The pouring rain had long since extinguished all the camp and bivouac fires, and was adding to the miseries of the wounded and the dying. He had covered his horse with a blanket, and made a pillow of his holsters, and, with the flaps of his Servian forage cap tied over his ears, lay there sleepless and heedless of whether he was kicked, or trampled upon, by his charger's hoofs, or the hoofs of others, while ever and anon the deep thunder grumbled over the spur of the Balkans, and the red lightning flashes lit up vividly, for a moment, the waters of the fast-flowing Morava, and a strange tower close by--a tower of human skulls, erected to commemorate a victory over the Servians by the Turks under Comourgi. CHAPTER XIV. A MYSTERY. It was six in the morning of the following day. From the eastward came a blaze of glorious sunshine; the rain had ceased about midnight; the blue sky overhead was cloudless; shadows strange and darkly defined fell to the westward from rock and tree; the Morava was glowing in golden light; but by its margin lay the battle-field with all its horrors--a place that no sunshine could brighten. Cecil was roused from sleep by Captain Mattei Guebhard, who announced that General Tchernaieff required his presence at head-quarters forthwith. 'For what purpose?' asked Cecil. 'How can I tell!' was the sulky rejoinder; 'you will learn when you get there.' The truth is, that this Mattei Guebhard, who was--justly, as events proved--cold in the king's service, had been unhorsed in one of the charges on the previous day, and had come a little scurvily out of the action, having failed to rally or reform his troop; thus, though he dared not to sneer at Cecil, he was jealous of the honours he had won, but never could have conceived how little the ex-Cameronian valued them. There is perhaps more hate at first sight in this world than there is love at first sight; and somehow Mattei Guebhard felt a curious hatred of Cecil, who was aware at the same time of having a most decided repugnance of him. Yet they exchanged cigars, and picked their way across the battle-field, where the dead were being buried in trenches; the peasantry were stealing arms and whatever they could lay hands on; where the scared vultures were hovering, angry and expectant, overhead; and where all the hedgerows, hollows, and ditches were, as usual in every battle-field, strewed with those mysterious scraps of papers, that are the sport of the passing breeze. What they are, no one cares to inquire, not even plunderers and burial parties, who fling them contemptuously aside, after searching the pockets and other repositories of the slain. They may be only Orderly Room reports, and parade returns; but too frequently they are the last letters from mothers and sweethearts, or wives--letters full of love and prayerful tenderness, to those who can peruse them no more.