DULCIE CARLYON.

'Something must be done, and deuced soon too, to separate this pair of spoons, or else they will be corresponding by letter, somehow or anyhow, after he has taken himself off; and Lady Fettercairn is always saying it is high time that something was definitely arranged between the girl and me! But, of course, Finella thinks him handsome enough to be the hero of a three-volume novel.'

Thus muttered Shafto, who, after a long absence, had returned to Craigengowan again, believing that Hammersley must now be gone; but he found, to his extreme annoyance, that two days of that officer's visit yet remained; so, with the futile fracas about the cards in his mind, Shafto avoided him as much as possible, and the house and grounds were ample enough to give him every scope for doing so.

He was sedulously bent on working mischief, and Fate so arranged that, on the second day, he had the power to do so.

They were on the very eve of separation now, yet Finella knew their love was mutual and true, and a glow of exultation was mingled with the sadness of her heart—a glow which had a curious touch of fear in it, as if such joy in his faith and truth could not be lasting. It was a kind of foreboding of evil about to happen, and when the time came that foreboding was remembered.

On the day of Hammersley's departure, he was to leave Craigengowan before dinner: thus, after luncheon, he contrived, unseen, to slip a little note into her hand. It contained but two lines:—

'Darling, meet me in the Howe of Craigengowan an hour hence, for the last time. Do not fail.

'V. H.'

She read it again and again, kissed it, of course, and slipped it into her bosom.

To avoid everyone and to be alone with her own thoughts, she ran upstairs to the top of the house—to the summit of the old Scottish square tower, which was the nucleus whereon much had been engrafted even before the Melforts came to hold it, and going through a turret door which opened on the stone bartizan—a pleasant promenade—she sat down breathlessly, not to enjoy the lovely landscape which stretched around her, where Bervie Brow and Gourdon Hill were already casting their shadows eastward, but to wait and re-read her tiny note.

She put her hand into her bosom to draw it forth; but it was gone—she had lost it—and her first thought was, into whose hands might it fall!

She had a kind of stunned feeling at first, and then a glow of indignation that she should be treated like a child, in awe of Lady Fettercairn, and in a state of tutelage.

Vincent Hammersley went to the trysting-place betimes—the shady Howe of Craigengowan. The evening air was heavy with the fresh pungent fragrance of the Scottish pines, the flat boughs of which nearly met overhead thickly enough to exclude the sunshine, which here and there found its way through breaks in the bronze-green canopy, and fell like rays of gold on the thick grass and pine cones below; but there was no appearance of Finella.

Shafto had resolved to achieve a separation between these two, we have said, and evil fortune put the power to do so completely in his hands.

Before Finella could reach the meeting-place among the shrubberies in the lawn, she came face to face with Shafto.

'Shafto!' she exclaimed, with intense annoyance, as she recoiled, 'you here—I did not know that you had returned.'

'And didn't care, no doubt? Yes—you are on the way to meet someone else?'

'How do you know that?'

'I found his little note to you.'

'Where?'

'At the foot of the turret stair.'

'And you dared to read it.'

'It was open. Dared!—well, I like that. Let us be friends at least.'

'I have much to pardon in you, Shafto,' said she, remembering the unpleasant trick he had played Hammersley about the cards.

'Let us understand each other, Finella.'

'I thought we did so already,' said she defiantly, and impatiently at his untimely presence; 'surely we have spoken plainly enough before this.'

His face was pale, and there was an expression of mischief in his eyes that startled her. It was mere jealous rage that acted love. He caught her hand, and, fearing him at that moment, she did not withdraw it, but did so eventually and sharply.

'What folly is this?' exclaimed Shafto; 'do not shrink from me thus, Finella, but allow me to make a last appeal to you. I cannot think that you are so utterly changed towards me, but that you are wilfully blinding yourself.'

'This is intolerable!' exclaimed the girl passionately, knowing that precious time was passing, that Vivian had but a minute or two to spare to receive a farewell kiss and last assurance of her love.

'You used to love me, I think, in past days, before this man Hammersley came here?'

'I knew and loved him in London before I ever heard of your existence,' she exclaimed, wound up to a pitch of desperation. 'Give me up my note—I see it in your hand.'

'His note?'

'Mine, I say.'

'You shall not have it for nothing then.'

'What do you mean?'

'Precisely what I say, pretty cousin. I must have some reward,' and holding the note before her at arm's length he again captured her right hand.

'Restore my property. Would you be guilty of theft?'

'No,' replied Shafto, laughing now with triumphant malice, as he remembered Dulcie Carlyon and her locket. 'But what will you give me for it?'

'What can I give you?'

'Something better than your grandmother will for it—a kiss, freely,' said he softly, as he saw what Finella did not see—Vivian Hammersley between the shrubberies, pausing in his approach, loth to compromise her, yet perplexed and startled by the presence of Shafto and the bearing of both.

Finella flashed a defiant glance at her tormentor, but aware that he was capable of much mischief, lest he might make some troublesome use of the note with her grand-parents, of whom she certainly stood in some awe, she was inclined to temporise with him.

'If I give you a kiss, cousin Shafto, will you please give me my note?' she asked.

'Yes,' said he, and his heart leaped.

'Take it, then.'

She put up her sweet and innocent face to his, but instead of taking one, he clasped her close to his breast, and holding her tightly, he daringly and roughly kissed again and again the soft lips that he had never touched before save in his day-dreams, and all this was in sight of Vivian Hammersley, as he very well knew, and the latter, to Shafto's secret and intense exultation, silently drew back and disappeared.

Shafto had certainly then his moment of triumph!

Finella was greatly relieved when she obtained possession of her note; but her proud little heart was full of fury and indignation at the unwarrantable proceedings of Shafto, who hung or hovered about her just long enough to preclude all hope of her meeting with Hammersley, and when, full of sorrow, she returned to the house, she could see nothing of him, but was told by Grapeston, the old butler, that his departure had been suddenly hastened; that the trap was already at the hall-door to take him to the station, and the captain had charged him with a note for her.

It was hastily written in pencil, and a pencilled address was on the envelope. It ran thus:—

'I went at the appointed time. You did not come, but I saw you elsewhere in the arms of your cousin, who doubtless has been hereabout for some time past, unknown to me. Those were no cousinly kisses you gave him. God may forgive your falsehood, but I never will!

