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What do yo' think o' that?
Yah-ah, yah-ho!

Who get married on the sly,
Becos who were so shy,
And that's the reason why,
Yah-ah, yah-ho!

Zike dimly and by degrees comprehended that the doggerel was meant to insult the woman who had been in his arms when Death fought for her, and his face blanched. He turned round without looking at Kate and took up his hat.

'Dunna go out to 'em, lad, dunna,' said Kate, trying to control her voice. Zike answered nothing, but went to the door. It was hard either to obey or disobey.

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Mrs. Torkington had elected herself leader, and was yelling her loudest, while Torkington himself, his hands in his pockets, was standing with others of his mates some little distance off. He grinned the more when Zike came out and for a moment stood stupidly gazing at the women. Zike crossed the road and went up to Torkington.

'That's thy wife,' he said shortly; 'send her whoam.'

'What the is it to do wi' me?' asked Torkington in an aggrieved tone.

For answer Zike caught him a terrific right-hander below the nose, and Torkington fell with a splash in the muddy road. Zike did not deign to look at him, but passed on to Thatcher.

'Send thy wife whoam,' he said.

For answer Thatcher stood on the defensive. Zike broke through his guard with a blow from his right, and followed it up with lightning speed from his left between the eyes, and down Thatcher went.

'Any moor?' Zike asked.

The din ceased. Damn ye, go whoam,' several men called to their wives, and one added, ' And yo' shall ha' summat when yo' get theer,'

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Some of the non-contentious had taken themselves out of harm's way when Zike came out, and now there was a laudable desire on the part of most to get elsewhere. Zike turned to the few who were left.

This is the front o' my house,' he said, ' and ther's no meetin'place here. Anybody as keeps here two minits lunger will ha' to answer fer it.' And he strode indoors.

No one disputed with him. A few who thought their dignity

would be compromised by celerity sauntered off as if asserting their right to walk there if it pleased them, but the roadway was soon deserted.

Kate was in tears when Zike returned. 'Nay, nay, lass,' he said, 'tha'rt none tekkin' any notice o' them foo's, ar't?'

How con Aw help it? We'st ha' no peace here.'

6

'Nay, wench, keep thi pluck up, naw. They'll none trouble thee agen in a hurry, tha'll see; and if they try it on it'll be bad fer some o' them. Go on wi' thi readin', wench, and lemme hear how them two gets on. Aw conna say as Aw howd wi' big folk's style of coortin', bur that doesna matter; Aw want to hear a bit moor.'

(To be continued.)

THE

CORNHILL MAGAZINE.

DECEMBER 1898.

FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG.

BY THE REV. W. H. FITCHETT,
AUTHOR OF DEEDS THAT WON THE EMPIRE.'

What is the flag of England? Winds of the world declare!-KIPLING.

XII.1

THE LADY WITH THE LAMP.'

Thus thought I, as by night I read
Of the great army of the dead,

The trenches cold and damp,
The starved and frozen camp.

The wounded from the battle plain
In dreary hospitals of pain,

The cheerless corridors,
The cold and stony floors.

Lo! in that house of misery
A lady with a lamp I see

Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room.

And slow, as in a dream of bliss
The speechless sufferer turns to kiss
Her shadow, as it falls

Upon the darkening walls.'-LONG FELLOW.

Two figures emerge with a nimbus of glory from the tragedy of the Crimean War. One is that of the great Russian engineer, Todleben, with powerful brow, and face of iron sternness, and eyes

Copyright by the Rev. W. H. Fitchett. All rights reserved. VOL. V. NO. 30, N.S.

31

that flash as with the keen sparkle of a sword. The other is the slender, modest figure of an English lady, with downcast eyes and pensive brow, and the dress of a nurse. It is Florence Nightingale, whose woman's brain and hand added an element so gracious to the memory of those sad days. And of these two figures, who will doubt that the angel of the hospitals,' as she was called, won a finer and more enduring fame than the hero of the trenches?

"

What a passion of mingled wrath and pity was kindled in Great Britain when the story was known of the brave men dying untended in the hospitals at Scutari or Kululi, or perishing of cold and hunger in the trenches about Sebastopol, can be easily imagined. There were over 13,000 sick in the hospitals. The death-rate at Scutari was forty-two per cent., in the Kulali Hospital it rose to fifty-two per cent. Four patients out of every five who underwent amputation died of hospital gangrene. The doctors showed all the devotion the world has learned to expect from them when face to face with human suffering; but they were few in number, were denied the common appliances of the sick-room, and were bound as with iron fetters by a brainless routine. Pen pictures of scenes in the British hospitals might be selected from Russell's Letters to "The Times," which, for their graphic horror, are almost without parallel in literature. They picture scenes which recall the circles of Dante's Inferno. Medicines and medical appliances lay wasted on the beach at Varna, or forgotten in the holds of vessels in Balaclava Harbour, while wounded British soldiers in the great hospital of Scutari were perishing with wounds undressed, and amidst filth which would have disgraced a tribe of savages.

A wave of amazed pity, flavoured with generous wrath, swept over Great Britain when all this was realised. Money was poured into the Patriotic Fund till it rose to more than a million sterling. Medical stores were sent out by the ton. The medical staff was multiplied till there was one doctor for every ninety-five soldiers in the entire British force. The trouble, however, had never arisen from a deficiency of supplies, but only from a bankruptcy of brains and method in their use. The army was being strangled by a system which was omnipotent for mischief, but well-nigh helpless for any useful service. But the sufferings of the British sick, and the insanitary hell into which the British hospitals had sunk, thrilled the hearts of all women in the three kingdoms with

a half-fierce pity, and to Mr. Sidney Herbert belongs the distinction of turning the fine element of that pity into a useful force, which wrought in a few brief months one of the most beneficent miracles recorded in the history of army nursing. He saw that what the hospitals needed was woman's quick wit, swift pity, and faculty of patient service. Offers to go out and nurse the dying British soldiers were poured in upon the War Office from tenderhearted women of every rank of life.

Pity, however, had to be organised and wisely led, and Sidney Herbert turned to Florence Nightingale, asking her if she would go to the East, carrying the resources of Great Britain in the palm of her woman's hand, and organise a nursing service in the great hospital at Scutari. A letter from Florence Nightingale offering her services crossed Mr. Herbert's letter asking if she would give

them.

Florence Nightingale was the daughter of a wealthy English household, but born in Florence, and taking her name from that city. In St. Thomas's Hospital, London, stands her statue. She wears the dress of a nurse, and carries in her hand a nurse's night-lamp. The figure is tall and slender, not to say fragile; the face is refined, with a look of reserve upon it-' a veiled and silent woman' she has been called. The living face, however, would kindle with a strange luminousness in conversation, and the dark and steady eyes took what a keen observer has described as a 'star-like brightness.' That Florence Nightingale was a woman of fine intellect, clear judgment, and heroic quality of will, cannot be doubted. Dean Stanley, indeed-not given to cheap praisehas called her a woman of commanding genius,' and her accomplishments tell how swift and penetrating was her intelligence. She spoke French, German, Italian, was a good classic, and had all the social gifts of her order. But all her genius ran in womanly channels. She proved herself, in the Crimea, it is true, to have great powers of administration. Her intelligence, again, had a crystalline quality which, within a certain range, made questions that puzzled statesmen easy to her. She hated shallowness and pretence. But although she widened indefinitely the area of woman's work, she did not in the least belong to the order of 'new women.' To her own sex she wrote, 'If you are called to man's work, do not exact a woman's privileges-the privilege of inaccuracy, of weakness. Ye muddle-heads! Submit yourselves to the rules of business as men do, by which alone you can make

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