ill
find you well and all friends.

"From your respectful,

"HENRY WINBURN,

"Colour-sergeant. 101st Regiment."

"March.

"My DEAR TOM;--I begin to think I may see you again yet, but it
has been a near shave. I hope Sergeant Winburn's letter, and the
returns, in which I see I was put down "dangerously wounded,"
will not have frightened you very much. The war is over; and, if
I live to get down to Calcutta you will see me in the summer,
please God. The end was like the beginning--going right up to the
guns. Our regiment is frightfully cut up; there are only 300 men
left under arms--the rest dead or in hospital. I am sick at heart
at it, and weak in body, and can only write a few lines at a
time, but will get on with this as I can, in time for next mail.

* * * * *

"Since beginning this letter I have had another relapse. So, in
case I should never finish it, I will say at once what I most
want to say. Winburn has saved my life more than once, and is
besides one of the noblest and bravest fellows in the world; so I
mean to provide for him in case anything should happen to me. I
have made a will, and appointed you my executor, and left him a
legacy. You must buy his discharge, and get him home and married
to the Englebourn beauty as soon as possible. But what I want you
to understand is, that if the legacy isn't enough to do this, and
make all straight with her old curmudgeon of a father, it is my
first wish that whatever will do it should be made up to him. He
has been in hospital with a bad flesh wound, and has let out to
me the whole of his story, of which you had only given me the
heads. If that young women does not wait for him, and book him, I
shall give up all faith in petticoats. Now that's done I feel
more at ease.

"Let me see. I haven't written for six weeks and more, just
before our last great fight. You'll know all about it from the
papers long before you get this--a bloody business; I am loath to
think of it. I was knocked over in the last of their
entrenchments, and should then and there have bled to death had
it not been for Winburn. He never left me, though the killing,
and plundering, and roystering afterwards was going on all
around, and strong temptation to a fellow when his blood is up,
and he sees his comrades at it, after such work as we have had.
What's more he caught my Irish fellow and made him stay by me
too, and between them they managed to prop me up and stop the
bleeding