CHAPTER XXV.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 136, 10 December 1875, Page 6

CHAPTER XXV.

THE MINATURE. Ghastly sights met the eyeg of Lord Lucan after the capitulation. The remains of his heroic cousin, lying amongst the dead, filled his heart with poignant grief ; and he stood some time, lost in Ins melancholy thoughts, beside her remains and those of the little one avlio had fallen by her side, when the voice of his faithful servant Denis aroused him. The poor honest-hearted fellow could scarcely speak for emotion. At last, after two or three inarticulate efforts, he managed to say : — " Arrah, thin, Gineral dear, the murtherous Saxons have done black Avork, bod cess to them for that same; but I come to tell ye there's one English officer, Major St. John, just after dyiug I may say, and he begs to see ye, Gineral ; he is mortal bad, a-nd has had two ugly wounds. He keeps saying, ' Fetch me the Gineral,' and I tell you his spirit can't go in peace till he sees you. " Come .vith me, Denis, and slioav me where he is ; I Avill go to him at once." Denis led the Avay to the hospital, in Avluch extra beds Avere being hastily improvised. All around lay the Avounded and tho dying-, their Avhite faces looking g - hastly, as though already the life had departed. On a loav settle bed lay Sir Reginald, grievously wounded in the right arm and loft shoulder. He was rumbling incoherently

■when Sarsfield approached his couch. A surgeon, assisted by a Sister of Charity, was "binding up his wounds. He Avas rambling about his early English home, of the happy scenes of childhood, for ever gone. But as Lord Lucan listens he discovers that the incoherent wanderings of St. John are not the mere ramblings of delusion, for ' words like these fall from his lips : "Yes, it -was all my fault; / took Benson to the Grange,/ induced her uncle to go to London. But for my sin and folly in that matter, my Florence, my betrothed, Avould never have been at Mary's court." "Aye, alight breaks upon me, then," thought Lord Lucan; " you have done mischief, Major, now I can account for that Avhich has perplexed me the reason of your sad, dejected countenance and constant fits of abstraction. It Avas through you, then, my Mnswoman, Florence, has got about that cursed court." The good General, hoAvever, kept do\vii all expression of what lie really felt, and bending his car low so as to catch the words ■which fell in broken sentences, and taking the cold hand of St. John Avithin his oavii, he lent an attentive ear to what he thought the last injunctions of a dying friend. " Will you give my Florence this — and this ?" he murmured, giving Sarsfield a small miniature of himself, set with diamonds, together with an unsealed letter. "On my faith as a soldier and a gentleman, I promise to do as you request," replied Sarsfield, much moved. " That letter I Avrotc lest I should fall in battle, 1 ' he resumed. " It begs her to forgive the folly which my loyalty to William led j me to commit; for, but for me, she had never been at the court of Mary. It begs her to think Avith tenderness of my memory, Avhpn she looks upon that likeness, if I die ; and if I live, it releases her from the engagement she has made to one Avhom the Prince of Orange has made an outlaw and a beggar. Tell me, once more, my lord, Avill you undertake to — to promise, that in some Avay my Florence shall — shall surely have these tokens of — of our betrothal, and — and — " But St. John had lost all poAver to proceed. The cold fingers which had tightly grasped Sarsfield' s hand relaxed their hold, a pallor like that of death overspread his face, and his head fell heavily on tho pilloAv. "Is there any hope, think you ?" said Lord Lucan, addressing the surgeon. "Very little, my lord ; the gentleman has been badly wounded. I Avould be sox-ry to give an opinion at present, but it is a very bad case ; it is more than probable it will prove a fatal one." Lord Lucan carefully placed the letter and miniature in his breast pocket, resolving to cany them with him to France, as amongst the ladies at the exiled court there might probably be one avlio would undertake, through her friends, to transmit the packet safely to Florence. Ho then visited the beds of other officers, as Avell as of the men, who had received severe Avounds at the hands of the enemy, and ended the painful duties of a A-ery melancholy day, by assembling those under his command, exhorting them to peaceable and quiet living, and inquiring into the number of those avlio intended to become exiles rather than submit to the usurper's yoke.