far below; a glitter of arms, a flash of cavalry sabres, gleams from colours and uniforms, with the solid movements of foot artillery, and the brisker activity of the light-horse guns. It was a vast army. Could it be the King, Francis II., who had rashly left the strong fortress of Gaeta to play one more game-to throw a final stake, to risk a last battle for his crown? It was the King; but instead of the weak Bourbon it was King Victor Emanuel, who, with General Cialdini's army, was marching down to coalesce with Garibaldi! But, king or no king, battle or no battle, it was all the same to Edmund Halton, who lay in an olive grove supine, and without hope or feeling of any description, save perhaps a faint desire for battle, to put an end to the gnawing agony he now began to suffer acutely from. Before that the first physical pain of intense hunger was long past-now the second sharper pangs of absolute starvation were coming on in all their horror.

Yet again was the march resumed, and yet again did the endurance and pluck of that young boy bear him superior to physical suffering, and he took his place in the ranks as the regiment moved back on Calvi. Captain Marston had been detached on outpost duty from the main body of the army, or surely, in spite of all his cynicism and sneering, he would have taken pity on the miserable lad, and got him food, though it had cost him his

life. But the regiment was now nearly disorganised, and almost, if not quite, mutinous-the men were starving, and there was absolutely no food whatever to give them! Fortunately there were no towns or villages in sight, or assuredly the frenzied men would have marched on and sacked one, though the guns of all Cialdini's army were turned against them, and a hideous massacre would have ensued.

At last a deserted house or two came in sight; a hamlet, with empty houses, and ahead a regular village, with a church and monastery plainly conspicuous. But by this time Halton's limbs had grown numb and refused their work; he sank gradually from his place at the head of the column; and as mass after mass of the men passed him by not one had a morsel of food to throw to the famishing wretch. The soldiers were a shade less cheerless, too, as if they had heard some good news; but nothing of hope had fallen on the dulled ears of Edmund Halton. At length he found himself quite at the end of the column, and with no companion save a few occasional stragglers stumping weariedly along in rear of the English brigade.

Suddenly one of these stopped short in his painful walk and eagerly listened.

'Hush, boy!' he croaked out in parched accents, and with the wild look of hunger-madness gleam

ing over his gaunt, wasted features, as Halton reached him. Hist! don't you hear it?'

But the boy was too much engrossed with his own stolid misery to notice or answer him.

Don't you hear?' pursued the man, wildly grasping the boy by the wrist, to stop him.

The action brought the bugler to himself; he made an effort, and heard distinctly away to the right the 'clucking' of fowl.

'It's food-food, I tell you!' The man threw down his rifle, dragged the boy with him; and, followed by two or three other stragglers, made in the direction of the sound.

Some distance away from the road they came to a sudden drop of the earth, as though a long-past convulsion of nature had sunk the land beyond to a depth of many feet; and, peering eagerly over, they saw in the hollow below a sort of farmyard, that was quite invisible from the highway. Halfsliding, half-falling, they rapidly made their way down, and came to a gate, behind which lay the yard, that was well stocked with fine turkeys and fowls. Halton, now with a new life of hope surging up in his breast and carrying away entirely any scruples that might have at another time arisen in his mind, burst into the yard with the others. A few minutes sufficed to hunt down and kill half-a-dozen of the birds. Two or three loaded rifles pointed at the heads of the farmer and his men effectually

silenced any remonstrance. Hastily the feathers were plucked out and the birds thrust on the blazing wood-fire to cook, while bread and wine in abundance were seized and swallowed with the desperate energy of starving men. Heavens! how that boy had wanted food! Bread-great coarse hunches of black bread-he swallowed as though he could never be satisfied; until one of the men, with more sense and feeling than might have been expected, commanded the lad to stop, and enforced his command with rude but effective me

naces.

While the turkeys were cooking, the men, flushed with the wine taken on empty stomachs, and, now that the ice was broken, quite hardened against their normal ideas of honesty and right, ransacked the house, changed their filthy rags of shirts and stockings for those of the occupants of the farm, and forced similar articles, with a pair of capital boots, on Edmund Halton. He put them on with gratitude; all moral sense was dead in him—to so low a pitch had hunger brought him-and was actually trying the large new boots on his bleeding feet, when a great clatter and dash were heard outside; several officers of Garibaldi's staff galloped into the yard; a few brief questions were asked of the farmer; the English soldiers and Halton were bound together with wrist-shackles some of the Hungarian guards carried, and were marched off,

until Garibaldi himself was overtaken, when the culprits were placed before him for judgment !

Then it was that Edmund Halton realised in its full force that unrelenting gaze that he had first seen before the king's palace at Caserta.

Silently the Conqueror heard the voluble story of the farmer; silently the tale the soldiers told to excuse themselves. 'Take them to their own colonel,' he said at the end, and let him deal with them as the Orders of the Army lay down.' No indecision, no relenting, no pity in that face now; and as the bugler was marched away, bound as a malefactor, all the punishment of a shameful death came on him, for he and his companions too well knew that there was no possible escape from the terrible sentence.

CHAPTER IV.

THE BITTER END.

'WHEN are we to march?' asked the Colonel of the British Legion, as he sat in the churchyard of the monastery round which the English were encamped the following morning; and where he had just been holding a sort of rude court-martial on Edmund Halton and the four other men who had been taken in the act of looting the farm-house.