The room seemed to swim round her as she read and re-read the lines like one in a dream. As she did so for the second time and took in the whole situation, a cry almost escaped her. Then she heard some farewells hastily exchanged on the terrace, and the sound of wheels on gravel as the departing waggonette swept Hammersley away to the railway station, and no power or chance of explanation was left her.

The false light through which he—so brave, so true and honourable—must now view her tortured and humiliated her, and unmerited shame, mingled with just anger, burned in her heart. And Shafto had brought all this about!

Oh for language to describe her loathing of him! His was the mistake—the crime to be explained; but would it ever be explained? And she dared not complain to Lord or Lady Fettercairn, who openly abetted Shafto's avaricious aspirations as regarded herself.

She rushed away to her own room, lighted candles, and locked herself in. She sat down by the dressing-table; was that wan face reflected in the mirror hers? She leaned her elbows on the former, with her face in her hands, and sat there sobbing heavily in grief and rage without ever sighing, though her heart felt full to bursting.

She pleaded a headache as an excuse for non-appearance at dinner, and Lord and Lady Fettercairn exchanged a silent glance of mutual intelligence and annoyance, not unmingled, perhaps, with satisfaction.

Finella sat in her room as if turned to stone; at last she heard the stable clock strike midnight, and mechanically she proceeded to undress without summoning her maid.

A rosebud was in the rich cream-tinted lace about her pretty neck. He had given it to her but that morning, as they lingered on the terrace, and with haggard eyes she looked at it, kissed it, and put it in her white bosom.

This morning she was with him—her lover, her affianced husband—her own—and he was hers—all to each other in the world—and now!

'He hates me, most probably,' she murmured.

A few days stole away, and she tried to act a part, for watchful eyes were upon her. Hammersley was gone! Doubly gone! How she missed his presence was known only to herself. He was ever so sweetly but not obtrusively tender; so quick of wit, ready in attention and speech, though the envious Shafto phrased it, 'he would coax a bird off a tree.' He was so gentlemanly and gallant—every way such irreproachably good style, that she loved him with all the strength of her loving and passionate nature. The memory of the past—of her lost happiness—lost more than she might ever know, through the deliberate villainy of Shafto, rose ever before her with vivid distinctness; the evening on which their love was avowed in the drawing-room—the evening in the Howe of Craigengowan, when he gave her the two rings, and many other chance or concerted meetings, were before her now, and she could but clasp her hands tightly, while a heavy sob rose in her throat.

The wedding ring, he had given her to keep, was often drawn forth fondly, and slipped on her wedding finger in secret—a temptation of Fate, as any old Scotchwoman would have told her. She would have written a letter of explanation to Hammersley, but knew not where to address him; and ere long the announcement in a public print that he had sailed from Plymouth with a strong detachment of the 2nd Warwickshire, for the seat of war in South Africa, put it out of her power to do so, and she had but to bear her misery helplessly.

More than ever were they now separated!

CHAPTER II.
AN UNWELCOME VISITOR.

Lady Fettercairn was in the drawing-room at Craigengowan, and talking with Shafto seriously and affectionately on the subject of Finella and the wishes of herself and Lord Fettercairn; and Shafto was making himself most agreeable to his 'grandmother,' for he was still in high glee and elfish good humour at the mode in which he had 'choked off that interloper, Hammersley,' when a valet announced that an elderly woman 'wished to speak with her ladyship.'

'What is her name?'

'She declined to say.'

'Is she one of our own people?'

'I think not, my lady.'

'But what can she want?'

'She would not say—it was a private matter, she admitted.'

'Very odd.'

'She is most anxious to see your ladyship.'

'It is some begging petition, of course,' said Shafto; 'desire her to be off.'

'It may be so, sir.'

'Then show her the door.'

'She seems very respectable, sir,' urged the valet.

'But poor—the old story.'

'Show her in,' said Lady Fettercairn.

The elderly woman appeared, and curtseyed deeply twice in a graceful and old-fashioned manner. Her once black hair was now seamed with white; but her eyes were dark and sparkling; her cheeks were yet tinged with red, and her rows of teeth were firm and white as ever, for the visitor was Madelon Galbraith, now in her sixtieth year, and with the assured confidence of a Highland woman she announced herself by name.

'I read in the papers,' said she, 'that the grandson of Lord Fettercairn had shot some beautiful eaglets at the ruins of Finella's castle. The grandson, thought I—that maun be the bairn I nursed, as I nursed his mother before him, and so I'm come a the way frae Ross-shire to see him, your leddyship.'

'I have heard of you, Madelon, and that you were in early life nurse to—to my younger son's wife,' said Lady Fettercairn, with a freezing stare and slight inclination of her haughty head; but she added, 'be seated.'

'Yes—I was nurse to Captain MacIan's daughter Flora,' said Madelon, her eyes becoming moist; 'the Captain saved my husband's life in the Persian war, but was killed himself next day.'

'What have we to do with this?' said Shafto, who felt himself growing pale.

'Nothing, of course,' replied Madelon sadly.

'Then what do you want?'

'What I have said. I heard that the son of Major Melfort—or MacIan as he called himself in the past time—was here at Craigengowan, and I made sae bold as to ca' and see him—the bairn I hae suckled.'

'If you nursed my grandson, as you say,' said Lady Fettercairn, 'do you not recognise him? Stand forward, Shafto.'

'Shafto—is this Mr. Shafto!' exclaimed Madelon.

'Yes, my son Lennard's son.'

'Shafto Gyle!' said Madelon bewildered.

'What do you mean?'

'What I say, my leddy.'

'This is Major Melfort's only son.'

'Only nephew! The bairn I nursed—the son of Lennard Melfort and my darling Flora—was named after her, Florian, and was like herself, dark-haired, dark-eyed, and winsome. Where is he? What is the meaning of this, Mr. Shafto? I recognise ye now, though years hae passed since I saw ye.'

'She is mad or drunk!' exclaimed Shafto, starting up savagely.

'I am neither,' said Madelon, firmly and defiantly.

'Turn her out of the house!' said Shafto, with his hand on the bell.

