attle songs,
I'll warrant, who never saw a man shot in their lives, not even a hare.
Come and give us the real genuine grit of it,--for if you can't, who
can?"

"It is a grand thought! The true war poets, after all, have been
warriors themselves. Koerner and Alcaeus fought as well as sang, and sang
because they fought. Old Homer, too,--who can believe that he had not
hewn his way through the very battles which he describes, and seen every
wound, every shape of agony? A noble thought, to go out with that army
against the northern Anarch, singing in the van of battle, as Taillefer
sang the song of Roland before William's knights, and to die like him,
the proto-martyr of the Crusade, with the melody yet upon one's lips!"

And his face blazed up with excitement.

"What a handsome fellow he is, after all, if there were but more of
him?" said Tom to himself. "I wonder if he'd fight, though, when the
singing-fever was off him."

He took Elsley upstairs into his bed-room, got him washed and shaved:
and sent out the woman of the house for mutton chops and stout, and
began himself setting out the luncheon table, while Elsley in the room
within chanted to himself snatches of poetry.

"The notion has taken: he's composing a war song already, I believe."
It actually was so: but Elsley's brain was weak and wandering; and he
was soon silent; and motionless so long, that Tom opened the door and
looked in anxiously.

He was sitting on a chair, his hands fallen on his lap, the tears
running down his face.

"Well?" asked Tom smilingly, not noticing the tears; "how goes on the
opera? I heard through the door the orchestra tuning for the prelude."

Elsley looked up in his face with a puzzled piteous expression.

"Do you know, Thurnall, I fancy at moments that my mind is not what it
was. Fancies flit from me as quickly as they come. I had twenty verses
five minutes ago, and now I cannot recollect one."

"No wonder," thought Tom to himself. "My clear fellow, recollect all
that you have suffered with this neuralgia. Believe me all you want is
animal strength. Chops and porter will bring all the verses back, or
better ones instead of them."

He tried to make Elsley eat; and Elsley tried himself: but failed. The
moment the meat touched his lips he loathed it, and only courtesy
prevented his leaving the room to escape the smell. The laudanum had
done its work upon his digestion. He tried the porter, and drank a
little: then, suddenl