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problem stared him in the face in the light like an unsolved question, or the
game that one goes to bed leaving unfinished; but with him and with her it
would be the most important move in the game of their young and at
present, divided lives—the lives and loves of two who were bound up in
each other, all the more that they had no one to care for in this world save
each other.

Meanwhile one anxious hour followed another, and there came no sound
of troops on the sward—no clatter of accoutrements to announce that the
pursuing Horse were returning his way.

The Second Division and Wood's Flying Column had marched to a

mountain called the Entonjaneni, and there formed a camp about twenty
miles distant from Ulundi as the crow flies. Vast quantities of thorn-bushes
grew on the left of it, and before it spread an open plain; and to this camp
came nearly the last envoys of Cetewayo, bearing two elephants' tusks as a
sign of amity, promising a herd of cattle, and so forth. The tusks were
declined, and the original conditions insisted on. However, Lord
Chelmsford agreed to delay his final advance till the evening of the 29th of
June.

Buller's Horse and the other mounted men were returning slowly from
their long pursuit, when they drew near the kraals so recently destroyed,
and saw that one hut was burning still, and casting a lurid light against the
evening sky. All thought this strange, as before the repulse of the Zulus in
the valley the fire in every kraal was completely over, as there seemed
nothing more left to burn.

Suddenly Tom Tyrrell cried out, in a voice of the keenest excitement:

'The hut in which we left our officer is in flames—the poor fellow will
be burned to death!'

'Who?' exclaimed Villiers.

'Our poor officer—Lieutenant MacIan.'

'God! you don't say so!'

 'See for yourself, sir.'

'It is too evidently as you say. Forward at a gallop!'

The flames were sinking fast when they reached the hut, now reduced to
a smouldering heap of ashes, and the horrible odour of burned human flesh
overpowered the perfume of the wild flowers, amid which the great bees
were yet humming; and poking amid the hot débris with their lances, the
men of the 17th found the charred remains of what had been evidently a
human body; and though inured to war, to bloodshed, and daily human
suffering, the soldiers looked blankly and inquiringly in each other's faces,
pausing for orders, and wondering what was to be done now.

In the hut the luckless Florian had lain for a time on its clay-beaten floor
listening for every sound. He had a natural fear of Zulus coming upon him
suddenly and assegaiing him in cold blood—if indeed the blood of these
fierce savages was ever cold till death seized them.

The idea was intolerable; and he writhed on the hard floor and hearkened
intently with his ear placed close thereto.

Shots in the far distance announced that fighting was going on

somewhere—that Redvers Buller, the unwearied, was 'at it again'—but told
him nothing more. What if the advanced troops were defeated—had to fall
back towards the Entonjaneni Mountain by some other route, and had to
abandon him to his fate?

In war, of what value is one human life, save to the proprietor thereof?

Anon, amid these exciting and oppressive thoughts, he became

conscious of a singular and awful odour pervading the place. He had
knowledge enough of it by ample past experience to know that it came from
the body of a dead Zulu. He peered about, and in a corner hitherto
unnoticed, near a pile of fresh bull-hides, intended doubtless for conversion
into long shields, partly covered by one, lay the corpse of a Zulu warrior,
whose shaven head, with the military ring or fillet, and bare feet, with
anklets of burnished copper, were visible.
 Pah!

Such a companion as this proved too much for his nerves, and at all risks
—the risk of being seen by scouting Zulus—he crawled out of the hut into
the pure and grateful air of heaven, and contrived to reach a clump of dwarf
mimosa-trees at a little distance on the slope of an eminence, and therein he
lay to await the return of his comrades.

He had with him his water-bottle and a brandy-flask; and with the
contents of these, a sandwich or two (from his haversack) made of tinned
meat, and a ration of biscuit, he made a meal, as mid-day was now past,
and, lighting a cigarette, strove to study the art of being patient.

