partial cover, the English gradually advancing on the Neapolitans, who were in great force; but when some ten or a dozen men of the former were wounded, and a few killed, their warm blood overpowered their sense of discipline, and, with a wild bugle call from our hero, he and the men burst out of all bounds, charged (in skirmishing order!) the enemy, and drove them back into Capua with great loss. Fortunately, in the confusion, it was never discovered who sounded the advance'; and Halton, instead of the censure or punishment he quite expected, and richly deserved, for his freak, was loaded with praise for the daring gallantry he had displayed during the sharp fight.

With occasional skirmishes, constant annoyance from night-firing, affairs of outposts, and an almost incessant fire of round shot and shell from the Capuan batteries and others erected on the far side of the Volturno, young Halton was kept pretty well occupied and in constant danger. That, however, he did not mind, or rather thoroughly enjoyed; but the hardships of camping out without covering of any sort whatever on the soaking ground, the entire absence of regular meals and of sufficient and good food when he did perchance get a meal; the misery of spending day and night, night and day, in his one filthy suit of uniform already rotting from damp and mud; and the wretchedness of the wild and utterly undisciplined

life the Legion led-those willing for duty being constantly worked almost to death, while those who cared more for themselves were self-exempted from all fatigue and exposure, and in the former category the most willing and most hard-worked was bugler Halton-began to tell severely on both his bodily and mental powers, until a frame nearly exhausted from overwork and ceaseless conflicts with cold, wet, and hunger became almost master of the brave soul it contained, and our hero gave way to the utmost dejection and despondency of mind. In constant duty he found his only consolation; but as he could not always be at work, his conscience found ample time to lash him again, and all the remorse and horror and grief and shame that he experienced those first nights in the Channel came back to him, until he found out that his punishment was almost unbearable. Adventure, pleasure, honour, glory, excitement (save the miserable excitement of the chance of being shot in a ditch like a rat-for fighting in the open there was none now), where were they all? Gone hopelessly, or, rather, after the first morning, they had never existed; and their place was occupied by a dull, squalid, filthy round of duty, and by a miserable, shivering, more than half-starved existence, crouching by day behind trees, rocks, or in open wet drains or ditches, half full of icy slush; and cowering by night (when not on duty, which was seldom)

G

on rotting, vermin-crowded straw, laid on the swampy earth and open to the pouring rain, the chill damp fog of the marshes, and to all the bleak winds of heaven! And this was the realisation of the gorgeously-coloured picture of Italian campaigning that Edmund Halton, only a few weeks before, had painted to himself with a free brush dipped in the vivid hues of an over-excitable imagination!

His misery was intolerable, and the second instalment of his punishment was surer and far more severe than had been the first on the crowded and filthy decks of the 'Melazzo.'

CHAPTER III.

HUNGER KNOWS NO LAW.

Now then, youngster, rouse and bitt. Why, hang the fellow! he's so snug in that feather-bed there's no waking him!' and 'Fighting Jack' knelt down in the slushy mud under the lee of a rude earthwork and shook Edmund Halton violently before he could wake him. It was three o'clock A.M.: a raw bitter morning, with a bleak cold wind blowing that was yet utterly powerless to lift the thick dank fog that clung around and wet everything, as effectually as if rain had been coming down in

torrents. Every now and then a solemn boomboom from Capua sent a round shot or fiery shell hurtling and crashing through the dripping branches of the leafless trees, or the sharp crack of a rifle drove a bullet whistling at random among the sleeping ranks of the British Legion.

'Confound it, boy, can't you stir yourself? Why you look like a fellow with a jungle-fever or an ague,' Captain Marston went on as the wretched bugler staggered to his feet, shivering and trembling in every limb from weakness, misery, hunger, and cold. Here, take a drop of this,' he went on, pulling out a flask full of fiery new rum; 'or stay— best munch a crust first, or you won't be fit for much.' He made the boy eat a morsel of coarse biscuit and then drink a tolerable quantity of the fierce spirit, which combined had the happy effect of putting some little life and warmth in Halton, who stammered out, 'What is it, sir?'

'What is what? Why the prospect of a jolly breakfast-of iron and lead, my boy; that's what it is! We are off after those sneaking curs that daren't show in the open; going to hunt them up in their own "" diggin's," so blow up "the rouse as loud and as often as you can!'

Really, Sir?'

'Really, you young jackass!' said the captain;

'orders have come to cross the Volturno and advance on Teano; so blow away!'

Ill and cold, miserable and weak, as he was, this news came to Halton like a godsend; his spirit and strength came back at the prospect of escape from the plodding wretchedness of his late life, and he blew the call on his bugle with a will and a vigour that soon roused up the damp-stiffened soldiers to hear with joy the glad news.

Crossing the rapid Volturno on a rickety pontoon-bridge (constructed in the roughest manner by amateurs who had never even seen such a work before), that groaned and swayed to and fro fearfully as the long lines of troops filed over it, the English, in high glee and eager for the battle they all expected was at hand, advanced through the thick olive groves on the far side, and turning off to the left were led along a sort of sunken byroad that skirted the mountains for miles and miles in a northerly direction. Most of the men were ill and very weak from fever and dysentery, brought on by exposure to wet, cold, hunger, dirt, and misery of all kinds; but their spirits rose wonderfully at the sudden change to more active warfare, and for the first few miles they marched along as eagerly as they had marched up the Strada-di-Toledo on the day of their landing. But soon the advance became anything but agreeable; the excitement began to die away when the expected sharp firing from the front was not heard. Sunk some fifteen or twenty feet in the earth, as