L'Envoi.

Otago Witness, Issue 1159, 14 February 1874, Page 21

L'Envoi.

Only the other day I paid them all a visit in that same old chateau. Estelle is but little changed, save that her figure is rounder and plumper, and there is a thread or two of silver in her still luxuriant hair ; her eyes are as bright and her face as sweet as they were fifteen years ago, and to look at her, no one would guess what terrible suffering the vivacious little woman had passed through. She is as fond and proud as ever of her "gros soldat," as she now calls Fred, who certainly has grown a trifle stouter of late. He left the army long ago and has taken to farming, which he appears to enjoy. At first he felt the loss of his arm, fortunately the left one, acutely ; but, as he himself said, "it was almost worth the loss of an arm to find one's self looked up to as a hero by men and women — especially the women ! " And Coo-Coo — the pet, the darling — the cause of all the grievous trouble which 1 have dwelt on in this story — Coo-Coo, as they still call her, Antoinette as she calls herself, is now a lovely young maiden, bright-eyed, golden-haired, and — shall I say it ? — wilful as of old, her mother and grandmother's idol, the pride of that quaint old Breton village, her father's left arm, as he laughingly calls her. More than that, she is an heiress in her own right, for old Mr. Malcolmson, who died about two years ago, left her sole residuary legatee of his very handsome fortune. She is coming to visit us in London next Autumn, and I must invest in at least one big stick wherewith to keep off fortune hunters, for "none but eligibles need apply." Not an eligible in the ordinary sense of the word, mark you, but one who will take her and guard her and cherish her, as her father will cherish her mother, until his life's end.

The Tillotsons you may see any day in Cheltenham. The General stayed too long in India— just that " one year more " which kills so many veterans — and thenretired upon a small additional pension, a torpid liver, and a paralytic stroke. He has partially recovered from the latter illness, ami is wheeled about in a bathchair, finding his chief solace in running down the whole British army and exalting the native one. Poor old Margery ! she has had a bad time of it with her General ; and she sometimes quakes in her shoes lest he should ever hear of the part she took in denuding him of the authority which, had he exercised it, would unquestionably have added another massacre to the bloodstained annals of 1857.

Dr. O'Brien, you will be happy to hear, is in full enjoyment of health, and a property situated, as described by himself, in "Oireland, a nate little pleece in the bogs," where one day he very nearly mis took a Fenian for a snipe. j And now, my dears, farewell. You j imposed a painful task on aunt Eleanor when you asked her to write out for you the story of little Coo-Coo ; for as she writes there spring around her bitter memories of that terrible time which England can never forget, when the blood of strong men and tenderly - nurtured women, the babe of a week old and the child who played at his mother's knee, was mingled together in one great holocaust, in the name and for the glory of those hideous fetishes, those abominable Mumbo- Jumbos, which Brahmin and Mussulman alike call faith and religion,* And as the last words fall from my pen, there rises, as if by magic, before me a great cloud of familiar faces ; some of them dearly loved, others deeply revered. One of them is a sweet girlish face, with the deep blue eyes and raven hair of the sister island. Ah, my little Norah, when. I walked with you through the green Wicklow fields, when I sat with yon on one of the old tombstones in your father's pretty churohyard, wondering when our turn would came to lie peacefully in "God's Acre," little did I think that the final resting-place for your young head would be, with other heads young and fair, and others old and grey, side by side in unhallowed sepulture in that awful Uawnpore well. And another is a fair boyish face ; a ( 'mother's, boy, " with honest bright eyes and chestnut curls. The eyea were dim, and the curls dank enough when they carried ,

♦ Veen ! Deem ("For our faitts ! ") was the w< cry of the WuppuUa^n portion ©f the rebel snap.

him from the Bailey Guard, with a bullet through his brave young heart. And another still, a peaceful man's face ; very noble, very calm, for he was one who feared not death. So may it have looked when they laid him down to rest in that spot near the Cashmere gate ; so will ifc look, but nobler far, when I see it again in the great hereafter. Never on carth — never on this earth again ; for as I gaze I know that every face in that cloud is the face of a saint and martyr ; and that if ever I see them again, if I ever be permitted to pr-jss in joyful welcome the hands which were last extended to me in everlasting, sorrowfull farewell, it must be in the better land, in the far-off mansions where all is "perfect peace."

A. s. b.