When consciousness returned, I found the dull red evening sun shining down the long valley of Inkermann, and that, save moans and cries for aid and water, all seemed terribly still now.

A sense of weakness and oppression, of incapacity for action and motion, were my first sensations. I feared that other shot must have struck me after I had fallen, and that both my legs were broken. The cause of this, after a time, became plain enough: a dead artillery horse was lying completely over my thighs, and above it and them lay the wheel of a shattered gun carriage; and weak as I was then, to attempt extrication from either unaided was hopeless. Thus I was compelled to lie helplessly amid a sickening puddle of blood, enduring a thirst that is unspeakable, but which was caused by physical causes and excitement, with the anxiety consequent on the battle. The aspect of the dead horse, which first attracted me, was horrible. A twelve-pound shot had struck him below the eyes, making a hole clean through his head; the brain had dropped out, and lay with his tongue and teeth upon the grass. The dead and wounded lay thickly around me, as indeed they did over all the field. Some of the former, though with eyes unclosed and jaws relaxed, had a placid expression in their white waxen faces. These had died of gun-shot wounds. The expressions of pain or anguish lingered longest in those who had perished by the bayonet. Over all the valley lay bodies in heaps, singly or by two and threes, with swarms of flies settling over them; shakoes, glazed helmets, bearskin-caps, bent bayonets, broken muskets, swords, hairy knapsacks, bread-bags, shreds of clothing, torn from the dead and the living by showers of grape and canister, cooking-kettles, round shot and fragments of shells, with pools of noisome blood, lay on every hand.

Truly the Angel of Horror, and of Death, too, had been there. I saw several poor fellows, British as well as Russian, expire within the first few minutes I was able to look around me. One whose breast bore several medals and orders, an officer of the Kazan Light Infantry, prayed very devoutly and crossed himself in his own blood ere he expired. Near me a corporal of my own regiment named Prouse, who had been shot through the brain, played fatuously for a time with a handful of grass, and then, lying gently back, passed away without a moan. A Zouave, a brown, brawny, and soldier-like fellow, who seemed out of his senses also, was very talkative and noisy.

"Ouf!" I heard him say; "it is as wearisome as a sermon or a funeral this! Were I a general, the capture of Sebastopol should be as easy as a game of dominoes.--Yes, Isabeau, ma belle coquette, kiss me and hold up my head. Vive la gloire! Vive l'eau de vie! A bas la mélancolie! A bas la Russe!" he added through his clenched teeth hoarsely, as he fell back. The jaw relaxed, his head turned on one side, and all was over.

Of Volhonski I could see nothing except his gray horse, which lay dead, in all its trappings, a few yards off; but I afterwards learned that he had been retaken by the Russians on their advance after the fall of poor Sir George Cathcart.

There was an acute pain in the arm that had been injured--fractured--when saving Estelle; and as a kind of stupor, filled by sad and dreamy thoughts, stole over me, they were all of her. The roar of the battle had passed away, but there was a kind of drowsy hum in my ears, and, for a time, strangely enough, I fancied myself with her in the Park or Rotten-row. I seemed to see the brilliant scene in all the glory of the season: the carriages; the horses, bay or black, with their shining skins and glittering harness; the powdered coachmen on their stately hammer-cloths; the gaily-liveried footmen; the ladies cantering past in thousands, so exquisitely dressed, so perfectly mounted, so wonderful in their loveliness--women the most beautiful in the world; and there, too, were the young girls, whose season was to come, and the ample dowagers, whose seasons were long since past, lying back among the cushions, amid ermine and fur; and with all this Estelle was laughing and cantering by my side. Then we were at the opera--another fantastic dream--the voices of Grisi and Mario were blending there, and as its music seemed to die away, once more we were at Craigaderyn, under its shady woods, with the green Welsh hills, snow-capped Snowdon and Carneydd Llewellyn, in the distance, and voices and music and laughter--some memory of Dora's fête--seemed to be about us. So while lying there, on that ghastly field of Inkermann, between sleeping and waking, I dreamed of her who was so far away--of the sweet companionship that might never come again; of the secret tie that bound us; of the soft dark eyes that whilom had looked lovingly into mine; of the sweetly-modulated voice that was now falling merrily, perhaps, on other ears, and might fall on mine no more. And a vague sense of happiness, mingled with the pain caused by the half-spent shot and the wild confusion and suffering of the time, stole over me. Waking, these memories became

"Sad as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others--deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret,
O death in life--the days that are no more!"

From all this I was thoroughly roused by a voice crying, "Up, up, wounded--all you who are able! Cavalry are coming this way--you will be trod to death. Arrah, get out of that, every man-jack of yees!"

The excited speaker was an Irish hussar, picking his way across the field at a quick trot.

It was a false alarm; but the rumble of wheels certainly came next day, and an ambulance-wagon passed slowly, picking up the wounded, who groaned or screamed as their fractured limbs were handled, and their wounds burst out afresh through the clotted blood. I waved an arm, and the scarlet sleev............