attendance of a surgeon. Startled by the woman's energy, the lady set about these tasks with speed; in a moment or two she returned with a small flask of brandy, and an intimation that the surgeon would be on the spot almost directly. The woman forced some brandy through the lips of the lad as he lay in a dead-faint on the ground, paused awhile, and then poured some more; in a few seconds he opened his eyes; consciousness gradually returned; and in his attendant he readily recognised the farm proprietress of San Lorenzo, and his informant of the previous day. In a very short time he was able to sit up and thank his kind attendants-the faint had been the effect of increased pain from the rapid rate at which he had been hurried out of the fight-and by the time the surgeon came to dress his wound he felt almost himself again. The bullet had gone right through, but had done no material injury, while the high spirit and courage of the recipient caused him to feel the consequences far less than would have been the case with one less brave. Food and wine were given him judiciously after the wound had been dressed, so that at the end of a couple of hours, he implored his kind-hearted nurses to leave him and render their services to some of the immense crowd of wounded men who were momentarily being brought in.

H

The fight had now raged for six hours without intermission, and the British troops had sustained enormous loss, considering their numbers. By the latest accounts from the front, Evans had taken, after several severe repulses, the second line of Carlist. entrenchments and held them. He had made many attempts to scale the heights that lay between his then position and the third-the last, and by far the most formidable-line, but in each effort he had been beaten back at a great sacrifice of men; while all the time the Carlist guns from above played down on his almost totally unprotected position, and storms of musketry were decimating his small force. Blunt heard all this from one of the latest from the front; he made up his mind on the instant, he was not so badly wounded but that he could fight again; so he quietly escaped from where he had been placed, and set out to toil up the ascent, join his regiment, and strike one more blow for the cause he had taken to his heart.

Slowly and painfully at first did he make his way up through the wounded, the dying, and the dead; but when once he came within range of stray bullets and overshot cannon-balls, his vigour seemed restored to him, and he made tolerably rapid progress-trusting to finding arms and ammunition in plenty on arrival at his regiment. As he passed a pile of dying or dead

soldiers in the course of his ascent, he thought he heard his name uttered and coupled with a curse: he looked again, and there, lying on the wheel of a broken gun-carriage, he saw his old enemy Sergeant Jenkins! He knew he could do nothing whatever for the man, but pity made him draw near as he saw the poor wounded wretch again trying to call out his name; he leant over to listen, and to his dying day he will never forget the horrid glance that shot out from the dying eyes, as Jenkins raised himself for a second on his elbow, hissed out the fearful words, "I hate you!" and then fell back dead!

Blunt was dreadfully shocked; he could not imagine the depravity of a man carrying his wretched human likes and dislikes into the awful presence of his Maker, and it took him many minutes before he could muster nerve to resume his fearful journey. But the increased rattle and roar of the musketry and big guns above him, mingled with the shouts and battlecries of thousands, lent him new vigour, and when he learnt from some wounded crawling down the hills that the English were in imminent peril of once more being driven back altogether-that dismay and despair were beginning to be felt on all sides his fierce courage could no longer be stayed, and he redoubled his pace to join his comrades.