'There is some trick here—where is Florian?'

'How the devil should I know, or be accountable for him to a creature like you?'

'Ay, ay, Mr. Shafto, as a bairn ye were aye crafty, shrewd, and evil-natured, and if a lie could hae chokit ye, ye wad hae been deid lang syne.'

'This is most unseemly language, Madelon Galbraith,' said Lady Fettercairn, rising from her chair, 'and to me it seems that you are raving.'

'Unseemly here or unseemly there, it is the truth,' said Madelon, stoutly, and, sooth to say, Lady Fettercairn's estimation and knowledge of Shafto's character endorsed the description given of it by Madelon.

'Florian was dark, and you are, as you were, fair and fause too; and Florian had what you have not, and never had, a black mole-mark on his right arm.'

'Such marks pass away,' said Shafto.

'No, these marks never pass away!' retorted Madelon; 'there is some devilry at work here. I say, where is Florian? Ay, ay,' she continued; 'my bairn, Florian, was born on a Friday, and a Friday's birth, like a Friday's marriage, seldom is fortunate; but this is no my bonnie black-eyed lad, Lady Fettercairn—so where is he?'

'This is intolerable!' said Lady Fettercairn, whom that name by old association of ideas seemed to irritate; and, on a valet appearing in obedience to a furious ring given to the bell by Shafto, she added, 'Show this intruder out of the house, and do so instantly.'

The man was about to put his hand on Madelon, but the old Highland woman drew herself up with an air of defiance, and swept out of the room without another word.

'See her not only out of the house, but off the grounds,' shouted Shafto, who was almost beside himself with rage and genuine fear. 'Nay, I'll see to that myself,' he added. 'Such lunatics are dangerous.'

Seeing her hastening down the avenue, he whistled from the stable court a huge mastiff, and by voice and action hounded it on her. The dog bounded about her, barking furiously and tore her skirts to her infinite terror, till the lodgekeeper dragged it off and closed the gates upon her. Then she went upon her way, her Highland heart bursting with rage and longing for revenge.

Shafto was glad that Lord Fettercairn was absent, as he might have questioned Madelon Galbraith more closely; but to his cost he was eventually to learn that he had not seen the last of Florian's nurse.

This visit taken in conjunction with the mode in which Finella now treated him made Craigengowan somewhat uncomfortable for Shafto, so he betook himself to Edinburgh, and to drown his growing fears plunged into such a mad career of dissipation and extravagance that Lord Fettercairn began to regret that he had ever discovered an heir to his estates at all.

While there Shafto saw in the newspaper posters one day the announcement of the terrible disaster at Isandhlwana, 'with the total extirpation of the 24th Warwickshire Foot!'

'His regiment, by Jove! I'll have a drink over this good news,' thought the amiable Shafto, and certainly a deep 'drink' he did have.

CHAPTER III.
A BRUSH WITH THE ZULUS.

When Florian recovered consciousness the African sun was high in the sky; but he lay still for a space in his leafy concealment, as he knew not what time had elapsed since he had last seen his mounted pursuers, or how far or how near they might be off.

Dried blood plastered all one side of his face, and blood was still oozing from the wound in his temple. Over it he tied his handkerchief, and with his white helmet off—as it was a conspicuous object—he clambered to the edge of the donga and looked about him.

The vast extent of waste and open veldt spread around him, but no living object was visible thereon. His pursuers must have ridden forward or returned to Elandsbergen without searching the donga, and thus he was, for the time at least, free from them.

In the distance he saw the Drakensberg range, and knew that his way lay westward in the opposite direction. It is the name given to a portion of the Ouathlamba Mountains, which form the boundary between the Free States, Natal, and the land of the Basutos. They rise to a height of nine thousand feet, and their topography is imperfectly known.

Having assured himself that he was unwatched and unseen, Florian quitted the donga, and, after an anxious search of an hour or more, succeeded in striking upon the ruts or wheel-tracks that must lead, he knew, to the camp at Rorke's Drift, beside the Buffalo River, and then he steadily, though weary and somewhat faint, proceeded upon his return journey.

How many miles he walked he knew not—there were no stones to mark them; but evening was at hand, and he had traversed a district of ruggens, as it is called there—a succession of many grassy ridges—before an exclamation of supreme satisfaction escaped him, when he saw the white bell-tents of Colonel Glyn's column, pitched on the grassy veldt beside the winding stream, and, passing the advanced sentinels, he lost no time in reporting himself to Sheldrake, and relieving himself also of that unlucky gold which had so nearly cost him his life.

Sheldrake sent instantly for Dr. Gallipott, a staff-surgeon, who dressed Florian's hurt. In the bearing of the latter as he related his late adventures Sheldrake was struck with a certain grave simplicity or quiet dignity—an air of ease and perfect self-possession—far above his present position.

'You are "not what you seem to be," as novels have it?' said the young officer inquiringly.

'I am a soldier, sir, as my—— (father was before me, he was about to say, but paused in confusion and substituted) 'as my fate decided for me.'

Impressed by his whole story and the terrible risks and toil he had undergone, young Sheldrake offered a substantial money reward to Florian, who coloured painfully at the proposal, drew back, with just the slightest air of hauteur, and declined it.

'You are somewhat of an enigma to me,' said the puzzled officer.

'Is there any news in camp, sir?'

'Only that we enter Zululand to-morrow, and a draft from home joined us to-day under Captain Hammersley.'

Florian heard the name of Captain Hammersley without much concern, save that he was one of the same corps. He little foresaw how much their names and interests would be mingled in the future.

'Here he comes,' said Sheldrake, as the handsome officer in his fresh uniform came lounging, cigar in mouth, into the tent, and Florian, with a salute, withdrew. Ere he did so,

'Tom,' said Sheldrake to his servant, 'tell the messman to give the sergeant a bottle of good wine; he'll need it to keep up his pecker after last night's work and with the work before us to-morrow.'

Florian thanked the officer and retired; and he and Bob Edgehill shared the contents of the bottle, while the latter listened to his narration.

'You have grown to look very grave, Hammersley,' said Sheldrake; 'of what are you thinking so much?'

'Nothing.'

'Nothing?'

