mother's heart to a thousand additional pangs.

"Surely, Robert, you do not ask me to let him go too? I cannot suffer it. I cannot indeed. Not both my boys. I cannot give them both. Was not one enough? What mother has done more? Robert's blood is on Her Flag they tell me ;"-this eldest son of theirs was carrying the Queen's Colour when he met his death at Inkerman ;-" does she want Alured's too? Do not let them send him also to those shambles. Spare him, Robert; spare him and me, for the love of Heaven."

It was more than she could bear.

At this hour when the memory of her slaughtered first-born was still raw and bleeding, to call upon her to resign her second to the same danger, perhaps to the same death, was more than she could endure. With a

shudder she dropped her hands from his arm, where they had been convulsively clenched, and resting her head upon them, on the table, burst into a passionate flood of tears.

"I ought not to have asked you this, Alice. I should have decided myself to refuse.

I

will write at once to Sir Octavius.

But it was

kindly meant; you must allow that."

You have not spoken to Alured yet?" "Not yet, of course. I would not till I knew what you wished."

I wish

"Wished; I wish to keep him. never to let him go out of my sight. I wish to be certain that he can never come to harm."

"My dear, let us drop the subject for the preTo-morrow you will be better able to

sent.

decide."

But next morning Major Frere did not broach the subject to his wife, and no one could have read in this brave woman's calm features the bitterness that was gnawing at her heart. She went through the morning's work quickly and methodically as was her wont. Read prayers, made the tea, ordered dinner, set her youngest daughter a lesson in French, heedless of all entreaties for a holiday on the plea of Alured's return from school. But her household duties done, she sought her husband in the dining-room, which the major used during the forenoon as a study.

"Have you written to Sir Octavius?" she asked.

"Yes; I have drafted a letter, but it cannot go till this evening."

"Of course. It is a refusal, worded as civilly as I can put it ;" and he gave the rough copy into her hand.

Robert," said Mrs. Frere, after she had read the letter through slowly, and looking steadfastly into her husband's eyes, "I will be guided by you solely and entirely in this. Do you think he ought to go?"

The major knew full well all that it cost her to concede this much, to keep the mastery over her feelings that were rampant within. But the emotion displayed on the previous night was now invisible. Her face was impassive, almost cold, though inwardly she was torn with the agony of Rachel mourning for her children.

"I think honestly that it is a great opportunity. It will give the lad such an excellent start."

"He is so young, Robert: only sixteen last

month," pleaded the mother-anything for an

excuse.

"He is older than I was when I was in the army of occupation in France."

"But the wars were over then."

"I wish they hadn't been. I should have been more than a major now, after all these years of service, if I had had such an opening as Alured is offered in such stirring times."

"You have always said that the army was no profession for a poor man or a poor man's son."

"Nor is it, when it is no profession, when there is no business stirring. But when a soldier can work at his trade-the real trade of war-then it is the most glorious career I know."

Major Frere was speaking from his own platform"; his was the opinion of a soldier, merely, about soldiering.

"You mean we ought to accept this commission ?"

"I do, most assuredly."

"Could you not get him into some other regiment, one not at the war,-in the colonies, or even in India ?"

"I will try if you wish, but I cannot hope my request will be granted."

"I will. But it would be folly not to accept the commission as frankly as the offer is made."

"I consent to his going, but save him from the war," she cried, breaking down utterly, her eyes streaming with tears, her voice harsh and thick. "If he, too, should fall it would kill

me, I think."

"His fate is in the hands of an all-powerful God, Alice. He might fall dead at our feet this very day, here in our peaceful home, where no danger threatens."

"His will be done," said the mother solemnly, and the discussion was at an end.

So Alured Frere accepted the queen's commission, and at the early age of sixteen years and one month he was engaged to lend his powerful aid in the reduction of Sabastopol.

This lad, Alured Frere, is our hero. Let me endeavour to describe him as he was at this time. A child, really, still; quite ignorant of the world and its ways, except so far as they had been revealed to him in the back regions