ntained. The opposing forces--besiegers and
besieged--were in constant collision. Sharpshooters interchanged shots
all day long, and guns answered guns. The Russians made frequent
sorties by night; and every day there were hand-to-hand conflicts for
the possession of rifle-pits and the more advanced posts.

It was a dreary, disappointing season. This siege seemed interminable.
No one saw the end of it. All alike--from generals to common men--were
despondent and dispirited with the weariness of hope long deferred.

Why did we not attack the place? This was the burden of every song.
The attack--always imminent, always postponed--was the one topic of
conversation wherever soldiers met and talked together.

It was debated and discussed seriously, and from every point of view,
in the council-chamber, where Lord Raglan met his colleagues and the
great officers of the staff. It was the gossip round the camp-fire,
where men beguiled the weary hours of trench-duty. It was tossed from
mouth to mouth by thoughtless subalterns as they galloped on their
Tartar ponies for a day's outing to Kamiesch, when released from
sterner toil.

The attack! To-morrow--next day--some day--never! So it went on, with
a wearisome, monotonous sameness that was perfectly exasperating.

"I give you Good-day, my friend. Well, you see the summer is now close
at hand, and still we are on the wrong side of the wall."

The speaker was M. Anatole Belhomme, Hyde's French friend. They had
met outside a drinking-booth in the hut-town of Kadikoi. Hyde was
riding a pony; the other was on foot.

"Ah! my gallant Gaul, is it you?" replied Hyde. "Let's go in and
jingle glasses together, hey?"

"A little tear of cognac would not be amiss," replied the Frenchman,
whose excessive fondness for the fermented liquor of his country was
the chief cause of his finding himself a sergeant in the Voltigeurs
instead of chief cook to a Parisian restaurant or an English duke.

Hyde hitched up his pony at the door, and they entered the booth,
seating themselves at one of the tables, if the two inverted
wine-boxes used for the purpose deserved the name. There were other
soldiers about, mostly British: a couple of sergeants of the Guards,
an assistant of the provost-marshal, some of the new Land Transport
Corps, and one or two Sardinians, in their picturesque green tunics
and cocked hats with great plumes of black feathers.

The demand for drink was incessant and kept the at