'No,' assented the other, expelling his cigar-smoke in long concentric circles; 'but there is a novelty in all this new work here, with a vengeance. Only think, Stanley, in London, a few hours hence, would find us at the opera, at a crush in Belgravia, or consecrating the time to billiards, to the joys of Bacchus, and the chaste salutes of Venus, by Jove!' 'A devil of a business that last Turkish charge was,' said Pelham; adding, in a low voice, 'I shouldn't have cared if that fellow Guebhard had been knocked on the head--well, unhorsed at least, to-day; he is a cantankerous brute--bad form, very.' Cecil looked at the officer of Lancers indicated, but knew not then that a time was coming when he would heartily share Pelham's wish. 'This is not your _baptême de feu_, I believe, even in Servia?' said the latter to him, suddenly. 'No--I have received that baptism before,' replied Cecil. 'Where?' 'In India.' 'Indeed! What regiment?' Cecil remembered the mode of his leaving the beloved corps; he felt his cheek flush hotly, and, affecting not to hear the question, turned to the war-correspondent of the London daily, who was making notes for ulterior press purposes, and took from Cecil's own lips his modest detail of the charge in which he saved the lives of General Tchernaieff and Count Palenka:--all of which episode would doubtless appear in the illustrated papers from sketches 'made on the spot, by our own artist,' whose immediate whereabouts was Fleet Street. 'How those Montenegrins fought to-day!' exclaimed Pelham, after a pause; 'armed with their sharp yataghans they came on like a living flood, after delivering their musketry-fire, and then flinging away their firearms, fell on with their blades in the smoke, precisely as the Scottish Highlanders used to do of old.' 'We'll have to write home about all these things.' Cecil smoked in silence, and thought what home had he, or to whom could he write save to one who dared not receive his letter! Amid this easy kind of talk, ever and anon the cries of pain--long-drawn moans, ending in a half-scream--came on the breeze from the adjacent battle-field. 'We shall hear the howling of the evil _vilas_ to-night,' said Guebhard, with a grim smile, as he took the meerschaum from his moustached mouth. 'Who are they?' asked Cecil, whose knowledge of Italian and German stood him in good stead amid the polyglot kind of conversation that went on around him. 'Don't you know?' said Guebhard, a little superciliously; 'but it is a Servian idea--superstition if you will--that spirits so named come at midnight to exult over the slain; these are the hideous and fiendish _vilas_, for there are others that are handsome and good.'