Week after week Charlie lay in that weary bed. One by one patients became convalescents, and convalescents went back to their duty, and still he was not allowed to move. A fresh action was fought, and more wounded were brought in, and yet Charlie was unfit for duty--in fact, was unable to rise. The doctor was hopeful and good-humoured, as doctors generally are, not being invalids themselves, and told him “he was going on most satisfactorily, and all that was wanted was a little time, and patience and quiet;” but at length even he hinted at sick-leave, and talked of a return to England, and the necessity of care and avoidance of exposure to weather, even after the wounds were healed; and Charlie’s dearest hopes of rejoining his regiment, and tasting once more the excitement of warfare, were dashed to the ground. The kind doctor had written to his patient’s friends in England, and assured them of his safety--on the rejoicings thereby created at Newton-Hollows we need not now enlarge--so that all anxiety on that score had passed away, and there was nothing to do now but to get well and embark for home. What a tedious process that same getting well was! Charlie began to pine, and grow dispirited and nervous. He had no friends, no one to speak to but the doctor; and the gallant boy, who would have faced a whole tribe of Kaffirs single-handed and never moved an eyelash, was now so completely weakened and broken down that he would lie and weep for hours, like a girl, he knew not why. At last he began to give way to despondency altogether. One day in particular, when the ward was again emptied of its recovered inmates, and the boy was left quite alone in that long, dull room, he lost heart entirely. “I shall never get well now,” he said aloud in his despair; “I shall never see the bright blue sky again, nor the regiment, nor Blanche, nor Mrs. Delaval, nor any of them--sinking, sinking, day by day, and scarcely twenty! ’Tis a hard lot to die like a dog, in such a hole as this. Ah! Frank always talked of death as the ever-present certainty, and the next world will be a happier one than this, I do believe, though this has been a happy one to me. I used to think I shouldn’t mind dying the least--no more I should, in the free, open air, leading a squadron, with the men hurraing behind me; or falling neck and crop into a grass-field with ‘Haphazard,’ alongside the leading hounds.” (Charlie was barely twenty, and to him the hunting-field was just such an arena of glory as was the tilt-yard to a knight of the olden time.) “No, I could die like a man at home, but to rot away here in a hospital, thousands of miles from merry England, without a friend near me, it’s hard to bear it pluckily, as it ought to be borne. Frank! Frank! I want some of your dogged resolution now. If I could see your dear old face once more, and shake you by the hand, I should be a different fellow. Ah! it’s too late now; I shall