Letters from Home—Flynn is Exalted and brought Low—Rumours of War in the Air.  
Events in life sometimes ripple along like the waters of a little stream in summer. At other times they rush with the wild impetuosity of a hill-torrent in winter.
 
For some time after the incidents just narrated the life of our hero rippled—but of course it must be clearly understood that a Suakim ripple bore some resemblance to a respectable freshet elsewhere! Osman Digna either waited for reinforcements before delivering a grand assault, or found sufficient entertainment to his mind, and satisfaction to his ambition, in acting the part of a mosquito, by almost nightly harassment of the garrison, which was thus kept continually on the alert.
 
But there came a time at length when a change occurred in the soldier-life at Suakim. Events began to evolve themselves in rapid succession, as well as in magnified intensity, until, on one particular day, there came—metaphorically speaking—what is known among the Scottish hills as a spate.
 
It began with the arrival of a mail from England. This was not indeed a matter of rare occurrence, but it was one of those incidents of the campaign which never lost its freshness, and always sent a thrill of pleasure to the hearts of the men—powerfully in the case of those who received letters and packets; sympathetically in those who got none.
 
“At long last!” exclaimed Corporal Flynn, who was observed by his comrades, after the delivery of the mail, to be tenderly struggling with the complicated folds of a remarkable letter—remarkable for its crookedness, size, dirt, and hieroglyphic superscription.
 
“What is it, Flynn?” asked Moses—one of the unfortunates who had received no letter by that mail.
 
“A letter, sure. Haven’t ye got eyes, Moses?”
 
“From your wife, corporal?”
 
“Wife!” exclaimed Flynn, with scorn; “no! It’s mesilf wouldn’t take the gift of a wife gratis. The letter is from me owld grandmother, an’ she’s better to me than a dozen wives rowled into wan. It’s hard work the writin’ of it cost her too—poor owld sowl! But she’d tear her eyes out to plaze me, she would. ‘Corporal, darlint,’—that’s always the way she begins her letters now; she’s that proud o’ me since I got the stripes. I thowt me mother or brother would have writ me too, but they’re not half as proud of me as my—”
 
“Shut up, Flynn!” cried one of the men, who was trying to decipher a letter, the penmanship of which was obviously the work of an unaccustomed hand.
 
“Howld it upside down; sometimes they’re easier to read that way—more sinsible-like,” retorted the corporal.
 
“Blessin’s on your sweet face!” exclaimed Armstrong, looking at a photograph which he had just extracted from his letter.
 
“Hallo, Bill! that your sweetheart?” asked Sergeant Hardy, who was busy untying a parcel.
 
“Ay, sweetheart an’ wife too,” answered the young soldier, with animation.
 
“Let me see it, Willie,” said Miles, who was also one of the disconsolate non-receivers, disconsolate because he had fully expected a reply to the penitent letter which he had written to his mother.
 
“First-rate, that’s Emmy to a tee. A splendid likeness!” exclaimed Miles, holding the photograph to the light.
 
“Arrah! then, it’s dead he must be!”
 
The extreme perplexity displayed in Flynn’s face as he said this and scratched his head produced a hearty laugh.
 
“It’s no laughin’ matter, boys,” cried the corporal, looking up with an expression so solemn that his comrades almost believed it to be genuine. “There’s my owld uncle Macgrath gone to his long home, an’ he was the support o’ me grandmother. Och! what’ll she do now wid him gone an’ me away at the wars?”
 
“Won’t some other relation look after her, Flynn?” suggested Moses.
 
“Other relation!” exclaimed the corporal; “I’ve got no other relations, an’ them that I have are as poor as rats. No, uncle Macgrath was the only wan wid a kind heart an’ a big purse. You see, boys, he was rich—for an Irishman. He had a grand farm, an’ a beautiful bit o’ bog. Och! it’ll go hard wid—”
 
“Read on, Flynn, and hold your tongue,” cried one of his comrades; “p–r–aps he’s left the old woman a legacy.”
 
The corporal did read on, and during the perusal of the letter the change in his visage was marvellous, exhibiting as it did an almost magical transition from profound woe, through abrupt gradations of surprise, to intense joy.
 
“Hooray!” he shouted, leaping up and bestowing a vigorous slap on his thigh. “He’s gone an’ left the whole farm an’ the beautiful bog to me!”
 
“What hae ye got there, sergeant?” asked Saunders, refolding the letter he had been quietly perusing without paying any regard to the Irishman’s good news.
 
“A parcel of booklets from the Institute,” answered Hardy, turning over the leaves of one of the pamphlets. “Ain’t it good of ’em?”
 
“Right you are, Hardy! The ladies there never forget us,” said Moses Pyne. “Hand ’em round, sergeant. It does a fellow’s heart good to get a bit o’ readin’ in an out-o’-the-way place like this.”
 
“Comes like light in a dark place, don’t it, comrade?” said Stevenson, the marine, who paid them a visit at that moment, bringing a letter which had been carried to the wrong quarter by mistake. It was for Miles Milton. “I know’d you expected it, an’ would be awfully disappointed at finding nothing, so I brought it over at once.”
 
“You come like a gleam of sunshine in a dark place. Thanks, Stevenson, many thanks,” said Miles, springing up and opening the letter eagerly.
 
The first words sent a chill to his heart, for it told of his father having been very ill, but words of comfort immediately followed—he was getting slowly but surely better, and his own letter had done the old man more good in a few days than all the doctor’s physic had done in many weeks. Forgiveness was freely granted, and unalterable love breathed in every line. With a relieved and thankful heart he went on reading, when he was arrested by a sudden summons of his company to fall in. Grasping his rifle he ran out with the rest.
 
“What is it?” he whispered to a sergeant, as he took his place in the ranks. “Osman ............