"They mean that some length of time had elapsed between the two parts of the story," said grandmother.
"Oh, I see. And each star counts for a year. I suppose. Let me see; one, two, three——"
"Molly, do be quiet, and let grandmother go on," said Ralph and Sylvia, their patience exhausted.
"No, they are not counted like that," said grandmother. "Listen, Molly, and you will hear for yourself."
"The first part of my little story finished in the snow—on a cold December morning in England. The second part begins in a very different scene and many, many miles away from Ryeburn. Three or four years have passed. Some of those we left boys are now men—many changes have taken place. Instead of December, it is August. Instead of England we have a far away country, which till that time, when the interest of the whole world was suddenly concentrated on it, had been but little known and still less thought of by the dwellers in more civilised lands. It is the Crimea, children, and the Crimea on a broiling, stifling August day. At the present time when we speak and think of that dreadful war and the sufferings it entailed, it is above all the winters there that we recall with the greatest horror—those terrible 'Crimean winters.' But those who went through it all have often assured me that the miseries of the summers—of some part of them at least—were in their way quite as great, or worse. What could be much worse? The suffocating heat; the absence, or almost total absence, of shade; the dust and the dirt, and the poisonous flies; the foul water and half-putrid food? Bad for the sound ones, or those as yet so—and oh, how intolerably dreadful for the sick!
"'What could be much worse?' thought Jack Berkeley to himself, as after a long killing spell in the trenches he at last got back to his tent for a few hours' rest.
"'My own mother wouldn't know me,' he said to himself, as out of a sort of half melancholy mischief he glanced at his face in the little bit of cracked looking-glass which was all he had to adorn himself by. He was feeling utterly worn out and depressed—so many of his friends and companions were dead or dying—knocked down at that time quite as much by disease as by Russian bullets—in many cases the more terrible death of the two. And things in general were looking black. It was an anxious and weariful time.
"Jack threw himself on the bed. He was too tired to undress. All he longed for was coolness and sleep—the first the less attainable of the two, for the thin sides of his tent were as powerless to keep out the scorching heat as the biting cold, and it was not till many more months of both heat and cold had passed that any better shelter was provided for him or his fellows.
"But heat and flies notwithstanding Jack fell asleep, and had slept soundly for an hour or two when he was suddenly awakened by a voice calling him by name.
"'Berkeley,' it said, 'you are Berkeley of the 300th, aren't you? I am sorry to awaken you if you're not, but I couldn't see your servant about anywhere to ask. There's a poor fellow dying, down at Kadikoi, asking for Berkeley—Jack Berkeley of the 300th.'