sorrows, from his mother, but she would not have it.

The attempt only increased her anxiety, and so he and Honor were obliged to yield, and to read to her, when each successive mail arrived, as best they could those terrible tragedies where heroic self-devotion, high courage, and patient endurance hallowed suffering into martyrdom.

Many names familiar to Lady Tracy were scattered along these pages-not a few known to her son. At times Honor found she had more command of her voice than he had, though she too often gave way.

I am not going to follow them through their sorrowful task. I am not going to ask my readers to come back with me to the magazine at Delhi, the frail entrenchments of Cawnpore, the Residency at Lucknow, nor yet to many a less celebrated spot,-the small fort, the private dwelling-house hastily organized for defence, or the open parade-ground, where there was none!

I will not weary you, my readers, by telling you how, when the torch of rebellion raised answering fires from every side of the doomed

VOL. II.

F

land, another beacon-light sprang up in a thousand brave hearts, and blazed triumphant, above carnage and disease, treachery and despair, to the last! There are some simple, common words that are very old-fashioned, and have become vulgar-I think from vulgar use; but there are Englishmen living yet to whom Nelson's motto is an abiding truth, to whom duty is never a vulgar word. One who died at Lucknow made no other aim than that his boast; and all the brave blood that then watered India's plains flowed forth ungrudgingly at that watchword. Yes; they did their duty. But we will not talk about it. Since the days of Aristides, have not men's public virtues been wearisome to the ears of their fellow-citizens ?

A great organ of English opinion pronounced, a terse and pretty epigram as their requiem, when all was over and India saved

'An army of mutineers, officered by clerks!' A generous French gentleman, one who, like M. de Trouvaille, would have been glad to see England humbled, but who not the less could venerate high deeds wherever he met them, said to me about the same time—

'You English have done many great things, but nothing you have ever accomplished has come up to your deeds of yesterday and to-day in India. You have surpassed yourselves and surprised the world. We confess freely no

other nation could have stood up against such fearful odds.'

I give the two verdicts, and let the reader choose between them.

CHAPTER IV.

TOO MUCH LOVE.

WEEK after Honor's arrival in Paris, Mr. Tracy one morning, coming to relieve guard in his mother's sickroom, handed to his cousin a letter, one look at the address of which sent in a moment the blood to her cheeks, paled with their long nightwatch. In her own room she opened that precious letter, her first 'love-letter.' It began by upbraiding her for her sudden desertion, and went on, and ended. We have all of us, I daresay, received, if not written, such documents, and we know how absurd they are.

Honor thought hers was the dearest letter ever written. She carried it about inside her dress till the paper was worn into holes.

She answered it of course, in hours when

Mr. Tracy believed she was sleeping while he watched; and an answer came, which in its turn was answered, as was another and another.

Spencer was going to Pau, he told her, to pass the time of her absence.

She had a short letter telling of his arrival there, and then silence. Honor feared she had wearied him by her own sad letters; but how could they be gay ?

The mail that last came in had told of the death of-well, it is a hard thing to say where every man was a hero, but I will say it,—of the best man in India; and Lady Tracy was more stricken by that than by all that had gone before, Honor thought.

'You were with me when I last parted from him, child,' she said. 'I told you then I should never see him again. O Honor, Honor! I wish you and I and all of us might be taken where he is now!'

'So do I, aunty!' sobbed Honor. Spencer's letter was pressed to her heart, Spencer's ring was on her finger, yet she said, 'So do I.'

Nearly at the same time came the history of