em Edens for hanging back as they did."

"They did not hang back," cried Ralph angrily; "they fought very
bravely."

"What!" cried Nick. "Well, I do like that. But I don't care. Dessay I
shall be a dead 'un 'fore I gets to the Castle, and then we shall see
what Sir Morton will say."

"Well, you will not hear, Nick," said Ralph quietly.

"No: I shan't hear, Master Ralph, 'cause I shall be a dead 'un, I
suppose. But I'm thinking about my poor old mother. She'll break her
heart when they carry me to her, stiff as a trout, for I'm the only son
she has got."

This was too much for the wounded men even. They forgot their
sufferings in the comic aspect of the case, familiar as they all were
with the open enmity existing between Mother Garth and her son, it being
common talk that the last act of affection displayed toward him had been
the throwing of a pot of boiling water at his head.

The laugh lightened the rest of the way, but they were a
doleful-looking, ragged, and blood-stained set, who bore one of their
number upon a litter formed of pike-staves up the zigzag to the men's
quarters at day-break; and Ralph felt as if he had hardly strength
enough to climb back to his window and go to bed, after seeing his
roughly-bandaged men safely in.

But he made the essay, and when half-way up dropped back again into the
garden, just as a thrush began to pipe loudly its welcome to the coming
day; and the blackbirds were uttering their chinking calls low down in
the moist gloom amongst the bushes on the cliff slope.

"Can't leave the poor fellows like that," he muttered. "Oh dear, how
stiff I am! Father said he always felt it his duty, when he was a
soldier, to look well after his wounded men."

He stood thinking for a few moments, and then began to tramp down the
steep path to where the shadows were still dark, and a mist hung over
the rippling stream. Then taking to the track beside it, he trudged on,
with the warm glow in the east growing richer of tint, the birds
breaking out into joyous song, and minute by minute the vale, with its
wreaths of mist, growing so exquisitely beautiful that the black horrors
of the past night began to seem more distant, and the cloud of shadow
resting above his aching head less terrible and oppressive.

And as the sun approached its rising, so did the beauties around the lad
increase; and he tramped on with a sensation of wonder coming upon him,
that with all so glorious at early m