Ravenshoe. By Henry Kingsley.

CHARLES MEETS HORNBY AT LAST. 343
Karlin Karlinoff was herding strange-looking goats on the
Suratow hill-side, which looks towards the melancholy Volga on
one side, and the reedy Ural on the other, when the Pulk came
back, and her son was not with them. Eliza Jones had got on
her husband's smock frock, and was a-setting of beans, when the
rector's wife came struggling over the heavy lands and waterfurrows, and broke the news gently, and with many tears. Karlin Karlinoff drove her goats into the mud-walled yard that night;
though the bittern in the melancholy fen may have been startled
from his reeds by a cry more wild and doleful than his own; and
Eliza Jones went on setting her beans, though they were watered
with her tears.
What a strange wild business it was! The extreme east of
Europe against the extreme west. Men without a word, an idea,
a habit, or a hope in common, thrown suddenly together, to fight
and slay; and then to part, having learnt to respect one another
better in one year of war than ever they had in a hundred years
of peace. Since that year we have understood Eylau and Borodino, which battles were a puzzle to some of us before that time.
The French did better than we, which was provoking, because
the curs began to bark, - Spanish curs, for instance; American
curs; the lower sort of French cur; and the Irish curs, who have
the strange habit of barking the louder the more they are laughed
at, and who, now, being represented by about two hundred men
among six million, have rather a hard time of it. They barked
louder, of course, at the Indian mutiny. But they have all got
their tails between their legs now, and are likely to keep them
there. We have had our lesson. We have learnt that what our
fathers told us was true, - that we are the most powerful nation
on the face of the earth.
This, you will see, bears all upon the story I am telling you.
Well, in a sort of way. Though I do not exactly see how. I
could find a reason, if you gave me time. If you gave me time, I
could find a reason for anything. However, the result is this, that
our poor Charles had been struck by a ball in the bone of his arm,
and that the splinters were driven into the flesh, though the arm
was not broken. It was a nasty business, said the doctors. All
sorts of things might happen to him. Only one thing was certain,
and that was that Charles Ravenshoe's career in the army was
over forever.