Once, an officer in the Crimea, believing himself dying, gave me a packet of letters to burn. He had written them, year by year, under every change of fortune, to a friend he had, to whom he occasionally wrote other letters, _not_ like these; which were never sent nor meant to be sent, during his life-time--though sometimes I fancy he dreamed of _giving_ them, and of their being read, smiling, by two together. He was mistaken. Circumstances which happen not rarely to dreamers like him, made it unnecessary, nay, impossible, for them to be delivered at all. He bade me burn them--at once--in case he died. In so doing there started out of the embers, clear and plain, _the name_. But the fire and I told no tales; I took the poker and buried it. Poor fellow! He did not die, and I meet him still; but we have never referred to those burnt letters. These letters of mine I also may one day burn. In the meantime, there shall be no name or superscription on them--no beginning or ending, nor, if I can avoid it, anything which could particularise the person to whom they are written. For all others, they will take the form of a mere statement--nothing more. To begin. I was sitting about eleven at night, over the fire, in my hut. I had been busy all day, and had had little rest the night before. It was not my intention to attend our camp concert; but I was in a manner compelled to do so. Ill news from home reached poor young Ansdell of ours--and his colonel sent me to break it to him. I then had to wait about, in order to see the good colonel as he came out from the concert-room. It was, therefore, purely by accident that I met those friends whom I afterwards did not leave for several minutes. The reason of this delay in their company may be told. It was a sudden agony about the uncertainty of life--young life; fresh and hopeful as pretty Laura Ansdell's--whom I had chanced to see riding through the North Camp, not two weeks ago--and now she was dead. Accustomed as I am to almost every form of mortality, I had never faced the grim fear exactly in this shape before. It put me out of myself for a little time. I did not go near Granton the following day, but received from him a message and my plaid. She--the lady to whom I had lent it--was “quite well.” No more: how could I possibly expect any more?