'Yes; the best way to get through life is not to think at all,' replied Hammersley bitterly, for his thoughts were ever and always of Finella and that fatal evening in the shrubbery at Craigengowan, where he saw her lift up her face to Shafto, who kissed her as though he had been used to do so all his life.

Colonel Glyn's column consisted of seven companies of his own regiment, the 24th, the Natal Mounted Police, a body of Volunteers, two 7-pounder Royal Artillery guns under Major Harness, and 1000 natives under Rupert Lonsdale, late of the 74th Highlanders.

At half-past three on the morning of the 12th of January, the colonel, with four companies, some of the Natal Native Contingent, and the mounted men, left his camp to reconnoitre the country of Sirayo, which lay to the eastward of it. With his staff, Lord Chelmsford accompanied this party, which, after a few miles' march, reached a great donga, in a valley through which the Bashee River flows, and wherein herds of cattle were collected, and their lowing loaded the calm morning air, though they were all unseen, being concealed in the rocky krantzes or precipitous fissures of the ravine.

A body of Zulus now appeared on the hills above, and Florian regarded them with intense interest, while the mounted men advanced against them, and his company, with the others, pushed in skirmishing order up the ravine where the cattle were known to be.

He could see that these Zulu warriors were models of muscle and athletic activity, and nearly black-skinned rather than copper-coloured. They were dressed in feathers, with the tails of wild animals round their bodies, behind and before; their ornaments were massive rings formed of elephants' tusks, and their anklets were of brass or polished copper; they had large oval shields, rifles, and bundles or sheafs of assegais, their native deadly weapon, and they bounded from rock to rock before our skirmishers with the activity of tree-tigers.

'With the assegai,' says Sir Arthur Cunynghame, 'the Zulu cuts his food, he fights and does many useful things, and it is used as a surgical instrument. Carefully sharpening it, he uses it to bleed the human patient, and with it he inoculates his cow's tail. In the chase it is his spear, a deadly weapon in his hand, and ready instrument for skinning his game.'

The orders of the main body of this reconnoitring force, which had suddenly become an attacking one, were to ascend a hill on the left, then to work round to the right rear of the enemy's position, and assault and destroy a kraal belonging to the brother of Sirayo, whose surrender the Government had demanded as one of the violators of the British territory.

The moment the companies of the 24th got into motion a sharp fire was opened on them by the Zulus, who were crouching behind bushes and great stones, and on the Native Contingent which led the attack, under Commandant Browne.

The latter had their own armament of assegais and shields, to which the Government added Martini-Henrys or Enfields, but their fighting-dress consisted of their own bare skins. Each company generally was formed of a separate tribe, under its own chief, with a nominal allowance of three British officers; but there were none of minor rank, to lead sections, or so forth, as these natives could not comprehend divided authority. They were pretty well drilled, and many were skilled marksmen; but now many fell so fast under the fire of the Zulus that every effort of their white officers was requisite to get the others on.

Dying or dead, with the red blood oozing from their bullet-wounds, rolling about and shrieking in agony, or lying still and lifeless, they studded all the rocky ascent, while the survivors gradually worked their way upward, planting in their fire wherever a dark head or limb appeared; and when they came within a short distance of the enemy's position, the men of the 24th prepared to carry it by a rush.

Hammersley's handsome face glowed under his white helmet, and his dark eyes sparkled as he formed his company for attack on the march.

'From the right—four paces extend!'

Then the skirmishers swung away out at a steady double.

Florian was now for the first time under fire. He heard the ping of the rifle-bullets as they whistled past him from the smoke-hidden position of the Zulus, and he heard the splash of the lead as they starred the rocks close by. Then came that tightening of the chest and increase of the pulse which the chance of sudden death or a deadly wound inspire, till after a time that emotion passed away, and in its place came the genuine British bull-dog longing to grapple with the foe.

The Zulus fired briskly and resolutely from their rocky eyries; and while one party made a valiant stand at a cattle-kraal, another nearly made the troops quail and recoil by hurling down huge boulders, which they dislodged by powerful levers and sent thundering and crashing from the summit of the hill till it was captured by the bayonets of the 24th; they were put to flight in half an hour, and by nine in the morning the whole affair was over, and Florian found he had come unscathed through his baptism of fire; but Lieutenant Sheldrake had his shoulder-arm lacerated by a launched assegai when leading the left half-company.

Sirayo's kraal, which lay farther up the Bashee Valley, was burned later in the day by mounted men under Colonel Baker Russell. Our losses were only fourteen; those of the Zulus were great, including the capture of a thousand cattle and sheep. All the women and children captured were sent back to their kraals by order of Lord Chelmsford, who, on the 17th of January, rode out to the fatal hill of Isandhlwana, which he selected as the next halting-place of the centre column, and which was eventually to prove well nigh its grave!

CHAPTER IV.
THE CAMP.

On the 20th of January the column began its march for the hill of Isandhlwana, through a country open and treeless.

'Where and how is Dulcie now?' was the ever-recurring thought of Florian as he tramped on in heavy marching order in rear of Hammersley's company. Oh, to be rich and free—rich enough, at least, to save her from that cold world upon which she was cast, and in which she must now be so lonely and desolate.

But he was a soldier now, and serving face to face with death in a distant and savage land, and, so far as she was concerned, hope was nearly dead.

'My position seems a strangely involved one!' thought Florian, when he brooded over the changed positions of himself and Shafto; 'there is some mystery in it which has not yet been unravelled. Am I to be kept in this state of doubt and ignorance all my life—but that may be a short period as matters go now. My father! Must I never more call or consider him I deemed to be so, by that name again!'

Four companies of the 24th Regiment were left at Rorke's Drift when Colonel Glyn's column reached Isandhlwana, which means the Lion's Hill. Precipitous and abrupt to the westward, on the eastward it slopes down to the watercourse, and grassy spurs and ridges rise from it in every direction. The waggon track to Rorke's Drift passes over its western ridge, and groups of lesser hills, covered with masses of loose grey stones, rise in succession like waves of a sea in the direction of the stream called the Buffalo.