As he lay there and smoked, numbers of insects, nameless to him—

cicadas, huge moths and butterflies—huge in the tropics—buzzed and
flitted about him; small birds, the gold and emerald cuckoo, sunbird and
finch, with beautiful plumage, flitted from branch to branch overhead; a
lizard or chameleon crawled along. Dazed by the heat, and under the
influence of the latter, and perhaps of his cigarette, Florian dropped asleep.

From this he was startled by a trumpet sounding the advance, and was
roused just in time to see the detachment consisting of the two Lancer
Squadrons, the Mounted Infantry, Frontier Horse, and Bengough's Natives
resuming their route to the camp, after investigating the ashes of the hut he
had quitted, and which had no doubt caught fire from the hot embers of
others blown against it by the wind.

But Florian's heart sank within him at the contemplation of what might
have been had he slept on—had the trumpet not been sounded, and the
troops had ridden away, leaving him helpless in that solitude.

CHAPTER V.
 THE LOADED DICE.

Shafto was located in a quiet hotel in St. Andrew Square, Edinburgh,

whither he had come in hope to raise money to meet the difficulties in
which he had become involved. When away from the splendid thraldom of
Craigengowan—for thraldom he deemed it now—he was daily and nightly
in the habit of imbibing more than he would have ventured to do there; thus
he was becoming slow of speech, with the fishy eye and the fevered breath
of the habitual tippler, even at his years, while in dress he adopted a style
that was a curious combination of the dandy and the groom.

The many confiding tailors, jewellers, horse-copers, wine-merchants,

and others whom he had honoured by his patronage were now getting
beyond all bounds with their importunity and—as he thought—impertinent
desire to have their bills settled; while, disgusted with him, Lord Fettercairn
had been heard more than once to say, even to old Mr. Kippilaw:

'If Finella had been a boy I should not have cared so much about there
being no other grandson of my own to ensure the succession and carry on
the title.'

But the peer did not yet know the worst.

Occasional visits to Edinburgh, and still more those to London, were

always involving Shafto in one or other disgraceful scrape; for,
notwithstanding a most liberal allowance, he was often at his wits' end for
money, and was over head and ears in gambling debts. Thus he was a bitter
pill to the patriotic peer, his 'grandfather,' and he was on the verge, he
feared, of dire disgrace, as a whole lot of post-obits might soon come to
light—on the fortune he reckoned would come to him on Lord Fettercairn's
death or his marriage with Finella; for with two such prospects the Jew
money-lenders and other scoundrels who trade as such, in Pall Mall and
elsewhere, under double names, had seen things in a 'rosy' light, and let him
thus have 'no end of money.'

And now, as a means of recruiting his exchequer for a time, he bethought

him of young Kippilaw, who had been left £30,000 unexpectedly by an
uncle in Glasgow, and his first thought was to flatter and fleece the fellow if
he could, though the spruce little W.S. was on the eve of his marriage with
one of the many daughters of Lord Macowkay, the eminent senator of the
College of Justice; so he invited that gentleman to a quiet little dinner at his
hotel, 'Just to pick a bone—sharp eight.'

Little Kippilaw, who was always flattered by the society of a prospective

peer, as something to talk about in the Parliament House, accepted with a
radiant countenance; and, as he had rather a showy-looking friend who was
passing through Edinburgh on his way to Drumshoddy Lodge, he asked
permission to bring him.

'Certainly, of course,' said Shafto.

'Major Garallan is a client of the firm.'

'What! the old woman Drumshoddy's nephew?'

'The same.'

'All right; let us have him.'

So the Major came in due course. He was the beau-ideal of a cavalry

man—tall, handsome, well set up and put together, dark-complexioned and
regular-featured, with his ears and neck scorched by the Indian sun to a hue
in which red and bistre were blended; but an awkward accession he proved
to Shafto eventually.

