.

"A parcel of booklets from the Institute," answered Hardy, turning over
the leaves of one of the pamphlets. "Ain't it good of 'em?"

"Right you are, Hardy! The ladies there never forget us," said Moses
Pyne. "Hand 'em round, sergeant. It does a fellow's heart good to get
a bit o' readin' in an out-o'-the-way place like this."

"Comes like light in a dark place, don't it, comrade?" said Stevenson,
the marine, who paid them a visit at that moment, bringing a letter
which had been carried to the wrong quarter by mistake. It was for
Miles Milton. "I know'd you expected it, an' would be awfully
disappointed at finding nothing, so I brought it over at once."

"_You_ come like a gleam of sunshine in a dark place. Thanks,
Stevenson, many thanks," said Miles, springing up and opening the letter
eagerly.

The first words sent a chill to his heart, for it told of his father
having been very ill, but words of comfort immediately followed--he was
getting slowly but surely better, and his own letter had done the old
man more good in a few days than all the doctor's physic had done in
many weeks.