When the column reached the hill and began to pitch their tents, the young soldiers of the 'new system' were sorely worn and weary—'pumped out,' as they phrased it. 'We may laugh at the old stiff stock and pipeclay school,' says a popular military writer, 'but it may be no laughing matter some day to find out that, together with the stock and pipeclay which could easily be spared, we have sacrificed the old solidity which army reformers should have 'grappled to their souls with hooks of steel,' and painfully was that want of hardihood and foresight shown in the tragedy that was acted on the Hill of Isandhlwana.

A long ridge, green and grassy, ran southward of the camp, and overlooked an extensive valley. Facing this ridge, and on the extreme left of the camp, were pitched the tents of the Natal Native Contingent. A space of three hundred yards intervened between this force and the next two regiments.

The British Infantry occupied the centre, and a little above their tents were those of Lord Chelmsford and the head-quarter staff. The mounted infantry and the artillery were on the right, lining the verge of the waggon track—road it could scarcely be called. The camp was therefore on a species of sloping plateau, overlooked by the crest of the hill, which rose in its rear, sheer as a wall of rock. The waggons of each corps were parked in its rear.

The camp looked lively and picturesque on the slope of the great green hill, the white tents in formal rows, with the red coats flitting in and out, and the smoke of fires ascending here and there, as the men proceeded to cook their rations.

Florian was detailed for out-piquet duty that night, for the Zulus were reported to be in force in the vicinity, and no one on that duty could close an eye or snatch a minute's repose. The circle of the outposts from the centre of the camp extended two thousand five hundred yards by day, lessened to one thousand four hundred by night, though the mounted videttes were further forward of course; but, by a most extraordinary oversight, no breastworks or other barriers were formed to protect the camp.

Before coming to the personal adventures of our friends in this story, we are compelled for a little space to follow that of the war.

Early on the morning of the following day, the mounted infantry and police, under Major Dartnell, proceeded to reconnoitre the mountainous ground in the direction of a fastness in the rocks known as Matyano's stronghold, while the Natal force, under Lonsdale, moved round the southern base of the Malakota Hill to examine the great dongas it overlooked.

Dartnell's party halted and bivouacked at some distance from the camp, to which he sent a note stating that he had a clear view over all the hills to the eastward, and the Zulus were clustering there in such numbers that he dared not attack them unless reinforced by three companies of the 24th next morning.

A force to aid him left the camp accordingly at daybreak, in light marching order, without knapsacks, greatcoats, or blankets, with one day's cooked provisions and seventy rounds per man; and with it went Lord Chelmsford.

These three detached parties so weakened the main body in camp that it consisted then of only thirty mounted infantry for videttes, eighty mounted volunteers and police, seventy men of the Royal Artillery, six companies of the 24th, including Hammersley's, and two of the Natal Native Contingent.

When these reconnoitring parties were far distant from Isandhlwana, the Zulus in sight of them were seen to be falling back, apparently retiring on what was afterwards found most fatally to be a skilfully preconceived plan; and, prior to making a general attack upon them, Lord Chelmsford and his staff made a halt for breakfast.

It was at that crisis that a messenger—no other than Sergeant Florian MacIan—came from the camp mounted, with tidings that the enemy were in sight on the left, and that the handful of mounted men had gone forth against them.

On this Lord Chelmsford ordered the Native Contingent to return at once to the hill of Isandhlwana.

Soon after shots were briskly exchanged with the enemy in front; a vast number were 'knocked over,' and some taken prisoners. One of the latter admitted to the staff, when questioned, that his King Cetewayo expected a large muster that day—some twenty-five thousand men at least.

It was noon now, and a suspicion that something might be wrong in the half-empty camp occurred to Lord Chelmsford and his staff, and this suspicion was confirmed, when the distant but deep hoarse boom of heavy guns came hurtling through the hot atmosphere.

'Do you hear that?' was the cry on all hands; 'there is fighting going on at the camp—we are attacked in the rear!'

Then a horseman came galloping down from a lofty hill with the startling tidings that he could see the flashing of the cannon at the hill of Isandhlwana, and that it was enveloped on every side by smoke!

To the crest of that hill Lord Chelmsford and his staff galloped in hot haste and turned their field-glasses in the direction of the distant camp, but if there had been smoke it had drifted away, and all seemed quiet and still. The rows of white bell-tents shone brightly in the clear sunshine, and no signs of conflict were visible. Many men were seen moving among the tents, but they were supposed to be British soldiers.

This was at two in the afternoon, and the suspicion of any fatality—least of all the awful one that had occurred—was dismissed from the minds of the staff and Lord Chelmsford, who did not turn his horse's head towards the camp till a quarter to three, according to the narrative of Captain Lucas of the Cape Rifles.

When, with Colonel Glyn's detachment, he had marched within four miles of it, he came upon the Native Contingent halted in confusion, indecision, and something very like dismay, and their bewilderment infected the party of the General, towards whom, half an hour after, a single horseman came up at full speed.

He was Commandant Lonsdale, the gallant leader of the Natal Contingent, who had gone so close to the camp that he had been fired on by what he thought were our own troops, but proved to be Zulus in the red tunics of the slain, the same figures whom the staff from the distant hill had seen through their field glasses moving among the snow-white tents.

Out of one of them he saw a Zulu come with a blood-dripping assegai in his hand. He then wheeled round his horse, and, escaping a shower of rifle-bullets, galloped on to warn Lord Chelmsford of the terrible trap into which he was about to fall. The first words he uttered were, 'My Lord, the camp is in possession of the enemy!'

Of the troops he had left there that morning nothing now remained but the dead, and that was nearly all of them.

The silence of death was there! And now we must note what had occurred in the absence of the General, of Colonel Glyn, and the main body of the second column.

CHAPTER V.
THE MASSACRE AT ISANDHLWANA.

'What the deuce is up?' cried Hammersley and other officers, as they came rushing out of their tents when the sound of firing was heard all along the crest of the hill on the left of the camp, as had been reported to Lord Chelmsford; and, soon after, the few Mounted Infantry under Colonel Durnford were seen falling back, pursued swiftly by Zulus, who, like a dark human wave, came rolling in thousands over the grim crest of the hill, throwing out dense clouds of skirmishers, whose close but desultory fire fringed all their front with smoke.

