Ravenshoe. By Henry Kingsley.

SCUTARI. 357
"Right again, eh, comrade?" said one. "' I thought you was
gone, my lad. But I heard the doctor say you'd get through.
You look bravely. Time was when you used to jump out of bed,
and cry on God A'mighty. Many a time I've strove to help ye.
The man in his bed died while you was like that: a Fusilier
Guards man. What regiment?"
"I am of the 140th," said Charles. "We had a bit of a
brush with the enemy on the twenty-fifth. I was wounded there.
It was a pretty little rattle, I think, for a time, but not of very
much importance, I fancy."
The man who had first spoken laughed; the other man, a lad
who had a round face once, perhaps, but which now was a pale
death's-head, with two great staring eyes, speaking with a voice
which Charles knew at once.to be a gentleman's, said, " Don't
you know, then, that that charge of yours is the talk of Europe?
That charge will never be forgotten while the world is round.
Six hundred men against ten battalions. Good God! And you
might have died there, and not known it."
"Ah, is it so?" said Charles. "If some could only know
it!"
E"That is the worst of it," said the young man. "I have enlisted under a false name, and will never go home any more.
Never more. And she will never know that I did my duty."
And after a time he got strong again in a way. A bullet, it
appears, had struck the bone of his arm, and driven the splinters
into the flesh. Fever had come on, and his splendid constitution,
as yet untried, save by severe training, had pulled him through.
But his left arm was useless. The doctor looked at it again and
again, and shook his head.
The two men who were in the beds on each side of him were
moved before him. They were only there a fortnight after his
coming to himself. The oldest of the two went first, and two or
three days after, the younger.
The three made all sorts of plans for meeting in England.
Alas! what chance is there for three soldiers to meet again, unless by accident? At home it would have taken three years to
have made these three men such hearty friends as they had become in a fortnight. Friendships are made in the camp, in the
bush, or on board ship, at a wonderful rate. And, moreover, they
last for an indefinite time, — forever, I fancy, for these reasons:
time does not destroy friendship; time has nothing whatever to
do with it. I have heard an old man of seventy-eight talking
of a man he had not seen for twelve years, and before that for
twenty-five, as if they were young men together. Craving for
his company, as if once more they were together on the deck of
the white-sailed yacht, flying before the easterly wind between