Mother Moran, can't you come out! We want to buy something."

"Don't be a fool, Bolt. What's the good of keeping up this farce! You know just as well as I do that the old hag's gone off to Balaklava to buy stuff."

"No, I don't know it, Dyver; how should I? And d'ye suppose I'd come all this way in this infernal snow, if I thought I'd not get what I wanted ?"

"No, I don't suppose you would!" said the other fellow, with a sinister grin: "I knew very well you would not; and you quite intend to have what you want. So don't be trying your virtuous game on with me."

The first speaker, who, young as he was, was still older than his more daring companion, put on an air of offended dignity as he replied:

"I don't break into people's houses and places as you do, and-"

"Perhaps you don't, because you're afraid; but you don't mind, all the same, helping yourself when others make a way for you. Come; don't let us have any more of this humbug. I'm famished with cold.

and half starved, so I'll just help myself, and pay next time-perhaps !"

The fellow drew his bayonet, and speedily untwist

ing the hasp of Ally Moran's den, walked down, followed, after a pause, by Bolt.

"Why dang the old harridan !

She has next to nothing left in the place," growled Dyver after they had turned over kegs, jars, and tins, without discovering much in the shape of edible forage.

"Why you ain't half a chap," remarked Bolt, who, now that an entry had been effected, did not appear to be at all so particular as he had pretended to be when outside: "See up there in the roof,-between the canvas and that stinking horse-hide. If that's not a bundle of fine bloaters I'm much mistaken!"

So saying, he overturned one of the butter firkins, mounted on it, and with the aid of his bayonet soon ferreted out and brought to earth a fine bundle of the delicacies he had named. Just as he had secured them in some interior fold of his nondescript apparel, a wild yell of rage fell on his ear; the lad turned deadly white with fear; his companion fell over the box in his hurry to escape; and in rushed Mother Moran with a cry of:

"Ye thieving, murdering blackguards! that'd rob a poor woman of her all, ye young scoundrels!" and with that she seized Dyver before he could rise, rained a shower of vigorous blows on his face and head, turned him over on his back, and proceeded to search him for stolen property.

"Let me up!" he cried, struggling hard to free himself from the clutches of the furious old woman;

Let me up! I've done nothing: I found the other fellow here prying about, and just looked in to see what he was up to!"

Mrs. Moran had by this time felt him all over, but, of course, without finding any of her stock; so, with a final pound of his head on the pebbly floor of her dwelling, she freed the unfortunate (?) Dyver, rushed out of the hut after Bolt, who was making the best of his way across the snow, and gained on him rapidly. In fact the active woman, who was 'as hard as nails,' and perhaps more fit for violent exercise than two-thirds of the soldiers in the army, would have speedily overtaken the weak half-famished youth she was pursuing, if she had confined herself to the chase. But that was quite impossible in her present state of excitement. male flesh and blood could not be expected to keep a silent tongue in its head at such a moment; so that as soon as she got within ear and eyeshot, and had satisfied herself that she could identify the thief, she opened on him a torrent of abuse and threats with such energy as to speedily materially affect her wind, and render her unable to quite overtake him:

Fe

"You villain, you rogue, you common pilfering thief!” she cried: "I know you! I'll hunt you down! I'll folly ye if it's to the end of the earth, or into Sepastopol itself! I'll run ye to earth, if it's in ould Nick's own palace in Rooshia! Ye shan't escape me, ye maraudering scoundhrel!"

But just then her eloquence and speed were both brought to a sudden termination, for in her rage she had not been able to keep her eyes on the exact track the chase had taken, and suddenly fell souse into a ravine that was luckily full of half-frozen snow, or the poor woman might have seriously injured herself on the rocky bottom. By the time she had recovered from the shock, and had regained the bank, Bolt had quite disappeared, and she made the best of her way home, to find that Dyver had compensated himself for the punishment he had received by appropriating the pick of her purchases of that day. However, she felt sure she should know them both again; so she changed her clothes, consoled herself with a jorum of hot grog, and turned in to dream of vengeance on her enemies.

“I

CHAPTER II.

THE BLOW-UP!

WANT Captain Hastings! Arrah, isn't it plain enough what I say, man?"

"But I tell you there ain't no Captain Hastings here,” answered the sentry, as he stamped his wretchedly covered feet on the frozen snow, shivering all over in the miserable apology for a great-coat supplied by a paternal government.

"Sure I tell you there is; an' who'd know better than meself when he was down in me shanty not a week back. There's a good man now! sure ye'll jest ask the sergeant of the guard-an' who knows but ould Ally Moran'd have a dhrop of the 'stuff' to warm up the cockles of ye're heart this murdhering could day!"

Thus adjured, the stolid Guardsman, trembling all over with cold as he was, and consequently unable to resist the temptation of a drop of rum (for he knew Mother Moran often could give a poor fellow a sly 'nip,' when there was not another to be got in the whole camp), called the sergeant out of the worn canvas erection doing duty for a guard-tent, and that functionary, not without some muttered curses on 'the