was the thoughts of his heart that troubled him; and alas! he knew not
the soothing power of prayer. Not a thought of prayer, not one
paternoster entered his mind. For he had lost his faith in God. We do
not mean that faith which no one has till he asks the Spirit of God to
give it him, and which then makes him love God in spite of all
difficulties; but we mean faith in the existence of God, which all have
by nature, and which sin alone can extinguish; not only grosser sin, but
sinful vanity of mind.

He thought of his much-loved home, of the mother that was so dear to him,
what agony of mind she must be undergoing; of his darling Elise, how her
dear heart must be full of him. And then there pierced him, like the
sting of an adder, the thought of separation, certainly for years,
perhaps for ever, from all that happiness: the hopelessness of his
condition as a prisoner of war at a time when war seemed chronic in
Europe, without prospect of cessation. And in the abject misery of his
soul--misery all the more intense because of his peculiar sensitiveness
of nature--he thus bewailed in secret and with rebellious will his fate.

"Cruel, cruel destiny! why did not an English bullet put an end to me at
once, instead of my lingering on in this slow torture? Nothing to look
forward to, nothing to be done to make one ray of hope possible! _There_
is the horror, _there_ is the cruelty! I would plunge with gaiety into
dangers, and endure without a murmur the tortures of the Red Indian, if
only there were hope at the end. But here I am--I, who looked forward
greedily to a career of honour and distinction--caught like a rat in a
trap, and not even dead! Oh, cursed was the day on which I was born!"

CHAPTER II.--FORMATION OF THE BARRACKS.

Some idea has already been given of the formation of the Norman Cross
barracks; but a fuller and more detailed account of them may, perhaps, be
interesting.

Norman Cross is the name given to that part of the parish of Yaxley, in
the county of Huntingdon, where that grand old thoroughfare of England,
the Great North Road, along which coaches might drive four abreast, is
crossed by the Peterborough Road. In one corner, bounded by these two
roads, is a large piece of pasture land, some forty acres in extent,
which Government purchased in 1796, for the purpose of erecting barracks
on it for prisoners of war, then multiplying fast, and for a large number
of soldiers to guard them