The sobering came in Mr. Kendal’s mention of Fred. Albinia was obliged to ask what had happened to him, and was shocked at having overlooked so terrible a misfortune; but Maurice seemed to be quite satisfied.  ’You know, mamma, it said they were cut to pieces.  Can’t they make him a wooden arm?’ evidently thinking he could be repaired as easily as the creatures in his sister’s Noah’s Ark.  Even Algernon showed a heartiness and fellow-feeling that seemed to make him more like one of the family.  Moreover, he was so much elevated at the receipt of a telegraph direct from the fountain-head, that he rode about the next day over all the neighbourhood with the tidings and comported himself as though he had private access to all Lord Raglan’s secrets.

The unwonted emotion tamed Maurice for several days, and his behaviour was the better for his daily rides with papa to Hadminster, to forestall the second post.  At last, on his return, his voice rang through the house.  ’Mamma, where are you?  The letter is come, and Gilbert shot two Russians, and saved Cousin Fred!’

‘I opened your letter, Albinia,’ said Mr. Kendal; and, as she took it from him, he said, ’Thank God, I never dared hope for such a day as this!’

He shut himself into the library, while Albinia was sharing with Sophy the precious letter, but with a moment’s disappointment at finding it not from Gilbert, but from her brother William.

‘Before you receive this,’ he wrote, ’you will have heard of the affair of to-day, and that our two lads have come out of it better than some others.  There are but nine officers living, and only four unhurt out of the 25th Lancers, and Fred’s escape is entirely owing to your son.’

Then followed a brief narrative of the events of Balaklava, that fatal charge so well described as ‘magnifique mais pas la guerre,’ a history that seemed like a dream in connexion with the timid Gilbert.  His individual story was thus:—­He safely rode the ‘half a league’ forward, but when more than half way back, his horse was struck to the ground by a splinter of the same shell that overthrew Major Ferrars, at a few paces’ distance from him.  Quickly disengaging himself from his horse, Gilbert ran to assist his friend, and succeeded in extricating him from his horse, and supporting him through the remainder of the terrible space commanded by the batteries.  Fred, unable to move without aid, and to whom each step was agony, had entreated Gilbert to relinquish his hold, and not peril himself for a life already past rescue; but Gilbert had not seemed to hear, and when several of the enemy came riding down on them, he had used his revolver with such effect, as to lay two of the number prostrate, and deter the rest from repeating the attack.