"I am sinking fast, Twyford!" he resumed, in a hollow and broken voice. "Pray for me—pray for me. There is but one way to heaven——"
"But many to perdition!" added a strange, deep voice.
And a dark, indistinct, and muffled figure, having two gleaming eyes, stood by the wheel of the gun-carriage, just as a cloud overspread the moon.
"Here—he here! Do not let him touch me—do not let him—touch me!" cried Raikes, in a voice that rose into a scream of despair, as he threw up his arms and fell back.
There was a gurgle in his throat, and all was over!
A fiendish, chuckling laugh seemed to pass me on the skirt of the frosty wind; but I saw no one; nor had I time to observe, or to remember, much more, for now a madness seemed to seize the horses.
They dashed away with frightful speed, the field-piece swinging like a toy at their hoofs. It swept over me breaking one of my legs, and inflicting also a terrible wound on the head, I sank among the snow, and remember no more of that night, for, after weeks of delirium and fever, I found myself a poor, weak, and emaciated inmate of the hospital at Scutari, and so far on my way home to dear old England.
But such was the Christmas night I spent before Sebastopol, and such were those mysteries in the "Book of Nature," to which I can find as yet no key.