wounded
officers or comrades, and several were thus saved from perishing on the
battlefield.

Another scene took place, trying to many a trooper who had managed to
bring his wounded steed out of the fight. The farriers went round to
examine those which had been rendered unserviceable by their hurts.
Some of the men pleaded hard for those that were condemned, in the hopes
that they might recover, but the farriers knew well that they would
never again be fit to carry their riders in the fight.

"Shure, it's myself would rather have been wounded than the poor baste,"
exclaimed an Irish trooper, throwing his arm round his horse's neck;
"you wouldn't have shot me, at all events. Just be after letting him
live for a few days, at laste, and I'll see what I can do to doctor
him."

"I'm obeying orders, Pat; I tell you, if he gets stiff he'll never carry
you fifty yards, much less the mile and a half you galloped over this
afternoon," was the answer.

Poor Pat, whose hacked blade showed the deadly work he had been doing,
burst into tears, as the farrier led off his well-beloved horse to the
spot appointed for its execution, where, with upwards of forty others,
it was shot.

As it was too late by this time to go on to the Guards' camp, Jack
considering it his duty to sleep on board, and having had the
satisfaction to hear that Sidney was well, and of sending him a message,
he and his party returned to Balaclava. Tom and Archie were full of the
exploits they had witnessed, and so excited did they become in
describing them to their messmates, that they declared they would give
up the service, and try and get their friends to obtain them commissions
in the cavalry.

"Which means that your friends are to buy you commissions, which will
cost them some thousands to begin with, besides finding you five or six
hundred a year to enable you to live like the rest of your brother
officers," observed the assistant-surgeon. "I should just like to have
the fortune which is lost to his family by each of the poor fellows who
bit the dust this afternoon in yonder valley of death. I'd quit the
service, you may depend on that, and buy a good practice on shore, with
enough to set up my carriage at once." The next morning Tom and Archie
had changed their minds, and had resolved to continue serving their
Queen and country afloat.

Jack, finding that he could not sail till the evening, went on shore,
taking the two midshipmen with him, to