The dinner, with its soup, fish, and many entrées, was all that could be
desired, from the curaçoa to the coffee, and put Shafto's two guests in
excellent humour with themselves and the world generally; the cloth was
drawn, the wine and dessert put on, and, seated at the head of the table,
Shafto almost forgot his troubles, as he took bumper after bumper of
sparkling Pommery-greno, while from the tall windows could be seen the
space of the stately square, with its tall central column crowned by the
colossal statue, of Melville, and all its many-pillared and palatial banks and
public offices whitened by the silver light of the summer moon.
 The Zulu War was, of course, spoken of, the mishaps at Isandhlwana and
Intombe discussed, though the subject was shirked by Shafto, who cared
nothing about it, save in so far as the danger that then menaced Florian; but
little Kippilaw, who was a full-blown captain in the Queen's Edinburgh
Rifle Brigade, talked a vast amount of 'shop' to the amused Major Garallan,
whom he ventured to instruct in the 'new method of attack,' and thereby
drew out the latter insensibly to talk a little of his Indian experiences, for he
had served in the expedition to Perak, against the Malays, and the Jowaki
expedition on the frontier of Peshawur, and been wounded at the storming
of Jummoo; affairs that, though small in themselves, went rather beyond a
sham fight in the Queen's Park, including the storming of St. Anthony's
Chapel and forming a rallying square in the Hunter's Bog.

And now the conversation began to flag, though Shafto had circulated
the wine freely, and he thought the time had come to propose 'a little mild
play.' One circumstance surprised him—that though they were supposed to
be connected by marriage, the somewhat haughty Major never made the
slightest reference to the subject.

'A quiet rubber of whist, with a dummy,' suggested Kippilaw.

'With a dummy, no,' said Major Garallan. 'I like poker, but——'

'Poker be hanged!' interrupted Shafto.

At this abrupt speech the Major, a well-bred man, pushed back his chair
a little way, while Shafto paused and felt in his waistcoat-pocket a little
white square ivory object—of which more anon.

It was arranged that Shafto and Kippilaw should have a mild game of
écarté, while Major Garallan smoked, idled, and looked on, a course that
the first-named gentleman by no means approved of, as, for cogent reasons,
he had an intense dislike of having his play overlooked.

Kippilaw, inflamed by the wine he had taken inconsiderately—while

Shafto, cautious to a degree, had not, to use a phrase of his own, 'a hair of
his coat turned'—allowed himself to be lured into doubling the stakes again
and again; and Shafto, who had his own ultimate end in view, while playing
to all appearance with intense care, allowed himself to lose eventually the
sum of £500, for which, as he had not the most remote intention of paying
it, he with great liberality gave an 'IOU' to Kippilaw, who, not being an
habitual gamester, but by nature and profession cautious and gentlemanly in
spirit, was rather scared in accepting the document.

Then a pause ensued in the game, during which more wine—Pommery-

greno—was circulated, fresh cards produced, and Shafto invited the Major
to play, but he declined somewhat curtly, as Shafto thought.

He then urged Kippilaw to let him have his 'revenge,' and the latter was
willing enough to let him have back the IOU if he won it, or any portion
thereof, as he disliked to possess such a document signed by the son of a
client of the firm, and thought secretly that he would not play a shilling
beyond that sum; but he had partaken of too much champagne, which, when
the Major's back was turned, Shafto contrived to dash with brandy, and
soon the demon of play, rivalry and acquisitiveness overruled the reason of
Kippilaw; but the nefarious action of Shafto had not been unnoticed by the
Major, who had affected to be twirling his moustache by the aid of a mirror
above the high black marble mantelpiece.

Shafto produced a dice-box; he lost, and Kippilaw won, as it was

intended he should, and a silly laugh of exultation escaped him.

'Another IOU—you're in luck's way to-night, Kippilaw!' exclaimed

Shafto.

'How much have I won?'

'A hundred and fifty.'

The play went on—the dice-box rattled again and again, while the
Major, with his back against the mantelpiece, looked silently and curiously,
but darkly on. Shafto won back—what he had lost as a lure—his £500, with
wonderful celerity, and then another sum of £100, for which Kippilaw gave
him a cheque, signed by a very unsteady hand.
 'Double or quits,' said Shafto, staking the cheque, with his hand on the
dice-box.

