'Since writing all the foregoing,' said the postscript, 'I find that your sister, Mrs. Elliot, appears to have had some news, after receiving which she and Miss Hester have suddenly left Edinburgh, but for _where_ or with what intention I am totally unable to discover.' 'News,' muttered Roland; 'what news can they have had?' Roland, by the field telegraph rearward, _viâ_, Cairo, wired a message to Mr. M'Wadsett for further intelligence, if he had any to give, concerning the absentees, but no answer came till long after the troops had got under arms to engage, and Roland was no longer there to receive it. 'By Heaven, this infernal coil at home is becoming more entangled!' exclaimed Jack. 'Were it not for my mother's sake I would hope to be knocked on the head to-day.' 'Not for poor little Maude's sake?' asked Roland reproachfully. 'God help us both!' sighed Jack. 'To every one who lives strength is given him to do his duty,' said Roland gravely. 'Do yours, Jack, and no more.' 'To me there seems a dash of sophistry in this advice now; but had you ever loved as I have done----' 'Had I ever loved! What do you mean?' asked Roland, almost impatiently. 'But there go the bugles, and we must each to his company.' Then each, seizing the other's hand, drew his sword and 'fell in.' The mystery involving the fate of Maude and the movements of both her and Hester were a source of intense pain, perplexity, and grief to the two friends now, even amid the fierce and wild work of that eventful 10th of February. CHAPTER LVI. THE BATTLE OF KIRBEKAN. On the night before this brilliant encounter the greatest enthusiasm prevailed in the ranks of General Earle's column at the prospect of a brush with the enemy at last, after an advance of eighteen most weary miles, which had occupied them no less than twenty days, such was the terrible nature of the country to be traversed by stream and desert. As a fine Scottish ballad has it: 'With painful march across the sand How few, though strong, they come, Some thinking of the clover fields And the happy English home; And some whose graver features speak Them children of the North, Of the golden whin on the Lion Hill That crouches by the Forth. ''Tis night, and through the desert air The pibroch's note screams shrill, Then dies away--the bugle sounds-- Then all is deathly still, Save now and then a soldier starts As through the midnight air A sudden whistle tells him that The scouts of death are there!' At half-past five in the morning, after a meagre and hurried breakfast--the last meal that many were to partake of on earth--the column got under arms and took its march straight inland over a very rocky district for more than a mile, while blood-red and fiery the vast disc of the sun began to appear above the far and hazy horizon.