There was no occasion for drum to be beaten or bugle blown to summon the troops; in a moment all rushed to arms, and the companies were formed and 'told off' in hot and nervous haste.

The Zulus came on in very regular masses, eight deep, maintaining a steady fire till within assegai distance, when they ceased firing, and launched with aim unerring their deadly darts.

Our troops responded by a close and searching fire, under which the black-skinned savages fell in heaps, but their places were fearlessly taken by others.

The rocket battery had been captured by them in their swift advance, and every man of it perished in a moment with Colonel Russell.

Driven back by their furious rush and force, the cavalry gave way, and Captain Mostyn, with two companies of the noble 24th, was despatched at the double to the eastern neck of the hill of Isandhlwana, where the Zulus in vast force were pressing along to outflank the camp, and on this wing of theirs he at once opened a disastrous fire.

Near the Royal Artillery guns the other two companies of the 24th were extended in skirmishing order; this was about half-past twelve p.m., and, as the mighty semicircle—the horns of the Zulu army—closed on them, every officer and man felt that they were fighting for bare existence now, and only procrastinating the moment of extirpation.

The shock which Hammersley's heart had received by the supposed deception of Finella was still too terribly fresh to render him otherwise than desperate and reckless of life, and in the coming mêlée he fought like a tiger.

He longed to forget both it and her—to put death itself, as he had now put distance, between himself and the place where that cruel blow had descended upon him; thus he exposed himself with a temerity that astonished Sheldrake, Florian, and others.

D'Aquilar Pope's company of the 24th was thrown forward in extended order near the waggon track till his left touched the files of the right near the Artillery. Facing the north were the companies of Mostyn, Cavaye, and Hammersley, with two of the Native Contingent, all in extended order, and over them the guns threw shot and shell eastward. But all the alternative companies were without supports to feed the fighting line, unless we refer to some of the Native Contingent held as a kind of reserve.

The crest of that precipitous mountain in front of which our luckless troops were fighting with equal discipline and courage in the silent hush of desperation, is more than 4,500 feet high; but the camp upon, its eastern slope had been in no way prepared, as we have said, for defence by earthworks or otherwise.

'The tents,' we are told, 'were all standing, just as they had been left when the troops under Chelmsford and Glyn marched out that morning, and their occupants were chiefly officers' servants, bandsmen, clerks, and other non-combatants, who, until they were attacked, were unconscious of danger. Fifty waggons, which were to have gone back to the commissariat camp at Rorke's Drift, about six miles in the rear as the crow flies, had been drawn up the evening before in their lines on the neck between the track and the hill, and were still packed in the same position. All other waggons were in rear of the corps to which they were attached. The oxen having been collected for safety when the Zulus first came in sight, many of them were regularly yoked in.'

It was not until after one o'clock that our handful of gallant fellows on the slope of the hill fully realised the enormous strength of the advancing army, now ascertained to have been fourteen thousand men, under Dabulamanzi.

By that time the Zulus had fought to within two hundred yards of the Natal Contingent, which broke and fled, thus leaving a gap in the fighting line, and through that gap the Zulus—loading the air with a tempest of triumphant yells and shrieks—burst like a living sea, and in an instant all became hopeless confusion.

'Form company square,' cried Hammersley, brandishing his sword; 'fours deep, on the centre—close.'

But there was no time to close in or form rallying-squares, and never again would our poor lads 're-form company.'

Before Mostyn's and Cavaye's companies could close, or even fix their bayonets, they were destroyed to a man, shot down, assegaied, and disembowelled, while the shrieks and fiend-like yells of the Zulus began to grow louder as the rattle of the musketry grew less, and the swift game of death went on.

Hammersley's company, which had been on the extreme left, though unable to form square, succeeded in reaching, but in a shattered condition, a kind of terrace on the southern face of the hill, from whence, as the smoke cleared away, they could see the Zulus using their short, stabbing assegais with awful effect upon all they overtook below.

Under the fire of the cannon, which had been throwing case-shot, the Zulus fell in groups rather than singly, and went down by hundreds; but as fast as their advanced files melted away, hordes of fresh savages came pouring up exultingly from the rear to feed the awful harvest of death; and, as they closed in, 'Limber up!' was the cry of Major Smith, the Artillery commanding officer; but the limber gunners failed to reach their seats, and, save a sergeant and eight, all perished under the assegai; and while in the act of spiking a gun, the Major was slain amid an awful mêlée and scene of carnage, where horse and foot, white man and black savage, were all struggling and fighting in a dense and maddened mass around the cannon-wheels.

Notwithstanding the manner in which he exposed himself, Hammersley, up to this time, found himself untouched; but his subaltern, poor Vincent Sheldrake, whose wounded sword-arm rendered him very helpless, was bleeding from several stabs and two bullet-wounds, which it was impossible to dress, yet he strove to save his servant Tom, who was lying in his last agony, and who, in gratitude, strove to accord him a military salute, and died in the attempt.

'Poor Vincent! you are covered with wounds!' said Hammersley.

'Ay; so many that my own mother—God bless her!—wouldn't know me; so many that if I was stripped of these bloody rags you would think I was tattooed. It is no crutch and toothpick business this!' replied Sheldrake, with a grim faint smile, as from weakness he fell forward on his hands and knees, and Florian stood over him with bayonet fixed and rifle at the charge.

At that moment an assegai flung by a Zulu finished the mortal career of Sheldrake. But Florian shot the former through the head, and the savage—a sable giant—made a kind of wild leap in the air and fell back on a gashed pile of the dead and the dying. It was Florian's last cartridge, and his rifle-barrel was hot from continued firing by this time.

All was over now!

Every man who could escape strove to make his way to the Buffalo River, but that proved impossible even for mounted men. Intersected by deep watercourses, encumbered by enormous boulders of granite, the ground was of such a nature that the fleet-footed Zulus, whose bare feet were hard as horses' hoofs, alone could traverse it, and the river, itself swift, deep, and unfordable, had banks almost everywhere jagged by rocks sharp and steep.