'Thanks—but I don't think I'll play any more,' said Kippilaw.

'Oh—indeed—please yourself,' said Shafto scornfully, while biting his

lips with anger and disappointment—'but after gaining £500 from me—the
devil—are you afraid?'

'No.'

'What then?'

'I have played enough—more deeply than I ever did before.'

'Enough!' repeated Shafto contemptuously.

'Yes.'

'Too much, indeed,' said Major Garallan suddenly; 'and, by Jove, you do
right to stop, Kippilaw.'

'What the devil do you mean?' asked Shafto, becoming pale with sheer
fury.

'What I say,' replied the officer coolly.

'Who the —— gave you a right to interfere?' demanded Shafto in a

bullying tone.

'I have watched your play, sir, for some time past,' replied the Major
quietly, 'and know right well how and why the tide of fortune turned so
suddenly in your favour.'

An oath escaped Shafto, and snatching up the cards, he hurled the pack
to a remote corner of the room.

'What does all this mean?' asked Kippilaw, staring half tipsily and with a
scared air at the speakers.
 'It means, you goose, that you have been playing with a fellow who is no
better than a blackleg,' said the Major, with quiet scorn. 'No, you don't,' he
added, grasping, as if with a smith's vice, the wrist of Shafto, who, uttering
a cry like a jackal, seized a cut-glass decanter, with the fell intention of
hurling it at the speaker's head, but the latter cowed him by one steady
glance.

'You shall repent this insolence,' said Shafto, starting to his feet. 'I will
teach you to question a man of honour with impunity.'

'Honour!' laughed Garallan.

'You shall hear from me, sir.'

'In what fashion—an action at law?'

'No; one perhaps you may shrink from.'

'Very probably. You don't mean a duel?'

'I do.'

'Where?'

'On the sands at Boulogne.'

'Fool! People don't fight duels nowadays, and if they did, I am not
required to fight with a—swindler! That is the word, so let us hear no more
high falutin. A man of honour, indeed!'

Garallan burst into a fit of scornful laughter, and Shafto, mad with rage
and disappointment, was rushing to grasp the poker, when the former, in a
moment, and before the apparently helpless Kippilaw could interfere, if
able to do so, in any way, had struck his would-be opponent down, and
wrenched from his left hand, which he tore open by main force, something
that Shafto had attempted to put in his mouth, and which, on examination,
proved to be—a loaded die.
 CHAPTER VI.

SHAFTO'S HORIZON BECOMES CLOUDY.

The Major had gone to the 'little dinner' at the desire of Kippilaw, but
unwillingly; he had evidently heard something about Shafto—knew him by
reputation, and during the meal had treated him perhaps rather cavalierly,
which Shafto was too self-assertive or too 'thick-skinned' to perceive,
though Kippilaw did.

The little W.S., who had never been in a 'scrimmage' since he left the
High School, was desperately scared by the whole affair, and especially by
the mauling given to Shafto, the son of a client of the firm, the heir of Lord
Fettercairn, by the Major, who made very light of the matter, and called him
'a d——d cad, and worse than a cad.'

When Shafto gathered himself up they were gone, and he heard their
footsteps echoing in the now silent square (where the tall column stood up
snowy white in the light of the waning moon) as they turned westward
along George Street, and a feeling closely akin to that of murder gathered in
his heart as he poured the most horrible maledictions on the Major, and
drank a deep draught of foaming Pommery-greno, well laced with brandy.

That fellow had spoiled his game, and his nefarious plans against young
Kippilaw, whom he regarded as a wealthy pigeon to pluck. No good ever
came of a quiet third party watching one's play. He would be even with the
Major yet, he muttered, as he ground his teeth; but how? The Major had
carried off the loaded dice, and after splitting it open, as doubtless he
would, exposure everywhere was sure to follow.

