been won, or a successful march made, in which, perhaps, God knows, that undistinguished boy of hers might have fainted and fallen aside to die. But the common people--God bless them!--are more hopeful in their laborious hearts than we who have leisure to think all our anxieties out, and grow sick over them. Derwie flew here and there on his pony, telling the news--possessed with it to the exclusion of every other thought--and I could but be thankful that he was a child, and the telegraph-boy, not a man, able to set out with a heart of flame to that desperate and furious strife. I surprised a nursery party at this memorable period in the expression of their sentiments. It was somebody’s birthday at Waterflag, and all the little people were collected there. Derwent had been telling them of a feat performed in India by a Flintshire man, which all the newspapers had celebrated, and which we were all rather proud of. Derwie, in his capacity of newsboy, read the papers to the best of his ability, with very original readings of the Indian names, but he was much more thoroughly informed than any of the others--by reason of his trade--and they listened to him as to an oracle. Then came an account of the mutiny and all its frightful consequences, as well as Derwie knew. The children listened absorbed, the girls being, as I rather think is very common, much the most greatly excited. Willie Sedgwick, the chubby pink and white heir, who looked so much younger than Derwie, sat silent, fingering his buttons, and with no remarkable expression in his face; but Miss Polly’s two nieces bent down from their height of superior stature to listen, and Clara Sedgwick--lovely little coquette--stood in the middle of the room, arrested in something she had been doing, breathless, her little face burning with the strongest childish excitement. She was not now arrayed in that glorious apparel which had captivated Derwie and myself in the spring. It was only a simple gray morning frock, which was expanded upon her infantine crinoline at this moment; but her beautiful little figure, all palpitating with wonder, wrath, and excitement, was a sight to see. “Oh!” cried out the child, stamping her little foot, as Derwie, breathless himself, paused in his tale--“oh! if I had only a gun, I would take hold of papa’s hand and shoot them all!” “Ah!” cried Emmy, whose thoughts had been doubtless following the same track, and to whom this sudden sense of a want which, perhaps, she scarcely realized in ordinary times, came sharp in sudden contrast with that exclamation of Clary’s--“Ah, Clary!” cried the poor child, with a shrill accent in the momentary pang it gave her, “but we have no papa.” It struck me like a sudden passionate, artless postscript of personal grief, striking its key-note upon the big impersonal calamity which raised, even in these children’s bosoms, such generous horror and indignation.