A few reached the stream, among them Vivian Hammersley, his heart swollen with rage and grief by the awful result of that bloody and disastrous day, by the destruction of his beloved regiment—the old 24th—for which he could not foresee the other destruction that 'the Wolseley Ring' would bring upon it and the entire British Army, and the loss by cruel deaths of all his brother-officers—the entire jolly mess-table. In that time of supreme agony of heart, we believe he almost forgot his quarrel with Finella Melfort, but found the track to Helpmakaar and Rorke's Drift, where a company of the 24th were posted under the gallant young Bromhead; but most of the fugitives were entirely ignorant of the district through which they wildly sought to make their escape, and thus were easily overtaken and slain by the Zulus; and so hot was the pursuit of these poor creatures, that even of those who strove to gain a point on the Buffalo, four miles from Isandhlwana, none but horsemen reached the river, and of these many were shot or drowned in attempting to cross it.

Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Pulleine of the 24th, on perceiving all lost, and that the open camp was completely in the hands of the savages, called to Lieutenant Melville, and said,

'As senior lieutenant, you will take the colours, which must be saved at all risks, and make the best of your way from here!'

He shook warmly the hand of young Melville, who, as adjutant, was mounted, and then exclaimed to the few survivors:

'Men of the old 24th, here we are, and here we must fight it out!'

Then his gallant 'Warwickshires' threw themselves in a circle round him, and perished where they stood.

Melville galloped off with the colours, escorted by Lieutenant Coghill of the same corps, and by Florian, who was ordered to do so, as colour-sergeant, and who, luckily for himself, had found a strong horse. These three fugitives were closely pursued, and with great difficulty kept together till they reached the Buffalo River, the bank of which was speedily lined with Zulu pursuers armed with rifle and assegai.

Melville's horse was shot dead in the whirling stream, and the green-silk colours, heavy with gold-embroidered honours, slipped from his hands. Coghill, a brave young Irish officer, reached the Natal side untouched and in perfect safety; but on seeing his Scottish comrade clinging to a rock while seeking vainly to recover the lost colours, he went back to his assistance, and his horse was then shot, as was also that of Florian, who failed to get his right foot out of the stirrup, and was swept away with the dead animal down the stream.

The Zulus now continued a heavy fire, particularly on Melville, whose scarlet patrol jacket rendered him fatally conspicuous among the greenery by the river-side at that place. Two great boulders, six feet apart, lie there, and between them he and Coghill took their last stand, and fought, sword in hand, till overwhelmed. 'Here,' says Captain Parr in his narrative, 'we found them lying side by side, and buried them on the spot'—truly brothers in arms, in glory and in death.

When all but drowned, Florian succeeded in disentangling his foot from the stirrup-iron, and struck out for the Natal side. A shrill yell from the other bank announced that he was not unseen; bullets ploughed the water into tiny white spouts about him, and many a long reedy dart was launched at him—but with prayer in his heart and prayer on his lips he struggled on, and reached the bank, where he lay still, worn breathless, incapable of further exertion, and weakened by his recent fall in the donga, after escaping from Elandsbergen; thus believing that all was over with him, the Zulus ceased firing, and went in search of congenial carnage elsewhere. And there, dying to all appearance, in a reedy swamp by the Buffalo river, the tall grass around him, bristling with launched assegais, lay Florian Melfort, the true heir of Fettercairn, friendless and alone.

* * * * *

No Briton survived in camp to see the complete end of the awful scene that was acted there! And of that scene no actual record exists. For a brief period—a very brief one—a hand to hand fight went on among, and even in, the tents, and the company of Captain Reginald Younghusband of the 24th alone appears to have made any organized resistance. Making a wild rally on a plateau below the crest of the hill, they fought till their last cartridges were expended, and then died, man by man, on the ground where they stood. The Zulus surged round and over them with tiger-like activity, frantic gestures, remorseless ferocity, and lust of blood, whirling and flinging their ponderous knobkeries, or war-clubs, one blow from which would suffice to brain a bullock.

Even the savage warriors who slew and mutilated them were filled with admiration at their courage, while tossing their own dead again and again on the bayonet-blades to bear down the hedge of steel. 'Ah, those red soldiers at Isandhlwana!' said the Zulus after; 'how few they were, and how they fought! They fell like stones—each man in his place.'

There is something pathetic in the description of the stand made by the last man (poor Bob Edgehill, of the 24th), as given in the Natal Times.

Keeping his face to the foe, he struggled towards the crest of the hill overlooking the camp, till he reached a small cavern in the rocks. Therein he crept, and with rifle and bayonet kept the Zulus at bay, while they, taking advantage of the cover some rocks and boulders afforded them, endeavoured by threes and fours to shoot him.

Bob—that rackety Warwickshire lad—was very wary. He did not fire hurriedly, but shot them down in succession, taking a steady and deliberate aim. At last his only remaining cartridge was dropped into the breech-block of his rifle; another Zulu fell, and then he was slain. This was about five in the evening, when the shadow of the hill of Isandhlwana was falling far eastward across the valley towards the ridge of Isipesi.

'We ransacked the camp,' said a Zulu prisoner afterwards, 'and took away everything we could find. We broke up the ammunition-boxes and took all the cartridges. We practised a great deal at our kraals with the rifles and ammunition. Lots of us had the same sort of rifle that the soldiers used, having bought them in our own country, but some who did not know how to use it had to be shown by those who did.'

Five entire companies of the 1st battalion of the 24th perished there, with ninety men of the 2nd battalion; 832 officers and men mutilated and disembowelled, in most instances stripped, lay there dead, shot in every position, amid gashed and gory horses, mules, and oxen, while 1400 oxen and £60,000 of commissariat supplies were carried off.

At ten minutes past six in the evening of that most fatal day Lord Chelmsford was joined by Colonel Glyn's force. A kind of column was formed, with the guns in the centre, with the companies of the 2nd battalion of the 24th on each flank, and when the sun had set, and its last light was lingering redly on the rocky scalp of Isandhlwana, this force was within two miles of the camp, where now alone the dead lay. The opaque outline of the adjacent hills was visible, with the dark figures of the Zulus pouring in thousands over them in the direction of Ulundi; and after shelling the neck of the Isandhlwana Hill—where it would seem none of the enemy were, for no response was made—the shattered force, crestfallen in spirit, heavy in heart, and after having marched thirty miles, and been without food for forty-eight hours, bivouacked among the corpses of their comrades.