He was wrong in one supposition, however, as the Major quitted

Edinburgh next morning for Drumshoddy Lodge, and, of course, would be
very unlikely to expose in public one whom he deemed a connection of his
own.

Intending to attribute the whole affair of the loaded dice—alleged to be

loaded, he would insist—to a tipsy brawl on the Major's part, to a mistake
or confusion, and carry it off somehow, Shafto, driven to desperation by
want of money on one hand, even to settle his hotel bill in St. Andrew
Square, and by some days of terrible doubt and depression on the other,
after writing a private note to Mr. Kenneth Kippilaw about his affairs, and
fixing an hour for a visit 'thereanent,' ventured to present himself at that
gentleman's chambers, where a shock awaited him.

As he passed through the hall, he saw Madelon—Madelon Galbraith—

seated in a waiting-room.

'Madelon here—for what purpose?' thought he, with growing anxiety, as

he was ushered into the presence of Mr. Kippilaw, who received him with
intense frigidity—even more than frigidity—as he barely accorded him a
bow, and neither offered his hand nor rose from his writing-table, but
silently pointed to a chair with his pen.

Despite this cold welcome, Shafto's constitutional insolence of thought

and bearing came to him with a sense of the necessity for action, for his
grim reception by the usually suave and pleasant old lawyer roused all his
wrath and spite to fever-heat.

'So—so, sir,' began the latter, 'so you, the heir to the estates and title of
Fettercairn, actually tried to rob my simple son by means of a loaded dice
till exposed by Major Garallan, to whom my warmest gratitude is due; the
split fragments are now in my possession; but I presume it was not on that
matter you came to consult me. And, not content with such vile conduct,
you sought to taunt, bully, and inveigle the Major into a duel, in which
perhaps your superior skill or cunning might achieve his murder. Duels,
however, are out of date; but penal servitude is not, so beware, Mr. Shafto—
beware, I say—there is a rod in pickle for you, I suspect.'

And as he spoke the keen, glittering eyes of the old lawyer glared at
Shafto above the rims of his pince-nez.
 'But you come to confer with me about your private debts, Mr. Shafto,'
he added, lowering his tone.

'Yes.'

'You know the total amount, I presume?'

'Scarcely.'

'How so?'

'Well, when letters come to me I open the white envelopes and chuck all
the d——d blue ones into the fire uninspected.'

'A sensible proceeding—very! How long can it go on?'

'I don't know—perhaps you do,' was the dogged reply.

As if it was useless to ask further questions, Mr. Kippilaw looked over

some papers which Shafto had sent for his consideration, and his
countenance lowered and his white bushy eyebrows became closely knitted
as he did so, while Shafto watched him with an aspect of languid interest
which he was far from feeling, and sucked the ivory head of his crutch-stick
the while.

'Why, Mr. Shafto,' said Mr. Kippilaw, 'this is rank dishonesty.'

'What is?'

'This mess I am contemplating.'

'Don't talk thus to me; the greatest robbers in the world, after one's own
family lawyers——'

'Sir!' interrupted Mr. Kippilaw, smiting the table with his hand, and
looking dangerous.

'To business, then,' said Shafto sulkily.

 'There's this bill of Reuben Levi, the London money-lender, of which I
have a note, drawn originally for £500, at three months, bearing interest at
sixty per cent., and renewed three times!'

'Well?'

'The money value to the drawer is not likely to be much at the close of
the precious transaction.'

'D—n, I think not.'

'Lord Fettercairn will have to take up these.'

'A few more too, I suspect,' groaned Shafto.

'This is quite as disgraceful as your affair of the cards at that Club in

Princes Street.'

'Which?'

'When you were found playing baccarat with ever so many cards too
much in the pack. I am sick of you and your affairs, as you call them. The
man who can act as you do, in these and other matters, is not likely to
discharge the duties that devolve on the proprietor of Craigengowan and the
title of Fettercairn, alike teeming with temptations; therefore I think his
lordship will put it out of your power to make ducks and drakes of the
inheritance, if he takes my advice.'

