looked more beautiful than they had
done for many a day, as, beneath the flaring gas-light, their faces
glowed for a while with noble enthusiasm, and woman's sacred pity, while
they questioned Tom, taking him for an officer, as to whether he thought
there were many killed.

"I am no officer: but I have been in many a battle, and I know the
Russians well, and have seen how they fight; and there is many a brave
man killed, and many a one more will be."

"Oh, does it hurt them much?" asked one poor thing.

"Not often," quoth Tom.

"Thank God, thank God!" and she turned suddenly away, and with the
impulsive nature of her class, burst into violent sobbing and weeping.

Poor thing! perhaps among the men who fought and fell that day was he to
whom she owed the curse of her young life; and after him her lonely
heart went forth once more, faithful even in the lowest pit.

"You are strange creatures, women, women!" thought Tom: "but I knew that
many a year ago. Now then--the game is growing fast and furious, it
seems. Oh, that I may find myself soon in the thickest of it!"

So said Tom Thurnall; and so said Major Campbell, too, that night, as he
prepared everything to start next morning to Southampton. "The better
the day, the better the deed," quoth he. "When a man is travelling to a
better world, he need not be afraid of starting on a Sunday."

CHAPTER XXV.

THE BANKER AND HIS DAUGHTER.

Tom and Elsley are safe at Whitbury at last; and Tom, ere he has seen
his father, has packed Elsley safe away in lodgings with an old dame
whom he can trust. Then he asks his way to his father's new abode; a
small old-fashioned house, with low bay windows jutting out upon the
narrow pavement.

Tom stops, and looks in the window. His father is sitting close to it,
in his arm-chair, his hands upon his knees, his face lifted to the
sunlight, with chin slightly outstretched, and his pale eyes feeling for
the light. The expression would have been painful, but for its perfect
sweetness and resignation. His countenance is not, perhaps, a strong
one; but its delicacy, and calm, and the high forehead, and the long
white locks, are most venerable. With a blind man's exquisite sense, he
feels Tom's shadow fall on him, and starts, and calls him by name; for
he has been expecting him, and thinking of nothing else all the morning,
and takes for granted that it must be he.

In another moment Tom is at his father's side. What need to desc