ld
have to live on very coarse and scanty food. They advised us to keep
out of the Frenchmen's sight, lest we should be pounced on and treated
as seamen and belligerents; this we very readily promised to do.
Altogether we had a very pleasant and merry meeting, and were sorry when
our friends told us that the hour for their return on board had arrived.
It was arranged that they should have another picnic party in the same
spot in three days, and they kindly invited us to join them. On our way
back we had, as may be supposed, plenty of subjects for conversation.

"That Miss Mary Mason," said Toby, "is a sweetly pretty girl. I would
go through fire and water to serve her."

"And Julia Arundel is one of the most lively, animated girls I have met
for a long time," remarked William, with a sigh. I had observed
O'Carroll in conversation with a lady who seemed to be a former
acquaintance. He told me that he had known her in her younger and
happier days, that she had married an officer in India, had come home
with three children, who had all died, and that she was now on her way
to rejoin her husband.

"Her case is a very hard one," he remarked.

"So I suspect we shall find are the cases of many," I answered. "Sad
indeed are the effects of war! The non-combatants suffer more even than
the combatants. That is to say, a far greater number of people suffer
who have nothing to do with the fighting than those who actually carry
on the murderous work. Oh, when will war cease throughout the world?"

"Not until the depraved heart of man is changed, and Satan himself is
chained, unable further to hurt the human race," answered O'Carroll.
"What has always struck me, besides the wickedness of war, is its utter
folly. Who ever heard of a war in which both sides did not come off
losers? The gain in a war can never make amends for the losses, the men
slain, the physical suffering, the grief: the victorious side feel that
only in a less degree than the losers."

I cordially agreed with him. Yet how many hundreds were daily falling
at that time in warfare--how many thousands and tens of thousands were
yet to fall, to gratify the insane ambition of a single man, permitted
to be the fearful scourge that he was to the human race? We said as
little about our expedition as we could, for the emigrants, as soon as
they heard of so many of their countrymen being in the neighbourhood,
were eager to set out to see them. We, however, p