'Your advice!' thundered Shafto.

'Precisely so,' said Mr. Kippilaw quietly, as he thrust all Shafto's papers
into a drawer and locked it. 'Lord Fettercairn has lost all patience with you,
sir. People should not incur debts they are unable to pay. I know of no
action more mean or contemptible than to make some man—a poor one,
perhaps—lose for another's amusements and enjoyments. You ought to
consider this.'

'Thank you, Mr. Kippilaw. You are, I believe, a leading elder in your
kirk, whatever that may mean; but I'll not have you preach to me.'
 'A man should do anything rather than defraud his neighbour.'

'D—n you, you old cur! do you speak of "defrauding" to me—you, a

lawyer?' said Shafto, grasping his cane.

'I do,' replied Mr. Kippilaw firmly. Shafto quailed under his gaze, and
turned to leave the room. 'Mr. Gyle!' said the lawyer, ere he could do so.

Shafto turned and faced him.

'Ha!—you answer to your name, I see!'

'What do you mean?'

'Simply that I begin to think you are an impostor!'

Shafto glared at him, white with rage and dismay, while a minute's
silence ensued.

Perhaps the astute lawyer had read that remarkable essay by Lord Bacon
on cunning, wherein he tells us that an unexpected question or assertion
may startle a man and lay him open. 'Like to him,' he continues, 'that having
changed his name, and was walking in St. Paul's, another came behind him,
and called him suddenly by his true one, whereat straightways he looked
back.'

'An impostor, dare you say?' exclaimed Shafto, taking one pace to his
front.

'Considering your conduct, I begin to think so.'

Shafto felt for a moment or so relieved, and said:

'What the devil do you mean? You had a properly attested certificate of
my birth?'

'Attested—yes.'

'Was that not all-sufficient, even for your legal mind?'

 'Not—now.'

'Why not now?'

'Because I remember that it is mutilated.'

Shafto winced.

'It is there, however,' said Mr. Kippilaw, pointing with his pen to a green
charter box labelled 'Fettercairn,' and Shafto thought that if he did not adopt
a high tone he might fail in the matter.

'You scoundrel,' he exclaimed, as he smashed his cane on the writing-

table, scattering letters and documents in every direction; 'doubt of my
identity is an insult now!'

Mr. Kippilaw did not lose his temper; he puckered up his eyebrows,
actually smiled, and looked cunningly at Shafto as he pulled or twitched his
nether lip with a finger and thumb. He was evidently reconsidering the
situation in his own mind, and coming to the conclusion that there was a
mistake somewhere.

Shafto was sharp enough to read this at a glance; he thought of Madelon,

and his heart became filled with black fury.

'I think our interview is ended,' said Mr. Kippilaw quietly, as he dipped a
pen in the ink-bottle and laid his left hand on a bell. 'You will be good
enough to leave my chambers, sir, or I shall have you shown out by the
hall-porter.'

There was nothing left for him but to withdraw, and as he did so,
Madelon Galbraith, who had been evidently waiting an interview, entered
Mr. Kippilaw's room, and as she passed she gave Shafto a terrible glance
with her black, sparkling eyes—a glance of hatred and triumph—as she had
not forgotten, but remembered with true Highland bitterness, the day of her
rough expulsion from Craigengowan, when he had actually hounded a dog
upon her.
 Shafto shivered; he felt as if an iron network was closing round him, and
that a fierce legal light might yet be cast on his secret villainy.

Guilt does not always look to the future. It is as well perhaps, under any
circumstances, that we never can see that mystic but certain period.

Smarting under Shafto's unbridled insolence to himself, and acting very

probably on some information accorded to him by Madelon Galbraith,
whom he desired to remain at his house in Edinburgh, Mr. Kippilaw took
means to achieve more—means which he should have adopted immediately
after his first interview with Shafto.

Discomfited, there was nothing left for the latter now but to cast himself
on the mercy of Lord and Lady Fettercairn in the matter of his debts and
involvements; and this, after a few days of doubt, irresolution, and much
hard drinking, he resolved to do, and so set out for Craigengowan.

