looking right
across the plain, towards where there was a tank and a small station.

"I think that ought to be our way, Smith," he said. "We could stay
there for half an hour's rest, and then on again towards Wallahbad,
sending a couple of the stoutest men on for help. By the way, we'll try
and start a man off to-night, as soon as it's dark. Who will you have
to help you?"

"I should like to have Bigley, sir," I said.

"Will one be sufficient?"

"Quite, sir," I said; for I thought Measles and I could manage it
between us.

Half an hour after, Measles was busy at work, fetching up muskets, with
bayonets fixed, from down in the store, and laying them in order on the
flat roof; taking care the while to keep out of sight; and I went to the
room where the women were, under Mrs Bantem's management, getting ready
for what was to come, for they had been told that we might leave the
place all at once.

STORY ONE, CHAPTER NINETEEN.

I suppose it was my wound made me do things in a sluggish dreamy way,
and made me feel ready to stop and look at any little thing which took
my attention. Anyhow, that's the way I acted; and going inside that
room, I stopped short just inside the place, for there were those two
little children of the colonel's sitting on the floor, with a whole heap
of those numbers of the Bible--those that people take in shilling
parts--and with two or three large pictures in each. Some one had given
them the parts to amuse themselves with; and, as grand and old-fashioned
as could be, they were shewing these pictures to the soldiers' children.

As I went in they'd got a picture open, of Jacob lying asleep, with his
dream spread before you, of the great flight of steps leading up into
heaven, and the angels going up and down.

"There," says little Jenny Wren to a boy half as old again as herself;
"those are angels, and they're coming down from heaven, and they've got
beautiful wings like birds."

"Oh," says little Cock Robin thoughtfully, and he leaned over the
picture. Then he says quite seriously: "If they've got wings, why don't
they fly down?"

That was a poser; but Jenny Wren was ready with her answer,
old-fashioned as could be, and she says: "I should think it's toz they
were moulting."

I remember wishing that the poor little innocents had wings of their
own, for it seemed to me that they would be a sad trouble to us to get
away that night, just at the time when a child's most likely