When, five months after, the burial parties were sent to this awful place, great difficulty was experienced in finding the bodies, the tropical grass had grown so high, while the stench from the slaughtered horses and oxen was overpowering. Every conceivable article, with papers, letters, and photographs of the loved and the distant, were thickly strewn about. 'A strange and terrible calm seemed to reign in this solitude of death and nature. Grass had grown luxuriantly about the waggons, sprouting from the seed that had dropped from the loads, falling on soil fertilised by the blood of the gallant fallen. The skeletons of some rattled at the touch. In one place lay a body with a bayonet thrust to the socket between the jaws, transfixing the head a foot into the ground. Another lay under a waggon, covered by a tarpaulin, as if the wounded man had gone to sleep while his life-blood ebbed away. In one spot over fifty bodies were found, including those of three officers, and close by another group of about seventy; and, considering that they had been exposed for five months, they were in a singular state of preservation.'

Such is the miserable story of Isandhlwana.

CHAPTER VI.
HAS SHE DISCOVERED ANYTHING?

Finella Melfort knew by the medium of telegrams and despatches in the public prints—all read in nervous haste, with her heart sorely agitated—that Hammersley had escaped the Isandhlwana slaughter, and was one of the few who had reached a place of safety. So did Shafto, but with no emotion of satisfaction, it may be believed.

When the latter returned to Craigengowan, Lady Fettercairn had not the least suspicion of the bitter animosity with which Finella viewed him, and of course nothing of the episode in the shrubbery, and thus was surprised when her granddaughter announced a sudden intention of visiting Lady Drumshoddy, as if to avoid Shafto, but delayed doing so.

At his approach she recoiled from him, not even touching his proffered hand. All the girlish friendship she once had for this newly discovered cousin had passed away now, crushed out by a contempt for his recent conduct, so that it was impossible for her to meet him or greet him upon their former terms. She feared that her loathing and hostility might be revealed in every tone and gesture, and did not wish that Lord or Lady Fettercairn should discover this.

To avoid his now odious society—odious because of the unexplainable quarrel he had achieved between herself and the now absent Vivian—she would probably have quitted Craigengowan permanently, and taken up her residence with her maternal relation at Drumshoddy Lodge; but she preferred the more refined society of Lady Fettercairn, and did not affect that of the widow of the ex-Advocate and Indian Civilian, who was vulgarly bent on urging the interests of Shafto, and would have derided those of Hammersley in terms undeniably coarse had she discovered them. And Lady Drumshoddy, though hard by nature as gun-metal, was a wonderful woman in one way. She could back her arguments by the production of tears at any time. She knew not herself where they came from, but she could 'pump' them up whenever she had occasion to taunt her granddaughter with what she termed contumacy and perverseness of spirit.

On the day Shafto returned Finella was in the drawing-room alone. She was posed in a listless attitude. Her slender hands lay idly in her lap; her face had grown thin and grave in expression, to the anxiety and surprise of her relatives. Her chair was drawn close to the window, and she was gazing, with unseeing eyes apparently, on the wintry landscape, where the lawn and the leafless trees were powdered with snow, and a red-breasted robin, with heart full of hope, was trilling his song on a naked branch.

It was a cheerless prospect to a cheerless heart. She had drawn from her portemonnaie (wherein she always kept it) the bitter little farewell note of Hammersley, and, after perusing it once more, returned it slowly to its place of concealment.

Where was he then? How employed—marching or fighting, in peril or in safety? Did he think of her often, and with anger? Would he ever come back to her, and afford a chance of explanation and reconciliation? Ah no! it was more than probable their paths in life would never cross each other again.

Tears welled in her eyes as she went over in memory some episodes of the past. She saw again his eager eyes and handsome face so near her own, heard his tender and pleading voice in her ear, and recalled the touch of his lips and the clasp of his firm white hand.

Another hand touched her shoulder, and she recoiled with a shudder on seeing Shafto.

'What is this I hear,' said he; 'that you think of leaving Craigengowan?'

'Yes,' she replied, curtly.

'Because I have returned, I presume?'

'Yes.'

His countenance darkened as he asked:

'But—why so?'

'Because I loathe that the same roof should be over you and me. Think of what your infamous cunning has caused!'

'A separation,' said he, laughing malevolently, 'a quarrel between that fellow and you?'

'Yes,' she replied with flashing eyes.

'Can nothing soften this hostility towards me?' he asked after a pause.

'Nothing. I never wish to see your face or hear your voice again.'

'Well, if you leave Craigengowan simply to avoid me I shall certainly tell your grandmother the reason; and how will you like that?'

'You will?'

'By heaven, I will! That he and you alike resented my regard for you?'

To say that Shafto loved Finella, with all her beauty, would be what a writer calls a 'blasphemy on the master-passion;' but he admired her immensely, longed for her, and more particularly for her money, as a protection—a barrier against future and unseen contingencies.

At his threat Finella grew pale with anticipated annoyance and mortification; but in pure dread of Shafto's malevolence, and for the other reasons given, she did not hasten her preparations for departure, and ere long the arrival of a new guest at Craigengowan decided her on remaining, for this guest was one for whom she conceived a sudden and lasting affection, and with whom she found ties and sympathies in common.

After being out most part of a day riding, Shafto returned in the evening, and, throwing his horse's bridle to a groom, was ascending the staircase to his own room, when, framed as it were in the archway of a corridor, he saw, to his utter bewilderment, the face and figure of Dulcie Carlyon!

DULCIE CARLYON.

CHAPTER I.SEPARATED.

CHAPTER II.AN UNWELCOME VISITOR.

CHAPTER III.A BRUSH WITH THE ZULUS.

CHAPTER IV.THE CAMP.

CHAPTER V.THE MASSACRE AT ISANDHLWANA.

CHAPTER VI.HAS SHE DISCOVERED ANYTHING?

CHAPTER I.
SEPARATED.

CHAPTER II.
AN UNWELCOME VISITOR.

CHAPTER III.
A BRUSH WITH THE ZULUS.

CHAPTER IV.
THE CAMP.

CHAPTER V.
THE MASSACRE AT ISANDHLWANA.

CHAPTER VI.
HAS SHE DISCOVERED ANYTHING?