One of the Six Hundred: A Novel
perhaps, on the graves of the light brigade in the Valley of Death,
through which our six hundred chivalry swept like a thunderbolt; and the
sweet spring flowers were blooming in the abandoned trenches of
Sebastopol, when I could hear the angel voices of glad little ones
waking the peaceful echoes in our old woody glen; and there a dark-eyed
Nigel, a golden-haired Newton, and a blooming little Cora, with beaming
eyes and dark brown braids, gambolled round the gaitered legs of old
Willie Pitblado, and the boot-tops of the sturdy old baronet, or were
learning "a taste of the brogue," as they rode on the back of Lanty
O'Regan, now our head groom.
And when winter comes to strip the old woods, and hurl their rustling
foliage before the west wind, seaward, down the lovely Howe of Fife; and
when the snows of Christmas whiten the scalps of Largo and the Lomond
Hills, we never forgot, after Cora has spiced the wassail bowl, to fill
our glasses, and drink in silence--
"To the memory of the brave fellows who died before Sebastopol!"
THE END.
BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, SURREY.