e only for the slight success at the cemetery.

Eagerly were the wounded questioned, as, carried on stretchers, or
slowly and painfully making their way upon foot, they ascended the
hill. In most of them regret at their defeat or anger at the
incompetence of those who had rendered defeat certain, predominated
over the pain of the wounds.

"Be jabers," said a little Irishman, "but it was cruel work entirely.
There was myself and six others and the captain made our way up to a
lot of high stakes stuck in the ground before the place. We looked
round, and divil another soul was there near. We couldn't climb over
the stakes, and if we had got over 'em there was a deep ditch beyond,
and no way of getting in or out. And what would have been the good if
we had, when there were about 50,000 Russians inside a-shouting and
yelling at the top of their voices, and a-firing away tons of
ammunition? We stopped there five minutes, it may be, waiting to see
if any one else was coming, and then when four of us was killed and
the captain wounded, I thought it time to be laving; so I lifted him
up and carried him in, and got an ugly baste of a Russian bullet into
my shoulder as I did so. Ye may call it fightin', but it's just murder
I call it meself."

Something like this was the tale told by scores of wounded men, and it
is little wonder that, sore with defeat and disappointment, and
heart-sick at the loss which had been suffered, the feelings of the
army found vent in deep grumblings at the generals who had sent out a
handful of men to assault a fortress.

The next day there was another truce to allow of the burial of the
dead and the collection of the wounded who lay thickly on the ground
between the rival trenches. It did not take place, however, till four
in the afternoon, by which time the wounded had been lying for thirty
hours without water or aid, the greater portion of the time exposed to
the heat of a burning sun.

Ten days later Lord Raglan died. He was a brave soldier, an honorable
man, a most courteous and perfect English gentleman, but he was most
certainly not a great general. He was succeeded by General Simpson,
who appears to have been chosen solely because he had, as a lad,
served in the Peninsula; the authorities seeming to forget that for
the work upon which the army was engaged, no school of war could
compare with that of the Crimea itself, and that generals who had
received their training there were incomparabl