In these few days the strands of Fate had been twisting slowly but surely
into a fatal coil!

CHAPTER VII.

THE SQUARE AT ULUNDI.

In the camp at the Entonjaneni Mountain the troops had two entire days'
rest, which enabled Florian to recover completely from the effects of the
accident which had befallen him in the pursuit of the Zulus.

In the afternoon of the 28th a telegram came announcing to Lord

Chelmsford that Sir Garnet Wolseley had arrived, that he had assumed the
entire command, and requesting a plan of the campaign, which, apparently,
Lord Chelmsford, having conducted thus far, was resolved to finish for
himself, as he did.
 With the same messengers came the mails for the troops, and, to
Florian's delight, there came a letter from Dulcie—we say delight at first,
for that sentiment soon gave place to one of anxiety.

At the sight of her handwriting, his heart went back in a day-dream to

the banks of the Yealm and the Erme and to the exquisite Devonshire lanes
where they had been wont to wander hand in hand together—lanes bordered
by banks of pale green ferns, while the golden apples hung in clusters
overhead.

Isolated now amid the different worlds in which each lived, these two
were tenderly true to each other, at those years when they who have been
boy and girl lovers usually forget, or form new attachments.

Florian was struck by a certain confusion in the letter of Dulcie, which

seemed to have been written in haste and under the pressure of some
excitement, so that at times it was almost incoherent.

'I am not superstitious, as you know, dearest Florian, but I dislike the
brilliant month of June more than any month in the year,' she wrote. 'Papa
died in June, leaving me alone in the world and so poor—hence I have
always strange forebodings of unseen evils to come—evils that I may be
powerless to avert; thus June is ever associated in my mind with sorrow,
death, and mystery. It is then I have restless nights and broken dreams of
trouble haunting me—even of hideous forms seen dimly, and I leave my
pillow in the morning more weary than when I laid my head upon it at
night. It is June again, and I am in trouble now.'

She proceeded then to describe her persecution by Shafto, who was

again returning after an absence; that his presence, conjoined to the taunts,
suspicions, and tone of Lady Fettercairn, made life at Craigengowan a
burden to her, and that she had determined on flight from the house—from
Scotland indeed—but where she was to go, or what she was to do, she knew
not. She had resolved not even to consult her only friend Finella, so that, by
the time her letter reached him, she would be out once again on the bosom
of the cold world!
 So ended this distressing and partly incoherent letter, which was the last
Florian received from Dulcie Carlyon, and by the tenor of it there seemed a
futility in sending any reply to Craigengowan, as too probably she must
have left it some weeks ago.

'If killed to-day or to-morrow—anyway, before Cetewayo is caught—I'll

never know, probably, how my darling gets over her trouble,' thought
Florian simply but sadly.

There came by the same post no letter for the absent Hammersley, so
Florian concluded that Finella Melfort must have seen through the medium
of the public prints that he had sailed for Europe on sick leave.

It was vain for him to imagine where and amid what surroundings
Dulcie was now, and doubtless with very limited means; it was a source of
absolute agony to him at such a time, when he was so helpless, so totally
unable to assist or advise her, and he seemed as in a dream to see the camp,
with its streets of white tents and soldiers in thousands loitering about, or
stretched on the grass, laughing, chatting, and smoking in the sunshine.

In the immediate foreground, on the branch of a tree, hung the skinned

carcase of an eland, from which a powerfully built Hottentot of the Natal
Contingent, all nude save a pair of breeches, was cutting large slices with a
huge knife, and dropping them into Madras cowrie baskets prior to cooking
them in small coppers half full of mealies.

A rich plain stretched away to the north; beyond it were mountains

covered with grass and dotted by clumps of trees, and in some that grew
close by the camp, numbers of beautiful squirrels were hopping from
branch to branch in the sunshine.

