t a certain remorse
consumes him for his lost gazelle, whom _he_ always thought paid penalty
for their love under the silent waves of the Bosphorus, with those lost
ones whose souls, according to the faith of Stamboul, flit ceaselessly
above its waters, in the guise of its white-winged unrestful sea-gulls.
He is far enough away just now--in which of the death-pots where we are
simmering and fritting away in little wretched driblets men and money
that would have sufficed Caesar or Scipio to conquer an Empire, matters
not to his story. When he reads this, he will remember the bitterest
night of his life, and the fiasco that ended SIR GALAHAD'S RAID!

'REDEEMED.'

"REDEEMED."

AN EPISODE WITH THE CONFEDERATE HORSE.

Bertie Winton had got the Gold Vase.

The Sovereign, one of the best horses that ever had a dash of the
Godolphin blood in him, had led the first flight over the
ridge-and-furrow, cleared the fences, trying as the shire-thorn could
make them, been lifted over the stiffest doubles and croppers, passed
the turning-flags, and been landed at the straight run-in with the stay
and pace for which his breed was famous, enrapturing the fancy, who had
piled capfuls of money on him, and getting the Soldiers' Blue Riband
from the Guards, who had stood crackers on little Benyon's mount--Ben,
who is as pretty as a girl, with his _petites mains blanches_, riding
like any professional.

Now, I take it--and I suppose there are none who will disagree with
me--that there are few things pleasanter in this life than to stand, in
the crisp winter's morning, winner of the Grand Military, having got the
Gold Vase for the old corps against the best mounts in the Service.

Life must look worth having to you, when you have come over those black,
barren pastures and rugged ploughed lands, where the field floundered
helplessly in grief, with Brixworth brook yawning gaunt and wide beneath
you, and the fresh cold north wind blowing full in your teeth, and have
ridden in at the distance alone, while the air is rent by the echoing
shouts of the surging crowd, and the best riding-men are left "nowhere"
behind. Life must look pleasant to you, if it had been black as thunder
the night before. Nevertheless, where Bertie Winton sat, having brought
the Sovereign in, winner of the G. M., with that superb bay's head a
little drooped, and his flanks steaming, but scarce a hair turned, while
the men who had won pots of money on h