"I shall not think about it any more." "Then we'll shake hands," he cried--"some day--next time we meet." We did shake hands next time we met, but when Philip Dalton said those words he did not know it would be seven years first.

But so it was.
-- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I never knew exactly how it happened, but I believe one of my uncles was influenced to take some part in the affair, and Sir Francis did all the rest.

What I do know is that about three months after the young Daltons had gone I was on my way to a clergyman's house, where I stayed a year, being prepared for my future career; and when I had been with the Reverend Hartley Dallas a year I was able to join the Military College at Woolwich, where I went through the regular course, and in due time obtained my commission in the artillery.
I had not long been in the service before the Crimean war broke out, and our battery was one of the first despatched to the seat of war, where, in company with my comrades, I went through that terrible period of misery and privation.
One night I was in charge of a couple of guns in a rather dangerous position near the Redan, and after repairing damages under fire my lads had contrived to patch up a pretty secure shelter with sand-bag and gabion, ready for knocking down next day, but it kept off the rain, and where we huddled together there was no mud under our feet, though it was inches deep in the trench.
It was a bitter night, and the tiny bit of fire that we had ventured to make in the hole we had scooped underground hardly kept the chill from our half-frozen limbs.

Food was not plentiful, luxuries we had none, and in place of the dashing-looking artillerymen in blue and gold people are accustomed to see on parade, anyone who had looked upon us would have seen a set of mud-stained, ragged scarecrows, blackened with powder, grim looking, but hard and full of fight.
I was seated on an upturned barrel, hugging my sheepskin-lined greatcoat closer to me, and drawing it down over my high boots, as I made room for a couple of my wet, shivering men, and I felt ashamed to be the owner of so warm a coat as I looked at their well-worn service covering, when my sergeant put in his head and said: "Captain of the company of foot, sir, would be glad if you could give him a taste of the fire and a drop of brandy; he's half dead with the cold." "Bring him in," I said; and I waited, thinking about home and the old garden at Isleworth and then of that at Hampton; I didn't know why, but I did.

And then I was thinking to myself that it was a good job that we had the stern, manly feeling to comfort us of our hard work being our duty, when I heard the _slush, slush, slush, slush_, sound of feet coming along the trenches, and then my sergeant said: "You'll have to stoop very low to get in, sir, but you'll find it warm and dry.