Ulundi was now only sixteen miles distant from our outposts, and from
thence came the last messengers of Cetewayo, bringing with them as a
peace-offering the sword of the Prince Imperial—the sword worn by his
father, too probably at Sedan, with a secret message—written by Cornelius
Vign, the Dutch trader—to Lord Chelmsford, telling him that if he
advanced on Ulundi to do it with strength, as the forces of Cetewayo were
many, many thousands strong.
 On the 1st July the division marched again.

Florian had been scouting with his squadron all the preceding day and
far into the night, and lay in his tent weary and fagged on a ground sheet
only, without taking off either accoutrements or regimentals. There, though
worn, he had dreams, not of Dulcie, but of his dead comrade, jovial Bob
Edgehill, and the little song the latter was wont to sing came to his
dreaming ears:

'Merrily lads, so ho!

Some talk of a life at sea;
But a life on the land,
With sword in hand,
Is the life, my lads, for me.'

Then he started up as he heard trumpet and drum announcing the 'turn

out'—the latter with the long and continued roll there is no mistaking. A
hasty breakfast was taken—scalding coffee drunk standing beside the camp
fires—the tents were struck, the waggon teams were inspanned, the
Mounted Infantry went cantering to the front, and the march was begun.

Beautiful though the district looked when viewed from Entonjaneni, the
country to be traversed proved a rugged one, covered with tall reed-like
grass of giant height, that swayed slowly in the wind, interspersed with
mimosa scrub and enormous cacti, with leaves like sabre-blades; but by
half-past one a.m. the White Umvolosi was reached.

More scouting in a dark and moonless night fell to the lot of Buller's
Horse and Florian's Mounted Infantry. They could hear the war-song of the
vast Zulu army—unseen in the darkness, but chiefly posted at fords on the
river, loading the still, dewy air, rising and falling with wild, weird, and
impressive effect, now apparently near, now distant; but so mighty ever and
anon was the volume of sound that it seemed to corroborate the alarming
message of Cornelius Vign. Among other sounds were the awful shrieks of
a dying prisoner, whom they had impaled on the bank of the stream.
 Much scouting, scampering about, and skirmishing by 'bank, bush, and
scaur' followed for three days, and the 4th of July saw the division on its
way to fight the great and final battle of the war, before Wolseley could
come on the ground—Ulundi.

The sun was well up in the sky, when the column crossed the river at a
point where sweet-scented bushes, graceful acacias, gigantic convolvuli,
and wild guava fringed its banks, where the bees were humming, and the
Kaffir vultures hovering over the slain of a recent skirmish; and splendid
was its aspect in the brilliant morning light—the 17th Lancers with their
striking uniform and 'pennoned spears, a stately grove'—the infantry, not
clad in hideous 'mud-suits,' but in their glorious scarlet, their polished
bayonets and barrels shining in the sun, while in the hollows under the
shadows of the great mountains, shadows into which the light of day had
scarcely penetrated as yet, the impis or columns of the Zulus were gathering
in their sombre and savage thousands.

'The troops will form in hollow square!' was now the General's order,
and, with other aides-de camp, Villiers, cigar in mouth, and with flushed
cheek and brightening eye, went cantering along the marching column, with
the details of that formation for the advance—the first instance of such a
movement in modern war, since William Wallace of Elderslie, the
uncrowned King of Scotland, instituted such a system at the battle of
Falkirk, and consequently he, as Green tells us in his 'History of the English
People,' was actually the first founder of 'that unconquerable British
Infantry,' before which the chivalry of Europe went down.

As formed by Lord Chelmsford on that eventful 4th of July, the infantry

on the four sides of his oblong square marched in sections of fours, with all
cavalry and other mounted men scouring the front and flanks, Shepstone's
Basutos covering the rear, with the cannon in the acute angles of three faces
of the square; all waggons and carts, with stores and ammunition, in the
centre.

This was about eight in the morning, and with colours flying and bands
playing merrily in the sunshine, this huge human rectangle marched in a
north-easterly direction, past two great empty kraals and a vast green