but the place being now untenable, the rest of
the garrison was removed safely in boats.

Three times the sergeant's wife traversed the
fire-swept battery to remove effects of her
husband's. The last time, she went for her child,
who had been left safe in the bomb-proof; she
returned, bending over it to shield it, at hazard
of her own life, from the shot and shell flying
round her thick as gnats over a summer pool.
She escaped safely, and followed her husband to
Glasgow after his discharge. Many officers
interested themselves in her, and made a
representation to the commander-in-chief, who
warmly pleaded her claims for a pension to the
secretary of war. But officials look upon such
claims as vexatious interruptions of official
intrigue and routine. His cold reply was, "We
have no funds at our disposal for this purpose."

In 1826 she was living, advanced in years,
her old husband and herself enjoying the grateful
nation's bounty of one and tenpence a day.

The courage of this brave soldier's wife
Cartridge compares with one only other real heroine
he ever met—a mistress of an English captain
of a light company, who followed her lover all
through the campaign, sharing all his dangers
and privations. At the battle of Vittoria she
was left with the baggage; but, hearing from
the disabled men who kept limping in, that her
lover was wounded, she instantly mounted her
horse, and rode down into the battle to search
for him. She found him just as he breathed
his last, and stopped, weeping by the body, till
his company had dug a grave with their bayonets,
and buried him out of her sight.

She was now left friendless and helpless; she
was forsaken and forlorn; her money soon went,
then her watch, then her horse—last of all, her
lover's miniature. The last thing Cartridge saw
of her was as a wretched camp-follower,
struggling through the mud in the rear of the line of
march, with her shoes torn from her feet. Soon
afterwards she disappeared, and what became of
her will never be known.

Here the class-book, leaving the author just
starting to join the depôt of his regiment in
Canada, breaks off, and Cartridge passes from
us for ever away into darkness.

Some details, picked up by chance, yield the
following interesting narrative of an Old Soldier's
life. There is a short, quick, and sudden flavour
of Gunpowder in this second dead man's story.

Firelock (so to call him) was in a Highland
regiment, and was with Abercrombie, and that
illustrious but insolvent hero the Duke of York
(the columnar Duke of York), in the miserable
expedition in Holland. Firelock's regiment had
to drive out the enemy from a range of sand-hills
that ran along the Dutch coast, facing the
German ocean. Two or three companies marched
abreast along the beach, firing four pieces of
cannon at the retiring enemy.

In the advance Firelock passed a dying man
who had been struck by a cannon-ball upon the
knee-joint, which had been carried away, the
leg only hanging to the thigh by two shreds of
tendon. A little further the young soldier saw
a man lying dead, with a ghastly expression on
his face which he never forgot; he had been
shot exactly through the centre of the thigh,
and had died with one gasp.

The sand-hills were various in height and
slope. Some were of loose sand, conical and
steep; others ran in winding, wavy ridges. It
was difficult to walk on when the upper crust
was broken; but here and there were chasms
and hollow flats.

There was hard fighting in broken knots
among these hills, our men coming often
unexpectedly on masses of the enemy, who
defended the hills as if they had been redoubts.
In one instance, a party of Firelock's regiment
rushing down from a sand ridge on the enemy,
slipped, and fell headlong among them. The
bottom of the pit being narrow, and there being
no side footing, the bayonet could not be used,
so the men fought with their butt-ends, and
even with their fists. The English were at last
driven back with loss, the men being worn out
by fatigue and want of water. They collected
water by putting empty ammunition-boxes in
the holes in the sand, where, after the trampling
of the fighting, rain had collected. Out of
Firelock's regiment, six hundred strong, two
hundred and eighty-eight were wounded, in a
short struggle of three-quarters of an hour. Of
the dead, very few could be recognised, and
those chiefly by scars of old wounds, birth
marks, or accidents of dress. One man belonging
to Firelock's company was found dead,
though without a wound; it was supposed from
fatigue and want of water.

Two foes who were found dead, locked in
each other's arms, excited great attention. They
were a Frenchman and a Highlander. They had
charged at each other, and the Frenchman
parrying the Highlander's thrust had run him
through the body; the Highlander feeling
himself gone, and stung with revenge, had thrown
his musket into his left hand, and seized his
enemy's throat with an unrelenting death-grasp.
The Frenchman then had transferred his musket
to his left hand, and seized the Highlander's
wrist to release his throat, but, unable, had
staggered and fallen on his back, the Highlander
still on him. A dreadful struggle had taken
place on the ground, ending in the Frenchman
dying strangled, and the Highlander of
the bayonet wound in the stomach. Each
corpse still held his musket in his left hand,
and, when the Highlander was lifted, his firm
stiffened grasp raised the Frenchman from the
ground. It was with difficulty the dead men
could be separated.

Firelock, after this miserable failure, went to
Egypt, and was at the great landing in Aboukir
Bay. Our fifteen thousand men landed in the
midst of a heavy fire from the French, who were
posted on the sand-hills. The boats were all
more or less perforated with grape-shot and
musket-bullets, but no great damage was done.
Some few boats were swamped, but the men
were instantly picked up by the smaller boats